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Analyzing our 2024 Garden: tomato and potato surprise

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For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.

As with so many other things in our garden this year, things did not go as planned or expected!

Tomatoes – how it started

This year, we were planning to cut down on how many tomatoes we were going to plant. I wanted a paste tomato for making sauces and, by request, we were going to have a few cherry type tomatoes for fresh eating. Two, maybe three, varieties.

For the cherry tomatoes, we had Chocolate Cherry and Black Cherry. For the paste tomato, I tried San Marzano this year, so see what the hype was all about.

Then we got free seeds with one of our orders, for Forme de Ceour tomatoes, a slicing tomato, so we had to try those!

Then there were the mystery compost ring tomatoes!

Oh, and a couple of mystery self seeded tomatoes. 😄

When starting them from seed indoors, I planted just a few seeds of of the cherry and slicing tomatoes, but a lot more of the paste tomatoes, with the expectation of processing and canning them.

The problem was, we had a very high germination rate, and I just can’t bear to toss away strong, healthy seedlings. Which means we ended up with considerably more transplants than intended.

And almost all of them survived transplanting!

How it went

Let’s start with

The Black Cherry tomatoes.

Those got transplanted into the wattle weave bed, along the back of the long side if the L shape. Each transplant had a protective collar round them, held in place with a pair of bamboo stakes that would later be used to support them as they grew.

The collars are something I will continue to do in the future. My husband goes through a lot of gallon jugs of distilled water for his CPAP humidifier, so we’ve got lots of them available. The tops and bottoms are removed, and they get placed over the transplant. This protects them from wind and, in the early parts of the season, from cold spring nights.

It also protected the transplants from rolling cats.

Bonus, the collars came it handy for spot watering. Fill the collars with water, and it slowly absorbed right at the base of the plants, rather than spreading across the garden bed.

The Black Cherry tomatoes – there were 7 of them – THRIVED!!! They got incredibly tall, growing up the stakes, then into the lilac branches above. They produced so many clusters of tomatoes, the branches couldn’t really hold the weight. We ended up having to find ways to add more support as they got bigger. It did take a long time for them to start ripening, though – again, due to our unfortunate spring weather.

The Forme de Ceour tomatoes

We ended up with 9 or 10 transplants. They went into the larger rectangular bed in the old kitchen garden, near the wattle weave bed, with the garlic down the middle, and Red Wethersfield onions interplanted with them.

They, too, absolutely thrived! I’m sure it helped that the sump pump hose was set to drain against the base of the bed, at the high end of the garden. With so much rain this spring, the pump was going off many times a day until well into late summer. Which means this bed got watered from below, frequently, and with our soil drainage, they would never had gotten over watered.

They were also quite prolific, and were among the first to start giving us ripe tomatoes, which my family assures me were quite delicious. They got so heavy with tomatoes that the weight actually broke some of the stakes supporting them!

The Chocolate Cherry tomatoes

There were 7 of these that got transplanted into the chimney block planters at the chain link fence, leaving one empty block for the Goldy zucchini to be planted in.

They grew pretty well, but did not thrive, like the others did. They produces lots of tomatoes, but they were slow to ripen, and few ripened at a time. I now think the chimney block planters themselves may be part of the problem.

The San Marzano tomatoes.

While we started the most of these from seed, an unfortunate falling tray accident did quite a bit of damage.

With the spring weather and inability to work on the main garden beds, I ended up planting the largest and strongest plants into the retaining wall chimney blocks. These blocks have mint in alternative blocks, with chives at one end, so they went into the open alternating blocks.

These did not do well. The plants never got particularly strong or healthy, and they produced few tomatoes.

When a bed was finally ready in the main garden area, the last transplants – the weakest ones – finally got into the ground.

They did fantastic. Even the one that was so spindly, I debated just tossing it rather than transplanting it, recovered and thrive!

I was never able to keep up with pruning these ones, so the side branches soon splayed out in all directions, so the point I was sure they had crushed most of the onions growing in between them. We ended up winding jute twine around the stems until we could lift them up and tie them off to their bamboo supports.

They did not, however start to ripen until very late, and when they did, we never got a lot of them. As a determinate variety, they should have all ripened pretty much at the same time, but they did not.

The Mystery Tomatoes

When harvesting potatoes from the bed along the other section of chain link fence, I uncovered a volunteer tomato. I ended up transplanting it to one end of the bed, so I could harvest the potatoes. It grew quite well, considering how late in the season it showed up. It produce large amounts of small tomatoes. Small enough that I don’t think they were survivors from when we planted a Mosaic Mix of cherry and grape tomatoes, but too big to be the Spoon tomatoes we’ve grown there in another year.

None of them ripened before frost.

Then there were the compost ring tomatoes!

These were from the seeds we dumped into the compost after processing last year’s harvest. The plants got massive. Eventually, I could see some that I could recognize as most likely from the Indigo Blue we grew last year. Others were clearly Roma VF.

But then there were the round ones. We never grew red tomatoes like that. I have no idea where they came from!

How it Ended

So.

Many.

Tomatoes.

With first frost approaching, my daughter and I harvested all the green tomatoes in one evening, along with the last of the winter squash.

Two of those bins are almost all San Marzano. One has Forme de Ceour on the bottom. Two are all the cherry tomatoes, plus a few Forme de Ceour as well – and the last of the patty pans, which you can see beside the cat.

The real surprise was the compost ring.

The plants were so strong and dense, I had to cut them away to reach the tomatoes – and there were so many tomatoes hidden under the foliage! The foliage was so dense, the tomatoes were actually looking blanched.

This bin is just from the compost ring. In one corner, you can see the dark Indigo Blues (most likely). The rest would be the Roma VV.

Those round tomatoes, though, with one looking quite red. I have no idea what they are. We never grew tomatoes like this. We haven’t even bought tomatoes like this in the store!

It’s been months since they were harvested, and we still have a box with ripening tomatoes in it, in the kitchen.

My tomato Conclusion

This was a successful year for most of the tomatoes. As with everything else, they were about a month behind, but most were very prolific.

I don’t know that we’ll be growing tomatoes next year, though.

I don’t eat fresh tomatoes. They make me gag. I can eat them after they’ve been processes, as long as they are a sauce or a paste. My family likes fresh tomatoes.

They are getting sick of tomatoes! 😄

When we weren’t able to process them fast enough, we put whole tomatoes into the freezer to be processed later.

We still have some from last year.

The problem is, they end up buried in the freezer and we don’t get to them.

Hopefully, this winter, we can make a project of processing them, if only to free up space in the freezer!

If we do grow any tomatoes next year, they will likely be another cherry type tomato, and not many of them. Or, we will get more volunteers!

The Potatoes

We bought two new varieties of tomatoes for this year. We got a couple of 3 pound bags of German Butterball, a later season variety, and Purple Caribe, and earlier season variety.

We ended up planting a third variety.

But first, we had to amend soil, to try and increase the acidity.

Once the soil was amended, there were only enough Purple Caribe to plant in 2/3rds of the bed. We still had some Red Thumb fingerlings from last year left – they were looking pretty wizened and sprouty by then! I planted the largest, healthiest looking ones, and the rest went into the compost ring.

It was a while before we were able to plant the German Butterball variety, in one of the low raised beds in the East yard.

How it went

With the Purple Caribe not well at all. About half of them never grew. We had a few plants that we could harvest, leaving two late bloomers to grow as long as possible. There were very few potatoes to harvest.

They were good potatoes, though.

The Red Thumb did much better, which was a real surprise. We got a decent harvest out of them, considering how few were planted.

The German Butterballs were left in the ground for as long as I felt we could get away with. I’m quite happy with the harvest I got out of them, too. We didn’t plant enough to keep for the winter, but we do still have some left now. We’re saving the last of them to have with our Christmas dinner.

Potato Conclusion and thoughts for next year

We are still in the “finding what kind we like” phase with potatoes. I would definitely be okay recommending the German Butterball potatoes. I wish I knew what happened with the Purple Caribe potatoes. This is the second time we’ve tried to grow a caribe type. The first time, the area we planted in got flooded. We had flooding this spring, but where the Purple Caribe failed would not have been affected by it. The Red Thumb fingerlings were a pleasant surprise. These are good potatoes and, clearly, do well when kept and used as a see potato. The only problem is, as a fingerling potato, they are harder to clean and peel for cooking, and just take so much longer to prepare because of that. So while they are good, I think we will move away from fingerling types completely.

Next year, I do want to grow potatoes again. I have just not decided on a variety yet, and am not even sure where I would grow them at this point.

All in all, though, I would consider the potatoes as successful this year, and am happy with what we got.

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2024 Garden: doing things different with melons, squash and gourds

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For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.

Okay, I’m going to start with what turned out to be the largest category of food we grew in this year’s garden, as it really changed a lot for us. Oddly, that was because of how successful they started out!

One thing we had to seriously change up was how and what we started indoors. Last year, we were able to set up space in the cat free zone – aka: our living room – for the many trays and pots.

Too many trays and pots. We over did it.

That set up was no longer going to be an option this year, so we had to really consider what we would start indoors at all.

We also had a lot of issues with our large seeded starts, having to replant some things several times. So this year, we decided to try pre-germinating seeds. With large seeds, they were also scarified, first.

How it started

Let’s start with the melons.

We did still have some seeds left from previous years, but this year I decided to try the Vesey’s Summer of Melons Blend. We are still in the “try new varieties to figure out what we like” phase, though with this blend, we wouldn’t know what the varieties were. I figured we could look them up, once they ripened enough to be identifiable. The main thing was that the mix included early, mid and late season melons, for a more continuous harvest.

Which… didn’t quite work out as planned. More on that, later!

We also went with some we’d grown before; Sarah’s Choice and Pixie. We also added some Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon, a short season variety.

With the known varieties, I chose just a few seeds from each to pre-germinate. When it came to the Summer of Melons blend, not knowing what the varieties were, I started the entire package, which turned out to have 21 seeds in it. I figured there would be some losses, and we’d end up with less.

We ended up with a 100% germination rate on the blend, plus a near 100% germination rate on the rest.

That was a lot of seedlings!

It was much the same thing with the winter squash. We went with the wild bunch mix, skipping the other winter squash seeds we bought, and got another high germination rate using the pre-germination method. We also used it on some Crespo squash (a variety of Peruvian pumpkin), my last luffa seeds, some African drum gourds and the two free pumpkin seeds that are given out every year at the grocery store in my mother’s town, encouraging people to grow pumpkins for their pumpkin fest.

I am really, really happy with the pre-germination method, and will continue using it.

As for the summer squash, it was decided that these would be direct sown, rather than started indoors. I know my mother always direct sowed her zucchini here, and ended up with massive zucchini (she didn’t know they were supposed to be eaten while small), so I knew it could be done. My problem was, would the slugs destroy them, like the year before?

We ended up direct sowing the yellow Goldy zucchini in one of the chimney block planters by the chain link fence. In pots, we planted Magda squash (a pale green squash), Endeavor zucchini (dark green), and the new White Scallop pattypan squash seeds we picked up to try this year.

Later, when we found ourselves with a gap in a garden bed, it was filled with the last of our G Star pattypan seeds, and more Magda and White Scallops.

When it came time for transplanting, we had so many melons and winter squash, they filled four 18′ garden beds. A new growing area was added to fit the pumpkins and drum gourds, while the luffa went into the wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden, where they had done so well last year, that we almost got a luffa to harvest! 😄

Oh, I almost forgot.

We also started Zucca melon seeds. That’s another experiment for me, as I’d really, really like to grow these massive melons. Then ended up being transplanted into a kiddie pool that got converted into a raised bed again. The Crespo squash went into a new bed in a completely different area.

The challenge

The first issue we had was having someplace to put the transplants. In the main garden area, my original intention was to expand with new beds that would eventually become trellis tunnels. However, the existing beds were in desperate need of cleaning up.

For a combination or reasons, including meeting mobility and accessibility needs, we will be making raised beds that are 4′ wide on the outside, with paths that are also 4′ wide. We also settled on them being 18′ long, and already had one new bed in those dimensions.

My daughter suggested that, since the existing beds needed to be cleaned up first anyhow, we should shift them into their permanent positions.

When we first made these beds, we basically eyeballed distances. They were roughly the same lengths, but slightly different widths, and some were crooked. The paths were not the same sizes either.

With some of the winter squash needing to be transplanted soon, we really needed to get at least one bed done quickly, and even had felled trees to prepare into logs to frame it with.

Of course, the job ended up being much bigger than expected.

Here is the start of the job.

Finishing it, however, had weather complications.

It eventually got done, but things were quite set back by the weather.

It took over a month to get the beds shifted, putting in transplants as we were able.

We did do interplanting as well. Peas and pole beans went in one bed of winter squash, corn in the other. The future trellis bed with melons planted in it shared the space with transplanted onions we found, and bush beans. The Crespo squash shared their bed with pole beans, too. I will talk about those in other posts, though.

How it ended

Late.

With the weather and late plantings, everything was set back about a month. The “Summer of Melons” blend didn’t give us any ripe melons until late in the season.

A trellis net had been added for them to climb and they grew pretty well. There were LOTS of melons developing, but it was ages before we could harvest any. In the end, we had to harvest most of then in an under ripe stage, before they could get killed by frost.

The winter squash were also late, but my goodness, they grew well! We ended up harvesting some that ripened on the vines and could be cured for winter storage, including one odd Crespo squash.

The last of them had to be harvested early, along with the melons, before the frost hit them.

The zucca melon in their kiddie pool raised bed were decimated by slugs.

The two pumpkins we transplanted did fantastic, and we got some decent sized pumpkins out of them.

The African drum gourd had a really slow start. Then they started blooming like crazy, with fuzzy little gourds forming all over. Some even started to get pretty big. None made it to first frost, though. If we had not had everything set back so much due to the spring weather, we might actually have gotten some gourds this year.

The luffa gourds in the old kitchen garden were set back dramatically. Last year, they had grown really huge there, vining their way up into the lilac branches above. This year, they barely got tall enough to reach the lilacs at all. The weather just set them back way too much. We barely even got both male and female flowers out of the largest ones.

The summer squash was also set back and did quite poorly. The ones in the pots had to be replanted several times. Unfortunately, even with adding barriers, the kittens found their way onto the pots and would often use them for naps, so that sure didn’t help, either!

The White Scallop patty pans did not make it at all. I gave up after replanting three times.

The Magda did okay, but we only got to harvest a couple of squash from them. The green zucchini did eventually grow and produce, but we had next to nothing to harvest.

The Goldy zucchini in the chimney block planter by the chain link fence produced some harvestable squash, but very few.

In the main garden area, between the onions and shallots, I was sure we’d get nothing at all. The Magda squash never did germinate. We did get a few of G Star patty pans, and they grew really well. There were even a lot of little patty pans developing. Unfortunately, with everything set back so much, we never did get many in a harvestable size before the frost killed them.

The White Scallop squash took so long to germinate, I was sure they’d died off, but we did eventually get two plants. It took even longer for them to start blooming and developing squash. We did have a few just big enough to harvest, at about 2 – 3 inches across, but the frost hit not long after they finally began to produce.

The big surprise and success was the Crespo squash.

We ended up with three surviving transplants, with one having a damaged stem after the bin the transplants were in got knocked over by cats in the sun room. They went into a new small raised bed near the compost ring. We’ve grown there before, but found the area gets soggy, so it was built up a few inches. That alone made a huge difference when the spring rains flooded everything out.

The Crespo squash absolutely thrived in that location. The vines spread so far, I had to train them to not cover the paths I needed open. Some vines grew into the cherry trees behind them, started to climb the branches, and even started to produce dangling squash!

Once again, though, the late start and weather delays slowed the development of squash. The very first one to grow got to a certain size and just stopped growing, becoming a darker green and staying small. Others, however, kept growing and stayed the pale green colour they are supposed to be. The largest ones developed the deeply fissured lumps and bumps this variety is supposed to get.

In the end, only one got to a size that I would consider fully ripe, with two others that got pretty close. With the oldest one included, we got four squash off those vines, though where were quite a few more little ones that never got a chance to get big before the frost hit.

I’m absolutely thrilled. I’ve been trying to grow these for years, and finally succeeded! I look forward to growing them again – this time with seeds saved from the biggest of them.

Thinking of next year

In general, I would say this year’s melons, squash and gourds were an overall success.

We did eventually end up with lots of melons to enjoy, though some had to be left to ripen off the vine for a while.

In the end, though, we basically planted too many. With the melon and winter squash mixes having such high germination rates, there were so many more plants than we intended.

Next year, we will do far fewer.

I’d still like to do Crespo squash again, or maybe try the Zucca melon in the bed the Crespo squash were in.

We got seeds for winter squash my daughter actually requested, though, and never used them. So next year, I want to try those. There is one variety my daughter chose because it’s described as an excellent soup squash. The other two are the Mashed Potato and Baked Potato varieties. I forget which one she actually asked for, so I got both.

I plan much the same with the melons. We will definitely grow melons again, and try another short season watermelon (we had only a single Cream of Saskatchewan melon show up, and it was about the size of a softball). At most, I am thinking only two varieties of melon, plus a watermelon, and only a few plants each.

As for the gourds, those continue to be my “fun” thing to grow. I want to get more luffa seeds from another source – I do want to grow some sponges! – and I want to grow large gourds for crafting purposes. Next year, I’m thinking of trying Canteen gourds again, as those are from a Canadian seed company that grows their seeds even further north than we are.

Conclusion

Aside from some drastic failures, such as the Zucca melon, or semi-failures, like the summer squash, I’d say this past year was a real success. Especially for the winter squash, though the melons did really well, too.

Next year, however, is already going to be very different.

I still had a lot of summer squash seeds from when I accidentally bought three collections instead of one. These included Endeavor Zucchini, Goldy zucchini, Magda squash and Sunburst pattypan squash.

For next year’s garden, we’re trying a winter sowing experiment. For summer squash, all the seeds we have – both old and new, zucchini type and patty pans – were combined, then scattered on a prepared bed in the main garden area. They got planted with some adjustments for spacing, then covered with a deep mulch of leaves and grass clippings for the winter.

In theory, once the snow melts and the mulch is removed so the warmth of the sun can reach the soil, and they should germinate once soil temperature is right.

With so many of these seeds being older, I don’t actually expect a high germination rate. Which would be okay. Otherwise, the bed will become overcrowded and I’d have to thin it.

All I’d really like is to finally get a good crop of summer squash.

Next year’s winter squash will be all new varieties to try, using seeds that were meant for this year’s garden.

We still have melon and watermelon seeds, so I don’t think we’ll buy new varieties to try next year. Same with the gourds, except the luffa. If I want to grow those, I will need to buy more seeds.

The main thing is that we will be growing fewer of them, so that they don’t end up taking over so much of the garden! There are quite a few other things that we were never able to plant simply because we didn’t have the space. Until we can get more progress on those new garden beds and trellis tunnels, we will need to be more selective on what we grow, and how much, for plants that take up so much space!

The Re-Farmer

Catching up and planning ahead

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First, the cuteness!

I just got back from doing the evening outside cat feeding. When I got to the isolation shelter, Kohl was right at the sliding window. She didn’t want food – she wanted attention!

So I gave it to her for as long as I could. She actually made it hard to close the sliding window, because she kept pushing her head through. I did take her out to cuddle her, which she was good with until she wanted back in, but she still wanted pets!

Eye Baby also wanted attention, but the fluffy male is still a stranger. I was able to pet him this morning, while he was eating wet cat food, but that was all he would tolerate. Eye Baby, once the way was clear, was as demanding of pets through the window as Kohl was.

None of them have shown any interest in trying to “escape” the isolation shelter.

In other things…

Last night, I got a message from my brother. Sadly, seeing me at the church closing service triggered our vandal. I thought thing had gone well, but nope. He left another message with my brother. He had some pretty nasty things to say about me, and my younger daughter in particular, and her beard. Of course, he has no idea about her PCOS – or anything else. He hasn’t seen my daughters in years, and only seen me in passing. How he even knows this, I don’t know, because I have no idea who else we have in common that would have described her to home – or why they would do that in the first place.

In the end, he was telling my brother to kick us out. He wants my brother living here, not us. He’s also demanding to meet face to face with my brother. My brother spent years asking to talk to our vandal, trying to find out what happened between them, and our vandal never responded. Now, he’ll insult my brother in the messages while demanding they meet face to face? Oh, and using his cancer as a weapon to try and manipulate my brother, just like he used my late brother and late father to try and manipulate my mother for so many years.

For someone who says he’s dying, he sure doesn’t look or sound like it. Not that that means anything.

My poor brother was really upset. He transcribed the message for me, which meant he listened to it over and over. I quite understand how traumatic that can be. I’ve had to do similar, years ago.

After we had a chance to talk, I ended up sending a message to my neighbour that had ranted at me in the church parking lot. I was going to not bother, but after the message – and a comment our vandal made that suggested to me that he and our neighbour had talked about what happened, since our vandal was already inside the church when some things were said – I changed my mind.

I didn’t address a lot of issues, but did point out some things our vandal has clearly been lying to him about, included the transcription of the new message and attached the last two, which were much more vile, as well. I also called him out on how he treated me and told him, never again. I told him, I wasn’t angry with him (I don’t waste my energy on anger) and I don’t hold grudges, but if he’s got a problem with me, we can have a conversation, but not that.

This morning, I found a brief response from him saying we could have a conversation, but he was pretty blindsided by things. Which is totally understandable. I hate that he has been dragged into the mess like this. I love him like another brother, though, and I would hate to lose his friendship over what our vandal is doing.

At this point, I’m am thinking it may be time to consult a lawyer to see what sort of legal action we can take. It’s not just about the slander anymore, when he is demanding my brother evict us. The irony is, one of the reasons we are here at all is because of our vandal. My brother and his wife were going to move here and rent their property out, but between our vandal and my mother’s mistreatment of my brother, they (rightfully) changed their minds.

Meanwhile, I just got a call from a hospital about my mother. She has finally been booked for an MRI.

On New Year’s day.

Before 8am.

Good grief.

Still, we had to take it. Otherwise, she would have been put on the bottom of the waiting list and who knows how long it would take for the next appointment they could get her.

Overall, though, today was a quiet home day. Tomorrow morning, I’m booked to pick up our beef share, then the day after, I’m booked to do my mother’s grocery shopping.

In the middle of everything else, I’m going to be starting my garden analysis posts. I’ve already started organizing notes and going through old garden blog posts. Normally, I would have done this in November, but that just didn’t work out.

It’s going to be interesting. So much changed from what our plans were, to what we actually ended up doing in the garden. All of which will help us decide what we will be doing next year, though with the direct winter sowing done in the fall, quite a bit of that is already decided!

So, for the next while, there should be quite a few gardening posts before Christmas!

In fact, I’m about to stary my first one, next.

I hope that others can learn from them as much as I do!

The Re-Farmer

Walking in a winter wonderland…

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Well, okay. Maybe more shoveling, than walking!

It sure does look beautiful out there, though.

We’ve had a gentle snowfall all night. It has stopped for a while, but we’ll be getting a little big more, this evening.

We were actually already at our high of the day (-1C/30F) when I headed out to do the morning rounds, and it will be slowly cooling down for the next couple of days.

As relatively warm as it was, that didn’t stop this kitty from taking advantage of the empty heated water bowl!

Alas, this is one of the more feral cats and it ran off very quickly. I had to zoom in and crop to get the image above, because I couldn’t get any closer without scaring it.

The isolation shelter was very warm in the food corner, where the heat bulb is facing.

You can also tell where the two pieces of insulation under the roof touch. Enough heat is escaping in between to cause the snow on the back of the roof to melt more!

I’m a little concerned about Kohl, though. She has one eye that’s leaking a bit. When I took a closer look, I could see some redness and swelling in the corner. She’s also snuffling a bit. Something to monitor.

Eye Baby, on the other had, is looking a bit better. His eyes and nose are still leaky, but his eyes were not stuck shut this morning, like they were yesterday. He was also quick to jump down and start eating the wet cat food I gave them. Kohl was more interested in human attention.

The fluffy male meanwhile, is looking clear eyed, hale and hearty! I couldn’t touch him, though. Kohl and Eye Baby kept getting in the way!

After doing the food and water for the outside cats, I got a decent amount of shoveling done around the house. In the process, I piled up more snow around three sides of the catio. The cats quite enjoy using it! The only issue is when the more feral cats are in there when I come closer to put food in the bowl in there. They start panicking and bouncing off the wire mesh of the walls a few times before going for the open door.

I got a path cleared to the garage, wide enough for a walker, and cleared in front of the garage so the doors where Spewie is stored could be opened. My daughter will use Spewie for the driveway later on.

I will most likely be heading out before then, though. Just a quick run to the post office. I checked online and discovered that a gift I’d ordered for my daughters arrived on Friday. The last time I looked, tracking said it would arrive on January 7, because of the postal strike. This was to be delivered with Purolator, but they are (90%?) owned by Canada Post, so they weren’t delivering either. With that delivered, it means regular mail might have been delivered, too. There has been a back to work order made (since Canada Post is a Crown Corporation, it’s federally controlled), but I think that kicks in this week.

Whatever the reason, I’m just happy the gift made it in, and hopefully, so will other important mail that should have arrived, weeks ago. We don’t get a lot of mail, as most stuff is now done electronically, but the mail we do get tends to be things like letters from clinics for my husband, or other similarly important stuff.

Since I’m heading to the post office, anyhow, I think I’ll stop by the old church again and see what is left inside, after yesterday’s closing service. I expect people took as many mementos as they could, and the only things left will be too damaged, but you never know.

Oh, I almost forgot to share one more adorable photo! As I was coming back inside after doing my rounds, I spotted these boys.

We’ve got Midnight, Gouda and I believe the tabby is the one the girls call The Toe Biter.

What a face I caught on Gouda!

They are all more friendly than feral. They have their moments. Some days, they eagerly come over for attention. Others, they act almost completely feral and won’t let us near them.

Gouda is the only one we’ve been able to get fixed, in this group.

Meanwhile…

Last night, I had a chance to talk to my brother on the phone. I told him about what happened with our neighbour, before the church service yesterday. We are both perplexed by some of the things he was saying. Clearly, our vandal has been telling him things, but any time I tried to ask for more information, he just kept ranting. After talking to me, my brother said he would call our mom, then let me know when he was done so I could call her and tell her about the service, since she couldn’t be there.

In almost no time at all, he called me back to say he was done; he had brought up about the church service, telling her that I was going to be calling her to tell her all about it. She kept asking him questions, but he wasn’t there and couldn’t answer, so he just told her I would be calling to tell her all about it. She kept asking, so he told her he would get off the phone so I could call her.

Which I did.

When she answered, my mother started telling me she was watching a show and “a problem like Maria” – which I promptly started singing, then told her it was from The Sound of Music. She was watching it, but didn’t know the name, even though she watches it when this channel plays it this time of year, every year, apparently.

I told her why I was calling, but in the end, she was more interested in her movie and said we’d talk about it later.

??? 😄😄

She did call me back today, while I was working on this post, so I got to tell her all about it. I told her I recorded the entire service for her, and just have to figure out how to get it so she can see it, since I couldn’t have such large video files taking up space on my phone. I did tell her about what happened with our neighbour, and she was perplexed by it, too. I told her what I had picked up for her, and about the Bible stand I took for myself. She was really happy that I had taken that stand. She remembers it well, too. There were a few other things we talked about as well. My mother used to regularly go to clean the church, even after it was no longer being used. Over the decades, she picked up things like shelves and other items for it. I’m sure the artificial flowers all over were from my mother, but I didn’t know she had bought several shelves, as well, including one that was in the tiny room the fire was started in.

I told her about the print that was donated by my “uncle”, how damaged it was, and who I thought had taken it. I told her I planned to go back, too, and she was happy to hear that. I also explained to her what was going to happen to various things, as much as anyone was able to confirm for me. She was particularly interested in the statue of Mary outside. It turns out, that was donated and installed by a (distant) relative of ours!

Then Meals on Wheels showed up with her lunch, so I let her go.

Things are still looking good outside. As I write this, the post office is closed for another hour, so I think I will head out and go to the church first and see how things are now, and take my time until the post office opens again. I don’t have to wait to pick up the one package I know about, since it was delivered to the store, not the post office, but we might have others.

Then I have to figure out how to get the gift for my daughters wrapped without them seeing it. For the space I need, I might have to use the basement! 😄

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

An expensive outing

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Well, my daughter and I did manage to get out and run multiple errands today.

Way too expensive ones.

Last night, however, I got a message from my brother, letting me know he was planning to come out. He had some stuff he needed to do with the vehicles he’s got parked out here now, including the tractors. Unfortunately, he was expecting to be here at a time when we would probably still be out and about. I let him know that, and that we would likely miss him entirely. He doesn’t need me to be there, but I do enjoy his company, and would help him, if I could be of any use to him. Ah, well.

Before we headed out, of course, the morning rounds were done. The wind was from the south and bitterly cold, so I didn’t quite get the full rounds done. According the the weather app, we were at -7C/19F at the time, with a windchill of -14C/7F. I don’t know which weather station had that reading, but it felt WAY colder than that in the wind. It was blowing in from the south, too, we were getting the full brunt of it.

With the cold temperatures, the outside cats’ kibble in the sunroom has been disappearing fast, as well as in the shelf shelter bowls, but the kibble house and under the water bowl shelter trays have been building up. It’s just been too cold for the cats to eat it, even as sheltered as they are. They’ll get to it when things warm up, but for now, they’re avoiding those trays as much as they can. The catio food bowl gets emptied, though!

The outside heated water bowl was completely dry, and the sun room water bowl had just layers of ice shards left. The cats were really appreciating having warm water to drink!

I actually am using hot water from the tap these days – with the new powered anode rod in our hot water tank, there is no longer a smell, so we aren’t shocking the tank with hydrogen peroxide anymore. That means we no longer need to get the kettle going every time.

I was concerned about the isolation kitties. Especially Eye Baby. His eyes and nose are leaking so much, and he’s still such a small kitty. It’s cold enough in there, even with the heat lamp set to face the back of the shelter and the overall temperatures increasing, that the wet cat food we’re giving them is mostly frozen. It’s right next to a sliding window, so that corner is colder. The kittens, however, have been hanging out on their lounging shelf directly in front of where the heat lamp is now facing, so they are obviously noticing a difference and taking advantage of it. They simply need more heat than what the 150 watt ceramic bulbs are capable of.

With that in mind, our first stop on the way out was the feed store. I got a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats – they had a different brand that I tried this time – and I found their heat bulbs. They didn’t have the ceramic ones, but that didn’t surprise me. Those are usually sold for terrariums. They had 250 watt incandescent bulbs in red or white. The white was slightly cheaper, so I got those. They came in a two pack, too.

They did not have any heated water bowls. When I asked, the guy said there had been one this morning, but it was no longer on the shelf. Someone beat us to it!

I did order another 4 pounds of lysine.

Once done there, we stopped at a gas station to top up the tank and get some energy drinks for the road – neither of us got much sleep last night! As I was about to go inside after filling the tank, though, I spotted a bird, on the pavement near the sidewalk along the building. Just sitting there. Frozen! I ended up getting a paper towel and put it in the garbage can. Poor thing. It may have been frozen solid, but I still didn’t want a car driving over it.

After the gas station, it was off to the nearer city.

Our first stop was the Walmart area. My daughter had her own shopping list, so she went in ahead while I hit a Staples in the same parking lot, first. My daughter has been updating her resume and wants to print it out, but my printer is out of ink in two colours – almost all from the automatic head cleaning. I’d last bought the XL size of cartridges, because that was what I could afford at the time, and those have very little ink in them. When a colour runs out, the printer won’t even print in black only, which is so frustrating.

Oh, I just remembered… the printer has been printing as if a portrait oriented file is being printed in landscape form. It didn’t do that when we first installed the printer on my new computer, but suddenly switched, and we have not been able to figure out how to fix it. All the settings are telling it to print as normal. If that’s still happening, we still won’t be able to print her resume! It would be practically unreadable.

Well, I’ll be doing test prints and cleaning the heads after the ink is installed, so we’ll see.

As for the ink, I was able to get the XXL size, with double the ink in the cartridges, as a 3 pack. I couldn’t have gotten the XL size even if I wanted to, as they only had those as individual packages – but no individual package of the XXL size!

One package of ink cost over $124, after taxes and enviro fees.

*choke*

The individual XL size cartridges, with half the ink, were almost $30 each. Add in the enviro fees and taxes, they wouldn’t have been much cheaper.

Ouch.

After leaving the ink in the truck, I met up with my daughter and we started out with breakfast (even though it was almost noon by then) at McRaunchies. Then we went our separate ways with our shopping lists. I had just a few things on my list, but I did get a few extras. One of the things I almost forgot to get was a new 12′ extension cord – an outdoor one – to replace the old one that the sun room heated water bowl was plugged into. That cord has been there since long before we moved here, and is just a household cord. After finding the melted spot on the bottom of the heated water bowl, I figure it was time for an upgrade, with something that can handle how cold it can sometimes get in there.

My daughter wasn’t able to find most of what was on her and her sister’s shopping list. My list had more kibble for the inside cats, bread and eggs, but I got more canned soup that was on sale, some items my husband requested, and a few odds and ends. I even found some affordable breakaway collars to replace the lost ones on the outside neutered cats, and a couple of inexpensive cat toys for the isolation kitties. I actually got quite a bit for the $160+ I spent there.

No heated water bowl, though.

So after paying for our stuff, we tried the Canadian Tire across the street.

They didn’t have any, either.

Well, I still plan to hit the feed store in the town north of us, as it has more retail stuff. I know they have heated bowls. I just don’t know if they have the smaller size I’m looking for, since the big ones seem to die a lot more quickly. I will be rescheduling to pick up our beef share in that town, next week, so I can check them out, then.

Since my daughter didn’t find everything on her list, we then went to a regular grocery store. Enough time had passed by this time that I was starting to get hungry again, so while my daughter went hunting for stuff on her list, I got some food we could eat in the truck – and a fruit cake as a treat for my husband. Just a little one. The size I used to get for him, which isn’t very big, either, has increased in price by almost 50%. Even the smaller one I got was more expensive than what the larger one used to cost. It’s a good thing my husband is the only one that likes fruit cake!

When my daughter was done her shopping, we had one more stop to make: a nearby liquor store. The girls want to make boozy eggnog, and we’ve got everything but the booze to make it!

With all the errands done, we started heading home. My daughter updated her sister was we got closer. We were maybe 20 minutes away when I asked if my brother was still there, and we were told he was snow blowing! I thought he might do that. There was a lot of stuff in the way of his snow blowers, though, so I wasn’t sure. I know my brother well enough that he would take advantage of the trip to do as many things as he could, before he had to leave.

When we got to the gate, he was still at it, though I could see he was having issues with the snow blower.

My daughter opened the gate for me and I drove the truck up to the house for unloading. With both sun room doors tied closed, I had to go through the house to open them, so we could unload the outside cat kibble straight to the sun room. I also made sure to turn off both heat lamps, to let the ceramic bulbs cool down so I could switch them with the new bulbs.

It took them a while to cool down!

Everything was unloaded, the outside cats were fed and I parked the truck, and they were still too hot to remove. I didn’t want the isolation kitties without heat, though, so I found some thick work gloves and used those to remove the ceramic bulbs.

Here is the before and after, for the isolation shelter.

So they will now be lit up, as well as warmer!

Poor Eye Baby. He is not looking well at all. Kohl has been trying to get through the window while I pet her, not so much to escape as to get warm cuddles! Which I couldn’t do, since that would be taking her out of the shelter and into the wind.

The fluffy boy wouldn’t let me touch him. Eye baby just sat on the shelf, ignoring me.

Once that was done, I went out to see my brother. He had already put the snow blower away and was about to leave! He said he made a bit of a mess, though I didn’t see it as such. He told me the snow blower has transmission issues and it keeps stopping. There’s a trick to getting it moving again. Not something I’m going to touch! Perhaps we’ll eventually be using his snow blowers, too, but not until after he’s had a chance to show me how to run them, before or after he’s done the fixes they need. So far, little Spewie is enough to do the job we need.

My brother cleared a vehicle wide path to the barn, plus did a few passes in the inner yard, before I blocked the way with the truck to unload it. He also widened the driveway a bit, and even fiddled with the gate, as the two sides were no longer straight. When the ground shifts in the winter, the posts on either side move. When he redid how the gate was hinged to the posts after our vandal damaged the original hinges, he did it in such a way that they can be micro adjusted. He even used a level to make sure the two sides were exactly straight!

That was so sweet of him!

It’ll probably shift back again in the summer, though. 😁 No matter! If it does, they can be adjusted again.

I basically had time for him to update me on the stuff he did, and give him a hug, before he was gone. He needed to hurry if he was going to get home before we lost our light.

After closing up the gate behind him, I came back to the house and could see the isolation kitties by the light of the new heat lamps. I definitely got the impression they are feeling the difference!

I then remembered to give them their new toys. I imagine it would get pretty boring in there for such young kittens. At least when they’re warm enough to play, instead of huddling together for warmth!

I went through the sun room to tie off the doors again, and found several cats under the new heat bulb in there, too! I tried to make sure there were some smaller kibble bowls under the heat lamp. There were three cats around one small bowl under the lamp, instead of at the big tray of food, nearby! 😁

In retrospect, I do regret not getting 250 watt bulbs, right from the start.

Ah, well. Live and learn.

All in all, it turned out to be a productive, if more expensive than planned, day.

It was stuff we needed, though, so it is what it is. 🫤

As I close this off, I checked the weather again. We’re at -7C/19F again, but this time, the wind chill is listed as -22C/-8F. THAT is more like how it felt, this morning!

We’ve got a couple of days with expected highs of -2C/28F coming up before things start getting chilly again. The day after tomorrow, we’re supposed to get more snow. We shall see how that works out in our area. Long range forecast now says the above freezing temperatures will start after Christmas, instead of before Christmas, though Christmas day itself is supposed to be just below freezing. We’ll see how it turns out.

This year, we’ll be having a very quite Christmas and New Year. None of us have the spoons for much activity, this year.

It’s been an oddly difficult year.

Ah, well. It is what it is. We work with what we are given!

As my late father would days, “what else can you do?”

The Re-Farmer

Getting better out there!

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Well, almost.

It’s almost 1pm as I start this. Outside, we’re at -17C/1F, which is a huge improvement from the last couple of days. Our predicted high for today is -15C/5F

The wind chill right now, however, is -30C/-22F

Tomorrow, however, we’re expected to reach a high of -6C/21F, then -2C/28F over the next couple of days! It’s going to feel downright tropical out there! 😄

My daughter did the outside rounds this morning. The short rounds, since it was -27C/-17F out there, before wind chill, at the time. When I did the evening cat feeding last night, I saw that the wet cat food in the isolation shelter bowl was frozen. It’s right next to the sliding window, so that corner is pretty cold. I reached in to tilt the clamp lamp so the heat bulb faced the back of the shelter, instead of the hammock below.

I was actually able to handle the metal shield around the heat bulb with my bare hands. It was just warm. Normally, I would have burned my fingers if I’d touched it. Another sign of how cold the ambient temperature in there got, even with the heat bulb!

The kitties are okay, though. Kohl had frost on her face fur again, but her fluffy partner did not. My daughter says there was a bit of frost around the top of the heated water bowl.

The kitties have now been in there for a full week. Kohl is handling her surgery just fine. No sign of infection, and neither of them seem interested in licking their surgical sites at all. They’ll be in there for one more week of observation.

They have company, though.

After talking about it with my daughter last night, we decided to add another kitten. There’s one white and grey that has leaky eyes, a stuffy nose, and has been sneezing and snuffling a lot. My daughter thinks it’s Eye Baby, but I’ll have to look closer to be sure. This morning, she was able to snag the kitten and take him into the isolation shelter. She said, he really didn’t like being carried outside in the wind, so he was very quick to jump into the isolation shelter all on his own!

With the temperatures improving over the next week, he will be better off in there than in the sun room, and will get to share the wet cat food as well. A week not having to fight so many adult cats for food, water and warmth will help him recover faster, as well.

At least, that’s the hope.

Today is a bright and sunny day, so they should have some passive solar heat in there, too.

My daughter doesn’t stop to take any pictures when she does the morning routine, though, so I’ll give you this, instead…

Here’s Toni, enjoying the indoor life!

I wish I could give all of them the indoor life!

It may be warming up out there, but today will be another home day. I think, tomorrow, I’ll make the trip to a feed store. I’m looking to get the 40 pound bags of cat food, but also want to see what they have for heated water bowls. I’d like to get another smaller one. They seem to last longer. When I took the one my SIL gave us outside to chop the ice out, and flipped it upside down to spill out the shards, I found there was a melted spot in the plastic in the middle of the bowl’s bottom! I had intended to go to the town north of us for that, but we are almost out of lysine, and the feed store in the town my mother lives in was able to order some for us. Since I’m also thinking of another smaller shopping trip in preparation for Christmas and New Years, in the nearer city, it would be along the way.

Until then, I’ve got another day to enjoy my hibernation.

The Re-Farmer

Power is out

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Hopefully, I have enough data signal to post this!

We currently have no power.

Thankfully, we still have the old rotary dial phone hooked up.  I had just answered a call for my husband.

From the newly opened pain clinic that is much closer to us!

The call got dropped when the power went out.  Then the rotary dial phone started ringing, while I was still holding the dead cordless phone in my hand.

Oh!  The power just came back! 

Glad it was a short outage.  With the temperatures we are having right now, a longer outage can be dangerous.

I spoke too soon.

We just lost power again…

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Little champs! Plus, YouTube issues

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Today was a good day to just hunker down and stay out of the cold as much as possible. As I write this, at almost 3:30pm, which is usually the warmest time of the day, we are at -25C/-13F and the wind chill is at -35C/-31F, though we did hit wind chills of -39C/-38F earlier on.

Once I had my glasses on and could see properly, I did find the sun room thermometer really is working. The temperatures in there had dropped to about -10C/14F, though by the time I headed out to do the evening feeding, it was just below freezing. The cats were taking full advantage of the bright sunshine and sitting on the shelves at the south facing windows.

Or on the shelf near the bathroom window. That spot is pretty popular!

Of course, the cat beds on the platform had their cuddle puddles, too!

In the first photo of the slideshow above, we have the isolation babies. It is downright WARM in there! So much so, that I would say that confirms my hopes of getting passive solar heat from the windows is actually working. After putting the wet cat food into their bowl, I opened the window wider so I could reach in and pet the fluffy boy – which he let me do – and they have zero interest in going out!

In the next photo, there’s a couple of kittens at the window shelf. The canopy we got on clearance this year is currently stored there, and it heavy enough they can’t knock it down. Instead, they like to perch on it. The little black and white kitten is not socialized and was getting nervous with me untying the doors to I could get food to the outside bowls, so I dropped a bit of kibble for him, and he stayed!

The last photo is of one of the fluffy babies, on that shelf near the bathroom window, watching me. 😄There’s two fluffy tabby kittens that are mostly grey and I know one is female, but I’m not sure if this one is it. I have no idea what the second one is. Too fluffy.

Considering the temperatures we’ve got right now, I am very pleased with how that isolation shelter is working out. The other cats have their various shelters as well, so if things get cold, they can find the best spots, and just pile together to keep each other warm. Cats that normally don’t get along are now being seen using each other as pillows in their cuddle puddles. The isolation shelter is small and there’s just two kittens – I suppose they’re more catten then kitten at this point – in there, so not a lot of shared body heat, and they can’t go anywhere to find a better spot. Turns out, the isolation shelter IS the better spot, and that makes me happy. It will be good when their 2 weeks are up and we can open the ramp door, put the box entry back, and the other cats can start using it again, too.

The only down side is, that freshly washed cat bed I returned to the bottom level was immediately being used as a litter box again.

*sigh*

On a completely different topic…

Please let me know if you are finding this, too…

We all tend to use YouTube quite a bit. For me, one of the things I like to do is use the YouTube app on my phone to play videos to help me sleep. Usually, just certain styles of music (the music I would normally listen to would keep me awake) or, if I’m having a really hard time sleeping, something with a soothing voice speaking.

Well, last night, I started up one of my playlists and immediately got hit with a very loud ad. I haven’t had ads on my personal YouTube account in years! (oddly, if I log in as Re-Farmer, I always get ads, but if I switch to my personal account, no ads, even though I’m using the same app or browser). It was so bad, I gave up and just stopped trying.

Then I tried to watch videos on my desktop computer this morning, and the ads were there, too. I’ve been using the Opera browser and yes, the ad blocker was on. The ads were absolutely aggressive. There would be 2 or 3 short ads before a video would start, then more interrupting the video, with no “skip” option. When I started to get ads that where three and a half minutes long …

THREE AND A HALF MINUTES LONG!!! with no “skip” option!

… I gave up. Most of the videos I watch aren’t even that long.

I asked my family, and none of them are having this problem. My older daughter told me that every now and then, Google managed to get through the ad blockers, and it takes a while for the blockers to adjust.

The problem is, Google owns YouTube. And Chrome, And Opera. And most of the “independent” browsers. The only one she’s found that isn’t part of the Google monopoly is Firefox with their Ublock extension.

Guess what I’m using right now?

The problem for me is, I have been using Opera because it has sidebar features on it that I use frequently. Specifically the Instagram extension, since I use Instagram for my images and embed them into my posts here, now that I’ve almost run out of storage space on my WP account.

So I can watch videos now without the ads, but I hate switching browsers. There are just too many things that need to be switched over and logged into, settings adjusted and so on. That’s a pain on its own, but to do all that, just so I can watch videos without ads? Is it worth it?

Anyhow.

Has anyone else had this happen to them? I find it strange that I’m the only one in the household it’s happening to. If it were just my phone app or just my desktop, that would kinda make sense, but it’s both, and only with me.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind the ads, since that is how content creators get paid. I don’t mind sponsored ads done by the creators themselves; at least with those, if I don’t want to watch them, I can skip through. These ads I’m seeing now are just badly made, annoying and loud – and there is no excuse for an ad being THREE AND A HALF MINUTES LONG! Insane!

*grumblegrumble*

All it does it make me stop trying to watch the videos completely.

Well, we’ll see how long it goes on for. It’s likely the next time my Opera browser is updated, the ad blocker will be working again.

Until then, my YouTube watching, at least, will be limited to my Firefox browser.

Ah, well. Small problems. I was just wondering if anyone else was having this happen to them.

As for me, it’s time to check on some winter squash I’ve got roasting in the oven.

This is the sort of weather that calls for comfort food!

The Re-Farmer

That wind chill!

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I’m supposed to be sleeping in right now.  My daughter will be doing the morning rounds today, but…

Yikes!!!

That’s -28C/-18F with a windchill of -38C/-37F, in case the image isn’t showing up.

Brutal!

The wind is coming from the northwest, though, and we are pretty well sheltered from those.

Our high for today isn’t supposed to be much warmer, either.  We’ve got one more day like this, then things are supposed to warm up dramatically for a while.

Checking the critter cam, the cats in the sun room are active and prowling around, waiting for food and warm water.  There must be something wrong with the wall thermometer, though.   The needle is just below freezing.  I didn’t have my glasses while looking out the bathroom window, but it looks like it’s reading around -5C/-23F and there’s no way it’s that warm in there.

I’m supposed to be going back to bed right now….

The Re-Farmer