postaday

Stocking up at Costco: this is what $1062, plus a few donations, looks like

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I have to keep reminding myself: I did in one trip what I used to have to do in two or three trips while using my mother’s car.

Still, this is the most we’ve ever spent at Costco in one trip, and… ouch.

I did things a bit differently this time, in that I had all the cat supplies put on one bill, then our own stuff was rung in separately. The total for both together came to $1061.97

*choke*

First, though, was the trip in with the new-to-us truck.

Road conditions were not very good. From our place to the town my mother lives in was packed snow and ice. There was blowing snow, but the visibility was still okay. I was quite okay with being behind vehicles doing only 80 or 90kph in a 100kph zone (100kph = about 62mph). Things started getting messier as I reached my mother’s town. I timed it so I could stop at the gas station to grab some fried chicken for brunch first. That gave me time to respond to some messages from the Cat Lady. She had a cat carrier and some kibble donations for us and we were trying to figure out when and where we could meet. She needed to go into the same area of the city as the Costco we go to, so we would be able to meet up today.

Once back on the road, the further south I went, the more the highway went from slush to water until about halfway to the city, when it all started going to ice and slush again. The truck handled it like it was nothing! In fact, I had to watch myself, because it was just too easy to start speeding before I even realized it. Normally, I’d have just set the cruise control, but with the conditions, I expected to be slowing down more often. I did, but it was usually because I found myself behind vehicles hauling trailers, or heavy equipment.

As I was leaving the city, I stopped at a gas station convenience store to pick up something to drink for the drive. At this point, conditions were deteriorating again, and visibility was getting poor. The further north I went, though, the better it got. I drove out of the snow, and the roads that had been slushy or icy before were now just a bit wet. It’ll be a problem once things freeze during the night, but at the time, it was good. It wasn’t until about 5 minutes from home that I started driving into falling snow again, but it wasn’t an issue at all.

As for the shopping, I forgot to get a photo of the flat cart before I started unloading into the truck, but that’s okay. I got pictures of how it fit into the truck, instead.

The Cat Lady caught up with me as I was starting to pack things into my reusable bags, and was able to pass on the cat carrier and some bags of kibble she had for us. She couldn’t stay long, though. I don’t know how she keeps up with everything she’s got going in her life! She’s amazing.

She is able to do couponing, so those bags of kibble probably cost next to nothing. The new carrier is a perfect kitten size! She’s told me she’s had to turn down donations of cat carriers in the past, because she had no space for them, but now she plans to accept them to pass on to us. We have 1 hard sized and 2 soft carriers, and the soft carriers can potentially be torn out of, so hard carriers are preferable. The wet cat food was part of our own purchase.

I’d remembered to grab a snow brush to keep in the truck and ended up using it to push the filled hard sided bags further in, so I could fit the kibble bags. The TP and puppy pads sitting on the tailgate went on top of the kibble. I didn’t even need to open the cover. In the cab, I had an insulated bag for the hot rotisserie chickens, and a bag for the rye bread. The only thing that didn’t go into the back of the cab were the eggs, which I put on the front seat, instead.

This is what we got for our money today.

Cat supplies:
12 bags, 9kg size, dry kibble @ $26.99 each, for a total of $323.88
canned cat food: $38.99
puppy pads: $24.99
Tax added another $46.54 to the bill, for a total of $434.40

We have got to get that bill down somehow. We’d have no problem at all with having a car payment right now, if we weren’t feeding so many cats! But we’re not going to let them go hungry, either. Hopefully, we’ll be able to adopt more out soon.

Also, I was intending to buy 14 bags of kibble, but the stack on the flat cart was getting a bit tall and less stable, and I still had lots of other things to fit on there.

Human supplies:
Toilet paper, Kirkland brand: $22.99
4pk Pronamel toothpaste: $19.79
Coke Zero: $14.69, plus 32¢ enviro fee
double flat of eggs (60 eggs): $18.89
AP flour, 10kg size: $9.99 (most places have bags this size at about $15 – on sale!)
family size pack of fresh sausages, mild Italian: $20.11
whole chicken, 3 pack: $28.64
2 chubs of ground beef: $28.49 each
1 chub of ground pork: $19.99, minus $5 at the till
pork blade roast: $20.87
4pk bacon: $24.99
pork loin: $29.15
Old Cheddar: $14.99
Mozzarella: $14.99
Whipping cream, two 1L cartons, $4.70 each
double cream brie: $10.99
4pk Kirkland cream cheese: $9.49
5 pounds of butter: $5.49 each
Two 2pks of rye bread: $5.99 each
Two 2pks tortilla wraps: $9.99 each
9pk pasta, 3 varieties: $13.99
Mayo: $10.99
dehydrated mushrooms: $19.99 – I haven’t seen these in years!! We used to love getting these before we moved!
Kirkland Olive Oil: $32.99
Avocado Oil: $16.99
popcorn: $10.79
hazelnuts: $11.49
Kirkland Basmati rice: $15.99
2kg size Peanut Butter: $10.39
2pk Butter chicken sauce: $9.99, minus $2 at the till
6pk Kirkland canned chicken: $18.99
2 rotisserie chickens, $7.99 each
pork rinds: $10.99 (meant to be used in place of bread crumbs)
Kirkland chocolate chips: $17.99

plus tax: $10.17
Total: $627.57

The alarming part was paying for this second bill. I’d already paid for the cat supplies, but when I tried to pay for the rest, it failed. Payment not authorized. ??? We tried again, and got the same response. I was asking her to suspend the order so I could check my bank account to see what the problem was when someone came by. Someone that turned out to be a supervisor.

It was the debit machine going down.

My order did get suspended and the receipt printed out. The supervisor took it and tried to process it on another till, but that one was down, too. She ended up taking me to their supervisor station over by the bathrooms, where they have a different type of debit machine.

I was not the only one trailing along! There were at least four other people gathering around, waiting their turn.

Thankfully, fourth time was the charm, and I was able to pay for our stuff!

I really ought to use cash, but I just don’t like carrying around that much cash. Especially when I’m not quite sure what the total will be, given how much the prices change.

