Our 2026 Garden: one more bed prepped, and got a visit in

May 26, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The temperatures continued to climb today.

I started things off a bit early, and it was still lovely and cool. My priority, after I did my morning rounds, was to water the garden beds before the heat hit.

I’m happy to say that I am seeing new sprouts in the rows of spinach, chard, turnips and radish in the main garden area. I checked under the boards in the trellis bed and saw what might be carrot sprouts, so I removed the boards. It’s hard to say for sure, as a lot of weeds were trying to come up under there, too.

I’m pretty sure I saw new sprouts in the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, too. I’m pretty sure I’m seeing tiny bok choy and beet seedlings through the mosquito netting, thought it’s hard to be sure. I didn’t see any this morning, but this evening, I’m sure I could see the first dwarf pea sprouts!

After I finished outside, I came in and had breakfast, then tried to go down for a nap before I planned to visit my mother, then pick up anything we needed before doing our first stock up shop, tomorrow.

It was a failure.

For some reason, both Butterscotch and Cheddar have decided that, when I lie down, they absolutely MUST cuddle my head. Aggressively. Then curling up right at my head to nap themselves.

That doesn’t count the other cats that like to settle on my hip, against my back or on either side of my legs.

*sigh*

Next time, I’ll try napping on the couch. The living room is a cat free zone.

I eventually gave up and got ready to head into town. Before I did, I noted activity notification on my bank app and checked.

My husband’s tax return, which is supposed to include my first Disability Tax Credit, came in.

It was short by about $2500.

Unfortunately, my husband still can’t log into his CRA account to see why. I’m going to have to wait until our tax prepared is back from holidays at the end of the month and phone her, because she can log in and see his account – and maybe find out why he can’t log in, himself. anymore!

My younger daughter never got her disability tax credit, either. She did her taxes herself.

Frustrating.

Anyhow.

I headed into town and realized my mother would be just starting her lunch, so I decided to go to the grocery store, first. I actually picked up some ground beef that was on sale. I haven’t seen ground beef for under $6 a pound for a long time, even with sales.

My visit with my mother was pretty good. As I was headed to her room, I spotted her in the dining room and popped in. We then went to her room for the visit.

She is so enjoying having a room – and a bathroom – to herself! She says being in the nursing home, compared to the TCU, is like night and day.

Of course, she still had things to complain about. With her medications, as usual. Apparently someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time? Then the count for her morning meds was off. She said she asked who was in charge of the medications and was told it was the pharmacy in town. I suspect the person didn’t understand what my mother was asking, but she now believes the pharmacy decides what medications she gets, at their whim. She then started going on about how the staff all think she is stupid, and everyone living there is stupid, and that’s why they are deliberately messing with their medications.

*sigh*

She had asked my brother for a radio and he’d given me one to pass on to her. I plugged it in and tried to find the station she told me the number of. There was nothing on either AM or FM (she didn’t know which is was; she doesn’t understand anything about AM or FM). Since I couldn’t pick up her station (though I could pick up others), she decided it was a bad radio and started asking me if an old radio that belonged to my husband when we were in high school – a ghetto blaster, which tells you just how old it is! – was still around. It is, but I told her, it still won’t pick up that station. I tried to explain again about things interfering with frequencies, but she decided it meant that the radio stations were the problem, for having “weak” signals.

Then I tried to show her the sliding switch that goes from off to FM then AM. She demanded “just show me what button to push”. I told her, it’s not a button. It’s a switch that slides, and showed her again; Off – FM – AM.

She got angry that my brother would give her a high tech radio that she can’t understand.

*sigh*

It was a shorter visit, since there really wasn’t much we had to talk about. Now that she is in town, I can visit her more often, anyhow. Before I left, I spent some time at the nursing station. I explained what my mother told me about the medications, and that someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time. She was startled to hear that and said she would look into it. She got out the medication binder and looked up my mother’s file, going over everything, which is basically the same that it was while she was at the TCU. She said they tried looking at my mother’s list to compare (the hand written one she makes after she counts her pills, with little diagrams), but it was in Polish, so they were trying to translate it. My mother had been promised a list of her medications and they were going to try to get it translated into Polish for her, too. I told her, my mother knows pre-WWII Polish; she would not be familiar with modern medical terms in today’s Polish!

As we were chatting, the nurse told me how so many of the staff were startled when my mother was transferred over. Many of them had cared for Baba – “grandmother” – which is what they called my aunt. My mother looks SO much like her sister did. My aunt passed away a few years ago, so for the staff to suddenly start seeing their Baba again was a bit of a shock until they found out they were sisters.

This nurse had just started working there when my father came to live there. I’ve had it confirmed that he was there for only 5 months before he passed away; I thought it was 6 months. She remembered my father, and I told her about how, when I phoned him every Sunday, he would go on and on about how great they were treating him, how well taken care of he was, and how much he liked the staff. She was so touched to hear that!

So far, my mother has been very nice to them. I hope that lasts! She has been saving the nasty comments about the staff for when we are there. 😕

It was a good chat with the nurse, and I expect we will have many more opportunities to talk now that my mother is there!

That done, I headed home, then stayed indoors to stay out of the heat. Unfortunately, it just kept getting hotter. I finally headed out at around 6:30, which is about when we hit 27C/81F.

The predicted high was 25C/77F.

We’re supposed to keep getting hotter, with the hottest day in the forecast being Friday, which they are now saying is supposed to hit 34C/93F.

The yard cats are laying in puddles all over the yard, in whatever shade they can find.

Bobert was looking adorable in the cat bed I tucked under the isolation shelter’s door box, to keep the weather out in the winter.

With the heat, I made sure to do the watering again. This time, I did watering in the food forest area.

I’m happy to say that it looks like the apple tree survived, in spite of the damage to the stem. A single branch with new leaf buds has shown up. The plum tree also has leaf buds showing up finally, but only in branches coming up just above the graft at the base. None of last year’s growth is showing buds. Neither are the mulberry trees. They survived their first winter, but it looks like they didn’t survive their second. The poor little highbush cranberry have free leaves showing, but they are still remarkably tiny, including the one that the deer did NOT nibble one. The silver buffalo berry bushes, which I don’t bother watering because there are too many, had been covered with what I thought were leave buds. It turns out they were not leaf buds, but flower buds! The leaf buds are showing up now. The sea buckthorn also have leaf buds unfurling.

After the watering was done, I started working on the larger of the two East yard beds that had not been prepped in the fall.

I first removed the two lengths of twine that went around the sides. Those were there to keep anything wrapped around the box frame from flapping in the wind too much, but they were in the way for working in the bed. I considered taking the box frame off entirely, but decided it wasn’t necessary and worked around it.

In the second picture, you can see the cleaned up bed. Unfortunately, while I was leveling the cleared soil with the hoe, I caught the line running across that helped keep the sides from bowing outwards at the joins. The wood is rotting and the screw eye got pulled right out!

Honestly, I’m surprised these beds have lasted as long as they have. I used lumber I found in the barn that had been sitting there for probably at least a decade before I found them. They were not in particularly good shape, but they were the best I could find for the job. I expected them to last about 3 years, maybe, and they’ve lasted twice that by now.

Weeding the bed didn’t really take that much, except that I found a remarkable amount of tree roots! Given where this bed is located, they would not be from the elm tree, but from the nearby cherry bushes.

I look forward to when we can make these into high raised beds. These beds are about a foot high, but it was still really painful to be bending to work in it.

Once the bed was clear, I took some plastic that was rolled up and set aside from previous uses in these beds and covered the soil to protect it from cats, until we can plant in it. I’m looking to transplant tomatoes into this bed. We have four varieties to transplant, and couple probably fit three varieties in this bed. We don’t have a lot of each variety.

The pieces of wood frame on the left of the first photo are on the 4′ square bed that also needs to be done. By the time I finished the longer bed, I was too hot and in too much pain to do that one. Aside from weeding it – and that one has been infected by creeping Charlie – I will be adding the additional wood frame pieces to make it a bit higher, and can then add more soil into it. I’m planning to put the eggplant in here. It’s a small enough bed that I can add plastic walls around it, to protect them from high winds and create a semi-greenhouse around them.

I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done over the next few days. I’ll be doing our city stock up trips and a vet trip in between. Shopping always drains me, so it will depend on how much energy I have left – and what my pain levels are at. At the very least, I plan to water everything in the morning, and again in the evening, because of the heat.

Once the city trips are done, I expect to be able to start the direct sowing, and then hopefully start transplanting soon after. Somewhere in there, I’ll be uncovering and reclaiming the area to plant our corn in.

A lot to do in a very short time!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: the potatoes are in, next bed ready, and the heat has hit

May 25, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Ah, life on the Canadian prairies. One extreme to the other. A short while ago, we were still getting snow and overnight temperature at or below freezing.

Today, we reached a high of 25C/77F – I don’t know what the humidex was – and passed 20C/68F by about 8 or 9am.

I headed out a bit earlier than usual to do the outside cat stuff. Then I checked the garden shed. Sure enough, the raccoon and her babies were still there. I decided to very carefully and as quietly as possible, take out as many things I expect to need in the next while.

I heard a lot of loud chittering as I was taking things out, most sounding like they were coming from the littles. They seemed to be chittering more about trying to latch on than what I was doing. The mama barely moved. After I cleared away things that were on top of the wheeled garden chair they are under, I stuck my phone into gaps to get the first three pictures.

Those are such roly poly babies! There are at least three, possibly four.

The last photo is most of the stuff I removed.

That roll of netting is long enough to go completely around the trellis bed, so I am saving it for this, if we need to do it again, as it would be way too long for anything else.

After that, I headed in for breakfast, iced up a water bottle, then got started on the covered bed that I wanted to plant our potatoes in.

In the first picture, you can see how it’s been since the fall, minus the bricks waying it down – something has dug holes through the plastic.

As you can see in the next picture, the solarization didn’t really work, and it was more like a greenhouse. So the first job was to loosen the soil and weed it. Especially at the end where the excess was rolled up, which was packed with creeping Charlie.

That stuff is just nasty.

Once weeded, I got it all leveled out, while leaving the soil thermometer in place. That soil is quite warm!

By this point, I was really starting to struggle with the heat and had to go inside for a bit. After grabbing a light lunch, I headed back out with the potatoes. I have 5 pound bags each of Viking and Yukon this year. Not a lot for our useage needs, but that’s all we have the space for right now.

In the photo where the potatoes are laid out, ready to be buried, you can see a board across the middle. That’s to mark between the two different types of potatoes in the same bed.

Next, the bed had to be protected. I decided to use the long roll of mosquito netting this time, which isn’t very wide, so I used shorter stakes. These were salvaged from a broken market tent and are all from pieces broken in half. The broken ends got pushed down so the end with the screw holes were at the top.

I had to gather things next, so I set up a cheap dollar store sprinkler hose over the potato bed. Double duty: I could start watering the bed while doing something else, and it kept the cats off while I wasn’t there to keep them away.

One of the things I had to go was get the roll of netting which, as you can see in the next picture, Gouda was using to nap on!!

In the past, I have strung twine from support to support, along the sided and crossing the middle. I wanted something stronger than that. This bed is 18′ wide, and I have 6′ bamboo stakes, so I ended up attaching three along the top of each side to hold the mesh up. The stakes were spaced out just under 6′ apart, allowing for some overlap. I used the screw holes in the supports and wire from one of the hoop kits I got to hold them in place. I still had to put the stakes deeper into the soil so that the netting could be secured to the ground on each sides. The sides are secured with ground staples.

Yes, I took the sprinkler hose out. It was a pretty terrible hose – but then, you get what you pay for, and this did not cost very much! It was just there for the moment, anyhow.

After I took that last picture, I gave the bed a very through watering.

Then I went inside, because I was getting dangerously overheated. I kept myself hydrated, but was feeling very exhausted. It was around 2pm by then, and I decided to nap for a couple of hours. I would then continue when the temperatures were starting to drop.

I passed right out and slept for three hours.

During this time, the girls took care of things like the outside cat feeding and starting supper.

We are going to need to get the AC going in the living room, and the onion snail rolls have been sitting on top of it, so I decided it was time to take them outside. Onions are hardy and I’m not worried about them, plus I need to start transplanting them as soon as possible. They are meant to be planted in between other things, as we go. The frame for the portable greenhouse is sitting in the shade near the shrine, so I put them there. I’ll need to start moving some of the trays from the basement out there, too.

Then it was back to the main garden area, where this is one bed that didn’t get cleaned up last year I wanted to prepare.

As you can see in the first couple of photos, the creeping Charlie is a real problem.

I had put the soil thermometer in there earlier, and it was reading a couple of degrees cooler than the first bed. By the time I removed it, though, it was just as warm as the first bed I tested! Having that plastic over the bed didn’t seem to make much difference. So much for solarization!

This bed turned out to be so filled with tree roots, too. I pile the creeping Charlie aside, half filling the wheel barrow, so it could be disposed of further away. I’d burn it, if I could. Getting those out means losing a fair bit of soil, too. In the fourth photo, you can even see some of the finer tree roots on top. I pulled out as much as I could, but somewhere under there is a major root. I was hitting it every now and then with the garden fork, but couldn’t lift it up at all.

No root vegetables in this bed, for now!

Once it was cleared and prepared, I gave it a thorough watering. For all the rain we had, that soil was pretty dry. Then I covered it with the plastic that had been over the bed the potatoes are in, covering the holes with scrap boards.

The potato bed is going to be a problem. I kept having to chase the cats off the netting! It stretches enough and is low enough that their weight pulls it down to the ground. Ideally, there would be horizontal supports across the top, joining the vertical supports, but I don’t have anything the right length.

At least they won’t be using it as a litter box.

I’ll have to figure something out.

By this time, it was around 8pm and the temperatures were downright pleasant. We’re expected to drop to 8C/46F tonight, but after that our overnight temperatures are expected to be no lower than 10C/50F On Thursday and Friday, we’re supposed to break 30C/86F, and the overnight temperatures are expected to be close to 20C/68F. It’s supposed to cool down a bit in the second week of June, but that’s a relative statement by then!

For the next while, with the exception of days where I have to drive into the city or something like that, my pattern is going to change. I’ll be getting up earlier to work outside while it’s cooler, then be inside (and probably nap) at the heat of the day before going out again when the temperature starts to drop. With the heat, I’ll be watering things in the morning. Possibly in the evening, too.

I have a couple of beds to take care of in the east yard, plus prep the old kitchen garden bed along the retaining wall. In the beginning of June – after I’ve done all our city trips and vet trip – I should be able to start direct sowing. I’m really trying to focus on getting each bed covered in some way to protect them from the cats. The one area I won’t be able to do is where I intend to plant corn. That area is currently covered by a black tarp/landscape cloth/whatever it is, and has been for several years. Everything under it should be dead by now. I need to move that aside and prepare blocks to plant corn in and, possibly, interplant them with winter squash. That area will simply be too large to cover. I’ll have to figure something else out.

It’s going to be very busy in the garden for the next while!

The Re-Farmer

It’s finally done!!!

May 24, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Getting that raised bed at the chain link fence done has taken way too long!

I’ll get to that in a moment.

My brother and SIL have been out working on their caravan, and whatever else my brother was able to do outside as the weather allowed, this weekend and had invited me to join them for breakfast this morning. I wasn’t able to join them last time, but was happy to do be able to join them today. They took me to the single restaurant in our little hamlet. The last time I was there was two owners ago!

Before that, I was outside doing my usual morning rounds.

There are so many tulip flower buds, with one early tulip just starting to open up.

When it came close to the time we were going to meet up, I headed out to open the gate, then took advantage of the time waiting to check the fence line and see what else needs doing. I’m going to have to head through the area with loppers again, and trim away all the poplar that’s trying to grow back, among other things. Not a priority right now, though.

When I got back to the gate I saw they had parked in front of the house and were waiting for me there! 😄

I closed the gate behind their car after they drove through which, with all the rain we’ve had recently, was rather muddy. Which got us to talking about how badly that driveway needs gravel! My brother has his front end loader here, but it still won’t run, and he hasn’t figured out why, yet. Not that he’s had much opportunity to troubleshoot the beast.

We talked about the two trees threatening the house that will be coming down – when the arborists arrive will depend on the weather. It will be a while longer before the saturated ground is dry enough to hold the weight of their equipment.

It was great to catch up with them, and compare notes on things like Mom and our vandal, while enjoying a lovely breakfast. I really like what the new owners have done with the place. It’ s longer a bar with a small restaurant on one side, but a pub and family restaurant. Which is what the last owners had converted it to, but I never saw what changes they did. We did order take out from them a couple of times, but could pick our orders up without ever going all the way into the restaurant, so I never saw what they’d done with it.

After breakfast, they dropped me off at the gate, then headed out again to a hardware store. They were back before I was ready to head outside. I needed to get that raised bed at the chain link fence finished.

The walls are done, but it needed some preparation before the soil could be returned.

In the first image above, I’ve taken straw and stuffed it into all the gaps I could find in the front wall, as well as tucking some against the end walls, to prevent soil from falling in or through the walls.

In the second image, I’ve covered the bottom and sides with two layers of carboard. Then, using the fence to steady myself, I walked across the length of it, tromping the cardboard down as much as I could.

In the last image, I had started to saturate the cardboard. I went it down, tromped on it again, then repeated the process several more times while working on the next stage.

Preparing the soil.

I started by using a hoe to spread the pile out – and remove as many cat turds as I could find. The pile of soil was absolutely saturated and sticky like glue! I got it spread out though, and then scattered Sulphur granules over it. I then mixed it in with a hoe, and then by lifting the tarp to turn the soil over itself, from all sides.

Did I mention it was saturated?

Not only did that make it sticky, but heavy. Shockingly heavy!

Once mixed, I shoveled the soil into the wheelbarrow and started adding it into the raised bed. The soil was so sticky, I actually had to stop and scrape it off the blade of the shovel, because it was so coated, it was hard to push it into the pile of soil, and there wasn’t much room for it to pick up more soil, either!

The first thing I did was spread out a couple of wheelbarrow loads on the carboard, pushing it up against the sides so that the soil would hold the cardboard against the walls, and no soil would fall between the cardboard and the straw filled walls. It wasn’t as much of a concern on the back wall, since that was in protected by a layer of vinyl. You can see that in the first image.

Then, FINALLY, I could dump in the rest of the soil and spread it out as evenly as I could. Which you can see in the second image.

At this point, I couldn’t really stop for a break or anything like that. Even as I was refilling the bed, I was chasing cats out that were determined to use it as a litter box. After I leveled the last of the soil, I turned to get something, turned back, and there was another cat, starting to dig in the soil!!! It was Flopsy, so not a feral. He just started at me while I tried to shoo him away and didn’t run off until I was practically on top of him!

The bed needed to be protected right away.

For this year, the supports will be temporary, and I debated whether to use robs from the hoop kits, or some of the Pex pipe hoops I have. In the end, I decided on a hoop kit, because I wanted to use the clips, and on the new one because it had more rods left.

My original plan had been to use the pairs of taller vertical supports to secure the hoops to. Which I could have done, though this bed is so much narrower, I wouldn’t have wanted to bend the rods quite that much. However, it occurred to me that, for this bed, I don’t actually want hoops. Once those elm seed start dropping, they would gather at the back of the raised bed, along the chain link fence, and would get under that way. Also, the cats will climb on top and lie on it, and I would prefer to avoid that completely.

So I only attached the rods – connecting three rods together for each length – to the front supports, using little zip ties to hold them securely. The top of the rods were curved into the chain link fence, near the top.

You can see the rods in position in the first image above.

In the past, we tried protecting this bed with mosquito netting, and I still have the netting that was used, rolled up and waiting. The mosquito netting ended up acting like a sail in the high winds, with the edge pinned to the ground blowing loose constantly, and the whole thing flapping. So I decided to use the black netting we still have on the roll. I unrolled it on the other side of the chain link fence, which you can see in the next photo, so get the length I needed before cutting it.

Then came the hard part. This netting is folded into thirds on the roll. I needed it folded in half. After cutting the length I needed, I dragged it over to an open part in the yard and spread it out flat, with rocks to hold it in place at the corners, because it was fairly windy.

Which is about when my brother and SIL drove by on their way home, so we chatted for a bit before they headed out.

Then I messaged my daughters for help, and my older daughter !!!!! came out. A testament to how much better she is feeling!

Between the two of us, we got the net folded in half length wise, then straightened it out as best we could in the wind. Then we very carefully moved it into position, with the salvage ends set to go over the chain link fence, and the folded edge to the ground. This netting catches on EVERYTHING, so it took some doing to get it in position and straightened out as smooth and tight as we could. then I draped the salvage ends over the chain link fence at my end – at this point, the “catches on everything” was a help – and slowly made my way down the fence, pulling the netting over until I got to my daughter’s end.

At that point, I could finish off the rest myself.

The first thing to do was use ground staples to secure the folded edge to the ground at the base of each longer vertical supports the hoop rods were attached to. I started from the middle and working to the ends, pulling the netting tight between each support along the way. Once the bottom was secured, I went outside the chain link fence, lifting and pulling the netting to get it as snug as I could. I wanted as little slack as possible in between the hoop rods.

Then I went back and got the clips. Once again, starting from the middle and working my way out, I pulled the netting up and snug before clipping it to the middle rods, just above the connector. Then I went on the other side of the fence to lift and tighten the netting over the fence again. I repeated the clipping process again, this time adding clips to the next higher rod, above the connector.

Once the netting was secured to the rods, I grabbed some more ground staples and went back to the outside of the fence. I lifted and tightened the netting over the fence one more time, this time using the ground staples, woven around the chain link, to secure the salvage edges in place.

Last of all, I worked on the ends, rolling and tucking the netting until it was closed off, using ground staples to secure the bottoms to the ground, and the garden wire to secure the rest to the chain link fence.

You can see the finished product in the last photo. It’s very hard to see the clips.

No cats are getting in there. No wind is going to blow it loose. With the netting folded in half, no elm seeds should get through. Plus, with the netting set up the way it is, it can stay there for most, if not all, of the growing season, depending on what gets planted there. To access the garden bed, I can lift the ground staples and, if necessary, remove the lower clips to raise the netting as high as I need.

It’s done.

It’s finally done!

Our temperatures are expected to go from one extreme to the other. The colder nights in the long range forecast into June are no longer expected to get as cold.

Which means I can start getting my transplants out.

I’m not hardening off this time. I just don’t have the cat free space to do it, without the portable greenhouse. I will be using the water bottle collars as protection for some things. For other, larger, transplants, I’ll figure something else out. The onions are the one thing that won’t need any of that, and they need to be transplanted so badly! The snail roll thing has been working a bit too well, in that respect. 😄

I need to get as much as possible done over the next two days, because after that I just won’t be home much. Wednesday is our first stop up shopping day. Thursday, I’ll be taking cats to the vet again, which means staying in the smaller city until it’s time to go home, unless I’m picking up chicks that day. I still haven’t gotten a call about those, so I’m guessing not. Then Friday is our second stock up shop. I will finally be home long enough to work in the garden more by the weekend, though somewhere in there I need to get a visit in with my mother. My brother left me with a couple of things for her that she wanted that I want to drop off, too.

Oh, and I still need to put together my May garden tour video. I took the video clips but just haven’t had a chance to sit down and put them together and edit them. I hoped to do it tonight, but it’s already coming up on 9am, and I am tired enough to go to bed pretty much as soon as I’m done writing this!

It feels so good to finally get this done!!!

It feels so good to finally have the weather we need to get outside stuff done again.

The Re-Farmer

Raised bed progress – almost done!

May 23, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I finally got that front wall done!

The rain came to a stop this afternoon, so I headed out and grabbed the draw knife so I could put points on the prepared stakes I’d made for the chain link fence bed’s deadwood wall. That did not take long.

With the rain we’ve been having, I took advantage of the soil being softer, making it easier to drive the stakes into place.

In the first picture, you can see I’ve laid out the sharpened stakes in the most open spaces between the current vertical supports.

These were all much longer than needed. Even with the softened soil, there was only so far I could drive them into the ground.

The second image shows all the stakes pounded into place. In the third image, I’ve taken the loppers to all of the new stakes, cutting them down to just a bit above the height of the deadwood wall.

The charred stakes are staggered, but where the inside stakes were places were not consistent in relation to the taller outside stakes. For the most part, the stake placement for of zig zagged across, but there were a few places where there were two stakes on the outside without a matching stake on the inside. So I decided to use some of the pieces I’d trimmed off that were longer, and set them in the gaps. They didn’t get pushed down into the ground too far, or they would have been too short, but I hand pushed them in to match the other posts in height, more or less.

I did end up having to rifle through some other leftover bits to find one last piece long enough.

After that, I used up all the smaller pieces of deadwood we gathered fall and tried to fill in as many gaps as I could. Then I grabbed the loppers and went back into the spruce grove to try and fine more that were thin and pliable enough to fill in more gaps. I ended up harvesting some younger poplars – gosh, those spread fast – to fill in more spaces. After a while, I decided an needed more height, so I went back into the spruce grove and went hunting. I was able to find some tall, mostly straight, cherry to use.

I plan to remove all of those cherry trees in the spruce grove. They don’t produce much, if anything, at all. We’ll keep the one by the house, as the house provides enough of a microclimate for it to procure lots of fruit. The rest can go.

But not today.

After cutting and trimming the straightest once I could get, I set them in between the stakes. Then I used twine to zig zag from stake to stake, pushing down the wall in places. I wanted to make sure the stakes – especially the extra lengths I added didn’t get pushed away from the middle, plus the twine will help push down the deadwood, reducing gaps a bit that way, too.

There are still gaps, though not as much. I have decided I will stuff straw against the front wall as a soil barrier, before replacing the soil I took out so I could start this project. Once the soil is back, I will use one of the hoop kits to attach to the taller takes, then put netting over the whole thing, to keep the cats out as well as the Chinese elm seeds then they start drifting. At that point, it will be ready for planting. I believe I will be planting winter squash in here, where they can use the fence as a trellis. This will likely not be the only place I transplant winter squash into, though.

We’ll see how the weather treats us over the next while!!

The Re-Farmer

Good news!

May 21, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Today has turned out to be a dreary day with rain on and off all night and continuing on through today.

Translation: I feel like I’m about to fall asleep at my keyboard right now.

The ground is way too saturated for the work I hoped to do outside today, but I can’t complain.

First good news.

I got Bug!

She had come into the sun room to eat kibble and was hungry enough that she didn’t run off when I came near. I grabbed the bowl of cat soup for the isolation cats and saw her still there, so I snuck a pet on her back.

She looked at me, then went back to eating.

I gave her neck scritches.

She kept eating.

So I picked her up.

She wasn’t too happy with that, but I had the bowl of warm cat soup, so I basically stuck it under her face and started walking. Every time she made like she was going to escape, I moved the food closer. She didn’t try to eat it while I held her, but it did seem to calm her down.

Once at the isolation shelter, she allowed me to put her in! I took out the food bowl inside and closed the window before she could make a run for it.

After taking out the leftover cat soup from last night, which the other cats pounce on immediately, I refilled it with fresh cat soup and set it back in.

Curtis was very interested in getting into the shelter and I ended up letting him in, too.

I did a quick check around the yard and, thinking of the raccoon I saw in the garden shed, decided to check and see if it was still there.

Yes, SHE was.

Turn your volume up a bit for this one.

There’s a litter of baby raccoons under that ball of fur. At the start of the video, you can hear the extra chittering from the babies.

Hmm… I just realized that Instagram shortened an 11 second video into something barely a second long – but I’m also getting “we are having trouble playing this video” messages. That’s on my desktop, though. On my phone, I can see the whole thing. Do let me know if you are getting the full 11 seconds, please!

I did move that garden feeder attachment aside after getting the video. I could just see part of her face after moving it, but she stayed all hunched around her babies.

I’m going to have to figure out how to get the stuff in the shed that I’ll need for the garden without scaring the heck out of them all. I don’t expect aggression from the mama, unless she feels threatened, which she might if I start moving out the bundles of garden stakes and plant supports. There’s that rolling seat/cart, but I won’t need it now that I’ve got my walker.

We’ve had cats have their litters in there, but this is a first for raccoons!

I paused to get a picture of the isolation kitties before I headed out this afternoon. Curtis is in the big cuddle puddle. Bug wants out again. 😄

Tonight, they have their overnight fast. In the morning, we have to get two into carriers. On file, we’re supposed to bring in Furriosa and Batman (aka: Marta), but they will take any two we can bring. I can see being able to get Bug. Furriosa… my daughter might be able to get her, but I’ve barely managed to sneak touches on her back. The other two, not even that, but we’ll have another week to work on them.

Once the outside cat stuff was done, it was time to head into town. My husband was finally up to getting his blood work done. That is always a challenge. They always have a hard time to get a vein on him – and they needed to take 8 vials! The tech barely got two done before she had to find another spot and was eventually able to fill the remaining vials.

That done and home again, I was going to grab an early lunch, then head over to visit my mother, since I wouldn’t be able to do it tomorrow.

Which is when I got a call from my brother.

It has finally happened.

He got a call from the nursing home. The one my mother actually wants to be in.

They have a bed for her – tomorrow!!!!

After well over two years – probably closer to three, by now! – of my mother fighting to get into a nursing home, it is finally going to happen! Yay!!!!

They wanted us to do the transport, which we thought the TCU would do. I wasn’t going to be home tomorrow, plus my mother can’t get into the truck. She can barely get into my brother’s car. So that was something that needed to be worked out.

Things were still very much in the air, except for what her room number will be, and “check in” time. She will have a room to herself, too.

I told my brother I was planning to visit after I finished my lunch, and he said he would phone Mom right away, since he was at work and was doing this between other things.

When I got to the TCU, I stopped at the nursing station first. The head nurse was there and they had already been called by the nursing home. I brought up about transportation and she told me they had already arranged a Handi Van. There will be a charge for it, since my mother is being transferred to her “forever home”, not another TCU, but it won’t be a lot. This way, they can use her wheelchair to get her in and out, and can safely secure her for the trip. The nurse suggested I take as much of my mother’s belongings as I can, to make it easier for them to transport her.

Then I went to my mother’s room. My brother had got through to her, and she was very happy with the news. She can’t wait to get out of the TCU!

We talked for a while and worked out what I should take with me for now, and I started taking things to the truck. Then I packed almost all of her remaining things in a couple of hard sided grocery bags, leaving just what she would need for the night and the morning. The head nurse came by and we talked a bit more about the transfer. She even remembered that they need to include Mom’s Pepto supply.

I visited a bit longer and we talked about how things will be done tomorrow, what they will take care of, and how she will be transported in the wheelchair while they bring the walker as well (I was specifically instructed to leave the walker).

My mother then insisted that her wheelchair has been “switched”. That her wheelchair was wider than this one. I told her, it’s the same wheelchair. I scrubbed that thing. I know what it looks like.

Only later did I remember about the cushion. Our vandal had brought her a “wheelchair” cushion, except it was basically just a memory foam cushion for a regular seat. It doesn’t actually fit in her wheelchair. Which is why it would be feeling smaller when she’s in it.

My mother has decided they’ve “switched” the wheelchair and nothing will convince her otherwise. She also claimed they “forgot” one of her meds, and went on about how terrible this place is for taking care of her medications and of her, and how she hoped it will be better in the nursing home.

It will be better, for sure, but not in the ways my mother will understand, and some things won’t change. Even while I was there, with her room mate out, she got mad and demanded I close the door, because someone in the hallway was talking. I closed the door but pointed out that, here she was, alone in the room, and complaining about noises in the hall. She’s going to hear noises in the nursing home, too. Her response was, “I’m not alone, you’re with me.”

…

So I rephrased that her room mate was not there. She will have her own room in the nursing home, but there are other people living there. She will hear noise. There is no escaping that.

I get the impression she believes that in the nursing home, things will be completely silent in her room. Granted, it’s not a transitional care unit in an old hospital, but there are a lot of people living there, and a lot of staff. She also thinks that the staff will all be white and Christian, because this place was built by a local Christian community, I forget how many decades ago. She is familiar with this place, since this is where my father spent his last 6 months, and her sister spent quite a few years before passing. Interestingly, when it came up with the head nurse, my mother talked about her sister living there, which she has brought up before, but she never mentions my father living there. It’s almost as if she’s forgotten my father existed, in many ways – and I don’t mean due to dementia. Which really doesn’t surprise me, to be honest. Ah, well.

Hopefully, things will work out. When my father was there, he always spoke about how well they were taking care of them and he would tell them how much he appreciated them.

That’s not something my mother is capable of, unfortunately, and I strongly suspect that, probably within days, she will find things to be angry about, and she will likely be lashing out at people before long. It is just the way she is.

Overall, though, it was a better than usual visit, even though she got mad at me for things like putting some of her items in the box of the truck, covered and hidden from view, because it doesn’t lock. She thinks people will steal her odds and ends. In fact, as I was leaving, the last thing she said to me was to keep her stuff safe. She’s more worried about her possessions than anything else!

Some things just don’t change.

Meanwhile, I have also been in touch with the rescue. They are happy that Bug is back in the isolation shelter. I’m really hoping all goes well, and we can get cats into the carriers in the morning!

It’s time for me to go out and feed them now. I want to make sure the isolation kitties get their fill of cat soup before we have to remove the bowl this evening. We’re going to have to be up quite early and, once we get two cats into carriers, the other cats will get their morning feeding.

Wish us luck! We’re going to need it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: protecting and preparing garden beds

May 20, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

We dropped to -3C/27F last night but, from now on, our days are supposed to be hot, and our overnight temperatures are expected to drop no lower than 7C/45F for the next while, though in the first 10 days of June, we’re supposed to have overnight temperatures barely above freezing.

I just realized. Today is the 20th. My day to do a garden tour video. It was still light out, so I quickly did that. I hope the videos turn out all right, because I won’t be able to try again until tomorrow evening!

With the next few days finally being hotter, my priority was to take off the plastic on the two raised beds and replace them with netting, so any seedlings under there won’t bake.

The first one to do was the smaller bed in the old kitchen garden, with the beets, bok choi, onions that will probably go to seed and the last minute addition of parsnips where the transplanted onions didn’t make it.

This time, I took the mosquito netting from the chain link fence above the blocks with transplanted strawberries. I knew this one was shorter than one of the lengths I have been using previously. It had been rolled up and secured with ground staples for quite a long time, so I took the time to unroll it and get rid of any accumulated leaves before dragging it part way into the old kitchen garden.

That netting is irrisistable to the cats.

Especially to my escapee, Bug.

The netting had been cut into narrower lengths from the original, the first year we used them, which meant this piece was the perfect length – but not quite wide enough to cover the raised bed cover. This cover is quite a bit higher than all the others, to accommodate for taller plants, but it means quite a lot more width is needed to completely cover it.

After removing the vinyl covering the frame, I made sure to give the bed a thorough watering from the rain barrel. I’ve left the soaker house, but laundry was started in the house, so I didn’t want to use the hose. Especially now that we know for sure that the pressure tank needs replacing. Thankfully, I had a nice full rain barrel, so everything got a thorough watering.

It was windy, so I had a bit of a struggle to get the first section of netting on and secured enough to overlap with the next section of netting I had ready. I was able to use garden clips, clothes pins and the one safety pin my daughter could find, to keep them together and close off the ends. The cats like to use this cover like a hammock, so it needs to be really secure. Hopefully, it’ll hold.

Before I started on this, I remembered to grab the soil thermometer from the basement and set it in the short side of the L shaped wattle weave bed.

The second picture shows the reading just before I went inside at the end of the day. The soil there is about 7C/45F. Tomorrow I will set it in other beds and see what they are at, too. Higher raised beds like this one should be warmer than lower ones, but this section of the wattle weave bed also gets a bit more shade than the lower raised beds in the main garden area.

Once this bed was done, it was time to move to the main garden area, and I brought along the hoop kits.

The first picture is of the new kit, which did end up coming with garden gloves. The weirdest feeling stretchy things we’ve ever tried on. 😄

The second picture compares both sets. The new kit’s rods are a half inch longer and a touch thicker, so the clips and connectors will not be interchangeable.

I haven’t even tried on the gloves that came with the first kit. It’s highly unlikely they will fit my hands.

Even the wire that came with the kits are different.

I was definitely looking forward to seeing how those gaskets would work with the ground staples.

Once in the main garden area, I double checked to make sure the roll of netting I had brought out a while ago was long enough for the 18′ bed, plus the height of the hoops, and it was. When it came time to deal with the poly and setting on the netting, though, it was a two person job, and my younger daughter came out to help.

This is how the bed looked, after I’d reworked the poly to make sure rain no longer pooled where the rolled up boards weighted the sides down, so no more worms would get stuck. Once we got the ends unsecured and the boards freed, we carefully shifted the poly over, then walked it to an open area and laid it out flat, using some of the boards to keep it from blowing away. Then I got my daughter to help me lay the netting over the hoops and secure it just enough that it wouldn’t fall off or blow away, before going back to the poly. It took both of us to fold it in half a few times, and then I rolled it up around the board the netting had been rolled around, and set it aside.

At that point, I no longer needed a second set of hands and continued on my own.

The netting didn’t have a lot of extra length but, even folded in half, there was quite a bit of extra width. I don’t want to cut it, in case we need to use it for something higher in the future.

I spent the next while making the netting fairly snug with clips before securing the ends and adding more clips to hold it in place. Then I tested out the new ground staples and gaskets.

I rather like them, though this bed had some issues. You can see them in place in the second image, where it’s holding rather well. On the other side of the bed, however, they pulled up very easily. The problem is the leaf mulch along the edges inside the bed. They add too much bulk for the staples to push through, and they tend to just pop up again. Later on, though, the mulch will be removed. Most if it, anyhow. Down the centre of the bed, I plan to plant pole beans. Along the outside, I will be transplanting some onions. The pole beans will need a trellis, so the netting and hoops will need to be removed completely. Hopefully, interplanting with onions will keep the deer from eating it all, after the protective netting is gone!

In the next image, you can see a little turnip seedling. There are quite a few radish seedings in the other row. It doesn’t look like any re-sowing will be needed at all.

The last image is the completed bed, seedlings no longer at risk of being cooked under the poly, and protected from cats.

Which led me to the next area. The high raised bed.

This bed had been prepared in the fall but, of course, it was catted. They love to roll around in the dirt.

It needed a bit of weeding, plus I grabbed a bucket of the compost my brother brought for me. After using the hand cultivator to loosen the soil and pull the weeds, I incorporated the compost into the top couple of inches.

For this bed, I used the new hoop kit. One of the big differences is the metal connectors, while the other kit has plastic connectors. I have a bit of concern that the metal ones might rust.

In both beds, I made hoops 4 rods long, which means there is a connector right in the middle. You can see the metal connector in the next image. The image after that, you can see a plastic connector from the other bed I’d just finished. It’s a bit hard to tell at that angle, but the plastic connector is slightly bent. In fact, all down the row, the plastic connectors are bent enough to make it look like the hoops almost have a point in the middle. So… definitely a point for the kit with the metal connectors, and a point against the kit with the plastic connectors.

Before adding the netting, I needed to add a length of twine across the top to keep things in place. The problem was, how to secure the twin at the ends? With the lower raised beds, I use a ground staple to tack them down. That is not an option with this bed.

Bonus towards having a raised bed made of logs.

I found some short lengths of broken bamboo stakes and jammed one between logs at each end. That gave me something to secure the ends of the twin to.

They also came in handy, to hold the netting in place while I set it out. This netting gets stuck on EVERYTHING. I could at least take advantage of that to keep it in place at the ends, while getting the things set up and snug. Ground staples are holding it in place on the sides, and I was able to use the twine to secure the gathered ends, which you can see in the last two pictures.

I had enough energy left to do one more section.

I’d already cleaned up the section at the north end of the high raised bed, where we grew flowers last year. I even tried direct sowing some nasturtiums, in the off chance they’d grow.

They did not.

I failed to protect the bed.

So… Some more clean up, and then more hoops, twine and netting.

The netting that had been over this area last year was now on the high raised bed, so I needed to find another short piece. I took a quick look in the garden shed, disturbing a raccoon sleeping on the wheeled garden chair seat. It woke up and groggily moved away. The only netting in there, though, was a huge piece that we’d set around the entire trellis bed last year. So I let the raccoon be and looked elsewhere. I found a piece that was the perfect length and used that.

This time, I tried something different to secure the sides of the netting. I had a couple of full size bamboo stakes handy, and I rolled them up in the netting, then used ground staples. The bamboo isn’t long enough to reach end to end, but it’s long enough to make the netting more secure than the staples alone.

Now I don’t have to worry about the cats rolling all over the bed and messing in it. I’ve got cosmos and nasturtiums that will be transplanted into here as soon as the temperatures allow.

By this time, I was starting to hurt pretty bad, so that was my limit for the day. Hopefully, I’ll get more ready tomorrow. Specifically, I hope to get the potatoes planted in one of the beds that is already prepped and still under plastic. I’d hoped they would be solarized somewhat but, from what I can see along the sides, it’s more like a greenhouse, even though the plastic is flat against the ground. I can see dandelions blooming in places, under the plastic!

Tomorrow, I need to get my husband to the lab for some blood work (he wasn’t up to it, today), then I plan to visit my mother, since I’ll be taking cats to the vet on Friday. With our longer days, I should still be able to get more garden beds ready in the evenings. I also checked on the stakes for the chain link fence garden bed and they’re feeling nice and dry under the sun, so I hope to get points on those and that bed finally ready and covered, before the Chinese elm seeds start to fall!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

One step closer on the garden bed construction, and an update

May 19, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I wasn’t expecting to get much done outside today. It’s been a damp and chilly day – the sort of overcast day that makes me want to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. Tonight, we’re supposed to dip below freezing for one last time.

Hopefully.

The first thing we had to do today was head into town and to the pharmacy, where my older daughter got a file set up and her prescriptions mostly filled. They didn’t have enough to fully fill one of them, but they’ll have the rest in a day or two. Meanwhile, she has enough to last for a fair bit longer than that.

One of the meds turns out to be covered by our province’s health care system, and the other was very cheap, which was a pleasant surprise. Once we were done there, the girls wanted to hit the grocery store and picked up a few things. On the way home, we stopped at the mail where my garden hoops kit was waiting for pick up.

There was also a letter from the health care system for my husband that turned out to be a “hey, you need to get your blood work done” reminder. He’s had his requisition form for months, but we weren’t able to do it either because the truck was in the garage for most of two months, or he was physically unable to make the trip into town.

We’re planning to do it tomorrow morning. Hopefully.

Later in the afternoon, after I went out to do the outside cat feeding and do my evening rounds, the weather had improved enough that I decided to try and find more materials for the chain link fence raised bed. I was looking to get about 18 stakes for the front wall, plus the side walls needed three smaller, thinner stakes. Going through the spruce grove, I found enough poplar, maple and cherry suckers with straight sections strong enough for stakes. I had two left from earlier, that I’d used to mark where the wall would go after the bricks were removed, so I collected enough for another 16 stakes for the front wall before going back Cutting the longer pieces down to equal length, I had enough slightly shorter lengths left over that I only needed to fine one more poplar sucker long enough for two stakes.

Then I spent the next while debarking them.

The shorter ones for the ends of the bed were narrow enough that I could easily make points with the utility knife I was using to debark them. For the longer ones, some are thicker, so I’ll use the vice and a draw knife to make point on those ones.

You can really tell in the picture, which lengths are the cherry wood!

They are all freshly cut and very green, so that are also very damp. I’ve left them out to dry out a bit. When I check on them tomorrow, I’ll have to decide if I should use them as is, or if I should char them like the others. If the soil weren’t so rain soaked right now, I wouldn’t be as concerned, but we’re looking as possibly more rain over the next few days.

We shall see.

So that’s my progress on the garden bed for today. Tomorrow, things finally warm up and are supposed to keep warming up to the point of getting actually hot – at least for our region – within the week.

Which means replacing the plastic covering two garden beds with netting, and keeping an eye on the isolation shelter. They will still need the heat lamp for one more night, and tomorrow, I’ll need to make sure to turn it off when the morning feeding is being done. If it gets too warm in there, even with the mesh walls on the bottom uncovered, I’ll set frozen water bottles in with them to help cool things down.

Now that I have the second hoop kit, I should be able to set them up over a couple of beds in an almost permanent basis, and still have enough left over to temporarily cover others. This is in addition to the Pex pipe hoops I already had. The goal is to be able to cover any individual bed with some sort of protection, until I can build more removeable covers for most of them. We need to frame out more raised beds in the main garden area with logs, and build more trellis beds, before I can focus on more covers. The hoops will do just fine until then.

Not a lot of progress today, but it’s at least one step closer to getting that chain link fence bed done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 garden progress, surprise worms, and home!

May 18, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I must have been way more exhausted than I thought.

The night before was one of those nights were I just didn’t sleep. Not restless or busy brain or pain, just… awake. Until about 4am.

Last night, I decided to try going to be early. I was in bed and messaged my daughter in the hospital, asking how she was doing, shortly after 8:30pm.

I fell asleep before she answered me.

When I woke later, needing to de-cat myself so I could go to the washroom, I checked the time, expecting it to be 3 or 4am.

It was barely past midnight.

I figured for sure I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again – and then I was awakened by cats crashing around in my room. Sure enough, it was about 5:30am, which is about when Ghosty goes into desctructo mode to wake me up and feed them.

So I did.

It was starting to get light out, but I went back to bed, expecting to not be able to fall asleep again, but I tried anyhow.

I opened my eyes and three hours had passed.

So I quickly got up and got ready to do my outside routine, which I always get done before I have breakfast. Especially when I end up going out later like this, because I know the outside cats would be quite hungry.

After feeding the cats I did my morning rounds, which includes checking all the garden beds. We had a “wintery mix” all night, and it was still raining. The sump pump has been going off, so the garden bed in the old kitchen with the vinyl cover, were I’d added the soaker hose, was being watered from below. The hose from the sump pump drains into a hole under the raised bed wall closest to the house, but it doesn’t go far, so it usually overflows into a path as well, but enough gets under the bed that it makes a difference.

When I got to the poly covered bed in the main garden area, I saw that water had collected in pools at the sides, where it’s weighted down by boards wrapped in the excess poly, again. Enough that, at one end, the weight was pushing the supportive hoop deeper into the ground and pooling more. So I was going to fiddle with the corner so that the water could rain into the bed when I noticed something odd.

A worm.

Two worms…

Ten?

Handfuls????

For some reason, all along the boards, on both sides, there were masses of earthworms in the water. In some places, I could see worms that had somehow managed to squeeze up the outside of the boards, under the poly. There were so many of them, I gave up trying to just drain the water. I unrolled all the boards and straightened out the poly, draining all the water away and taking out every stray would I could find. Amazingly, most of them looks like they were still alive, too!

Unrolling the poly required loosening the secured ends and removing the clips. When I rolled the boards up in the excess ploy again, I did it from below (which is much more awkward!) and in such a way that the poly now wraps completely around the outside of the raised bed’s log frame.

I was just finishing securing the second end when my daughter came out, asking if I could hear my phone or not.

I could hear nothing over the sounds of the poly as I fussed with it.

My older daughter has messaged us. She was free. Knowing it would take a while for us to get there, they told her to let us know first, and they would start the discharge paperwork and go over her prescriptions.

We had already prepped a back seat in the truck yesterday, and I decided to bring my walker along, just in case, which meant securing it in the box of the truck with some Bungee cords, so it would slide around as we drove, and we were soon on the road. Neither of us had eaten yet and it was past 10am by then, so we stopped at the next town to get a bit of gas, some beef jerky to tide us over, and a couple of energy drinks.

As we were driving in, I saw a gas station we would pass on the way out with gas at $1.729. We had gotten gas at $1.849, but most places in the city were $1.809. I decided it was worth getting more gas on the way back.

One of the things we asked my daughter was to find out where the pick up zone was, as I figured there was no way it was at the doors we’d gone in through when we visited.

It was those doors.

With my younger daughter to rubber neck for me while I was driving, she spotted the curb cut that passed as the entrance. Once we pulled in, I still couldn’t figure out where to park; at the doors was a fire lane, so no stopping at all. My daughter spotted some parking spots that looked like part of the patio, but the signs on the back wall said “permit only”. There was a truck sitting in what looked like the middle of the patio area, surrounded by several large, kidney shaped raised flower beds. That turned out to be where only 3 drop-off zone parking spots were, which I had to back into, because there was no room for me the truck to turn in. Thankfully, the “permit only” parking spaces were empty, because I had to pull into one of those to have room to back up.

Half hour only, paid parking only.

At least this time, I could use a machine in the lobby to pay for parking, rather than use a frickin’ website.

My daughter went ahead to get her sister while I took care of paying the parking, then waited in the lobby area for them. My older daughter was looking so much better! She was walking normally again, and she looked so happy to be leaving. She’s been stuck either sitting or lying down for the past week, with tubes and wires hanging off of her, so just being upright and moving made her feel better, too.

Once we had her settled into the truck, we headed out of the city, stopping to fill the tank at the one gas station with the lower price that I’d seen. Our next stop was going to be the pharmacy in town, so she could get a file set up and fill her prescriptions. Most of it will be vitamins.

I forgot, though.

Today is not Sunday. Today is a holiday Monday.

It wasn’t until I saw the empty parking lot at the pharmacy that I realized that. They were closed.

Which means my daughter won’t get her meds for the rest of the day.

We’re going to have to get back tomorrow, as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, my daughter was absolutely craving a meaty burger. The hospital food was good, but had no seasonings. Especially lacking in salt – and we don’t normally use a lot of salt in our cooking at home!

So we stopped at the DQ and got her a triple burger. Red meat, fat and salt – all the things she needs right now! 🍖🥩🧂🥓🍔

Actually, we all got triple burger meals to bring home. Can’t leave my husband out of the treat!

Once everything we settled and done, and it was time to feed the outside cats again, I stayed out to check on things and see what I could get done. Which is when I realized we had completely forgotten to turn on the shop lights over the seedlings (to make up for where the LED lights can’t reach), so I headed down to the basement, where I found a lovely surprise.

Our very first bi-colour pear gourd has emerged!

The second picture is the early White Vienna kohlrabi I started, just in case the ones outside don’t take. So far, only the chamomile has not sprouted yet.

That done, it was time to head outside.

It had stopped raining, though everything is still very wet, so there was only so much that could be worked on after the cats were fed. I was able to get back to that raised bed at the chain link fence, first securing the vinyl strips protecting the back wall that got pulled up by the winds. Then I started laying out the deadwood I’d stripped of bark along the front wall. It turned out I had enough stripped pieces to cover the bottom from end to end, so I no longer needed to strip any others.

Here is how it looks, as of now.

I actually went into the spruce grove to try and find more long, straight pieces, and found a few poplar that weren’t too wonky. I still have a pile of what we collected in the fall, but they are too short to set between the stakes.

I need more stakes. If I’m going to use skinny, short pieces to fill in the gaps so the soil won’t fall out, I’m going to need a lot more stakes.

They won’t need to be as tall as the ones that will support any hoops or whatever we use to hold protective covers, and I won’t bother charring them. That will have to be a job for another day, though.

I will also need to make stakes for the ends. With how narrow this bed is now, it will be a lot easier to do those, and I can use the shorter, but much more flexible pieces we collected in the fall.

One that’s all done, I can finally return the soil I removed.

Which will need to be sifted, because the cats have been using the pile as a litter box.

*sigh*

Once the soil is returned, that bed it doing to need to be covered with netting immediately, or the cats are going to be all over it. Not just to use as a litter box, but they love to roll around in loose soil.

I’ve actually ordered another hoop kit with fiberglass rods. A different kit from last time. This one doesn’t come with little gardening gloves (well… little for my simian hands), but it does come with ground staples – ground “nails” they call them – with “gaskets”. The fiberglass rods are 16.5inchs long, and this kit has 60 of them, plus the connectors. These connectors are metal instead of plastic, so I’m curious to see which ones last longer.

I had been trying different materials to make hoops, and things like the Pex pipe work well, but for the price, I’m getting a lot more hoops out of these kits than out of the Pex pipe. Plus, the lengths can be adjusted as needed; just use the connectors to add more rods. Whereas once I’ve cut the Pex to size, that’s it. I’d have to get pretty creative if I want more length.

Once I have more of these hoop kits, I will be adding them to the bed along the retaining all in the old kitchen garden that I finished last year, and probably just keep the hoops on the bed, even if any covers are removed. With this bed, I want the supports to be permanent, while also making it easy to work in between them. I’ll try it with these hoop kits first and see how it goes. Since they are fiberglass, they’ll handle weathering well.

As it is right now, that front wall is pretty much the same height at the back wall. Once I accumulate more stakes to better secure it, I might increase the height a bit while also filling in the gaps with thinner material. We’ll see.

I was debating what to plant in this bed. With the chain link fence right there, anything that climbs would be ideal. Maybe some winter squash. Once they are big enough that any protective cover can be removed, I won’t have to worry about the deer eating it, like they do with things like peas and pole beans.

Looking at the forecast, we’ve got one more cooler day, with a couple more nights of frost, then thing things will warm up substantially – but we are now getting rain forecasts starting the day after tomorrow and continuing for the next 5 days! At least, that’s what the weather app on my phone says. Not so much the one on my desktop. Hopefully, it’ll be nice enough that I can get the last beds prepped that weren’t done in the fall. I don’t mind the combination of heat and rain. Better than the usual drought!

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get our seed potatoes into one of the main garden beds that were prepped last fall. They could have already gone in by now, but it can still wait for a while longer. At this point, other than things like other varieties of peas I’d like to try, and seeing if I can get some onions transplanted, most things can’t get done until possibly the second week of June!

Weather willing.

Little by little, it’s getting done – and this year, we really need to have a good gardening year, because the grocery prices just keep getting worse.

The Re-Farmer

Yes, more snow, plus updates and moving the chicken coop

May 16, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

*sigh*

Woke up this morning to falling snow.

It didn’t take long for things to warm up enough that the snow on the ground melted away, but it was a bit longer before the snow turned into a light rain. Yes, we need the moisture, but we also need warmer temperatures! Especially overnight.

We were able to message with our older daughter, who is still in the Women’s Hospital in the city. There was a possibility that she might come home today. They were asking her how far away she lived, so they knew she needed some advance notice before the discharged her. They were waiting on some test results, first, though.

They didn’t get the results until about mid afternoon.

She didn’t come home today.

They’re changing her meds a bit, and are saying she might come home tomorrow.

She is just itching to get out of there!

It wasn’t until late afternoon that things warmed up enough to make working outside more pleasant. As a bonus, my brother and SIL came out to work on their set up. My younger daughter and I went over to their caravan to say hello and visit for a bit, and I got to show off my new wheels.

Before my daughter went inside, I got her to help me with a couple of things. One was to take off the vinyl covered garden bed cover in the old kitchen garden, and move it completely aside. I’ll do a separate post on garden progress, next. Then I showed her a location I thought would work out for the chicken coop that looked the most level. It’s where I’ve been trying to get wildflower mixes growing, but the cats keep using the loose soil as a litter box, or to roll in, killing off anything that might have germinated. She agreed that it looked like a good spot, so I gave it a through raking while she set the ramp up in the coop, so it wouldn’t drag sideways on the ground while we moved it.

Moving the coop was a real pain. Aside from both of us being rather broken, we can only pick it up by our fingertips. Once we’re more settled with it, I’m going to find some way to modify it, so we can move it around more easily.

We set it almost where I wanted it to be, and I worked on the rest. I wanted to set the coop on top of the bricks that used to line one side of the low raised bed I’ve been slowly redoing, but I wasn’t sure if I had enough. I loaded the wheelbarrow and started by laying them out along the back of the coop, just to see how many were needed for the length of it.

It turned out to be 10, with the last brick turned at a right angle.

Once I worked that out, I set the bricks out as straight and even and tight against each other as I could, before very carefully lifting the coop, one end at a time, on top. Then I immediately set bricks under the front corners, just to level it.

It turned out I had another 10 bricks in the wheelbarrow, so a prepped those before getting another load for the sides. I don’t know where these bricks were re-purposed from, but I made sure to use the ones with no, or almost no, mortar still stuck to them. There was more raking and leveling and careful placement, but I finally got it done – and had extra bricks.

The first image above was taken after the coop was moved. I didn’t open the door to let the ramp down until all the bricks were in place.

The next pictures show how the bricks were laid out, including the extras I set along the back and sides. I wanted it on bricks so the wooden frame wasn’t touching the ground. Yes, it’s painted, but it would still end up damaged by moisture and rotting faster.

What I’m not sure of is if anything would burrow under it to get at the chickens. Raccoons and skunks are both known to kill chickens. Ideally, we would set wire mesh around the outside edges by about 2 feet. Which is something that would have been done before setting the coop on bricks. We still need to figure out about securing it. With the wind storm we just had over the past couple of days, it was fine, and that location was more exposed than this one. It might be fine as it is.

Something to consider, still.

I’m glad we finally got it moved and set up on bricks, though. We can figure out the rest later.

Meanwhile, here is a beautiful Lady Adam, and I am rather perplexed by her.

I know Adam has had kittens, but she has been staying around the house a LOT for a mama that just gave birth. She has allowed me to feel her belly, while she’s on the cat house roof, eating. At first, it seemed I was feeling at least three active nips. Maybe more. Then, I was able to feel two, full and swollen with milk. The last time she allowed me to feel her belly, they weren’t swollen anymore. That could mean that she’d nursed her babies before coming to the house for food, but she is always around the house. Even more than usual. Does this mean she lost her litter? Or has she abandoned them? We have no way to know, without knowing where her “nest” is.

I don’t know what to make of it.

As for the cats in the isolation shelter, we are having zero success in socializing them. When we open the windows to give them their cat soup and fresh water, Bug is the only one that tolerates contact. Furriosa glares at me before moving out of reach. The other two just run away, as soon as I open a window. They aren’t even tempted by squeeze treats!

I did change out their litter box today – since I have to open the ramp door to do it, it has to be done quickly, so none of them escape, so I quickly remove the dirty litter pan and immediately replace it with a freshly prepared on, then quickly close up the ramp door. I’ve been able to add more toys for them as well, though I’ve yet to see them actively playing with any of them.

When it comes time to get them to the clinic – Furriosa is to be done first – I honestly don’t know how we’re going to manage it. We might be able to get Bug into a carrier, but the others will not allow us to touch them. How are we supposed to get them into a carrier, if we can’t reach them? Especially if they go into the lower level.

*sigh*

And these are among the friendliest, most gettable females.

We have got to figure something out.

Anyhow.

After I was done with the chicken coop, I worked in the garden for several hours and got good progress done.

Which will be in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

Everything, all at once!

May 15, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had one real goal today. That was to visit my mother in the afternoon.

While doing the morning routine over the past week, my younger daughter and I had been making sure to open the gate, just in case. It was late morning when we heard a honk and I saw a thing of beauty.

The septic truck had arrived!

I headed out to meet him as he got out to check on where he needed to set the truck up. He was apologetic about not getting back to me about the delay – he’d lost my phone number! I was just glad his truck was up and running again, and he could make it at all.

Once he confirmed that he could back up around the back of the house – I wasn’t sure if our straw bale would be an issue or not – he opened up the tank to check inside. I told him about how we’ve had things backing up into the basement because there seems to be a bottleneck that I estimate to be roughly under the wall. He mused about how something like that could be fixed until I told him it was a cast iron pipe joining plastic. He just shook his head. Cast iron, over time, can start crumbling, and it’s likely near the join with the plastic pipes. As for fixing it, I told him I figured it would require tearing up the concrete and replacing the pipe. He said we’d have to excavate outside, too. I mentioned this had been done, before we moved out here and he wondered why it wasn’t fixed them. I told him, no one knew. My dad was living here alone by then. With just one person, it wasn’t a problem. He understood.

With the tank open, I stayed out on cat watching duty, to make sure none came too close to the open tank. Which is much easier, now. The rescue took so many of the cats, there’s a huge difference in what we’re seeing. Even when I check the sun room critter cam at night, I have been seeing no cats at all, many times, or just a few in the cat beds. None of the swirling masses we used to get! With the very loud truck, the cats almost all immediately disappeared. The Grink was the only one that came to check things out, and it was easy to persuade her to leave.

He was done very quickly and was soon leaving the yard, stopping when I came out with the envelope of cash we had ready for quite some time now, to pay him. Every time we’ve done it this way, he’s never even looked in the envelope, trusting me that I had the right amount. Of course, I tip him, too. Always. There have even been times when I couldn’t get to a bank machine to get cash before he came out here, and he just did the job and told me where his house was, trusting I would drop the payment off when I could.

He may be more expensive than other places; I don’t actually know for sure anymore, but I wouldn’t want to go with anyone else.

When he left, it was late enough that I was going to get changed, have a quick lunch, then head out to my mother’s.

Which is when the phone rang.

Earlier in the morning, I’d noticed that the wind was tearing off a tarp covering one of my brother’s pieces of equipment. It was too torn up for any chance to secure it again, so I took some video and sent it to my brother. He called to thank me for that, and asked if I could get some measurements, so he could pick up another tarp. So I quickly got some shoes on again and headed over with a measuring tape to get the info for him. He might come out tonight to take care of it.

Not too much longer, I was on the road to my mother’s for what turned out to be an okay visit. She was having one of her better days. The last time I was there, she had asked for a couple of apples because she missed having fresh fruit. I’d passed that on to my siblings, because I knew it would be a while before I was back. When I reached her bedside, I saw an apple on her tray, so I knew my sister had come by on her day off and remembered to bring some for her – I had completely forgotten. Once my mother was settled on her bedside, she picked up the apple and reminded me that she’d asked me to bring her apples. I guess my sister bringing her apples wasn’t good enough??

The next thing I knew, she was talking about giving me some money to get something for her, but started talking about her vision, her vison, her vision… Her vision is so important. She started going down a rabbit hole so I cut in to ask what it was she wanted me to get for her.

The eye vitamins. Because they’re only giving her the eye vitamin once a day, not twice, and she wanted me to get the gel type that she used to get in her bubble packs.

I told her, the TCU has her prescription now, not the local pharmacy – and they were definitely giving her her eye vitamin, twice a day. She insisted they were not; she was supposed to get it at the end of the day, as well as in the morning, but she wasn’t getting the second one. When I didn’t immediately agree with her, she started saying “oh, you think I’m stupid… you’re just like them… you’re taking their side“, and so on.

She also said that her vision was getting worse, because they weren’t giving her the eye vitamin, and that it was for both eyes.

I explained to her again, she has two different problems. The vitamin can only help with her left eye. For her right eye, she would have to go into the city to get the eye injection, because there is only one place that does this treatment. I even tried to ask her how her vision is getting worse. “It’s getting dark“. I asked if it was with one eye or the other, and what did she see if she covered one eye, but she wouldn’t do it and just made like it’s both eyes going the same thing.

That conversation got nowhere.

As we were chatting, her new room mate was wheeled in and transferred to her bed, promptly falling asleep. The privacy curtain was already pulled and we just kept talking. At one point, I spotted a tiny insect flying near one of my mother’s eyes and I mentioned it was there, in case she saw something moving in her peripheral vision (which is pretty good, based on the last tests she had). Her response?

Her room mate sleeps with her mouth open.

???

This confused me so I asked what that had to do with anything. She talked in circles for a while before dropping it, but she said enough that I realized she thought the insect had come from her room mate’s mouth, because she sleeps with her mouth open.

?????????

Meanwhile, I started to get messages from home.

The tree company had arrived.

My daughter and husband knew which tree was being assessed for removal, but there were details they weren’t sure of, so we messaged back and forth on that, while I told my mother about my brother wanting to hire a company to safely remove the tree.

My mother started saying, she planted that tree there, and did I know why? Yes. It was for shade. She’d told me before about how the sun through the kitchen window made it so hot. I suggested it would have been easier to put up a curtain (that window did have curtains, but they were lacy things that did not block any light), so she started telling me about how, at her childhood home back in Poland, they had a cherry tree right by the house. I pointed out, they didn’t have a basement. Oh, of course – no one had basements! So I talked a bit about how this tree’s roots were causing cracks in the basement wall, and the branches were threatening the new roof.

She brought up the extended pruning saw that should have been here. I told her I use it often, but it can’t be used on these branches. They’re just too big, and if we cut them, they’d fall onto the roof. So she started to give instructions on how we could put a rope around the branch to pull it so it would fall the way we wanted it to. I told her, that might work somewhere else, but not over the roof. It would be much better to get someone with the proper equipment and get it down right, with no risk to the roof. Oh, it’s not my business anymore.

…

*sigh*

I didn’t stay for too much longer, as my mother was looking forward to Bingo starting soon. Before I left, I stopped at the nursing station and talked to the nurse that gave my mother her meds this morning, and would again, at supper time. I told her, my mother keeps insisting that they are not giving her the second eye vitamin.

It turned out that not only is she getting it at both breakfast and supper time (it has to be taken with food), but the pill is so big, at my mother’s request, they break it in half for her. She always sets out the pills on her tray and counts them out, and when she does that, she counts the two halves as one pill, recognizing that they belong together (she has another half pill, but it’s tiny, and she takes only one half at a time).

The nurse promised that she would make sure to explain to my mother that the big pill split in half is her eye vitamin, and why she’s taking it with her supper, not at the end of the day. We talked about some other pills she has issues with, like one that she is completely convinced she used to take twice a day, but she only ever took once a day.

That done, I headed out, but not home, yet. I went to the feed store to ask about the chicks. The woman who was working out the splitting of the minimum 24 chicks order was not there. I talked to the guys that were that and was told that, if she hasn’t called me by now, she wasn’t able to confirm the arrangement. One of them made a note for her to call me when she is back next week.

Then I confirmed the date the chicks will arrive.

It’s the same day I’m supposed to bring three of the isolation cats in for their spays.

Crud.

I would be dropping them off at 8am, though, and they said the chicks tend to arrive at 11am or later, so we would have time to drop off the cats, then drive to the feed store to get the chicks. We would then have to take them home and get them set up in a brooder before I would have to drive back to pick up the cats and bring them home!

That’s going to be a lot of driving.

While there, I got an extra 40 pound bag of kibble, plus a chick feeder and waterer, both gravity fed. I’ll get the pine shavings and chick feed another time. I may not be able to get chicks, if I can’t split a minimum order with someone, but if that doesn’t work out, I know people I can guy adult laying hens from.

On the way home, I remembered to stop at the post office. I wasn’t expecting anything, but it’s been a while.

I’m glad I did.

I got a letter from the health care system. I’m booked for a pelvic ultrasound on June 9, in the hospital that’s literally across the road from the vet clinic we get spays and neuters done at. 😁 The appointment time is in the afternoon, which will be much easier for us to get to.

I’m surprised I got the appointment so fast. My younger daughter had to wait for almost a year before she got an ultrasound done, but the images weren’t clear, so they want to to come back. That was two winters ago.

Meanwhile, there isn’t much news from my older daughter. Things are improving, but not where they should be, yet. She really wants to just go home. Which I can understand, that’s for sure! Still, it means we have no idea when she’ll be discharged.

While today was nowhere near as windy as yesterday, we were still dealing with high winds – though we didn’t lose any trees, where I could see! – and it was overcast and rainy. The sort of weather that always makes me sleepy. After I got home, I settled at my computer for a while, watching the latest Tasting History video, and fell asleep in my chair! Aside from the evening cat feeding, the only thing I managed to get done outside today was a bit of clean up in the old kitchen garden.

Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to freezing or lower – I made sure the heat lamp in the isolation shelter was plugged in and on – and tomorrow is supposed to be chilly. Which is actually a good time to do some of the direct sowing I want to do. Hopefully, I’ll be able to work on that. I’m also hoping to finally get my mother’s old mattress and box spring to the dump, but we shall see when the time comes. We’ve got a few chilly days ahead, then we’ll warm up moderately. There is still much to do out there in the garden, and the month is already half over! The long range forecast says we’re supposed to suddenly get very hot during the day, approaching 30C/86F, and staying high for all of June.

We’ll see what actually happens.

For now, though, I need to get any seeds that prefer cold soil direct sown right away.

At some point, I’ll be able to get back to working on the walls of that garden bed!

What I really want to do right now it crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

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