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Blessing of the Baskets

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My younger daughter and I took our basket into town for blessing.  After a bit of shifting things around, this is what our basket looked like.

2018-Easter.basket

The prosciutto roses were added at the very end, because they dry out so quickly – though they did double duty in holding some of the eggs in place!  I ended up fitting 8 of each type of egg into the basket, so there were some of the tea dyed and onion skin dyed eggs left over.

The embroidered table cloth is one of a couple of antique embroidered linens I’ve managed to acquire many, many years ago.  It has 8 little matching napkins.

Normally, I would have ironed it first, but neither of our two irons made it with the movers.

Which reminds me.  I have come to realize something.

We are now completely finished unpacking!

I had unpacked a box of books in the office some time ago.  I still have a number of bins, but aside from one that’s still got stuff in it because I have to find the right spot of them, they don’t need to be unpacked.  The stuff in them belongs in the bins.

On the one hand, Yay!  We’re unpacked!

On the other… there is now no possibility of finding the missing stuff jammed into an unpacked box somewhere.  That stuff is lost.

Including my two irons.

*sigh*

But I digress!

I snagged a quick photo in the church…

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Another half dozen or so baskets were added after this photo was taken.

I’m taken aback by the lit candles inside people’s baskets.  I’m reading “fire hazard” all over the place!  :-D  My daughter remembers the last time we brought our baskets here for blessing, several Easters ago.  We had come out for a visit and stayed with my father, in the very house we live in now.  We had included a candle in our basket.  Someone lit it for us!

A couple of the baskets that came after this photo was taken were just huge!  You can kind of tell whose baskets are for larger families. :-D There was one that had the most interesting wire holder for the eggs, that kept them well above the rest of the food.  I love all the different styles of baskets and how they are decorated, too.

If you look towards the back of the photo, on the riser above the baskets at the foot of the alter, is a small basket that doesn’t have any food in it.  That’s a donation basket for the priest, for doing the blessing.  I remember helping my mother bring baskets for blessing, and she would set up the little donation basket, and a second one, where she added some food items from our own baskets.  Other people followed her lead and added more, so that by the end of it, the priest also had a basket full of food!

For the blessing ceremony, a prayer and blessing was said, then the priest sprinkled all the baskets with holy water.  Then he went down the aisle and sprinkled us, too.  We finished with a rousing hymn of blessing, with the priest grinning from ear to ear as he sang, his arms waving to the rhythm.  Clearly, this is a ceremony much enjoyed by the priest, as well!

Then, after we retrieved our basket, I saw him standing there with his iPhone out, taking video of us all, getting our baskets, still with that huge, joyful smile on his face.

It was awesome.

The Re-Farmer

Our Daily Deer

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I’m told I missed a whole lot of deer visiting when I went into town.  My daughter and I still saw about a dozen or so, in three different groups, just in the first mile along the road from our place.  We saw more, again, on the way back, as well as a couple of other between our little hamlet and the next town.  They were really active today!

Tomorrow, when we come back from blessing the baskets, we’re going to have to get more deer feed.  I put out the last of it today.

No one was able to get photos while we were out, but thankfully, we got more visits later, and I was able to take photos.

First up was Hungry Girl and Barbecue.

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They didn’t stay for long.  Something kept startling them.

After that came the deer with no tail, and her little one!

We’re going to have to come up with a name for her.  “Deer with no tail” is a bit cumbersome.

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I kept trying to get a good shot of the little one’s antler nubs, but they are still so small, that they don’t really show well in the photos.

If you saw the video I posted earlier, you saw Mama and the twins come in, too.

Mama and the twins drove these two off for a while, but they came back soon after.

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They definitely enforce their hierarchy at the feeding station!

I just love this photo of one of the twins.

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Such beautiful eyes!!!

There was a daring squirrel that would come in while the deer were feeding, and both Mama and the twins, and the other pair, were very curious about it today.  The mama with no tail did a bunch of foot stomping at it – which the squirrel ignored – and her boy, as well as one of the twins, got brave enough to approach and try and sniff it.  Which the squirrel also ignored! :-D

I’m so glad we are getting more regular visitors.

The Re-Farmer

Eggs, three ways!

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Today, we did the final preparations for our Easter basket.  Which required an extra trip into town to get more eggs!