On top of this, I did fill the gas tank before I even went in to shop. I was at half a tank by the time I got there, but the Costco gas price for regular was 141.9¢/L, instead of the 153.9/L at my mother’s town, or the 152.9/L in the town we usually go to. So it cost “only” $68 and change to fill the tank.

As painful as it was to spend so much in one day, the fact that we won’t have to go to Costco again just saved us another $50 – $60 or so, just in fuel. We do plan to go to the city again next week, but I’m wondering if we even need to make that trip. This would be the trip where we go to the international grocery store, a Walmart and a Canadian Tire, all in one trip. However, the only reason to go to Canadian Tire is for litter pellets, and we still have plenty of those, and to get a few more fire bricks for our outdoor kitchen build, which can wait a month or two. The Walmart is where I get the shredded wet cat food I use for the kittens (the Costco wet cat food is all paté), and maybe a couple more bags of cat food, which we don’t need to do right now. The only other thing we’d be getting is the fresh produce and non-bulk stuff, and we can do that at the closer Walmart or the local grocery store.

We’ll decide on that later. I’m just so happy that I was able to get all this in one trip, with zero issues with the drive!

A few days ago, we finally got a copy of an email confirming our financing FINALLY was approved, and our mechanic was finally going to get paid for the truck. Getting my husband’s full name added to the electric bill was finally good enough for the lender! After I got back from the city and everything was unloaded and put away (and the outside cats fed, to get them away from the truck so I could park it in the garage!), I made sure to send a thank you email to our mechanic and the lady at the finance company. They bent over backwards to get us this truck, and it’s made all the difference in the world.

Best of all, we can work on plans to get my husband into the city to see his family. He hasn’t seen his dad since late 2018, and hasn’t seen his sister at all since she moved back from out of province, a couple of years ago. We had to turn down a planned family gathering, but the seats in this truck support his back so well, he feels he can actually handle the trip!

Which makes having car payments again, completely worthwhile.

The Re-Farmer

Found the warm spot!

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

Overnight we got what I would call our first real snowfall. Enough snow is on the ground that it might actually stay. At least in the shadier spots. We shall see.

It doesn’t stop the outside cats from preferring to eat on the cat house roof!

Junk Pile has found the warm spot, above the terrarium bulb inside. 😄

Most of the cats have been using the sun room. At least the smaller ones. I’m seeing more cats peeking through the window of the cat house now, too. I counted possibly 33 or 34 cats this morning, including Sad Face.

I’ll be heading into the city within the hour. I’ve been keeping tabs on the local highway conditions groups and chats. The highway I’ll be taking has been described as icy and filled with packed snow. Not too bad, but enough for people to warn about driving carefully and taking it slow. As I write this, we are at -3C/27F, with a wind chill of -12C/10F. We’re pretty sheltered from the wind around the house, as it’s coming from the northwest. I just wore my light hooded jacket while doing my rounds and didn’t feel much chill at all. This afternoon we’re supposed to stay at 1C/34F for several hours, so I expect the roads will clear pretty quickly.

I am so glad we got the truck when we did. I would not be comfortable driving my mother’s car in this at all. It’s not even the tires, which checked out fine, or the road conditions, which aren’t that bad. It’s more that I keep expecting it to suddenly break down. It keeps checking out fine, but it makes so many noises and just feels wrong when I’m driving it. So going back to driving it only when I need to help my mother is a relief.

This will be my first time driving the truck in the city. I’m going to love having better visibility, but I’ll have to pay attention to those few extra inches in length! I don’t want to be “that” vehicle that parks with the back end sticking into the lane. 😄

The Re-Farmer

We have cows again!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I’ve had some sleepless nights, so the girls were kind enough to do my morning stuff for me and let me sleep in. I headed out in the afternoon to go to the mail, then into town to refill a couple of our big water jugs, and ended up picking up a lasagna for supper.

When I got home and went to open the gate, I was pleasantly surprised to see we have cows again!

The renter has rotated his cows to our quarter section one last time before they bring them in for the winter.

Seeing his cows makes me smile, every time!

I drove into the yard to unload the water jugs, then took the time to try and figure out how to open up the cover over the truck’s box. I’d looked up online, but found instructions for a specific brand, and it turns out ours unlocks differently! It took using the flash on my phone to finally see the loop under one corner that released the cover. I rolled it up then climbed in with a broom.

That was NOT fun. I could get onto the tailgate easy enough, but my knees are so shot, it was a real struggle to get up again. I would get one knee up, which would cause massive pain on the other knee. I’m going to take a page from my brother’s book and get some high density foam pieces that can be slid onto the tail gate and make it less painful. We’ve already been talking about keeping a folding step stool to make getting into the back easier, too. We wanted a taller vehicle for important reasons, but … well, I’m short!

Tomorrow we will be making our first stock up shopping trip to the city, and I’m planning to hit Costco on this trip. I will be able to load an entire month’s worth of cat kibble in the back! I might actually run out of room on the flat cart in the store, and should still have space in the truck! With temperatures the way they are right now, we can even skip the ice packs and load the insulated bags in the back with the kibble bags, while things that don’t need to stay cold can be loaded into the cab.

If all goes to plan, I’ll only have to do the one Costco trip, then do a second trip a few days to a different areas of the city, where there are several stores all along one street that we go to. I might even go check out the liquidation place we found but rarely go to.

That should be all the necessary trips to the city after that – two trips instead of 3 or 4. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it goes!

Oh, I was just reminded as I wrote about the kibble; with how much we get every month, I did some searches to see if I could buy the kibble from a wholesale supplier, instead of at retail. I did find some Canadian “wholesale” outlets, but the prices were often more expensive than what we’re paying at Costco! Which makes these the retail store for wholesale outlets.

I should try that livestock supply store again. Their huge bags of cat food were cheaper, but the cats didn’t like it, but they did have other brands and higher quality cat food. If they have better prices than Costco, for kibble that cats will actually eat, that would be awesome. They don’t have any products listed online, though.

We shall see.

Anyhow.

Aside from the trip to town, we got a bit more progress done outside. The last of the garden hoses are put away, the septic tank covered, and a few more garden supports and stakes bundled and stored. Over the next few days, it will be getting cold enough to do the winter mulching before the ground freezes. We’re still expected to get temperatures hovering around the freezing mark for most of November, so it’ll be a while before more than the surface freezes.

It is amusing to start the truck and get a warning on the display saying “ice possible, drive with care”. 😃 We’ve only been getting a light dusting of snow that’s mostly gone by the afternoon, but the south end of our province has been getting a mix of snow and rain, so there are plenty of warnings about road conditions going out.

It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, so I hope to finally get a good night’s sleep, tonight!

The Re-Farmer

Saying goodbye

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Oh, my goodness.

This was an unexcepted thing. I was connected with someone last night, we got together this morning, and it’s done.

Nosencrantz no longer has to be constantly stressed out being around so many other cats. She has a new forever home, and she’s already settling in nicely. When feeding the cats this morning, she came out of her hiding places as usual, and I was able to get her into the carrier. She got treated to some wet cat food while I finished my morning rounds, then off we went to meet her new family.

I am feeling really good about the family she went to. You know how, when you sometimes meet someone and there is this automatic connection? That’s how it was when I was introduced to someone who was looking for a new cats. Nosencrantz checked all her boxes, and she checked all of ours!

This is a hard one for me. Of all the cats, Nosencrantz is the one I connected with the most. She, however, was so stressed out. There’s a reason we also called her Anxiety Bear! Too many other cats. Both inside and out, she had specific cats that targeted her, too.

Now, she has a safe, warm “suite” to stay in for a couple of weeks as she gets used to her new home, before they let her out to explore. She’ll have one other sweet and friendly cat to get used to, and cat loving children to dote on her. They also have other cats that are completely indoors, including a rescued tripod. I have been promised lots of pictures, and look forward to getting to know the family more!

It feels like this family was put in our path at just the right time, too. I am going to miss Nosencrantz, but this was the right thing to do for her.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Last onion harvest, plus adorableness

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Let’s start with the adorableness!

Shadow in the Dark has turned into a pretzel!

It occurred to me that these guys are coming up on 6 months old. The Cat Lady was looking into getting 5 slots for the cheap spay and neuter day, including Toni, Ghosty and a couple of outdoor males, but I just asked if her if we could get the 5 oldest kittens done, instead. She still wants to get Toni done, too, so she’ll see if she can get 6 slots. She might be moving next month, though, and things are really hectic for her and her family right now (and their 27 or so cats!!), so she’ll get back to me on that one. I told her I’m less concerned about Toni than I am about having 5 kittens old enough for their first heat (well… three female kittens going into heat with intact males around!). Ghosty, depending on how things go with the move, would not be coming back, as she’s found a home for her.

Speaking of large numbers of cats, I did a head count outside this morning. Including Shop Towel/Sad Face, I counted 38.

As much as we’d like to reduce that population, we really need to reduce the indoor population first. It’s just not healthy for them, mentally or physically. The Cat Lady, once they move to their new home, will be able to convert a heated shed into a place just for cats. That’s something I wouldn’t mind finding a way to do. Too bad we can’t use the storage house for that! We need more sheds, anyhow. The ones we have are either fallen apart, falling apart, or jammed full of junk. Or, in the case of the warehouse that used to be my late brother’s workshop, filled with my parents’ stuff my mother insists we keep. Not that we’d use that for cats. We need a workshop more!

Ah, well. All in good time.

With the temperatures dropping below freezing consistently over night from now on, I pulled the bed of Red of Florence onions, yesterday.

There was enough to half fill the wheel barrow, plus there were a few too small to bother keeping.

Their necks are still too “fleshy”, so we won’t be able to cure them like we did with the other onions we harvested already. We’d had a night and morning of consistent rain, so these were also pretty damp. We have the hardware cloth “door” we made to keep the cats out of the old basement when we keep the door open in the summer. It does double duty for laying out vegetables. I was able to set it up in the old kitchen and laid the onions out to dry a bit. From there, we will need to process them; some for freezing, some for dehydrating. This is on top of the onions we’ve been able to cure and braid for casual use. We got a very decent haul of onions this year, but only the yellow onions, plus these ones. Oh, and the shallots. We also had the Red Wethersfield onions, but not one of them survived transplanting! I’ve no idea what happened to them, but I want to try that variety again before we conclude that they just won’t grow here.

The high for today, and the next couple of days, is expected to be 3C/37F. After that, the highs will be lower, and reach just above or below freezing. So far, the overnight lows are not expected to drop very far, and remain just a few degrees below freezing, but we will no longer be seeing overnight lows above freezing from here on. It’s still not too bad, though. Nothing severe or extreme. Also, we don’t have the snow that other parts of the country got yesterday, including the city we lived in before moving out here!

There was a thin layer of ice on the outside cats’ water bowls. It’s starting to be time to bring warm water out for them when we feed them. It’s time to put the hoses away and cover the taps, anyhow. The electrical in the cat house needs to be plugged in and tested, so we can plug in the huge heated water bowl in the water bowl shelter, plus the terrarium heat bulb inside, with its timer set to turn it on at dusk. I’ve already set up the smaller water bowl in the sun room and plugged it in.

Still lots to be done, but as long as we get the essentials taken care of, the rest can wait until spring, if necessary.

The Re-Farmer

Good morning!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Breakfast is served.

I counted 37 or 38 this morning. Plus Shop Towel. He came over to the kibble house and seemed okay at first -I was even just starting to be able to touch him – but then one of our friendly males came by and he attacked. I chased him off and he actually stopped to attack another cat that had been startled by the commotion and happened to be running in the same direction.

*sigh*

Also, yes. That tuxedo has a messed up eye. That’s the one that had a badly infected eye, but we could never catch him to clean it up. Not the tuxedo that lost its eye entirely. I haven’t seen that one in a long time.

Today looks like a day where not much is going to get done outside. It looks like it’s been raining for most of the night, judging by how much water is pooling in our driveway, and is still raining now. It’s expected to continue raining until the evening.

Which I’m okay with. It’ll be good for the ground to get a lot of moisture before the snow hits and the ground starts to freeze. That will benefit any young trees, like the apple we planted in the spring, and the Korean Pine in the outer yard, as well as the garlic and saffron crocuses that were planted not long ago. A good, deep watering before winter is a good thing.

Oh, I need to remember to contact Veseys about those purple raspberries. I double checked and yes, I was remembering correctly. They are regular cane raspberries, not primal cane. Primal cane raspberries produce berries on new canes every year, so you can literally mow the whole patch down in the fall, and they will produce new shoots in the spring. With regular cane, berries are produced on second year canes, which then die off, leaving the fresh first year canes to survive the winter and produce the following year. What we should have gotten in our order was first year canes, and we should not have had any berries this year at all. Instead, the canes planted this year would have produced berries next year, while also having new canes come up that would produce berries the year after. There were no new canes that came up. Just the ones we planted, that produced berries, instead. It seems highly unlikely, but we either got second year canes in stead of first year canes, or conditions somehow “tricked” the raspberries into acting as though they’d gone through a winter. This can sometimes happen with biannuals like onions or carrots. For example, the year we had groundhogs eating our carrot greens, quite a few went to seed after their greens started growing back. I can’t think of anything that happened with the raspberries that could have simulated that sort of annual pattern, though.

Anyhow…

Days like today – rainy and overcast – always make me feel really, really sleepy. I’m resisting the urge to crawl back into bed!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: root vegetable harvest, plus a first longer drive with the new truck!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Things started out a bit rough, this morning. While I was in the kitchen, my husband opened the door to my room to let some of the bigger kittens in/out (usually we get both happening at the same time), when Soot Sprite dashed out.

The littles are still too little to be let out.

Unfortunately, my husband couldn’t catch him, but he also thought it was kinda cute, so he started following the Sprite around to keep an eye on him.

Right on down to the basement. The one place that we absolutely did NOT want him getting into. At Sprite’s size, there are too many places he can squeeze into that are not safe or healthy for him. We learned that when we had Beep Beep and Butterscotch have their kittens down there.

I put the food I was working on aside, protected from cats, then went down to see if I could catch him.

I could not.

Worse, I ended up losing sight of him entirely. I was pretty sure he’d squeezed under a counter shelf, but couldn’t be sure. That is one of the worse places (though not the only one) for him to be hiding in. When cleaning up in that basement, we weren’t able to move that shelf. We did clean out stuff inside it, though, which included things like pain cans that had spilled or leaked – it was a long time before we were able to clean out enough to finally get rid of whatever it was that was making the basement smell like a chemical factory! It’s very likely things leaked under that shelf, but we really don’t know.

I ended up messaging my daughters to see who was available to help out, and my younger daughter came down. Part of the problem was that, wherever Sprite ran off, the bigger kittens would run after him and tackle him, like it was a game, which it partly why he ended up disappearing entirely. My daughter had brought a toy to lure him, while I ended up going up and down the stairs with arm loads of other cats and kittens that were causing problems.

Have I mentioned that stairs and I do NOT get along?

My knees are just not stable enough. It isn’t too bad going up the stairs, but going back down is something else entirely. Basically, I have to take one step at a time and hang on to the door, the wall, the window ledge and finally the rail, to get to the bottom.

It took toys, wet cat food and finally letting Clarence (formerly Tweedle Dum) down to finally lure Soot Sprite out. He could barely squeeze his way out from under that counter shelf!!!

That done, my daughter could finally take a shower before heading out. She and her sister had a grocery shopping list and were thinking of going to town, but I took advantage of that to get one more bag of kibble before our stock up shopping, so we went to the nearest Walmart, instead. They carry a 10kg size that costs less than the 7kg sizes that are available locally. Not enough to drive all that way for just a bag of cat food, but worth it if we’re buying other stuff, too.

I made a point of not getting gas on the way out. I’d put some in on Wednesday, before taking the truck home, and got it to just above half. We’d had another trip into town for my husband’s medical appointment, but didn’t go anywhere yesterday. This is our first city trip, enough though it was to the smaller, closer city, so just a 45 minute or so drive, one way. After we did our shopping, we took a different route home so I could get gas at the same station I got gas at a few days ago.

The trip ended up taking just over a quarter tank of gas – I can’t see the odometer to keep track, because we still can’t find where we can cycle through the computer display, and we’ve got that “service tire monitor system” warning. (Which should just be a battery change on the module.) Our model just doesn’t have the computer display buttons that are in the owner’s manual diagram, and there’s nothing else we can find.

The gas station in town we normally go to now has just switched to full service today, which was a nice surprise. Happily, the prices have also dropped a bit again. We are currently at 154.9¢/L When I added gas on Wednesday, it had dropped to 155.9

It cost $102 to fill our tank from the 1/4 mark – and that’s after my CAA discount!

Ouch.

As for mileage… it’s hard to say, considering the substantial difference in tank size between the truck and my mother’s car, and not being able to see the odometer, but I’m pretty sure it’s better for gas than my mother’s car. Probably about what the van did.

I’m glad to have a full tank of gas, but that was painful.

Once at home, I pulled up to the house to unload, then left my daughter to take care of putting things away while I parked the truck in the garage. I even managed to get it in far enough to close the door behind it.

Except….

Well, when I opened the door before we left, I had a bit too much momentum and opened it all the way. The pull strap broke off long ago, so I usually leave it down a few inches, so I can reach to pull it closed again.

Ah, the joys of being short! I could barely touch it with the tips of my fingers, never mind actually grab it to close it!

So I texted the family to let them know, then went to feed the outside cats. My husband, sweetheart that his is, came out to close the door for me. He’s probably the only one that can reach without jumping or standing on something. My older daughter might have been able to reach. Maybe.

We really need to replace that pull strap.

As for the drive itself, it was fantastic. It was a smooth ride, without any of the shuddering or creaking that my mother’s car does, that drives me bonkers. Also, it’s so nice to be driving a larger vehicle again! I can see!

Once we were home and settled in, I headed out to do some clean up in the main garden area. All the stakes and supports needed to be gathered and sorted and tied into bundles, along with tools and supplies. All those feed bags used as grow bags had to be bagged up for the dump, the tree roots growing through the felted fabric grow bags needed to be pulled out as much as possible – they didn’t dry out as much as I’d hoped, given the off and on rain we’ve been having – and everything put away in the old garden shed.

It was also time to harvest the last of the Uzbek Golden carrots, and see what there was among the turnips, beets and radishes.

Would you look at the size of some of those carrots! I am quite happy with this variety.

Much to my surprise, I also found a few yellow onions that got missed, including one fairly larger one.

In digging up the turnips and beets, I honestly did not expect to have anything worth harvesting, but there were a few little turnips of a useable size that weren’t all chewed up by slugs. This variety is meant to be harvested at about golf ball size, if I remember correctly, and these are pretty close to that.

The beets were a complete loss.

There was also one really big radish that I thought was actually the root from one of the two blooming radishes, but it turned out to be next to one of them. Only one other radish was big enough to harvest. I left the two that are still blooming alone. The bed cover I’d set over them got moved to the new trellis bed for storage for now.

What I found interesting about the turnips and radishes, though, it that most of them had lots of fresh new growth. The greens on both had been pretty damaged. Whatever insect has been eating them – I never did see what it was – seems to have gone away with the frost and cooler temperatures, and the greens were actually starting to grow and recover!

This is the last of what was in the main garden area, and as I’ve been writing this, my family has been enjoying the carrots as a snack while making supper! After this, we have the sunchokes to harvest, and the Red of Florence onion bed. The orange carrots will be left and harvested as needed, until it starts getting cold enough to deeply mulch them for winter storage. Beyond that, it’s just preparing the beds for the winter, and hopefully making more beds before the snow flies and the ground freezes. The garlic, saffron crocuses, strawberries, asparagus and the Liberty apple tree will all also need to be given an insulating mulch, but not too early. It’s a balancing act between covering them early enough that they don’t freeze too much over the winter, but late enough that they don’t stay too warm and start growing before the real cold hits.

Which, if the long range forecast is to be trusted (ha!), won’t be for a little while. We’re expected to be consistently below freezing, including daytime highs, in the middle of November. For now, though, we’re supposed to get heavy rains this evening and into the night, and we’re under a weather advisory, as the first Arctic air blast of the season is expected to hit us later this week. We’re still supposed to get days above freezing, though not by much, and we may even get a mix of rain and snow on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

I am so glad we have the truck NOW, before the weather turned! Thank God!

The Re-Farmer

Montana Morado corn, and energy vampires

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

First, the pleasant stuff.

Yesterday, I got out the Montana Morado corn cobs that had been set aside to continue drying in a cardboard box before trying to remove the kernels. Unfortunately, a few small cobs were still to unripe and started to get fuzzy instead, but we still got this out of it.

It came out to almost exactly a cup of kernels.

I’m waffling between keeping some as seed for next year, or just processing the whole thing. We don’t have a corn mill, but we want to make flour out of it to try. We might have a coffee grinder strong enough, but I think my daughters want to try using our larger mortar and pestle. Which is still pretty small, but we’d be doing it in batches, anyhow.

The other thing that happened yesterday was related to the truck financing.

Yes. We have the truck.

Yes. We have signed the financing documents with the lender, and the finance company representative that’s been helping us all this time.

Yes. The lender had actually said it was done, after we’d sent in a cell phone bill in my husband’s name as yet another proof of ID.

Then yesterday, they told her the cell phone bill wasn’t good enough. They wanted more.

By this point, the entire office was in an uproar about it, I was told. She’d gone to her managers about it, and they were getting involved with the lender to get this mess fixed up. It’s gotten so bad, she was starting to think someone else at the lender’s office had a problem with her, and was messing with the file because of it. We’re not the only file of hers that’s had issues, but none to the point we’re at now. Not only was the entire office getting involved to help out, she herself had stopped working on all other files but ours. The problem is, we already gave them pretty much everything we had. I did eventually sent in an image of my husband’s CPP Disability T4, which only has information they already have on it. They kept wanting something with my husband’s name and address that was sent within the last 30 days (the updated proof of income not being good enough, since they sent it to use digitally, apparently), but most of what we have is all done online, and/or is in my name.

Eventually, a manager had an idea, and suggested we contact the electric company and have my husband’s name added, then have them generate a bill with both our names and our mailing address to send in. This manager had to do that, themselves. They are in a different province, however, and in our province the electric company is run by the government.

I tried it anyhow. I logged in, but the name is one thing that cannot be changed by the client. I found a phone number, though, and after going through the automated system, eventually got to where it would sent me to a customer service rep. All lines were busy, of course, but I had the option to get a representative to call me back, rather than sitting on hold, so I chose that.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait too long. After explaining the situation, the rep was able to do it in her software, but when I logged out and logged back in (refreshing the page didn’t work), on my end of it, our names were all mixed up. She tried again, and basically removed my last name entirely, and that finally worked out by showing “[my name] & [my husband’s entire name as it shows on his birth certificate]”.

She could not, however, generate a statement for me. The change would not show up until the next billing cycle, which I wouldn’t get until the middle of next month.

The personal information page, however, had our names and mailing address on the same screen, so I hoped that would be good enough. I did a print screen and save as PDF, and sent that in.

I have not heard anything since, which tells me it may finally have been accepted!

We are all just blown away over how this has been made to be more difficult that it should be. They had more than enough to establish my husband’s identity. It just sounds like someone had a bee in their bonnet and wouldn’t let go.

Then I got a call from my mother.

Now, when I last spoke with her on Tuesday, I made sure she knew that I would not be available on Wednesday or Thursday, because we were getting the truck on Wednesday, and my husband had a medical appointment on Thursday. My sister was planning to visit her on Wednesday, so she would be able to help my mother with groceries, etc.

Well, she helped with the groceries, at least.

When my mother called, she told me she had run out of her prescriptions, which come in bubble packs. She had planned to take her walker and go to the pharmacy, but it’s been raining and unpleasant. She said she also had a letter from the doctor to give to the pharmacist, and what was I doing tomorrow?

So we arranged for me to come over today so we could have lunch together, and then I could help her with the pharmacy.

I headed out earlier to pick up some gas, first, and would normally have picked up some fried chicken for lunch from there as well, but it was too early in the day for that. They wouldn’t have any for quite some time. Instead, I went to the Chinese restaurant by her place and got take out. Yes, even though she told me she didn’t want to eat from there anymore, because she’s decided they use cats for meat. Well, she did enjoy her meal – then told me not to get food for her from there anymore, because she things they are using cat meat. She claims she saw on the news that a restaurant in the city was caught doing this, and now assumes all Chinese restaurants do this, but 1) the first time she told me about the cat thing, she told me it was one of her neighbours that told her they were doing this and 2) when asked, she couldn’t tell me anything about this story she heard, other than it was in the city. No idea where in the city, or even how long ago she heard this.

The thing is, this is a small town, and there are only so many options. The gas station has fried chicken she loves, but she’s decided she’s not supposed to eat it because it’s bad for her (even though she only eats it rarely). There is a restaurant she goes to pretty regularly that specializes in fried chicken, among a wider menu, but she complains because their food is always cold and not as good, so that’s out, too. There’s another restaurant, but it doesn’t do take out, and finally, there’s the Chinese food place. Which has excellent food at prices even she used to make a big deal out of, because they give so much food for the money. That’s it. Those are the only options for take out. The remaining alternative is for her to make lunch and 1) I wouldn’t want to make her do that work and 2) … let’s just say, my mother’s food combinations don’t always work out. My brother always bring food when he visits, because he has gotten physically ill from food she’d slapped together to make a meal. This isn’t even a “make do with what you have” thing. My mother could be a great cook with some thing. With others… frankly, I’d rather eat cat.

Anyhow. I brought lunch, she ate and enjoyed it, but chastised me for it. Knowing she will complain about anything I bring (when my sister brings her food from the Chinese restaurant, my mother speaks glowingly about it), I’ll just bring whatever I want that is available.

For the rest… Well, I’ll make it as short as I can. Overall, it was a good visit, but there were a number of concerns that came up.

First; my mother is really struggling, physically. Her knees are hurting her a lot, but she still refuses to take the T3s, because they are “narcotics”. Even though she took a pain killer before she left, it was clearly not enough.

Second; my mother’s cognition is failing. The “letter” for the pharmacist turned out to be the new prescription from the doctor for her bladder concerns. A prescription my mother declared she would not fill, when we got into the car after her appointment. She doesn’t trust the doctor because she’s female and not white. When the pharmacist brought out her bubble packs, my mother was shocked, because she though she wouldn’t be getting them, because of this “letter”. When she found out it was to have a new prescription on top of the unchanged regular prescriptions (for all that she complains she’s taking soooo many pills, she really isn’t), she was upset. She completely forgot that she had a new prescription and what it was for, but filled in the blanks by deciding it was a letter – a letter she thought the pharmacist somehow already knew about, even though she had the only copy – that said what she wanted it to say.

Third; she’s having trouble keeping her medications straight. We went over them after I got her home, and she had a couple of them mixed up. Which wouldn’t matter too much, if she were simply taking them when she was supposed to, but she keeps trying to drop this one or that one. She had tried to tell me on the phone that she was feeling better without them, but today, she was telling me how bad she was feeling without them. It also turned out she had changed when she was taking one of them that was supposed to be taken before bed, which basically negated the whole point of that particular medication helping her while she’s lying down. She was taking it with her evening pills, but she takes those so early in the evening, it wouldn’t be useful by the time she got to bed.

Oh, when I had the chance, I asked her why she didn’t get her refills while my sister was there to help. She said she still had a day left, so she didn’t bother. We’ve all been trying to tell her, she needs to get her refills before she runs out, but she seems downright offended by that idea. As if there were some sort of law against it.

In the end, was I was looking up her medications to tell her what each specific pill was for, she got me to write it out. which leads me to one last concern. Her anger issues. It’s not even a new thing. It’s just more hair trigger. As I was writing things out, she was at first happy to see how I was printing it out so clearly and easy for her to read – but then got angry that it too me two lines to write out the description and information, then what the pill was for. Then she wanted little drawings of the pills and was furious because I didn’t make the doodle where she though it should be, etc.

I was able to de-intensify things well enough but, my goodness, that gets exhausting.

Still, it got done. She has her medications, including the new one. I told her (as did the pharmacist), to try it for the 30 days. He only gave her half the prescription, since it’s basically a test. If, after 30 days, she finds it helps, she can let the pharmacy know and they’ll add the next 30 days into her bubble packs. If they don’t help, she can just stop using them. I added that it could take about a week to for them to start working, so to go keep taking them for the 30 days.

I won’t even get into the other stuff that came up. The medications thing was enough to suck the energy out of me on its own, but of course, it wans’t the only thing.

I had left early enough that I could have done some work outside (something else she gave me a hard time about), but by the time I got home, I just didn’t have the spoons anymore. After updating the family – and writing an email to my siblings about the medication things and the concerns I was seeing – I’d pretty much reached my limits.

The problem is, next week, the cold weather is supposed to finally hit us. Which means things need to be prioritized differently. Getting that second trellis bed started has just dropped down the list over things like mulching the garlic more, as well as covering the orange carrots we plan to store in ground for the winter, etc. We’ve been leaving that last bed of onions as long as possible, but we’re going to have to take the whole thing in and process them for freezing right away.

As glad as I am to have the truck and to be able to bring my husband to a medical appointment in it, it looks like those two days were the last really pleasant ones we’re going to have for the year. Since then, it’s been overcast and rainy. Tomorrow is supposed to be a bit better, and then that’s it.

Ah, well. There’s only so much we can do. The world won’t end if it doesn’t all get done.

Right now, I need to decompress and get some solid sleep!

The Re-Farmer

Golden morning, and our 2023 garden

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Yes, I still have garden stuff to post about! On October 20!

I have no errands to run today, so doing my morning rounds was more relaxed. And gorgeous!

We had another night with thick fog that was still hanging around, while a bright, golden sunrise shone through. Truly stunning!

Not quite enough to make me a morning person, but I can still appreciate it. 😄

With how mild the temperatures have been, the frost hardy carrots, onions and radishes are still being left to be harvested as needed. Well. Not the radishes. We’ve got the two that are happily blooming, and I want to see how far along they get before winter hits. I don’t expect to have harvestable pods in time, but you never know!

The old kitchen garden has only the chamomile and thyme (the thyme is doing very well!) growing, plus the strawberries we grew from seed.

Amazingly, there are not only strawberries ripening, but they are still blooming! They’re just tiny little things. I have no idea if that’s the variety, or if it’s because it’s their first year after being started from seed. The kit they came in did not have a variety name that I can recall.

Then there’s the luffa…

The smaller one that was hanging up near the top of the lilacs was getting pretty sad looking, so I went ahead and picked it. Definitely not developed enough, but I’ve set it aside in the sun room to dry. I’ll crack it open later to see how it looks inside. The larger one is still resting on the branch I set it on, so it wouldn’t get bashed around in high winds. The vine might be long dead, but that one is still looking very green, so I’m leaving it for now.

I’m hoping to get more work done in the garden today. Things are really damp right now, and we’re looking at the possibility of rain. I’d like to finish cutting that tree to size and dragged it out of the spruce grove for the second trellis bed. If it’s too wet to use the electric chain saw, there’s plenty of other work that needs to be done to prepare the garden beds for winter.

With all the crazy distractions we’ve had for the past month or so, I’m really appreciating how mild our fall has been, and that being able to get work done in the garden is an option at all, never mind trying to catch up on all the stuff that’s been delayed, time and again. That there is still stuff growing and blooming is absolutely amazing! I really like strong El Niño years! It may mean more snow, but the temperatures tend to be milder. Both are a huge bonus for our area.

In other things, we set our battery charger up on the truck overnight, since I had no idea when we’d be doing any longer drives that would do it for us. When we moved here we found a battery charger in the garage, but our own will stop charging when it’s full, making it safer to leave overnight. So that is taken care of. As much as I’d like to be driving the truck as much as possible, now that we have it, I don’t have the time or gas budget to waste on unnecessary trips. We’ll be doing plenty of driving at the end of the month, when it’s time to do our stock up shopping.

I’m so looking forward to being able to do full trips again! Especially with the Costco shopping, and all those bags of cat food we can now fit in there. While looking over the truck when I first brought it home, my daughters suggested we keep some sort of hook to help reach things at the far end of the box, without having to crawl all the way in. My brother keeps a garden hoe for that. Something similar, but with a narrow hook that can fit into the small handles on the ends of our hard sided bags, for example, would be better. A long handled version of the metal hooks we used to drag hay bales around, back in the day, would be perfect. I should look in the barn and the sheds and see if there’s anything we could repurpose. In the van and my mother’s car, we could get away with using the spare canes with pistol grip handles we keep in there, but those are too short to use in the truck box.

What a nice problem to have. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Still not done yet, and I have awesome friends!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

My husband had his medical appointment this morning, so we got to give the truck its first real test.

I did end up having to fold up both bench seats in the back to fit his walker. With just the seat behind the passenger seat folded up, the walker fits at a angle, which makes one wheel just an inch or two too far for the door to close. The part of the bench seat behind the driver’s seat that folds is 2/3rds of the seat, so it would fit just fine, there, but that’s not where my husband is, when it comes time to load and unload it. If we are ever driving with all 4 of us, the walker would just have to be laid down in the box and secured. With the cover on the box, that would work out just fine, too.

As for getting in and out, he has an easier time of it than I do, being considerably taller than I am! Not having to fold himself down into a tiny seat in a tiny car, all on its own, makes a world of difference!

The appointment went as well as such things go with him. He’s going to be tried on a new medication to try and get his blood sugars down and, hopefully, allow him to reduce his insulin. Part of the problem with insulin is that it causes weight gain, and that’s sure as heck not helping his injured back any. He hasn’t had his Ozempic for a while, now. Because of how high his dose is, he gets it in special ordered pens with a lot more in them; with the “regular” dose versions, he’d be going through a pen a day, and it’s a lot more expensive, even with coverage. The pens he needs, though, are not available. He opted to skip it for now, rather than go for the more expensive smaller dose pens he’d have to buy twice as much of.

So he’ll be taking this new medication for 3 months, then get some bloodwork done to see if it helped any, or if the dose needs to be changed, etc. This medication is supposed to also be good for his heart, though he hasn’t had his heart tested in a very long time, what with the heart clinic in the city being unwilling to accommodate his disability.

Armed with a new prescription, our next stop was at the pharmacy. The new medication needs special “permission” for coverage, though, and that involves some paperwork between the doctor and the insurance company. It was expensive enough that I couldn’t just get it without coverage, unfortunately. Since he’s going to have to really keep on on monitoring his sugars while on this medication, I got more test strips and lancets and, since it’s been more than a year, he qualified for a free glucometer with the purchase of test strips. I don’t think we’ve every had to pay for an actual glucometer with that particular deal.

After his stuff was done, I had my own prescription to refill, which is extremely simple compared to my husband’s convoluted medications. While I was waiting, I remember to ask about the Ozempic. Still nothing, and no estimate as to when they will be able to provide more. The problem, of course, is that Ozempic is being used by people who are not diabetic as a weight loss gimmick. Which is disturbing enough on its own, but that enough people are getting this super high dose for it to run out completely is quite alarming. This stuff has some pretty terrible side effects, and you can’t just take it, loose weight, then stop taking it. It’s basically Ozempic for life. She said she expected the fad to fade away in about 5 years, like previous weight loss drug fads. I sure hope it takes less than 5 years! I just can’t imagine deliberately taking something that can cause such incredible problems with the digestive system, including losing control of the bowels, just to lose a few pounds. For some diabetics, it can work very well. It doesn’t seem to be doing much for my husband, other then add to the long list of side effects he’s already dealing with. It certainly isn’t resulting in weight loss, but he’s also been on at least two medications that cause weight gain for much longer than he’s been on the Ozempic.

As you can see, everyone has pretty much given up on any treatment for his back injury. There really isn’t a fix for that, and pain control has never been very successful on any of the different medications they’ve maxed him out on. With his current medication (two versions of the same drug; one fast acting and one slow release), it seems he’s actually been a sort of test case on just how high they can safely increase the dosages to. And he’s already been told, right from the first diabetic nurse he saw after he became officially disabled from it, he won’t be able to control the blood sugars until he can control the pain.

Not much quality of life in his situation.

Having said that, while we were driving around and talking about the truck, he actually brought up wanting to make a trip into the city to visit family. !!! Which is really amazing because, even with the van, he always balked at taking longer trips.

By the time we were done with everything, it was past lunch time, and neither of us had had breakfast, so we decided to go to the new DQ for a sit down lunch. That sure hit the spot! He also got more to bring home as a surprise for our daughters.

It was late enough when we were finally heading home that the post office was open after its mid day break, so we stopped by. I was hoping our lysine for the cats had come in, but apparently it’s backordered right now. There were, however, other packages waiting, including two surprises!

M, you are amazing!

That hose will be for the garden tap we will be installing. As we are able, we will get pipes that hose can be run through and buried, and a few other fittings. The plan is to have everything ready for next spring, when we can dig up the rest of the existing pipe and set up a nice tap and vegetable washing station at the garden. I had been looking at heavy duty hoses at Walmart and Canadian Tire. It never occurred to me to look for metal contractor grade hoses online.

As for the other box…

Just look at those beautiful clear eyes!

… Tiny: The Beast, got to be the first to test it out! This is for the outside cats, in the winter. It works by “reflecting” body heat back. No electricity required. I’m sure the outside cats will love it!

In other things, this was a highly interrupted post. I got a call from the roofing company that did our roof last year. My brother had gone up this year and noticed some shingles lifting, which will be fixed under warranty. However, we had that one driving rain that resulted in rain dripping around the chimney to the old cook stove in the kitchen, which has never leaked before. My brother talked to the roofing guy about it, and he said that chimney doesn’t have a proper collar on it. Which apparently it never has, but it also has never leaked before. Either way, my brother made arrangements, and the guy went searching for a collar that would work. the problem is, the roof over the old kitchen is a lot steeper than anywhere else on the house, which, I’m told, is why there was never a collar on the chimney. The angle is wrong.

Well, it seems the guy found something that will work, and he’s now on his way over to fix it, and fix the loose shingles my brother spotted. It’s awfully late in the day for this – it gets dark so fast, this time of year! – but we’re glad that he’s going to get it done.

Aside from all this, there is also more delays in regards to the financing for the truck, if you can believe it!

Oh… time to pause. The roofing guy is almost here.

Well, that’s done.

The collar he found was clearly too small for the chimney, but he went up and did the other warranty covered work, which included sealing around the chimney. He found a gap where he could see water would have gotten in, in a driving rain. He even sealed around the top of the chimney, under the cap, and around a join near the bottom, which had been sealed long ago and was starting to crumble. He even added sealant under some shingles that were over lapping the sort of collar at the base, and the base itself. It will not leak again! He even went around the roof and tacked down anything that looked loose, and sealed around openings above the bathroom, just in case.

In the end, he figures it will not leak anymore, and a collar would not be necessary. It will be up to my brother if he still wants it done, as it is not covered by warranty. Having watched him thorough he was, I don’t see a need!

One more think off the list…

So… where was I?

Oh, yes.

The financing thing.

Before we left this morning, I got an email from the finance lady. The lender had a whole bunch of stuff they needed, now that the vehicle has been insured and sold. Most of that, our mechanic already had copies of that he could sent. In fact, the list was really meant for him, since it included how he wanted to be paid!

Yeah. He still hasn’t been paid, other than our down payment!

One thing they wanted was a copy of the registration in the borrower’s name.

That would be my husband. Who no longer drives and no longer has a driver’s license. I clarified that part but let her know I could get some of the rest for her, if our mechanic couldn’t provide it, since we now have the truck, but it would have to wait until after we got back from the doctor’s.

I took the truck out of the garage so it would be easier for my husband to access and started taking the photos the lender wanted, but couldn’t get a photo of the dash with the mileage. The littler computer display screen it would be on had a warning for a low tire in the rear. Which isn’t low. I saw them top all the tires up, and double checked. It’s fine. I hooked up our OBDII scanner and cleared the codes, but that one kept coming back.

I texted our mechanic about it. When we got to the clinic, the display changed to “service tire monitoring system”. He figures the module needs a new battery, because he knows it’s all fine. I have no doubt; now that I have all the paperwork for the safety, I have a list of all the things he took care of before putting it up for sale! Yeah. I’m even more sure he took a loss on this one.

After we got home, I was going to email the financing lady to see if there were still things she needed that our mechanic couldn’t provide – only to have her phone me before I started! One of the things was a photo of the VIN sticker on the door, which I already got a photo of. The other was more involving my husband’s ID confirmation. They wanted something mailed to him within the last 30 days that has his name and address on it.

His birth certificate name, not the name he uses, which is his second name, as traditional among his Acadian family.

We already sent all sorts of things to them, but they were either with the “wrong” name, or they didn’t have his address. Even his proof of income had his given name, not his first name. Most of the things she suggested either don’t get mailed to us, as we have gone completely electronic, or are under my name. Then she mentioned a cell phone bill.

That was one of the things he updated to include his full name, so that he would have something to show when he finally was able to come in to get a photo ID.

I logged in and checked, and sure enough, it had his full name, just like on his birth certificate, plus both our postal and our physical addresses. Yay!!! Finally!!! I was able to download the pdf and sent that along with the VIN sticker photo.

I just can’t get an odometer reading photo, because we can’t find any way to cycle through the computer display readings. The user manual shows us where the controls should be, but our model doesn’t have it.

There has to be something, somewhere, but we just can’t find it!

Anyhow…

Hopefully, this is the last thing they need, and our mechanic can finally get paid! We’re all getting pretty frustrated, because they keep coming up with all these little things that are delaying it. Everything else is done. We have the truck. He needs to be paid!

Talking to my daughter about all this, later on, she suggested we bake him a cake or something as a thank you! I agree!

On a different note, I had planned to top up the gas tank before going home, but we were out so long, I skipped it, so my husband could get home and recover from the outing. The nice thing?

The needle barely moved, the entire time.

With my mother’s car, we would have seen a substantial drop. Even taking into account the different sizes of gas tanks, the difference is notable. Now, given the specs on this truck, it’s not going to be fantastic on gas, so this is more a reflection on how bad on gas my mother’s car has gotten – and we can’t find the reason why! At least it doesn’t seem to be getting worse anymore.

So that’s were we’re at now.

Tomorrow, I have no errands to run, so hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to work outside. We’ve had some absolutely gorgeous weather, lately, and it’s supposed to stick around for a while.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer