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Progress! But still no shower or hot water

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Okay, so we DID get progress today. Honest!

My main thing was to go into town and talk to my favourite manager. We spent a lot of time looking at the photos I took of the bathtub plumbing, and things like whether or not we will be replacing the copper pipe for the shower with Pex as well as the hot and cold water pipes. Plus, we’d need to replace the pipe to the spout, which is completely different and would be removed with all the other old parts, since it would be soldered in place with lead, too.

My brother had talked about using Shark Bite fittings, but the manager suggested it would be better – and cheaper – to use Pex crimps. That meant getting a crimping tool, which is something we’ll need in the long term, anyway, and a Pex cutting tool. I wish I had that when I bought Pex (a different type) to use on one of the raised bed covers.

As we went through various fittings and joins, crimps and, of course, the Pex pipe, etc., there was one type of fitting they only had two of. We figured I would need at least six. He called another store for me and confirmed they had plenty in stock, so once I was done with the local store, I drove to the next town up the highway to get the rest.

He assured me that, anything we don’t use, we can return. Just hang on to the receipt for both stores, because if we want to return anything, we would have to return them to the store we bought them from, even though they are the same franchise.

I am really hoping we got everything we need.

While I was doing that, my younger daughter scrubbed the exposed walls around the tub, treated it with an anti-mold and mildew spray cleaner, then left the fan running on it. She did that a second time and, when that was dry, she started painting the exposed walls with the mold and mildew resistant primer. So far, that has two coats. I think it’ll need a third.

Once that is done, it will be ready to have the tub surround installed – whenever that will be!

Once I got home, my daughter and I went through the parts and pieces. I was already forgetting what was what. My daughter knew what she was looking at, though.

Having daughters that both used to work in a hardware store comes in very handy at times!

She was in between coats of paint, so I grabbed some tools and headed to the basement. I wanted to see if we could use one of the top elements from the old hot water tanks, and see how to remove the anode rod.

*sigh*

Since both tanks died because they started leaking out the bottom, the bottom panels were already open. Damage on those ones is visible from the outside. I uncovered the top panel on one of the tanks and removed the wires to get a good look.

Hmmm…

After consulting the manual, I realized I would not be able to take them out. There is a special tool – basically, a large socket – to remove them, and we don’t have one.

So I shifted to the anode rod.

Now, this is supposed to be easy. Pop off the cap, remove the anode rod and you’re done.

The cap did NOT want to come off.

I should have been able to slide the tip of a Standard screwdriver under the edge and lever it up, but the edge all around the cap just bent. Eventually, I was able to jam the screwdriver down between the edge of the cap and the metal and pop it off, breaking off something under it in the process.

The opening was full of foam insulation. Oddly, there seemed to be text in the foam. I had to take a flash picture of it to be able to see that yes, there was writing – and it was backwards. Looking at the underside of the cap, I could see the writing that was imprinted into the foam insulation.

There was nothing about this in the manual.

I dug out the insulation until the top of the anode rod was finally uncovered.

Oh… something else that needs a socket.

Back to the tool kit I go and come back with the largest socket we’ve got.

It wasn’t large enough.

*sigh*

So I wasn’t able to get either the rod or the heat element out. With the rod, I just need to know how to do it, for when the powered rod comes in and we replace the one in the current tank. I’d hoped to get the heat elements out and see if at least one of them is still good, so we can switch it out for the burnt out one in the current tank.

I guess I’ll be going back to the hardware store tomorrow. The tool for the heat element is $25. A large socket ranges from about $9 to $14.

I’m certainly glad we still had the old hot water tanks in the basement that I could use to find this out. It would have really sucked to find this out on the current tank!

Since I couldn’t do any more there, it was time to finally start putting away and cleaning up in the garage, so we can finally park the truck in there again, now that the cat isolation shelter is out.

When bringing stuff to store here at the farm, my brother brought me a couple of crane boxes. I have no idea what makes them a “crane” box, other than they are rated to hold up to 1000 pounds. One of them got crushed a bit, but it was still useable. They actually came in handy as surfaces I could use to hold the clear plastic for the isolation shelter. I was able to cut in a gap between the boxes, and have weights on either side to reduce vibration. It worked really well.

The garage walls are unfinished, with exposed joists. When I moved off the farm, the garage was just a single “room”, all the walls were exterior walls, with shiplap boards covering the outside. Over the years, lean to additions were added to each side.

My brother had brought scrap wood they were intending to add to the burn pile, but there was a lot of useful wood in there that I kept, instead. From those scraps, I was able to cut three supports per box and attach them to wall joists, using the shiplap boards as a guide to keep them even, since I didn’t have a level with me.

The boxes each had three “feet” on their bottoms that reached from side to side, made up of stacks of what looks like plywood, nailed and glued together. Unfortunately, they were spaced in such a way that, while two of them could fit in the space between the wall joists, the third one did not. So each box had to have one of these “feet” removed.

That was NOT an easy job. They were nailed together from both the inside and the outside, plus the inside had extra long staples into them.

I had a pry bar handy, though, and was able to get them off.

Once that was done, I could put the boxes on the supports, with the bottoms against the joists. They then got screwed directly to the joists, as well as the supports.

The supports are all longer than the boxes are deep. The boxes have lids. Once I get some larger hinges, I will attach the lids with hinges on the bottoms. This way, they can be opened from the top to form a surface. It will make it harder to reach what’s inside, but I figured having that would be useful enough to be worthwhile.

Once the boxes were hung up, I had someplace to start putting things on my work table away, rather than returning them all to the sun room. Last winter, the cats knocked way too many things down to the ground, so I want to avoid storing things there, if I can.

Here is how it looks like now.

Eventually, we’ll be making more shelves against the walls, and I will be able to clear the space under these boxes. That’s all on a makeshift shelf that’s just a piece of scrap plywood sitting on top of a couple of 5 gallon pails on their sides. It was meant to be temporary. We just haven’t gotten to working on organizing the garage, yet. There’s just too much stuff in there that I have no idea what to do with.

These boxes have enough space in them that we could probably add another shelf across the middle. Maybe in just one of them, and leave the other open for larger items.

That done, I was able to finish clearing off my work table, saving some of the wood scraps for future projects, while others will go to the fire pit, moving the miter saw, and so on, and the work table got folded up and set on the swing bench in where my mother’s car is stored.

The saw horses that I’d been using while painting now had a screen over it to hold the curing shallots. My daughter wants them to cure a while longer before braiding them, so that got moved in front of the swing bench.

Then came the finicky part.

Getting the floor safe to drive on.

I’d already fired up the compressor to pump the flat tire on my mother’s care, then used the air to clear off the sawdust on the work table. For the next while, I used the compressed air to blow away the sawdust on the ground, too.

I’m glad I did, because I found quite a few shards of glass in there! I have no idea where they came from, or how long they’ve been there.

Eventually, I got to the point where I could start raking the dirt floor, and used a magnet to find any nails or other metal bits that might have been lost.

I had to consider what to do with my brother’s lawn tractor. There isn’t room for it in the lean to’s on either side of the garage, and I don’t want it stored in the barn. I ended up moving some bins to the other side of the garage, where they are now being used to hold recycling. There was a lot of weird odds and ends in the ground under them, like rusted out bolts and very old spark plugs that predate us living her for quite some time. The area got raked and cleaned and raked again before I went over it with a magnet.

In the end, I still wasn’t confident in the space. I had rolled up the protective cover that the clear roof panels were wrapped in. It’s got a waterproof surface on one side. I decided to lay that out on the ground against the wall, and that’s what the lawn tractor is now sitting on, close enough to the wall that the truck has plenty of space.

After a bit more raking and a bit more searching with the magnet – and finding more bits of glass in the oddest of places! – I was confident enough to get the keys and park the truck in the garage.

Finally!

By the time that was all done, my daughter had finished more coats of paint in the bathroom.

So while we still don’t have the plumbing fixed, we still don’t have hot water (though if we leave it long enough, we do have very warm water at times), we did get some good progress today.

The next six days are supposed to be warmer, so I’m hoping to be able to finally work on cleaning up garden beds, but if my daughter needs help with the plumbing, that’s the priority.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Well, that isn’t going to work!

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First, Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends, and Happy Columbus Day to my friends in the US.

Before I get into our newest find in the bathroom plumbing saga, I will share some cuteness.

This is what the view out our bathroom window typically is, not that the platform has been set up for the winter.

The cats are just smashed together up there!

I think that’s Shop Towel with his head handing over the edge of the cat bed, being used as a bed by several kittens. He may be aggressive with the adults at times, but he’s good with the babies!

Nosy, I see, is cuddled up with him. Now that Nosy has been neutered, it does seem like he’s no longer involved in any aggressiveness that we still see at times.

Anyhow.

Today’s main job was to see if we could get a panel cut into the wall in my husband’s room, to access the plumbing for the tub and shower. After gathering what tools we thought we might need, my daughter flashed a light into the holes for the bathtub taps, to try and see where the wall joints were.

Turns out, they were pretty much right at the pipes.

Then she went to the other side of the wall, while I used the drill with an auger bit and made a couple of holes above the taps, trying to be close to the joists, but not too close, through to the other side of the wall. The first pair of holes was made using one of the narrowest auger bits. Once those were through and I got the go ahead from my daughter on the other side, I did them again, using a larger bit.

Then my daughter cut an opening in the paneling.

We hoped to be able to use the jig saw, but that would have hit the pipes. She ended up doing the first cut across the top, using the saw on her multi tool. It was the only saw small enough. After that, aside from having to start the first inch or so with the multi tool, she was able to use the pull saw.

My brother thought there might be aspenite behind the paneling, but there was no. It was just open joists. At one point, as my daughter was saying away, the panel was flexing so much, it made things almost impossible. I ended up reaching under her with a broom handle to hold it against the paneling to hold it, so she could finally finish the cut.

She wasn’t able to cut all of one side, though. She was a couple of inches short when she hit something. She pulled back the cut piece as much as she could to see, and thought there was a nail or something, in the joist. In the end, she cut everywhere else, then just snapped the panel off.

Finally, we could access the plumbing!

In the end, there was nothing we could do.

My daughter tried to take off the piece for the taps, but it just would not happen. It turned out it was soldered. I ended up taking pictures and sending them to my brother.

We took out the faucet set we have and discovered another problem.

It threads completely differently.

Here, you can see both old and new.

On the right, for the hot water, you can see that wood was gouged out of the joist to make room for the plumbing. There is also a strange pair of right angle beds in the hot water pipe below.

We don’t know why the cold water side is black.

In the middle, however, you can see the problem.

The old fixture is threaded internally.

The new fixture is threaded externally.

In the end, we put everything away, then taped the section of panel that was cut off back over the hole for now.

After a while, my brother was able to look at the photos I sent him, and we ended up talking on the phone.

It turns out that, 40 years ago, it was standard practice to solder plumbing together with lead. The only way we’re going to get that out is to cut it.

After talking about it some more, and getting a look at that bend in the hot water pipe, my brother suggested that we replace the copper pipe with Pex, including the pipe to the shower. We can then get Shark Bite parts and adapters to install the new fixture. The set we have includes a shower head, but we won’t be using that, since we currently have the accessible hand held shower (it has an extra long hose, and a shut off valve under the handle of the shower head).

I don’t know that I want to mess with the pipe for the shower, if I can avoid that. I have no idea how it’s attached at the top, and I don’t want to cut another hole in the paneling to see!

So that was it for today.

Tomorrow, I’ll be going to the hardware store. There’s a guy there that has been most helpful. I can show him the photos and talk to him about what we need. My older daughter says she can cover the cost, though at this point, we have no idea what those would be.

We did get a few other things done today, though it was nowhere near as productive as I would have liked. I have so much I need to do outside, and I’m just not getting to it!

My daughter and I got the last of the winter squash moved from the garage to the root cellar; we’re supposed to reach -3C/27F tonight, and I figured it was time. We did leave the big Crespo squash upstairs, though. It has the most damage to the shell, so we will see about using that as soon as we can. I definitely want to save seeds from this one, so we can grow them again next year.

The tomato paste I was making in the slow cooker out of just San Marzano tomatoes was finally done last night and left to cool until today. I like using the slow cooker for this, but it does take longer. I probably should have cooked it down more, but we were going to need the slow cooker. There was enough somewhat saucy paste to fill two 750ml jars. We’ll just keep those in the fridge to use as needed. We like to just add a spoonful of paste into various things, almost as a seasoning.

I did taste test it and, to be honest, I don’t find the flavour any better or worse than any other tomato sauce or paste we’ve made. I’ll have to get my daughters to try it. I’m not a good judge of such things! 😄

Our Thanksgiving turkey got deboned, and there is now a stock being made from the bones in the slow cooker. It’s as plain as plain can be. Just the bones and water. Not even salt, so that we can use it for the cats as well as for ourselves. We can add seasonings for ourselves, later.

The last of the vegetables that were under the turkey went into a pot, along with the leftover squash, some of the leftover turkey and some of the freshly jarred tomato paste to make a large soup. Between the soup and the rest of the turkey, we won’t need to take anything out of the freezer for a while!

We’re still having to heat water to wash ourselves and anything else, including the dishes. I have found that, if we leave the hot water alone long enough, we do actually get some almost hot water. It takes a long time for one element to heat up a 40 gallon tank.

Another job for tomorrow. Take the elements out of the previous tanks to see if any of them can be used to replace the burnt out one in our current tank. I took a quick look at one of the tanks while I was done there earlier today. The bottom panel is already open and I could see scale built up around the element on the outside.

There’s a reason we go through hot water tanks so quickly!

I’ll have to grab some tools and have at the old tanks. Aside from opening the panels and removing the elements to see how they are, I want to take out the anode rods. At the top of the tank is just a flat cap. There’s nothing to grip. I can’t see how it’s supposed to be removed without digging under it and scratching up the surface of the tank. Of course, nothing I find online is the same as what we’ve got. It’s probably a simple thing, but with how absolutely everything seems to be breaking at once right now… well, let’s just say I’m glad we’ve got a couple of old tanks to practice on!

Our new powered rod isn’t supposed to arrive until Oct. 22, so we have time for that. It’s the element that I really hope we can get replaced.

Meanwhile, the girls are going to be taking on scrubbing the area around the tub as much as they can before treating with with an anti-mold and mildew disinfectant again. Then, once that’s dry, all the exposed area will get painted with the mold and mildew resistant primer. Once that’s dry, we can look into getting the new tub surround ready to install. The most important part being, cutting the holes for the plumbing in the right places.

The tub itself is going to need a whole lot of CLR, too.

It’s going to be downright strange when all this is done, having a tub and surround that isn’t water stained with rust.

I just want to be able to have a real shower again, with water that wasn’t heated in a kettle, first!

Ah, well. Little by little, it’ll get done!

Very little, by very little, with this particular job!

The Re-Farmer

I think they like it!

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Just look at these two cuties!

The kittens in particular seem to really like the isolation shelter.

When I did my rounds this morning, all the clear plastic was fogged up and there were no cats inside at the time. It would be interesting to put a thermometer inside the shelter, and another on the outside, to see what a difference the passive solar makes, with the sliding panels closed, as they are now. Once the heat lamp is set up and running, we’d be able to see what a different that’s making, too. I’ll have to remember to pick up a couple of cheap dollar store dial thermometers.

I’m quite with how this shelter turned out! The biggest expense was the roof panels, and that was enough to cover two shelters, so we got twice the mileage for the price.

Not bad for something made almost entirely out of whatever I could salvage around the property!

The Re-Farmer

From good to not so good!

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Yesterday was such a good day! I’m just so happy to have finally got the cat isolation shelter to the point that we can use it (though it still doesn’t have a latch on the ramp-door).

I didn’t over exert myself.

Honest. I didn’t.

Working on the shelter was mostly a lot of back and forth to get things cut and nailed or screwed into place. I wasn’t doing anything heavy or strenuous.

Yet, apparently, I overdid it.

I was in bed, just finishing my devotions, when I tried to roll over.

Thankfully, I still had my phone in my hand when the leg cramps hit. I was just able to get so I could sit on the side of the bed, but couldn’t go more than that. I was able tap “help” to my older daughter, and that was it.

She didn’t need more information to know what was going on. Which is good, yet not good, since it shows now often I’ve been getting these, lately.

I’ve had some bad Charlie horses before but, this time, it hit me in both thighs, on all sides and severe enough for pain to shoot down into my calves and up into my hips.

I couldn’t bend, I couldn’t straighten, I could barely use my arms to shift. Even taking the ibuprofen and magnesium my daughter brought me was difficult.

She stayed with me until the painkillers kicked in. Even that was weird. First my right leg, then my left, just suddenly relaxed, with a jolt. Even so, my daughter had to lift me legs for me so I could get back into bed, because the muscles were quivering so much.

As I slowly recovered, and I was able to talk, my daughter mentioned looking up the cause of these. She thought at first it might be lack of hydration, but she knows I stay on top of that. Her next thought was perhaps a lack of salt.

My initial reaction was no, but then I realized that yesterday, I’d eaten almost no salt all day.

It’s the only thing either of us could think of that might apply.

She ended up bringing me a few rock crystals of Himalayan pink salt for me to chew on.

I did eventually fall asleep, but it was many hours before my thigh muscles felt anywhere close to normal. It’s almost 8pm as I write this, and they still feel trembly at times.

My older daughter took care of doing the softened kibble feeding of the outside cats this morning for me, so I could try to sleep in – or at least stay in bed longer.

In the end, if was cats going bonkers, chasing the lady beetles that have gotten inside, that had me giving up on trying to get more sleep.

With the various plumbing issues we have right now, we’ve all been slowly chipping away at dishes and cooking as little as possible. The kettle has been kept going pretty much all the time. Between washing ourselves, using boiled water to soak the outside cats’ kibble, and just general clean up, we’ve taken to simply filling it and setting it to boil so there’s at least warm water available for the next person who needs it.

I did eventually make it outside. It started to rain, so I moved the shallots that were hanging on the high raised bed frame to cure, into the garage. Another couple of days, and they will be braided and brought into the root cellar.

I also got a heat lamp set up in the sun room, as the nights are going to be going below freezing soon. I was going to put the second one in the isolation shelter, ready to be plugged in as needed, but I will have to find a way to secure it better. I want it to be hanging from the centre of the roof, but I will need a little step ladder to reach. 😄 So that will wait for now. I did make sure both sliding panels were closed, though, to keep the weather out of the upper level. There is just the ramp door to get in and out.

The cats quite like going in there!

It had been my plan to clean up and put things away in the garage, now that the isolation shelter no longer needs to be in there, so we can finally park the truck in the garage again.

That didn’t happen!

Maybe tomorrow.

This is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and we do have a turkey thawing out. It’ll be ready to be cooked tomorrow, so that’s when we’ll do what we can for a thanksgiving dinner, even if we don’t end up eating it until much later.

My daughters emptied out the wardrobe of my husband’s things – mostly his old office clothes, which he has little occasion to wear these days. They all went into the laundry, and my daughters got the wardrobe upstairs.

Which means my husband now has access to the closet in his room.

We can also bring back his tiny medication fridge, and the table it sits on, back into his room, though that will be done tomorrow.

He’s going to need some sort of small shelf, though.

While I was outside, my mother called. After a bit of telephone tag, we finally connected.

I’m glad to say that she has been really happy with her Meals on Wheels deliveries. She is really enjoying the food, and not having to cook it herself! This is going to work out much better for her than the bulk meal prep that home care offers.

“One of the ladies” told her that the hospital in town has a new doctor, and she told me we should make an appointment with her.

My mother is STILL talking about changing doctors, while she’s in the middle of being assessed for placement in a nursing home or supportive living. If I thought it would actually help any, sure – if nothing else, it would mean her current doctor won’t have a racist AF patient. The problem is, my mother is never happy with any doctor she has. This is a female doctor, and my mother doesn’t think women can be good doctors, just nurses, so we already know she won’t be happy with any female doctor. Even with male doctors, if they don’t tell her what she wants to hear, she’ll find something about them that disqualifies them in her mind. And if there isn’t something there, she’ll invent something. Even doctors she starts out liking, she’ll turn on them in a heartbeat.

She has a very long history of doing this sort of thing.

Eventually, I was able to update my mother on the septic repairs. When I first told her about discovering there was a leak at the expeller, she offered to pay for repairs. I ran the estimates by her and that we were going with the company that was closer.

Today, I told her how this company had stopped returning my calls, so I contacted the other company and ended up talking to the owner.

As I was trying to tell her this, she kept interrupting. I should just get my brother to do fix it, she tells me.

I had to explain, an excavator is needed. It has to be dug up.

We should just have it moved.

???

Moved? That would be an even bigger job to do!

She is not at all understanding our system here. My dad took care of all this stuff, and it’s as if she’s never seen the expeller before, even though she remembers the other things in the area, like the water fountain for the cows that was set up, along with a tap in the barn and another water fountain on the other side of the barn, all piped at the same time.

Then she started telling me my brother should be doing this, not me, because this is a man’s thing to do (talking to companies to arrange repairs, etc.), and my brother is somehow dumping this on me. I told her, this is my “job”. It’s part of the deal I had with her, and that I now have with my brother.

As all this was going on, she also started saying how, oh, someone told her that the farm is not hers anymore, it’s not her responsibility…

Yup.

She started backing out of her offer to pay for the repairs.

After she made a few passive aggressive threats about that, I finally told her, stop playing games with me. Are you going to pay for it, or not? Because if you’re not, I have to call the company to cancel the job.

Thankfully, there is now at least some water running through the expeller, so it would probably last us through the winter, but still… that would not be good.

Well, my mother, being my mother, bounced from saying, yes, she would pay for it (making it sound like I asked her to, rather than being something she offered to do) and why should she pay for it? At one point, she asked me, if I were in her place, would I do it? I said yes, if I could, I would.

I don’t think she expected that.

Anyhow.

This is another old thing with her. She will offer something, then when the time comes, start to back off, and use the offer to manipulate people. I have no patience for what is basically psychological abuse. Especially at a time like this, when we have so many things breaking down at once. I did manage to mention the hot water tank issues, but she just blew right past that. I doubt she even heard me. She even tried to drag my brother into the whole thing, and why doesn’t he call her?

I finally just said, it’s because you do stuff like this, and I just can’t handle this right now.

I then said we would talk later, said goodbye and hung up.

After that, I sent a message to my brother, updating him about the call, telling him it looks like my mother is backing away from her offer of paying for the repairs, so I’ll probably have to call and cancel the job.

While I was writing that message, my older daughter walked in and asked me if I knew what was going on with the bathroom fan.

Yup.

Guess what else is no longer working!

We had that fan’s motor replaced just a few years ago. The previous motor was the original, installed in the mid 70’s.

On top of all this, there were just lots of other little things going wrong, all day.

I did get one good phone call, though.

My brother called.

My mother had called him not long after talking to me.

She never mentioned her call with me at all, but she did bring up that she’d “heard” he was here at the farm yesterday. Yes. Yes, he was, he told her. He’d dropped some stuff off, then checked on the hot water tank and the bathroom for us.

He had to distract her from jumping to all sorts of conclusions about that.

She brought up wanting him to come to put away her air conditioner for the winter, which he’d already said he was planning to do. He won’t be able do it until after Nov. 1, though. When he goes there, he has to plan to be there for several hours, and it’s really hard for him to carve out that much time in his schedule.

As they were talking, the topic of the roof came up and he was saying how great it was that it was done, and that it has a 25 yr warranty, and they’ll both be gone before when.

What do you mean, she wanted to know. Is he sick?

…

No… 25 years is a long time. The average life span for a male is 80 years, and lots can happen in 25 years.

That led to them talking about the message our vandal somehow managed to leave on my brother’s cell phone, and the terrible things he was saying about my brother and I. My brother even managed to even address how our vandal does and says all these terrible things, and she treats him so well, but my brother and I love her so much, and take care of her, but she treats us to cruelly. He even brought up how we are dealing with so many problems right now, and her response is to mess with us. Why is that?

She started to go into her usual justifications, on how she loves everyone equally, but he cut that off, because no. She doesn’t.

He’s not sure if he managed to get through to her, how illogical her behaviour in that respect it. Particularly when it came to her saying she would pay for the repairs, then backing off. My mother, however, is acting as though I’d asked her to pay for it, which I would never do. “Donations gratefully accepted”, as my late brother used to say, but help from my mother tends to come with a high price tag, and if there were any way we could get the repairs done without her help, we’d do it.

In the end, though, my brother assured me that my mother will keep her word about paying for the repairs. The amount isn’t all that much – for her, at least – and she’s thrown twice as much at our vandal, just because, before. More than once.

Mostly, though, he wanted to make sure I didn’t cancel the repair job!

I told him I wouldn’t.

So that, at least was a positive end to the day.

Well. Not that the day is over yet, but close enough!

Tonight, I think I’ll make sure to take some ibuprofen instead of my usual acetaminophen, and maybe make sure I’ve eaten enough salt with my meals, before going to bed!

I think an early bed time is a very good idea, today.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

The Re-Farmer

What a great day, with some excellent updates

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I am really happy with how things have turned out today!

First, we have the cat isolation shelter.

It took all day, but it is now useable! It has been moved close to the house, and the cats love it. Here is a short video I took to post on Instagram.

I was able to make the sliding doors, but one of them turned out to be a real pain. The wood lath covering the insulation on the other side, were not all the same widths, with some sticking out further than others. There was no way the panel could slide over it. So I made a stopper, instead, and it can only slide the other way. We’ll just have to be careful not to slide it out so far that it’ll fall out.

The other side was downright easy, after that!

Once those were in, I got my daughter to hold the front window in place while I drilled some pilot holes and put screws into the corners. Once that was done, she could let it go, and we added more screws to secure it.

Then, finally, we could put the roof pieces on.

Which turned out to not be as long as the boards they were being attached to. We have excess wood sticking out, front and back The back is the “handle” to lift the roof, anyhow, so I’m not too concerned about that, though at some point we’ll want to replace the strip of wood lath across the back with something sturdier. As for the pieces sticking out the front, I ended up using them to help steer as we moved it. We might cut them flush with the roof later, though.

I had to abandon my daughter part way through moving it, as my brother arrived with another load to drop off. After greeting him and he went to unload, I had a chance to take a short video of the isolation shelter. My daughter had left it in an open spot for me to do that. Eventually, I will put together a video of the entire process, which dragged on for so much longer than expected. After that, I moved the shelter closer to the house.

The door/ramp doesn’t have a latch, though – the ones I had were not large enough – so it kept dropping open, even though we’d taped it shut. The down side of using salvaged materials. One of the boards of the ramp cracked after hitting the ground. I had to add a couple more screws to fix it. Which was fine, but it required closing the door to do it.

The kitten that was inside the shelter was not happy about that! 😄

The last thing that really needs to be done is to find a latch for the door/ramp. We also need to get more paint, but that’s mostly cosmetic.

Once we work out exactly where it will stay for the winter, we’ll hang the clamp lamp with the heat bulb under the roof and get that ready for plugging in for the winter, preferably with a timer. I’d also like to attach handles to make it easier to move. The handles I had that I thought we could use are not strong enough.

After moving the isolation shelter closer to the other cat shelters, I grabbed a couple of winter squash as a gift for my brother, and went to join him while he worked. While we were there, we started hearing a noise.

A noise he identified as splashing water on metal.

From the septic expeller.

I couldn’t believe that’s what we were hearing, so we went to take a look. Sure enough, there was water coming out of the pipe!

It was not coming out as well as it should have been; it was almost dribbling down the outer pipe, and the sheet of metal that’s there to prevent erosion at the base was being partially missed. The pipe itself is leaning a bit back and to one side, instead of being straight up, which I’m sure isn’t helping, either.

I’m amazed that it was working at all. I was just there earlier today, taking photos, and saw no sign that water was being ejected from that pipe.

Oh! I completely forgot to mention!

With the one septic company ghosting us, I called the other and left a message this morning. The owner called me back less than half an hour later. They will be able to do the job for us. They are really busy and he couldn’t tell me when they can come out to fix the leak – it might be 3 or 4 weeks – but he told me that they could do the work even if the ground were frozen.

So that was definitely good news!

He asked me for photos of the expeller. While I was there, I made a point of looking to see if there was any sign that greywater has been flowing over the sheet of metal. That fact that there is some water flowing out the pipe, and not all just seeping into the ground, is actually a bit of a weight off my shoulders, making the timing of getting the repair done is not quite as urgent.

So that was more good news.

My brother had been able to come out sooner than he expected. It was still light out when he was done unloading, so he and I did a walkabout, including out to the car graveyard and the old farm equipment. I now know which things he wants to keep, and what can go to the scrap dealer – and it’s added a lot more to what the salvage company can come out for!

Oh, it’s going to be good to clear out this stuff.

My brother then came in to take a look at the bathroom, and the rot on the walls.

In the end, he said it’s not actually that bad. He said he wouldn’t bother taking it out at all, which would require taking the tub out. He suggested we just fix the taps from the other side, then cover it all with the new tub surround we already have.

Then we went around to the other side of the wall to talk about cutting an access panel. He’s pretty sure there is more aspenite under the paneling. We could take off the entire panel, but that would require removing the molding that’s over it, too. He suggested drilling through from the bathroom side to mark where to cut. Which is what I had been thinking, but only after cutting away the rotted aspenite around the taps. We have to figure out where the joists are; they should be 16″ apart, but the bathroom was installed while he was away in college, so he never saw how things were done.

So that is more good news. We don’t have to remove the tub and cut more of the walls away. He recommended we treat the aspenite with bleach, but we have some anti-mold product specifically for bathrooms we can use.

We can now put together a plan of action to get things fixed so we can use our tub and shower again!

Then my brother got his meter and we went to check the hot water tank – after shutting off the breaker! He tested the elements, and it turns out that it is the top element that is burnt out. The bottom one is working fine.

So we’ll be looking into getting a replacement for the top element.

I told him about the powered anode rod we are getting. Looking at the outlet near the hot water tank, I mentioned my thought of unplugging the extension cord that goes into my husband’s closet, then moving the plug for the well pump up, so we have room to plug in the new rod.

He advised against it.

As he put it, we’re already on borrowed time with that well pump, and he wouldn’t touch anything if it can be avoided.

We looked at the other outlet, where the sump pump is plugged in. He suggested running an extension cord from there, instead.

I will trust his advice and do that.

So we’re still without use of the tub and shower, and have only tepid water, but we now have a better idea of what to do next.

Which will be to get at the plumbing for the faucet set from the bedroom side and get that working, first. Then, even if it takes longer to get to the point we can install the tub surround, we can temporarily put plastic over where it’s cut open, so we can use the tub and not have to keep sponge bathing!

So… I rate that as more good news.

There was only one hiccup in the day that is more strange than anything else.

While my brother was unloading his truck, he got a voice mail notification on his cell phone – but his phone never rang. He joked that it was our vandal, because that’s who it was the last time this happened.

Well, after he left our place, my brother checked the voice mail, and it really was from our vandal!

I’ll get a copy of the message later, but it was much the same as last time. He’s wondering why my brother is “catering” to me – and we have no idea what he’s talking about. He also said that his doctor told him that the reason he got cancer is because of us, and that we are evil, evil, evil! He’s dying of cancer, and it’s our fault.

???

I’d say, he was drinking behind his wife’s back again.

At least he didn’t threaten us with “retribution” so extreme, even the Pope would be reading about it in a magazine, this time.

We are perplexed as to what triggered the call. Particularly since my brother was here when the voice mail was left. My brother thinks our vandal has been watching us, and saw that my brother had arrived, but I don’t see how.

Whatever the reason, my brother has our vandal’s number blocked, so he shouldn’t have been able to leave any voice mail message at all. The phone company is going to be getting a call about it, that’s for sure!

One thing else is for sure. When the scrap metal company comes to clean things up, we will have to watch out for our vandal, because he is going to go ballistic. He believes all this stuff rightfully belongs to him – but then, he thinks the entire property rightfully belongs to him.

Well, we’ll deal with that when the time comes. I’ll just be glad to get all this stuff cleaned out – and I’m sure the renter will be glad to see it gone, too, since his cows graze around almost all of it!

Oh, and I told my brother about the guy that wants to buy a couple of cars for parts, and how he will need to bring in special equipment to be able to get them out. I also told my brother that I’d arranged for him to use part of the money for the cars to pay back the guy that put a down payment on the old Farm Hand tractor, since I could see my brother wasn’t happy with the sale. My brother was happy to hear this.

So good news for him, too!

It’s just been a good day, overall, I’d say!

The Re-Farmer

Progress with the kitties!

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Some good news with the outside cats, this morning!

When I headed out this morning to feed the outside cats their warm, softened food, I kept an eye out for the kitten that was acting kinda sick.

The first place I checked was in the shelf bed it normally hangs out in. It was empty.

After I finished putting the food out, I finally spotted it.

It was eating on its own! This is the first time I have seen it eating since we first noticed there was something wrong with it. Even when we brought it into the old kitchen to give wet cat food, it was more interested in cuddles, and yesterday morning I was feeding it with a syringe.

This is a huge step forward! I even saw it moving to the other tray to eat, then some of the adult cats got a bit too pushy.

Not this one, though.

This is the cat that we aren’t sure where it came from. I asked the girls about it, and they’ve seen it hanging around for a little while, but don’t really recognize it, either.

When I saw that it was in the sun room, eating at one of the trays, rather than hiding in a corner of the shelf shelter, I took a chance.

It was facing away from me while eating, so I was able to reach down and start petting its back.

That startled it, and it stretched its head way up to look around, but didn’t run away. When I started to scritch it’s neck, it finally turned to look at me, but did not run away.

Shortly after, it actually came up to me, wanting more pets!

This actually confirms to me that it not likely one of our cats from last year, returned, which was one possibility. If it was, it would have been one of the more feral ones that we’d never been able to get close to. I also would have expected it to be an older cat. This one seems barely more than a “teenager”.

That it actually took to pets so quickly suggests to me that this is probably a cat that got dumped in the area. There’s no way to know for sure. It may even be a yard cat from one of the neighboring farms, though if it were, I would actually expect it to be more feral, not less.

If we can get to where we can handle it, we can look for things like an ear tattoo.

It’s nice to have some good progress with the kitties!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a surprise harvest! Plus updates

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Okay, so the garden is pretty much done.

The red onions have been left, since they can handle the cold nights, and still aren’t quite ready for picking. With various distractions related to our plumbing issues, the potatoes still need to be harvested. The sunchokes are still green and growing, so they won’t be harvested for a while. Mostly, the beds are ready for winter clean up – once we can get to them!

What I wasn’t expecting was this.

That’s right. I harvested tomatoes this morning!

When my daughter harvested this bed, she left behind the really tiny tomatoes, or the damaged ones. However, as more of the foliage died back, I could see some green tomatoes that looked fine, and seemed to have gotten missed. The foliage in this bed was so dense, that’s no surprise. I basically ignored them, though, figuring they were frost damaged by then.

This morning I could see they had continued to ripen! Hidden in the middle like that, it seems they got protected from our first frost and following cold nights, too.

So I picked them and added them to the bins and boxes of green tomatoes in the old kitchen to ripen.

We have quite a few things slowly ripening. Yesterday, my older daughter grabbed all the ripe hot peppers, cleaned and prepped them, then set them in the oven to dehydrate. Eventually, they will be made into a powder.

Now… my older daughter is pretty much the only one that can eat these. My husband used to love spicy food, but the medications he’s on have really messed with his ability to taste or tolerate foods. My younger daughter can handle a bit of heat, but not as much. My, I can’t tolerate spicy food at all.

So she has taken over preparing the hot peppers as they ripen and, once dehydrated and powdered, she will have enough to last a very long time! We won’t need to grow hot peppers for some years. 😁

Now, these are hot peppers, but not exceptionally hot peppers. They’re not the kind where you need to wear gloves or anything.

Normally.

It turns out that, after processing about a dozen remarkably large hot peppers, that becomes a problem.

Not right away, though. My daughter had no issues at all while working on them. She was careful about washing her hands before touching things, too.

Then she made herself a sandwich.

The pepper oils from her hands – even after being washed – got onto her sandwich, and it was so spicy, it started to burn her mouth. She ended up having to drink straight cream to reduce the pain!

Then her fingers started to burn.

It happened slowly, over several hours, but eventually she could barely even use one hand.

She sprung for take out for supper, so I went into town to pick up the food. By the time I got back and she regaled me on what had happened, I could see the tips of all her fingers were bright red!

Lesson learned. Even mildly hot peppers can become a problem, if you’re processing enough of them at once!

Gloves needed!

Meanwhile, even her lungs were starting to burn!

These were being dehydrated in the oven. We had the kitchen window open and the fan running. The house smelled amazing, but we still had to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, so as not to breathe too many of the hot pepper fumes. Even the cats were staying out of the kitchen!

Speaking of cats, they added another distraction. My younger daughter tried to go to bed early, only to discover a cat with a messy butt made a mess on her bed. She had to wash all her bedding.

We had been working to clear my husband’s bedroom, and started doing his laundry, too, so that was already set up (yes, we are still running the hose out the window for the washing machine to drain into the yard). The girls were going to start the laundry and my younger daughter was going to use her sister’s bed for the night.

Which is when they discovered more mess in the middled of her sheets, from a cat or cats that squirmed its way under her covers.

So they were both up all night, doing load after load of laundry. Some things needed to be washed twice, just because of their size. They didn’t get to bed until past 6am.

We’ll be more laundry today, too. My husband has set up his CPAP in my bedroom so he could sleep with me.

Sleeping in the same bed as my husband! Imagine that. 😄

That will give us a chance to strip his hospital bed and wash things like his pillows and body pillows, along with the extra blankets he puts under his sheets. The mattress for the hospital bed has a sort of thick vinyl instead of fabric, so it’s easier to clean. Unfortunately, it doesn’t breath, and causes my husband to sweat. The extra layers under the sheets help prevent that.

I did finally find an XL twin fitted sheet on Amazon for his mattress, which is several inches longer than a standard twin mattress. We’ve confirmed the new sheet fits properly, so we’ll need to get a few more. For now, though, he has only one fitted sheet that actually fits the mattress on his hospital bed.

We’ve been working most of yesterday on clearing his room so we can access the corner behind the plumbing for the tub. This is where we will be cutting an access panel, but it’s still covered by the wardrobe. My husband doesn’t really use the wardrobe, and the girls have said they’ll take it upstairs – but they will need to move out their little bar fridge for the space. They don’t use that much anymore, so we were already talking about moving it to my room. I’ll have to find space for that, though.

Once we get that figured out, we can start moving things around but, for now, we still have one more corner of husband’s room to clear and clean, where has his own tiny fridge to store his injections. This will give us the opportunity to defrost and clean it, too, then move it to where it will be more easily accessible.

The bonus of moving the girls’ fridge out from upstairs, to make room for the wardrobe, is that it frees up a grounded outlet.

That means they can get an air conditioner and actually be able to plug it in! The upstairs gets so insanely hot in the summer, they really need one up there.

That will not happen for a while, though, since my daughter will be paying for what we end up needing to get the bathroom walls repaired.

So all of this rearranging and cleaning and figuring things out is happening at the same time – all because the hot water tap in the tub broke.

There is nothing we can do in the bathroom itself right now. The fan it still running to dry the rotted aspenite. My brother will be looking at it when he comes out on Friday evening (today is Wednesday).

We will have to pull out the tub to be able to find and cut away all the rot, and I’m not even sure how that will be done. It does seem like the tub is in two parts; the tub itself, resting on top of a flat panel that hides the underside of the tub.

Well, we’ll find out when the time comes.

Until then, we’ll just take advantage of the disaster and do the clearing, cleaning and rearranging we need to do, anyways.

On the one hand, I’m glad this has happened now, and not in the middle of winter.

On the other, this keeps me from getting outside stuff done, and from finishing the cat isolation shelter!

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some of that done today, since there’s only so much I can do in my husband’s bedroom before I need my daughters to help out. It’s so close to being finished, too!

Ah, well. It is was it is.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

A few updates, and I’m not sure about this kitten

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It was a nice, crisp and cool morning as I was doing my rounds. I made sure to get the kibble for the outside cats to soak in hot water before I headed out, so they could have a nice warm breakfast.

There is one kitten that I noticed last night; a friendly little tabby. It had been curled up in the cat bed at the bottom of the shelf in the window. While topping up their kibble at the end of the day, it basically didn’t move, while all the other cats and kittens came running as soon as they heard kibble hit tray.

This morning, it was still in the same spot, but meowing strangely. It reminded me of how eye baby used to meow, when he was pretty much completely blind and wandering around the yard.

Eye baby seems to be doing quite well, btw. The one eye is still shaped differently, but he can blink it and seems to be able to see out of it.

I was able to get the kitten out and tried to bring it near the warm food. It did not seem interested in the food at all.

It was very interested in attention, though.

I cuddled it a bit, but had to continue my rounds. As I was making my way back to the house, I could here it meowing, and found it following a couple of other kittens into the old kitchen garden. I went to pick it up and it really enjoyed being carried, started to purr and knead the sleeve of my shirt.

I tried to put it near food again and managed to free myself long enough to bring a water bowl into the sun room. It’s one of the working heated water bowls (at least I hope it’s still working!), and we will have it plugged in during the winter, so they’ll have a heated water bowl both inside and outside.

As I moved the kitten to different places, as much to get it out from under my feet as to show it where the water bowl and food trays were, it seems to me the kitten is not very steady on its feet. It does seem to be having vision issues though, as far as I could see, the eyes are clear and dilating normally.

There’s nothing we can do about it, other than monitor the kitten and see how it does. We do still have antibiotics we can give it, if it seems warranted.

Meanwhile…

My brother was finally able to get back to me on Messenger, this morning. With great hesitation, I had told him we would need help with the bathroom, as we don’t have the tools we need to cut away the rotten chip board – aspenite is the proper name for it. I never remember that, but my brother mentioned it.

He asked what tools we needed, but I honestly don’t know. What tool is the right tool to cut away the aspenite, without damaging what’s on the other side of it?

He did mention something that should have been obvious, though we hadn’t thought of it yet.

We’re going to have to take the tub out entirely. The rot extends down the wall where the water pipes are, and in the middle of the back wall.

*sigh*

That is not going to be an easy job. Not just because of the size of the tub in a rather small bathroom. This tub is old school. I’m pretty sure it’s enameled cast iron. When you first get into it, it’s absolutely freezing, but once it warms up, it holds heat so much longer than a modern tub.

Gosh, I miss being able to take a bath!

We basically went from, the taps and faucet need to be replaced, to a major repair and replacement job. The more we uncover, the more we find will need to be done.

My brother barely remembers what’s behind that aspenite. We know there’s log behind the two walls, and that there are more pieces of whatever was handy, like we found under the fake tile paneling, used to try and level the walls.

We’ve still got the fan set up on the bath chair to get things as dry as we can. Every now and then, I’ve been using more CLR on the rust stains under the taps. May as well try and clear that as best we can, while we’re at it.

As much as I like this tub, if we had the funds for it, I would replace it with one of those walk in tubs. The kind with a door on the side, and a seat at one end. This would allow both my husband and I to be able to get in and out safely, and get the hot, soaking baths that would give us at least some temporary pain relief. Especially for him, when his back starts to spasm.

A plain walk in tub with a seat starts at over $3600 at Home Depot. There are slightly cheaper walk in tubs, but they don’t have a seat which, for us, completely defeats the purpose of having one.

If we did get one, we would probably have to add more structural support to the floor in the basement. Which is not that big of a deal. I think we even have an adjustable steel pillar somewhere around the farm that could be used. The only down side of that is, it would make it harder to get at the well pump, sump pump and pressure tank, as well as the plumbing, that are all under the bathroom.

Ideally, we would be hiring someone to do all this and renovate the entire bathroom in the process. If we were to include installing a walk in tub at the same time, though, that would easily cost at $10,000. Probably more like $15,000 since we’d also be getting at least the walls around the tub tiled. When we looked it up before, the cost to tile the bathroom alone was in the $5000 for a room the size of ours.

*sigh*

If we had that kind of cash available, we wouldn’t have truck payments right now.

Well, we’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, my brother plans to come out here with another load, after work on Friday, and he will take a look at the bathroom while he’s here.

So today’s priority will be working on my husband’s bedroom. I’m hoping we can set his computer up on his leatherworking desk in the living room first. Then we can start clearing and rearranging his room, so we can access the corner on the other side of the tub and look into cutting an access panel.

One of the things we need to take out of his room is my late father’s wardrobe; it matches the vanity and nightstand I’m using in my room. In talking to him about it, he said we could take the wardrobe out completely and leave it out, as he doesn’t use it very much, but we have nowhere else to put it! It’s pretty darn big.

It seems like every thing we discover that needs to be done requires something else that needs to be done to do it… which requires something else to be done so we can do that…

When my mother asked us to move out here, we knew it wouldn’t be easy, and the house wasn’t “perfect” like she claimed it was, but my goodness, we never expected it to be this bad.

Well, it is what it is. We will deal.

It’s not like we have any choice!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: yes, we have a harvest! Plus, we will have warm kitties this winter

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No harvest this morning, though. I had time to do my usual rounds before heading out to my mother’s, and that’s it.

I did find these hardy little jewels, though!

Yes, the tiny strawberries are still growing, still blooming and still producing berries! Only a couple were ripe. Whatever variety of strawberries they are, they are certainly appropriate for our climate! It should be interesting to see how they do, when they are transplanted somewhere they can grow wild.

My trip to my mother’s was productive, though she was physically not up to climbing in and out of the truck to go to the bank. Hopefully, my sister will visit on one of her days off and can take her with her car. It’s much easier for our mother to get in and out of her vehicle.

At her request, I picked up a large pizza for our lunch. Today was her first day on the Meals on Wheels program, though. We were done eating before it arrived, and my mother still has half a pizza. That will be two or three meals for her, right there, and the Meals on Wheels will be her supper.

The place that cooks the meals usually sends out invoices at the end of the month, but my mother wanted to pay in advance. She doesn’t trust the post office, though, so she asked the volunteer delivery person – who happened to be one of the social workers that hosts all sorts of activities in the building – to hand deliver it. My mother has been making use of their services on an as-needed basis and always paid cash per meal directly to the delivery person, so we knew this was acceptable.

Lack of volunteers means they only deliver meals three days a week. As we were talking about the delivery days, the social worker told my mother that, if she wanted, she could request more than one meal. She could, for example, order two meals each on Monday and Wednesday, then order three meals on Friday. This way, she could have a meal for every day of the week. My mother was happy to hear that, and said that she would think about it. For now, we’ll just see how the three days a week works out for her.

The meal comes with a container of soup, which my mother wanted to eat right away, leaving the rest of the meal for later in the day. So I headed out with her list and did her shopping for her. It didn’t take long, even with going to both the pharmacy and the grocery store. My mother is set for a good while now.

By the time all was done and I was heading home, I noticed that I would reach our area in time for the post office to reopen for the afternoon. I knew one package was expected today. Another was due in a couple of days, but sometimes they come in early.

There turned out to be three packages waiting for me!

This is what was in two of them.

One was the pair of clamp lamps, the other was the ceramic bulbs. I tested both lamps and bulbs, then set them aside for now. We won’t need to set them up for a while, yet, and one of them is meant to go into the cat isolation shelter. We have a larger clamp lamp that we used last year, but the bulb didn’t make it through the entire winter. When the budget allows, I should pick up another two pack.

The other package was a chainsaw sharpening kit. My husband, sweetheart that he is, sharpened the chain on the mini-chainsaw (battery powered pruning saw) for me. I’ll have to find the spare and get him to do that one, too, plus the chain for our larger electric chainsaw.

My husband likes sharpening things. 😁

After having the supper my older daughter prepared, I headed outside to take care of the eggplant and pepper bed. I removed the plastic that was surrounding it and rolled it up around a couple of narrow boards for storage. We might use one section to put around the catio for the winter, so for now, they’re being stored on the catio roof.

The eggplant leaves were definitely killed off by the cold, but I was surprised by how well the eggplants held out.

Even some really tiny Little Finger eggplant seemed salvageable. Only a few were too frost damaged to bother picking. There were only three Classic eggplant left to harvest, and all three had minimal frost damage on them.

That plastic did the job, even if it couldn’t completely protect the plants!

The Cheyenne hot peppers in the middle of the bed fared better. There were SO many peppers, and none of them were too frost damaged to pick!

I should have used the bigger colander! It’s being used for something else, though. When I brought them inside, they almost filled the basin I’d dug out of the old kitchen recently.

We don’t have the space to spread them out, so I guess we’ll have to string them and hang them. They should continue to ripen.

We most definitely don’t have the space for all the things that need to ripen indoors, though!

Which is a good problem to have, I suppose!

I’m just happy to have a harvest in October.

After this, the potatoes need to be harvested. Oh, and the red onions are still hanging in there!

The sunchokes should also be harvested, but they are still quite green and growing. The frost hasn’t really bothered them at all. I’m curious as to how well they did, after not harvesting them at all last year.

In a few days, we’ll be bringing the rest of the winter squash from the garage to the root cellar.

The root cellar is going to be pretty full this winter!

Not too bad, considering what a rough start the garden had this year. I’m quite pleased!

The Re-Farmer

Cuddle puddles, and some wind damage

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It’s about 10:30am as I start this and, according to the weather apps, we’re at 6C/42F right now, with a “feels like” of 1C/34F

Which means it was probably a couple of degrees colder, at least, while I did my morning rounds, which I finished a couple of hours ago.

I didn’t even need a jacket while I was out there. Sweats and a sweatshirt had me more than warm enough!

Still, it’s rather chilly for the kitties – especially the littles – so I took the time this morning to set their kibble to soak in hot water until completely softened, and also had warm water to top up their water bowls.

Click through to see a second photo, above.

The cats that prefer to eat on the cat shelter roof aren’t too happy when I just walk past them – some even reach out to grab my arm as I go by! – but they do eventually go to the trays.

I’d say the warm food is worth it for them!

As I was doing my rounds, I had quite a few branches to pick up. Mostly smaller branches around the yard. Then I found this in the maple grove, out by the fire pit.

When I first saw it, I was a bit confused. How could we lose a tree, but all the trees are still standing? Where did it come from?

Click through to the next photo, and you’ll see.

We just lost half a tree! 😄

Clearly, it had been dead for some time. As I was cleaning it up, I left the biggest piece of trunk for last. The smaller pieces and branches went to the two branch piles we have – one in the yard as fuel for the fire pit, one just on the other side of the fence that will eventually need a commercial wood chipper to get rid of.

The trunk turned out to be so dry and partially rotted that, when I went to pick up the larger end to drag it out, it broke in half!

Those pieces got dragged over next to the pile of cut logs we have for the fire pit, to be broken down more, later.

We haven’t used the fire pit even once this year. It’s usually been too windy for a fire, and when it wasn’t windy, there were too many mosquitoes. Now that it’s getting cooler and the bugs are mostly gone, I’m hoping to get it going at least once or twice – if the wind allows!

Another reason I want to get our outdoor kitchen built. We’ll move the fire pit into the shelter. It won’t keep the bugs out, but it’ll have at least some shelter from the wind and rain.

Until then, we won’t be getting much use out of the fire pit where it is now. Not only is wind a concern, but there are too many dead branches around that the sparks could ignite, as well as a nearby spruce. Spruce is basically a big torch waiting to happen.

After finishing cleaning up the wind damage around the yard – mostly very minor stuff, thankfully – I started heading inside, and found all sorts of adorableness in the sun room!

Poor judgement, trying to squeeze his way into the cat bed with the kittens and… I believe that is Not-Junk-Pile in with them.

If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see a kitten cuddle puddle. The “bed” they’re on is an old feed bag, from when we could still afford to buy deer feed and bird seed, we found, stuffed with… I can’t remember what. It was stored on the shelf and the cats knocked it flat to make a bed out of it! 😄

We will be rearranging the sun room as we clean it up for the winter, bringing in another shelf from the old kitchen that isn’t being used as intended. We’ll set up this side of the sun room for the cats, so they will have more places like this to stay warm in the winter.

Well, it’s time to go help my daughter in the bathroom. There is much to do to fix things up!

The Re-Farmer