We eat a lot of eggs.

I see chickens in our future.

We tend to do eggs at least 2 ways.  This year, with the pickled pink eggs, we have 3 varieties.

First up, here is how the pickled pink eggs turned out.

Pickled pink eggs

Pickled Pink eggs, after 3 days in the pickling liquid.

Of the 12 eggs we pickled, I went over them and picked the 8 best, leaving 4 for us to taste test.

They are quite delicious.  The pickling gives the eggs a very solid, dense feel, and the tang after 3 days in the pickling liquid is just right.

We then got two pots of 18 eggs each going.  One included the onion skins I’d been setting aside for the past few months, along with a splash of vinegar and a dash of turmeric, for extra colour, in the water.  Onion skin dyed eggs for the Easter basket are called kraszanki (kra-SHAN-kee) in Polish.  The turmeric is my own addition.  The eggs are hard boiled until they reach the desired colour; these were boiled for probably 45 minutes.

Onion skin dyed eggs

Always cook extra, in case of breakage!

Of the 18 eggs, 6 broke, leaving an even dozen for the basket.  It’s unlikely we’ll be able to fit all of them in.

The other batch of eggs were boiled for 10 minutes.  The hot water was replaced with cold until they reached a temperature where they could be handled.  Using the back of a spoon, the shells were cracked all over.  After that, they were returned to the stove to boil again, this time with 3 Tbsp black tea leaves, 1 tsp sugar, a tsp of five spice mix (or, as we did today, the equivalent spices I had on hand) and 1/2 cup soy sauce.  They were then cooked for another 45 minutes or so – again, it’s until the desired colour is reached.  The original recipe I’d found for these said to cook them for 3 hours!  We’ve never cooked them that long.

Here is what they looked like, after being drained and rinsed.

Tea dyed eggs

Once they were cooled down, it was time to peel them.

Out of the 18, 7 got damaged while being peeled.

And that is why we cook so many extra eggs! :-D

Peeled, tea dyed eggs

In all the years we have done these eggs, including years when we’d cooked them for much longer, the coloured parts have never looked this intense!

I wonder if our well water has something to do with it?

Meanwhile, I dug out some of my collection of little bowls (I adore little bowls, so I’ve got quite a few) and other pretty dishes to hold the other basket ingredients.  Some of the vinegar and olive oil were transferred to small pitchers with liquid tight stoppers.  For the butter, we whipped some with parsley and fresh garlic.  The salt we’re using this year is Himalayan sea salt.  We are including a mustard this year, too.

Each item in the basket has symbolic meaning.

The bread symbolizes Jesus, who is the “bread of life.” Eggs symbolize the resurrection and new life.  Kielbasa (sausage) represents God’s favour and generosity.  Ham is a symbol of joy and abundance.  Bacon (which we don’t usually include, though sometimes we include prosciutto, instead) represents God’s mercy, as well as generosity.  Butter is a reminder of the good will we should have to all.  The butter is traditionally shaped into a lamb, but we usually have plain or herbed butter decorated with a cross made of cloves.  Some years, we’ve had a lamb made out of marzipan.  The lamb, of course, symbolizes Jesus.

Horseradish, with its strong, bitter flavour, reminds us of the Passion of Christ.  When made into a spread sweetened with beet juice, it represents both the pain of Christ’s crucifixion and the sweet joy of resurrection.  Salt is a reminder for us to be the “salt of the earth” and symbolizes prosperity and justice.  Cheese symbolizes moderation.

We’ve included olives and olive oil in our baskets, symbolizing peace, wisdom and hope.  Vinegar is there to remind us of the crucifixion, when Jesus was given vinegar (also translated as sour wine) on a sponge to drink.  We sometimes include mustard – preferably a type in which the seeds are still visible – to represent faith.

A candle can also be included, to symbolize Christ as the Light of the World.  The baskets can be decorated with spring flowers, greenery and ribbons to represent new life and the resurrection.  A bottle of red wine is also appropriate to include, to symbolize the blood of Christ.  Then the whole thing is covered with a fine embroidered or lace cloth.

The blessing of the baskets, called Święconka (shvye-CHONE-ka is a rough approximation of how it’s pronounced) in Polish, happens on Holy Saturday.  The blessing of the baskets is one of my fondest childhood memories.  Some years, I would have my own tiny little basket to carry (okay; tiny is a relative statement in our family…) for the blessing.  They would all be laid out at the front of the church, on the steps leading up to the altar.  I loved looking at all the different ways people did their baskets, and the different things they would include.  There is plenty of room for variety in this tradition!  I saw all kinds of breads, fruit, and eggs decorated in all sorts of ways.  With so many baskets, the church was soon smelling so good!  There was such a sense of anticipation – so very appropriate, as we anticipated celebrating the resurrection of Christ.

Whatever traditions you have for Easter, I hope that it brings you much joy and peace.

The Re-Farmer

The Story Continues (plus critters)

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I had hoped that, after spending so much time needing to prove who I am and that I actually do live where I live, it would be done.

And in a way, it is.  A major hurdle is now behind us.

Now it’s all about the van.

The parts I needed came in this morning, so I went back to the garage to get the work done to pass safety inspection.

This time, I brought my project bag so I could do some crochet while waiting.  The garage isn’t in town, but along a major highway, so it’s not like I walk over to a coffee shop or something while I waited. ;-)

One of the things that needed to be done was replace the LED brake light above the rear windshield.  That went well, and it looks great.  The previous one had a bit crack in it.

Then there was the ABS issue.

Yesterday, they replaced the connector for the harness and hooked it up, and were getting erratic readings.

The brakes themselves are working fine.  The next thing was to replace the bearings.  Which they did.

That didn’t solve the problem.  The indicator lights are still turning on, and their readings still come back as erratic.

They ended up basically doing the entire safety inspection, all over again, trying to trace the problem (at no extra charge).  Mechanically, they can find no reason for my ABS light to be on.

Which means it could be a wiring problem, or the instrument cluster in the dash.

If it were the instrument cluster, there would probably be other things going off, too.  So it’s likely the harness.  So they went ahead and ordered a new one for me.  It’ll cost about the same as that LED light bar for the rear brake light.

Now, of the bearings they changed, one set was really bad.  The second was borderline.  So because that one might not have needed to be changed, and changing it didn’t solve the problem, they are not going to charge me labour to put in the new harness; just the cost of the part.  I’ll get a call in a couple of weeks, when it’s expected to come in.  I probably won’t actually come in to get it replaced until the end of the month, when next pay comes in.

After talking about passing the safety inspection so I could transfer the vehicle registration and insurance to this province, and confirming that I was going to keep the vehicle, and wasn’t trying to sell it, they signed off on the inspection.  At this point, there is no actual safety issue.  Just a light that’s turning on, and they don’t know why.

I did mention that it took a week after getting a new gas cap that the “check gas cap” notification to stop turning on.  Who knows.  Maybe the same thing will happen with the ABS indicator.

Once I paid for the work and got my inspection sheets, I went into town to transfer our vehicle, while the office was still open.  Yay!

I get there and give the woman at the desk the inspection form and the insurance and registration cards.

She starts going over them, so I wait.

And wait.

She kept looking back and forth.

Then back and forth again.

A perplexed expression began to form on her face.

Oh, dear.  Now what?

After a while she tells me, the VIN numbers don’t match.

What?

The VIN on the insurance and registration cards had different numbers than on the inspection form.  The letters at the beginning matched, but the numbers were completely different.

What???

I didn’t even think to double check.  Why would I?  Sure enough, the numbers were completely different.

Well, that meant going back to the garage.  However, before I left, they asked me about my husband.  His name is on the insurance and registration.  He is the primary owner of the van, which allowed us to get a veteran’s plate.

Which meant he needed to be there.

Also, did he have his new license?

No.  I explained that he doesn’t really drive anymore because of pain, and pain was why he hadn’t made it in to transfer his driver’s license.

After talking about options, including having his name taken off (would he have to fill out a gifting form?), but the easiest thing would be for him to come in, get his driver’s license transferred – they confirmed with me that he had all the necessary documentation! – then transfer the vehicle over at the same time.

Tomorrow being Good Friday, the office will be closed; that would mean coming in on Saturday, at the earliest.  Otherwise, it would have to wait until after Easter.

I then asked about the time frame.  Normally, there is 90 days to get all this done when moving to a new province.  I’m over the 90 days.

After confirming that my insurance company was okay with it, they let me know that the provincial insurance would also be okay with it, since we are clearly at least TRYING to get it done!  If we had simply not bothered for 6 months or something, that would be different.  My file has notations for all of this, so there is documentation showing that it is actually being worked on.

So yes, I am indeed still driving legally!

When I went back to the vehicle, safety inspection form in hand, I went to look at the VIN on the dash, confirming that the one on the form did not match, while my insurance and registration cards did.  Once in the vehicle, I phoned the garage and told them the numbers didn’t match.  I was looking at the form as I called and realized that the year didn’t match, either.  Instead of a 2005, it had 2007.

The guy at the garage was flabbergasted.  How could that be?  He went and checked on the computer, looking up the number that was on their copy of the form.  Sure enough, it was coming back as a 2007 model.  What the heck?

Then he remembered.

Didn’t I say something about getting a new door?

I had mentioned this to him only in passing, so I’m really impressed that he remembered.  I didn’t even think of it.  The mechanic must have taken the VIN from the door, instead of the dash, and that door frame is from another vehicle.

So I headed over to the garage to get a new form.  When I parked, the guy (the owner, I think) came right out with one of the mechanics, and a new form.  He’d filled everything else out already, and just had to take down the right VIN and confirm the year.

As the paperwork was being prepped, the mechanic looked at me and asked, “you’re (my younger brother)’s sister?”  Yes, I am.  “We went to school together!”

Turns out he’s from my home town and we’d both gone to the tiny little, two classroom school that was here (when the school closed, there were only 8 students from Kindergarten to grade 3!).

I admitted I didn’t remember him at all.  After all these years, I barely remember anybody!

Still, it was cool to find that connection!

I now have the new safety inspection form, but that was it for the day.  There was no way I could go home, pick up my husband, then come back before the office closed.

Ah, well.

Meanwhile, the family was visited by a whole bunch of deer while I was gone, and my daughter got some photos.

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Hungry Girl and Barbecue had come by.  Mama and the twins, as usual, chased away Hungry Girl and Barbecue, though both came back to continue feeding near them later.

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None of them, however were willing to allow two others to join them.

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It’s the deer with no tail again!  My daughter got this picture through the dining room window.  They kept looking into the bush, and towards the pile of stuff nearby.  Likely there was a cat somewhere in the area.

After the other 5 left, these two did get to go over the the feeding station and get some nibbles.

Then, not long after I got home, another deer showed up, all by itself.  Number 8!

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I chose this picture because of the interesting colour changes along its jaw and neck.  It doesn’t show in any other photos.  We’re thinking there might be something from the house reflecting onto her.  No idea what it might be. Especially at that angle.

Tomorrow, the main goal of the day is to prepare the Easter basket for blessing on Saturday.  I still need to find out what time that’s happening!

I’m really looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer

 

 

 

 

 

 

More new deer?

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Today was a chilly day, with very high winds.  There had been freezing rain the night before, so it was pretty slippery driving out to get the van’s safety inspection, with winds buffeting all the way.  Even when parked!  After they were done with the van, I sat in it for a while, updating my husband with Skype (we used to text each other all the time, but Skype uses internet, so it’ll actually get through).  The wind was rocking the van hard enough that, as I was focusing on tapping out my message, I was actually feeling some vertigo!

With the unpleasant conditions, it was no surprise that no deer came over, and for a while I thought we wouldn’t see any at all.

Then a whole bunch showed up, all at once!

At first, three came running in, with a little one in the lead.  A slightly larger one followed, while and even larger third deer hung back at the tree line.

The slightly larger one kept trying to drive away the little one, who kept coming back.  Then the bigger one by the trees went at the middle sized one.

While watching their antics, I suddenly realized I was seeing two more deer coming through the spruces, and one of them drove off the two bigger ones.

I didn’t recognize the two that got driven off.  It looks like we got some more new ones, but they didn’t have any distinguishing marks that would allow me be sure. The little one turned out to be one of the twins, and the two coming out of the spruces was Mama and the other twin.  The twins have distinctive black on their ears.

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Mama and the twins.  She’s the one with the heart shape on her forehead.

Not long after, we spotted the other two through the dining room window!  These two had cut through the spruce grove to come around a pile of pallets and whatnot that’s sitting at the edge of the trees.  Deer rarely come from that direction.  They tried to come back to the feeding station, but Mama and the twins weren’t about to let them!

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One of the twins.

Deer.  They’re so dramatic! :-D

While all that was going on, my husband and I decided we needed to get the van work done to pass safety.  We’re going to have to go into the money for the broken power pole, but what choice do we have?  Getting the new pole will just have to be pushed back.  The vehicle is the priority right now.

That decided, I called the garage to tell them to go ahead and order the parts.  Turns out that I’d called early enough that the order would go out today, and the parts should come in tomorrow.  They were able to book me for the afternoon, though I was asked to phone at noon, first, to check if the parts were in.  No point in getting any of the work done, if there is a delay in any of the parts.

It had been my intention to bake the Easter bread tomorrow.  Since I’m most likely going to be spending quite a bit of time at the garage, I decided to do it today.  This bread has such a completely different texture than our usual bread.  It’s all that eggs, butter and milk!  Then, I tried a new rye bread recipe, modified to use our rye sourdough starter.

Both came out looking awesome!

I’ll be posting the recipes separately.

We’ve also dug out our Easter baskets, and will have to use the biggest one this year.  The braided loaf I made is too long for the round one we usually use!  Even with the bigger basket, we’ll have to find some way to support it from underneath, so it doesn’t break apart.

Now that’s the kind of problem I would much rather have, instead of vehicle problems! :-D

The Re-Farmer

That’s going to hurt…

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automotive-defect-broken-car-wreck-78793.jpegWell, I’ve taken the van in this morning to get the safety inspection.

This is a bare bones inspection required in order for me to be able to transfer our license and registration to this province.  Whatever else they find, as long as I can get it fixed within 30 days, they can sign off on it as a pass.

It failed.

When the mechanic came in, his first question to me was “were you planning on keeping this vehicle?”

There are a lot of little things wrong with it.  Whoever owned it before us didn’t maintain it well.

Here we thought that buying from a dealership would save us from this hassle.  I never thought that the dealership would be the one to screw us over.  I would have been better off buying a vehicle off of LetGo.

Ah, hindsight.  It’s always perfect.

To be fair, the engine itself is sound.  If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be worth fixing.

The mechanic did find where our power steering was leaking.  Apparently, it wasn’t spotted because it’s leaking into something, and not just onto the ground.  It’s not a safety issue, though, so that can wait.

At my request, he also checked my driver’s side door to see why it’s dropping.  The bushings are worn out.  Again, not something that affects the safety inspection.

There were only two things to cause the failure.

One, is the brake light at the rear of the van.  The one that’s above the lift gate.  If it had just been a bulb, it would have been a quick fix, right then and there.

Turns out, it uses an LED light bar.  Which they didn’t have in any of their parts vehicles in stock.  Which can only be purchased new, directly from GM.  Which makes it considerably more expensive.  Also, it would need to be ordered in.

The other failure was with the ABS indicator.  The light has always been on since I’ve owned it, and the onboard computer always has a “service ABS system” warning.  So I figured there would be something, there.

It turns out the problem was with what WASN’T there.

A connector.

It turns out the connector for the relevant wiring was gone, and the wires themselves were tied off.

I had to ask.  Why would someone do something like that?

His best guess is that it had come loose and was dragging on the ground.  Rather than replace it, the person who did it just cut it off and tied off the wires, so they wouldn’t be dragging on the ground anymore.

He also mentioned in passing that he’s not impressed with these systems.  The ABS warning light is on on all his own vehicles, and it’s a common problem.

They did a quick check, and it turned out they did have a connector in stock that should fit.  I gave the go ahead to do both the light (which is when they found out it wasn’t just a bulb and couldn’t do it) and install the connector.

It didn’t work.

The connector was the right kind, all right, but the indicator lights continued to show.  He even drove it around a bit to see if it would turn off.  When they tested it, it kept coming up as erratic readings.

They found where the problems where.

On their own, the cost to get everything fixed really isn’t that bad.  All together, though, it’s going to be almost $650.

The only way we can afford that is if we go into the money set aside to fix the broken power pole.

Granted, the pole can’t be fixed until the ground thaws.  Which means sometime in May.  If we use this money, we likely won’t be able to replace it all of it until the end of May, which means the pole won’t get replaced until June.  My brother was going to get the power restored to the barn at the same time (they plan to paint it this year, and will need power for the equipment).

We don’t really have a choice.  We have to get the work done and the registration transferred.  We’re already behind on that.

*sigh*

Moving out here was supposed to be a help to our financial situation.  All these extra expenses are making it harder for us just to get caught up on extra expenses related to the move.  So it’s extra expenses on top of extra expenses.

It’ll work out in the end.  It’s just going to be a painful ride for a longer time.  Being the cynic realist that I am, all I can think of, what will happen next?  Because there’s always something, isn’t there?

Still, we have a roof over our heads, food on the table, and our basic bills are being paid.  For that, at least, I am thankful.

The Re-Farmer

New Deer… doing a double take!

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My younger daughter and I ended up going out most of the day, getting everything we needed for Easter, and to last us until the Tuesday after.  There is no way I’m doing the Costco shopping before Easter weekend.

Then we went out again to get the thing I thought I had, but didn’t…

My older daughter got some photos of a new pair of deer that visited our feeding station today.

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It looks like a Mama and her youngster.

There is, however, something strange about that Mama.

Take another look…

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She has no tail!

Now there is a deer that likely survived a predator attack!

We seem to be getting more new deer visiting us lately.

My daughter also got a cute shot of Butterscotch.

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Butterscotch has been quite entertaining today.  I got some very dramatic photos of her this morning, as well as a funny video, that I posted on my Instagram.  We saw all of the cats except The Hand and Mothman today – I think the warm temperatures are being quite enjoyed by them!  They were certainly more playful.

The Re-Farmer

 

Hello, Critters

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Ah, a much more pleasant day today!  Just the winds dying down makes a huge difference.  There are blizzard warnings for later on, but not in our area.  We’re just supposed to get a mix or rain and snow some time.

I’m still waiting for that last big blow-out before real spring (as opposed to calendar spring) arrives.

Interestingly, the better weather conditions did not translate into increased critter activity outside our window.

Nasty Crime Boy came to check out the birds.

2018-03-26.cat

Later, we saw Beep Beep climbing one of the trees.  Rolando Moon came out to say hi when I brought the food out, and that was it for the outside cats.

As for the deer, we only saw Hungry Girl and Barbecue.  My being in the window taking pictures seemed to make Hungry Girl very nervous, so I didn’t stay for long.  I did get a couple of cute photos, though.  Including my obligatory tongue shots! :-D  I got both Hungry Girl…

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… and Barbecue…

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… just a peak of a tongue. :-D

It was a quiet day overall, which I’m quite enjoying.  Visits with my mother tend to require a few days of recovery time.  Seeing her every day for 5 days in a row?  I’m going to need at least a week to de-stress!  I did get a call from her today, and I was happy to learn she had booked an appointment with her local doctor for tomorrow – that was fast!  She didn’t get her brace on, though tomorrow she is hoping to talk to some staff about getting the assistance.  I don’t know how the process works in this province yet, but I’m hoping she will be able to get daily visits to put the brace on her, quickly.

I did get a quick trip into town to pick up some things for Easter that will need advance prep time, plus I got my van booked to get the safety done in a couple of days.  I really don’t know what to expect with that.  I’m hoping it’ll be inexpensive, but my paranoid side is thinking they’re going to find new, expensive problems in the process.  Because it just always seems to happen that way!  If all goes well, though, I’ll have the safety done in the morning, and by afternoon, I can get our registration and insurance transferred over.  Then I’ll finally be driving with this province’s license plates!  It’ll only be a month and a half past when it was supposed to get done. :-/

I just know it’s not going to be that simple.  There’s going to be something to complicate things, right?  :-D

I am so looking forward to this hassle being over and done with!

The Re-Farmer

A Good Day to Stay Inside!

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

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

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

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

20180325wind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The other deer didn’t even get that close…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under the spruce tree, next to the house.

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

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

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

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

Boy, did he have a revolt on his hands!

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Quiet – and critters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

!!!!!

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

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

My husband is allergic to stings.

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

So I’m doubly glad my brother came over!

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

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

It’s a long list.

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

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I love how they tilt their heads like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They didn’t stay for much longer after this.

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer