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Update, up and broken things

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First, an update on the kitties!

Beep Beep came half out of her baby nest to have a bit of food while I was there, with the babies peacefully snoozing in a pile. I was even able to get a picture, despite her best efforts to use her butt to block my attempts. :-D

She was more co-operative later.

That is one happy, contented bunch of wormies!

Beep Beep looks ticked off at the flash. :-D

While I was outside, doing my rounds, Butterscotch and her boys followed me around.

Creamsicle really, really wanted up – and not just with me!

He does love climbing things!

Including my leg. :-D

Potato Beetle was more polite about it.

Just look at that face!

He has a terrible habit of running in front of us as we are walking, then flopping down on the ground, right in front of our feet. It can be very hard not to step on or trip over him! :-D

He likes to go up on the roof and watch the girls through the upstairs window. I’m told he even falls asleep with his forehead against the glass! :-D He is such an affectionate boy. :-)

Butterscotch not only let me pet her this morning, but even let me pick her up, if only briefly. This let me get a quick feel of her belly. The one teat that was very swollen yesterday is still swollen, but already getting softer. This is good, since her not suckling could potentially lead to mastitis.

Before heading outside this morning, I checked on the seeds I’d started earlier, and found there are some seedlings sprouted among the fennel, so I took the dome off the tray. They are already really leggy. I need to get them set up in the sun room soon. The main concern I have for there is how much the temperatures drop during the night. We can’t get a good sense of that with the doors propped open all the time, so I was going to close the outer door, leaving the inner door with its much smaller window, open. We could then keep an eye on the temperature through the bathroom window, throughout the day.

Unfortunately, the door can’t close.

Even when we first moved here, this door was difficult to close. I had to lift it and basically force it shut. Now, not even that works.

Not that it matters anymore. We need to replace the door.

A part of the door’s edge appears to have changed shape and just hits the frame. That’s the part that prevents the door from closing. If this had been the only issue, I could just use one of the planes we found in the basement and shave it down. However, as you can see in the photo, the door itself is coming apart at the bottom, and the window is no longer attached along one side. The caulking is old, brittle and has been breaking off all long that side.

Theoretically, I could take the door off its hinges and repair all of this, but it’s really not worth the effort. I’m pretty sure this is a standard sized door, and we should be able to switch it out with one of the doors we’ve found in a shed.

It’ll be worth a try, at least.

If that doesn’t work… we’ll have to figure something out, or I won’t be able to use the sun room as a greenhouse. I need to be able to protect the trays from the cats.

So that’s something I hope to get done this afternoon.

Wish me luck! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Good news so far!

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I am happy to say that Butterscotch’s remaining kitten is doing very well with her adoptive mom.

I wasn’t able to get a photo today (I didn’t want to bug Beep Beep too much), so this is one I got last night. Butterscotch’s baby is the second from the left, happily nursing.

On the one hand, this is very encouraging. They are lively little squirmy worms. I even had quite a surprise when checking on them this morning. That kitten on the far left? I could see its face peeking out from under Beep Beep’s arm, when suddenly it blinked at me. It’s eyes are starting to open already!! Just barely – if it hadn’t blinked, I wouldn’t have noticed.

On the other hand, it’s kinda depressing, as it likely means Butterscotch really did smother her own kitten yesterday. :-(

As for Butterscotch, when I headed out to feed the critters and do my rounds, she was already meowing outside the sun room door (there are no longer any food and water bowls in the sun room. She also joined me and her boys while I continued my rounds.

While she was willing to rub against my legs, she didn’t really want me to pet her, and certainly didn’t want to be picked up. She has shown zero interest in going back into the house.

I think putting her baby with Beep Beep, and putting Butterscotch back outside, was the right call. :-(

Today turned out to be a day of driving. After dropping my daughter off at work, I headed home just to load the van up with stuff for the dump. We finally included the containers of mystery liquid we found while cleaning the basement. Unfortunately, I think one of them leaked. I ended up having to do the drive with the window open, because of the smell, which persisted, even after I unloaded.

When I dropped my daughter off, I offered to come back for her lunch break. With their lunch room closed off because of the physical distancing requirements, she had her lunch outside again. Yesterday was a lovely day, though, right?

In town, it rained.

My daughter had deferred, since I would be making and extra trip, but I decided to go, anyhow. The problem was, I didn’t know when she was going for lunch. After heating up some leftovers for my own lunch, I asked my other daughter if she knew, and the best she could figure was 11:30. So I figured I would leave at 11 and just meet her.

Then I checked the time and realized it was 10:59. LOL

So I packed my lunch up and headed into town.

Driving with the windows partly open, because of the smell from whatever leaked in the back. :-(

Once in town, I just parked near the pharmacy and had my lunch while I waited. I couldn’t see through the reflective glass, but it turned out my daughter had door duty again (apparently, she has a calming affect on people who might otherwise be upset over having to wait to be let in), so she could see me. While in the van, I realized I should have taken some antihistamines before I left. I have no idea what I’ve developed an allergy to, but it seems to be something that’s only around outside in the early mornings. So I went in to pick some up and got to talk to my daughter. She didn’t know when she was going to be getting her lunch.

It ended up at 1.

I didn’t mind the wait. It meant I could play some Pokemon Go during Community Day. I was also able to pick up some lunch for my daughter, so she just needed to join me in the van. We were able to head over to a park and play Pokemon Go together while she ate. :-D

Normally, I would have just staying in town after she went back to work, rather than drive all the way home and back again. Unfortunately, with so many places closed, there is a lack of open public washrooms, nor places to just sit and enjoy a beverage out of the weather.

Which means I’ll be heading back into town again, fairly soon, to pick up my daughter.

This did allow me to start on a project I had in mind, as an excuse to be in the basement with Beep Beep. It turned out rather well, and I will be sharing about that in another post.

While I was working, Beep Beep came out a couple of times to eat and drink, but otherwise stayed in her nest with the babies.

She is such a good mama.

The Re-Farmer

Another one gone. :-(

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So… we seem to have a problem.

Butterscotch’s third orange kitten died today.

I checked on them this morning. Beep Beep’s kittens were sleeping in a pile, and she had even come to the stairs to greet me when I came down, before dashing back into her nest.

Butterscotch was in her nest, sitting like a loaf. I couldn’t see her kittens, so I felt around and found them. They complained a bit at being disturbed, and I was a bit concerned that they seemed to be under Butterscotch. Once they started complaining, she lay back and nursed them, and all seemed well.

One of my daughters had a shift today (one extra day this month, then nothing but Saturdays on the new schedule), and while I was in town, my other daughter checked on the kittens. They were all looking fine. She did have to dig the orange one out from under Butterscotch, so she continued to check throughout the afternoon, and again when I went back to town to pick up her sister.

Which is when she found the orange one, unresponsive.

At that point, she took the grey and white one and put it with Beep Beep, who had no problem nursing an extra baby.

I checked again when I got home, and there was no question. The kitten was gone.

We’re now left with a couple of possibilities.

Either these babies all had some sort of birth defect, and we’ll have to watch the last one carefully. Or Butterscotch smothered her own kitten.

The box we’d made a nest in that Beep Beep was using was starting to get kinda damp, so I ended up moving her and the babies into the crate that Butterscotch was using, and made up a new bed in an old laundry basket. It is too open for the moms’ preferences, though, and Butterscotch ended up trying to climb into the crate with Beep Beep and the babies.

She is now outside.

I noticed as I picked her up, she did not seem to be full of milk, either. When I had picked up Beep Beep, I could feel she was quite full of milk. This could be another part of the problem.

We will have to make a point of checking on Beep Beep and the babies often. The last I saw, all five kittens were nursing and wriggling around.

Hopefully, there will be no more losses.

The Re-Farmer

Sad news

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It is already turning out to be a very warm day today. We’re supposed to hit a high of 15C/59F this afternoon!

While doing my rounds this morning, I had a Potato demanding cuddles the whole time. :-)

It was warm enough that I went to try and move the saw horses by the storage shed. The ground was thawed enough that I got one of them loose, but the other turned out to be in worse condition than I expected. Instead of breaking loose from the ground, it just broke. !!

Of course, I checked on the babies before heading out this morning.

Beep Beep and her brood are easier to check. They are even right in a sun spot, in the morning. :-)

Butterscotch’s babies are harder to check on, since she tends to block the opening with her own head. I’ve been using the camera on my phone to try and see the babies.

Which is the only reason I was able to see a problem this morning.

In the photo, I could see one of her babies was pushed off to the side. I’d noticed this same kitten had been pushed off to the side yesterday, and had brought it closer to mom, but when I saw it this morning, I knew it was gone. Judging from the state of its hind end, something had gone wrong with it. My guess is, Butterscotch sensed it was not doing well and had been pushing it away from her healthy babies. It may well have been weak from the start.

My daughter and I have been talking about how we can set Butterscotch and her remaining babies up in a new nest, and block the inside of the old radio off completely. It’s just too difficult to see them in there. It’s unlikely it would have made a difference, to be honest, but at least we’d be able to check on them more easily.

A sad way to start the morning. :-(

The Re-Farmer

Spring clean up started

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

But first, I must share this adorableness.

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

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

Dang.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Him and his filthy, filthy nose! :-D

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

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

The Re-Farmer

So many cats… and a bit of a hang up

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

Eighteen.

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

That is insane.

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

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

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

Potato Beetle was funny this morning.

He wanted SO much attention!

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

There was a bit of a hang up.

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

Freezing the tarp to the ground.

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

But not today.

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

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

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

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

In some places, it already is.

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

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

We’ll figure something out.

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

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

I’m looking forward to the work! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, cold damage and more thinking ahead

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other areas…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Morning surprise, and checking things out

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My morning routine now includes checking on the mamas in the basement. I wanted to see how Butterscotch and her babies were doing inside the old radio she decided to give birth in.

Unfortunately, we never thought we’d need to clean the inside of it.

I’m glad one of the cat beds I crocheted fit in there, because the rest of it is really dirty and gross.

Also, this old radio also has a record player in it. I didn’t realize that until I noticed a piece of it sticking out like a drawer. Turns out there is a pullout turntable. Gutted, of course, but the drawer is still there.

While I was checking out Butterscotch, Beep Beep was in the cardboard box we’d made a cat cave out of that fits under a chair. She was curled up in the back, but I could still reach to pet her. Both of them were purring furiously, too. Then, since I was taking pictures of Butterscotch, I decided to take a picture of Beep Beep, too.

It wasn’t until I saw something odd in the picture preview that I realized, she was not alone!

Two little wormy babies!

I’m pretty sure she wasn’t done, either. I expect to find a couple more, the next time I head down to check on them. :-)

While doing my rounds outside, I have been making a point of checking various areas we haven’t been able to get to throughout the winter and assessing things.

The Potato Beetle assisted me in checking out the deer damage on one of the birch trees.

This huge lake of a puddle still had a sheet of ice on the surface. We’re supposed to reach 9C this afternoon; the warmest we’re expected to get for the next week or so. I expect this is going to either get bigger, or finally start to be absorbed into the ground. When it comes time for us to plant the fruit and nut trees we are planning on, we will have to take into account areas like this that flood every spring. This area may puddle in the spring, but in the summer, all of this area gets very dry. The north-east corner is the area that is the worst. Even grass and weeds have a hard time growing in that corner.

I also took the opportunity to extend my rounds into the outer yard. If we were to do a burn, this would be the perfect time for it, as the ground is still quite wet. It would be really good to get rid of the years of dried grass built up, as it becomes a major fire hazard by summer.

With future plans becoming more solidified, I have been looking at the stuff lying about with a new eye for salvage or other usefulness. There are, for example, two really good saw horses outside the storage shed. The ones I have currently in the garage are in much worse shape, so I want to bring these ones over to the house.

Once they are no longer frozen to the ground.

There are some other things, like metal… balcony rails? … that could be set up as temporary fencing around some garden areas. There are a lot of things that have been shoved under the storage shed itself that I’ll want to take a closer look at.

Inside the shed itself, there are things that we could definitely find uses for. If we can get at it. As we cleared out my parents’ stuff from the house, we’ve shoved so many things into here, it’s going to be hard to get at things. We will have to get into there and re-arrange things, though. Some of the stacks of boxes are collapsing, as bottom boxes have given out. This shed was my late brother’s workshop, and I’m sure there are all kinds of useful things hidden away in there. I’d love to be able to reclaim it as a workshop some day, but what do we do with all my parents’ stuff? My mother is adamant that we keep it all, though she has said I could sell some of it off, if I want. She keeps suggesting holding a garage sale, which I have no interest in doing. I’ve done these in the city with little success. What good is having a garage sale this far off the beaten path? I might try using eBay or something, but am in no position to sort through things and take pictures right now.

It would be a good way to try and raise money for a new roof, though. We’ve got to come up with some way to raise the money, because we sure as heck won’t be able to save up for it with our current fixed income. Not with so many other things making demands on every spare penny. I most definitely am not complaining; that fact that we have spare any pennies at all is something I am grateful for. The reality of it is, if we’re going to keep this place up just in the basics of maintenance and repair, we’re going to have to come up with other solutions.

Any suggestions?

The Re-Farmer

Morning

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One of the things I’m appreciating about doing my morning rounds earlier, is our longer days. Along with the increased light is the increased critter activity.

Along with my feline followers, I was hearing all kinds of cranes and Canada geese calling. Sometimes, I can see the geese out in the pasture behind the barn, or watch the geese and cranes flying overhead. Every now and then, I hear the thrumming of prairie chicken wings as they drum up their presence, and the staccato knocking of a wood pecker getting at some grub. :-D It’s fantastic!

The temperatures fluctuating above and below freezing so much (more below than not, lately) had an unexpected result this morning.

One of the icicles from the cracked bird bath created a hat of ice on the gnome! :-D

This morning, my daughter and I took my mother’s car to bring Two Face for her appointment with the vet. Since they are just blocks away, I dropped my daughter off at the vet and continued on to the garage to get a status on our van. Parts have been ordered and are on their way from the city. It will be ready by the time we return to pick up Two Face.

I am so looking forward to having our van back!!!

I just don’t like driving my mother’s car. I don’t like how it feels. I don’t like the noises it makes (and I don’t mean the noise from the differential that I will be getting checked; just it’s normal car noises). I don’t like the small size. There is so little leg room for the back seats, it may as well be a 2 seater.

It actually is a good little car. It does have a decent amount of space under the hatch, and the spare tire is easily accessible. Also, the front seats have butt warmers. :-D I’ve just been absolutely spoiled by minivans. Living here, having two vehicles is more necessity than luxury, but if I had any choice in the matter, our second vehicle would be one of those big, ostentatious, jacked up trucks.

With a plow attachment and a trailer hitch.

Funny how priorities change when you’re living in the sticks. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Destructive cats, and a winter tree casualty

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So… that didn’t take long.

In re-arranging the living room, the girls and I also moved around the plants. The living room is the only space we have for our bigger plants – and some have gotten very big since we’ve moved out here! – so it’s a bit of a challenge.

One of the things we have a lot of is jade plants. The jade plant that we thought might not survive the move is now a massive, healthy beast of the tree. We also have lots and lots of aloe vera. I knew that aloe propagates itself easily, but I didn’t realize how easily jade plants do as well. It turns out any leaf that breaks off can grow into a new plant.

Leaves break off easily. Especially with our cats. They keep trying to get into the pots, lying in the dirt, and generally wrecking havoc. I recently ended up using the extra legs of the plastic utility shelf we got as supports for the big one, because it was almost completely flattened. (As a bonus, because these are tubes, I can now water the plant through the tops.) This is not a good thing, since jade plants are poisonous to cats.

One of the treats I’ve started to get at Costco are these large plastic containers of Cheese Balls. I’ve been keeping the containers because I thought they’d make great cloche coverings in the garden at some point. When the cats were determined to use one of the plant pots as a bed, mashing the jade plant flat, I put one of these over the plant to protect it. It worked well, but when we arranged things, I figured the plant was big enough to not need it any more and took it off.

Well… they did leave that one alone.

Another smaller one, not so much. The pot was knocked over, the poor little jade plant was on the carpet, and there was soil all over.

I’m glad we thought to put that plastic over the shelves to protect their tops!

I put the soil back and replanted the jade plant. It should actually survive this, but we’ll see. Meanwhile, this and another pot are small enough that I cut the tops off of two of those plastic containers, so that they are not straight sided, and they can completely cover the pots and their plants, with room to grow.

This morning, I ended up using the cut off tops to put over a couple more plants that showed signs of cats bashing their way through them.

Meanwhile, while doing my rounds this morning, I remember to check on the pair of trees my mother planted right against the chain link fence. One of them had looked like it was dead, but I wasn’t up to slogging through the snow to check it. The snow is mostly gone now, so…

Yeah, that is one very dead tree. Both of these were fine in the fall.

I had wanted to transplant them away from the fence, but my mother demanded they stay right where they are. When I pointed out that they would eventually grow big enough to damage the fence, and were too close together, she said they were exactly where she wanted them to be, and she didn’t care if they damaged the fence.

Now that one of them has died, knowing my mother, she’s probably going to think I killed it because I didn’t want them there.

Ah, well. I’ll deal with that when the time comes.

One of the things that has really hit home for me as we’ve been cleaning up around the yards, is how incredibly important it is to think years ahead when planting trees. We intend to plant many, many trees, with a focus on food trees, and this gives us an opportunity to learn from what my parents did 10, 20, even 40 years ago.

The Re-Farmer