septic

Getting things done!

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Aside from a morning occupied with wandering around the yard, trying to get a signal on my cell phone, so I could listen to the voicemails from home care, with all the phone calls, emails and messages that get done because of it, it was a decently productive day!

The main goal was accomplished, and that was breaking open that straw bale and covering the septic tank.

I love how round bales just peel away in layers.

The outside was so densely packed, and partially frozen, that it formed a shell. I took advantage of that. After removing the insulated tarp and spreading out loose straw, I’d drop chunks of the outer shell on top, strategically, to keep the straw from blowing away before it could settle in place. There were still some chunks left over when I finished covering the septic tank area, and I put those on top of the bale to form a sort of roof. Once we’re done covering things with straw, I plan to “store” the insulated tarp by setting it over the bale. That way, moisture won’t get into the open end and cause rot.

Once the area was covered, I got the emergency bypass for the septic partially set up. The pipe in the basement needs to be pushed through, and the end can be set into the PVC pipe – after taking the cap off, of course! I’ve got the flexible hose running into the maple grove this time – something we couldn’t do last winter, because of the snow. Once it’s set up properly at the house, we’ll set various supports under everything, to create a gradual decline and try to make up for uneven ground. Last year, there was one time when the flexible hose froze closed because there was a slight dip in the ground.

Hopefully, we will not need to use it at all. However, should the ejector freeze again, all will be ready, and we’ll just need to open the ball valve. The heat tape is still set up around the parts of the ejector that is above ground, but that won’t help anything at the venturi valve on the bottom.

We were planning a dump run today, so I didn’t have time to start covering the winter sown garden beds with straw on top of the leaf mulch, but I did have time to winterize things more for the yard cats.

I especially wanted to the get catio strawed up. I took everything out and put a decent layer on the ground, focusing on filling the gaps under the elevated frame. Then I added some onto the hammocks, just because. I put the pieces of rigid insulation back under the self heating cat shelter again, but the other pieces were no longer needed under the box nests. Since the self heating cat shelter had been collapsed a couple of times, it was a bit floppy in one area, so I trimmed one of the scrap pieces of insulation to fit tightly between the floor and the roof, against the wall next to the entry. Hopefully, it will stay in place, but if it falls in, that’s fine. The cats love that insulation!

As you can see in the picture, the cats are indeed using the new shelter!

The straw will also help insulate the water bowl, at least a bit, so it won’t freeze quite so quickly. I still had to take a hatchet to the ice to be able to drain the water inside, and replace it with hot water. The hot water would melt at some of the remaining ice and soon be cool enough for the cats to drink.

When it was feeding time, I noticed the straw on the hammocks were compacted in circles. Cats are definitely appreciating the straw up there, too!

The catio winterized a bit more, I switched to the isolation shelter – which has seen a whole lot of activity of cats enjoying it being open again!

I removed the litter pans from the bottom level and swept things out as best I could. I’ve got an old telescoping snow brush with a broken scraper that’s perfect for the job. Once that was cleaned up, a fairly thin layer of straw was added – I didn’t want to add to much, since there is a heat bulb and power cords in the upper level – and then the refreshed litter pans were returned.

Which, as you can see in the second picture of the slide show above, Pinky promptly jumped into, before joining the crowd above, which you can see in the last picture of the slide show!

I had a bit of straw left in the wheelbarrow when the catio and isolation shelter we done, so I added it in the covered greenhouse, on the ground under the food tray and water bowl. Even with that, I had a bit I could set on the concrete patio block between the isolation shelter and the steps, just to give another insulated place for the cats to sit on.

While I was doing that, my daughter brought the truck into the yard and loaded up the garbage and recycling. Once the dump was open for the afternoon, we headed out. After unloading at the dump, we continued on to the town north of us – right into blowing snow. Not a significant amount, but definitely the most we’ve seen this year. The system passed our place entirely, but went right over the town to the north of us.

Our destination there wasn’t actually in town, but the feed store. I picked up four 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats while my daughter went shopping in there clothing and boots section. For that many bags, I paid for them, then backed the truck up to their shipping/receiving door to get the kibble, then parked again and rejoined my daughter.

She had been looking for something specific, which she found, but she got distracted by their display of bib overalls. She told me later that she’s been pining for bib overalls since she outgrew some she grew out of when she was 7! She’d looked at them at places like Mark’s Warehouse before, but wasn’t happy with what they had.

This place carried a brand called Tough Duck, which were exactly what she wanted. They had another, more expensive, brand as well, but she didn’t like them as much. She had a budget for only one thing, though, and the overalls won! She got these. (not an affiliate link) Given her rather generous feminine assets, plus these are meant to be worn over clothing, she went with a 3X. She didn’t try them on until we got home and she is very happy with them. These are men’s overalls and ludicrously long on her, but they can be hemmed. The website does have a women’s version but there are no hourglass figured in this household! My daughters and I take after my Eastern European side of the family. If it weren’t for boobs, we’d be straight, rectangular brick houses. 😄 So when it comes to pants, men’s clothing tends to fit better.

When I had a chance later on, I tried them on, too. I might actually want to go a size bigger, only because they tend to pull when I bend over to touch my feet. The fabric has no real stretch to it, though it would soften and loosen up a bit after a few washings. I do a LOT of bending from the waist when I work, since my knees aren’t stable enough to bend at the knees, so it’s something to keep in mind. Not that I’d be getting myself a set anytime soon, but they would be really handy to have come spring time!

After getting the legs hemmed. 😄

Once home and unloaded, the first thing I did was start feeding the outside cats, so my daughter could park the truck, then do my evening rounds. When I was done, I spotted this bit of adorableness.

That would be Sprig, who is only slightly less feral than her mother, Sprout!

I haven’t seen Sprout for a few days. I hope she’s okay.

Sprig has been coming into the sun room more often, and joining the cuddle puddles. So far, I’ve only managed to sneak a touch as she runs past. I’m happy to see her using the new cat cave. I zoomed in to get the picture, as I knew she would run away if I came to close, and I didn’t want to chase her out of a warm spot.

It would be really awesome if we could get her to the vet tomorrow! In a couple of hours, my daughter and I will head out to see who we can set up overnight in the isolation shelter for an overnight fast. Not that they’ll be fed again until after we leave in the morning, so any of the cats could be brought in – if we can get them into carriers. I really want to get Frank. She’s a bundle of nerves, but is still the most approachable of the intact females. Adam and Slick have been coming around, but Slick hasn’t been allowing contact, and Adam only allows it while she’s eating. The white one with grey tabby spots is even more feral. Trapping will likely be the only option. I just don’t see us being able to socialize them over the winter, and I really want to get them spayed before they go into heat in the late winter/spring.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day, that’s for sure. The goal is to be on the road with the 3 cats by 7:30, as the drop off time is 8:50am this time. We’ll be staying in the city until the clinic calls us to pick up the cats – trying to avoid the Black Friday crowds. (Weird that Canada does Black Friday, when our Thanksgiving was last month.) Then, I’ll be doing my mother’s bed time med/personal care assist at around 9pm. If it were summer, I’d be napping in the truck while waiting for a call from the clinic, but it’s getting too cold to do that now.

Ah, well. It is what it is!

Happy Thanksgiving to my US visitors!

The Re-Farmer

Progress outside!

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I wasn’t sure if it was going to get done. When I headed out this morning to feed the outside cats, it was decidedly unpleasant.

I also counted 38 cats. I haven’t seen that one tabby that I didn’t recognize, but none of the ones I did see were unfamiliar. Which means the crowd was congregating all at once!

I didn’t soak the kibble in the morning, because I knew it would freeze, so I saved that for the afternoon. I counted 32, that time. Including this little fluff ball.

Tomorrow evening, we are going to get Frank and Pinky closed up in the isolation shelter, so that they can have their fast (after a treat of wet cat food) and be easier to catch in the morning, for their spays. The other cats and kittens are not going to be happy with not being allowed in the isolation shelter for a month! We’ve got the first two that will be in there until it’s time to switch them out for about 10 days, and then we’ll have the next two set up in there for their recovery period. Assuming we can catch two more females. If we ended up with males, they won’t need that much time for observation and recovery.

After the second feeding, I did my evening rounds before it got too dark – these are being done earlier and earlier! Today, I made a point of checking the asters. I’d left the flower bed untouched, so that the Cosmos could shelter the memorial asters from the frost, and hopefully give them time to go to seed.

It worked!

I collected some to bring inside for planting next year. I left others to self seed. I’m so happy they had enough time to develop seeds before the deep freeze hit!

It was nice enough out that I grabbed a rake and collected leaves to do some mulching, then did a bit of winterizing.

The first picture in the slide show above is where the tiny strawberries were transplanted. I have no idea if they will survive in their new location, but it is worth a try. In the next picture, you can see that the strawberries transplanted into the retaining wall also got mulched with leaves. Next was the saffron. I don’t know if I am being too early with this, or too late, since they are showing new growth. The one flower bud that is still there looks like it froze before it could open, so I left it. I had considered leaving those until later, as we are supposed to warm up a little bit over the next week, but then I saw cats digging around them to leave “presents”, so the mulch is to keep them away, too.

I didn’t mulch the little herb bed, as we are still able to harvest from them, but I did get a pile of leaves ready for when it’s time.

Now that our septic tank is empty, it’s time to get that area ready for winter, too. We’ll be setting the emergency bypass up, just in case, so I stretched out the flexible hose so that it can warm up in the sun and straighten out. I ended up sitting a short length of pipe into the far end to flatten it, because it kept sticking up into the air. The two lengths of PVC pipe we set over the pipe from the basement got shoved into the flexible hose at the other end to help straighten that out, too. In a couple of sections, I leaned boards and bricks and whatnot to get them to straighten out and flatten to the ground.

We did not get the straw bale I was hoping to get this weekend. It might still get delivered in the next while but, just in case, I set the insulated tarp over the septic tank and weighed it down.

The forecast now says we should reach highs of 5C/41F next weekend, and that should be pretty much it for the winter. Time enough for a few last things, like covering the herb bed and, if the straw comes in, using that in various places. I’ll take advantage of every warmish day we have right now!

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

So much progress!

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I so love it when the weather is good and I don’t have to go anywhere. I got so much done today – and it’s not even 2:30, yet, as I start this!

First was a morning of phone calls.

Priority was to call about my mother’s Meals on Wheels being cancelled. I got through to the kitchen number and talked to a woman there. She told me she had listened to my message, but there is no management in today, so she couldn’t find out more for me. She did check their list, though.

My mother’s name is still on it.

Her service did not get cancelled.

So what was the phone call she got about? That is a question for when a manager comes in, tomorrow!

Needless to say, my mother was both relieved and confused when I called to let her know she would be getting her Meals on Wheels as usual.

I also got through to the septic guy.

Yup.

His truck broke down.

He’ll be here tomorrow to clean out our tank.

We’re good with that – the weather will still be good, too.

That all done, it was time to head outside.

One of the first things I worked on was emptying the rain barrel by the sun room and setting it aside for the winter. It had a solid layer of ice on the top, so I had to use the ice scraper tool to chip a hole through. Thankfully, the barrel was not completely full, and I was able to carefully tip it over to drain. It took some doing, since the hole in the ice was just off centre, but I was eventually able to get it empty enough that I could tip it completely upside down. Then it could be rolled to the spot by the honeysuckle where it stays for the winter, lying on its side. There is still a thick layer of ice in it, so I made sure that end was facing south. There’s a chance it will at least melt enough to break apart or fall flat. The barrel will serve as extra potential critter shelter in the winter, so it would be good to get the ice out.

That done, I went and dragged the insulated tarp over to the septic tank, just in case we don’t get a straw bale soon. I’m not hearing back from the renter, who is the one I usually get it from. They did give me the names of others I might be able to get from, but I’d rather get it from the renters.

Bringing the tarp over meant going past the pile of bricks that used to be the chimney from the old wood furnace that isn’t used any more. When the new roof was done, that chimney was removed and I asked them to leave the bricks, rather than haul it away with the junk. The plan had been to use them as part of a path we plan to make along the back of the house that will eventually be part of a shade garden. They piled it all on an old tarp they could leave behind, and it’s been sitting there, ever since.

I didn’t want to move the pile twice, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to make that path and it’s in the way. So I cleaned that up, next.

That old chimney needed to be replaced back when my parents bought this place, before I was born. The chimney blocks I am now using as a retaining wall and for planters were meant for that, and it just never happened.

Those bricks were in terrible shape! Most were broken. There were a few whole bricks. I stacked those, and the larger broken pieces, against the pile of logs still sitting from when we had trees cut away from the roof, years ago. The tarp was intact enough that I could use it to drag away the collected debris and pieces too small to be worth keeping. That’s now with the junk pile for hauling to the dump.

It means moving the pile twice, but it’s now out of the way, and even sorted, more or less, so they’ll be easier to work with when we finally get around to making that path.

We’ll need more broken bricks, though. 😄

That done, it was time for the big job.

I was going to wait until after the tank was emptied, but decided to take my chances and clean up around the ejector today.

Grabbing gloves and tools, I headed out to the gap in the fence closest to it. This meant going through where some old farm equipment and various outbuildings are.

Plus some really massive burdock.

I started cutting back the burdock when I got distracted. There’s an old Farm Hand tractor that I’d cut clear of self seeded maples a few years back. They were growing back. Since I had the loppers with me and was using them to cut the burdock, I cut the maple suckers away from the tractor. That didn’t take very long, though, so I was back to cutting away the burdock. Several of the burdock stems were thicker than the maple suckers I’d cut away from the tractor! Try as I might, I couldn’t avoid getting burrs stuck to me, so pulling those off was fun. Not.

I didn’t clear it all away, though. Just enough to make a path to the opening in the fence. There’s just the renter’s electric wire across it. There are some huge willow trees there, so the cows don’t seem to try to get through the opening here, unlike the old gate opening, which has a chain across it, as well as the electric wire. They do go under the willows enough to graze the tall grass on that side of the fence down, though.

The cows were moved off some time ago, so the electric fence is not hooked up to a power source right now.

Here are the “before” pictures I took.

In the first picture, I’m standing in the lower area the grey water is supposed to be draining towards. You can just see the small trench I made to help it flow through. The whole area was really rough after the excavator buried the new ejector, so that needed to be worked around.

Those boulders and all the other rocks you can see were from the hole they dug to reach the pipe.

The second picture in the slide show above is where the problem lies. Instead of draining down the slope, things are pooling at the end of the old sheet of metal roofing that’s there as a diverter. The snow fence is something my brother had put around to keep the renter’s cows from accidentally trampling the new ejector. It’s nowhere near as tall as the old one was.

The third picture is of the inside of the fenced area, where the diverter is. Yes, there is a long sheet of metal hiding under that mess!

The last picture in that series is the view from just inside the “gate” of the snow fence.

I had to cut my way through burdock to get to the fence and access the area. To get to the rigged gate of the snow fence, I had to cut my way through Canadian Thistle. Those were as big as the burdock, and getting stuck on those was a lot more painful!

Inside the snow fenced area, it was mostly old nettles I had to get through, plus some young burdock and a LOT of crab grass. Plus a few burrs.

This is what it looks like, after I cleared all that out as best I could.

One of the main concerns with laying that sheet down as a diverter was that it might get blown away, so we put some logs and a big rock on it, to prevent that from happening. In the first picture, you can see the logs at the end.

The second pictures shows the first part of the problem. So much debris had lain over the metal, it actually flattened it on one side that the grey water was, at least partly, draining off of their instead of all the way to the end.

In the third picture, you can sort of make out the other part of the problem. The soil is rough and there’s a bit of a lump on one side. It seems to be just enough to keep the grey water from flowing to the lower area. Instead, it’s draining to a different area, where it is pooling, first.

Worse, it was also flooding back under the diverter.

Last year, we had to use the emergency diverter for the grey water to be pumped into the yard, far from the house, because the new ejector froze. With the ground around it saturated, because the grey water isn’t flowing away as it should, there is a risk of that happening again.

The first thing to do was to get those logs off (the rock didn’t need to be moved) and clear the debris off the diverter. The logs then went under the sides of the sheet to create more of a channel, which you can see the start of, in the first picture below.

There was still the problem of things pooling at the end, instead of flowing away. I’d already opened up the trench more, but there was still that lump of soil that prevented the grey water from draining straight to the trench. There was no way I was going to be able to level that whole area enough with just a spade. Plus, the soil is already partially frozen.

The diverter needed an extension.

I went over to the pile of stuff nearby, where we’d salvaged this sheet of metal from in the first place, and looked around. There are still cast off pieces of metal roofing in there. I found a shorter one that I could use.

It took some fussing to get it under the snow fence, then under the big diverter sheet. The smaller piece was already curving on its own, so I could take advantage of that. I set it at a bit of an angle, then used rocks to flatten it more on one side, while raising it up on the other – then added more rocks on top, to make sure it didn’t blow away.

This left a corner of the metal sticking up, and that was something the renter’s cows could get injured on. I needed to make some sort of barrier.

Well, there are those willows nearby, and willows are known for dropping their branches. I had lots of deadwood around to drag over!

In the third picture, I tried to stand in the same place is when I took the first “before” picture. There’s a willow branch that does off to the left. Out of frame, it’s actually still attached to the tree. I dragged it across, but it wouldn’t break all the way, and I didn’t have the tools to do anything about it. I decided to take advantage of it, instead, and it added to the deadwood barrier I was making.

The fourth picture is the “after” shot from just inside the makeshift gate. Looking so much better!

The fifth picture is after I adjusted a bit more at the end. It looked like there was still a possibility of grey water flowing back under the long sheet, after pouring onto the new extension, so I put more support under one side that will hopefully prevent that from happening. I also stepped on key points, on both sides of the snow fence, to bend the metal and make the channel more defined. You can see that on the outside, in the last photo.

With the tank not emptied yet, this whole time I was working, it was possible that the pump would be triggered and I’d have grey water to deal with while I worked. All it would have taken was someone flushing a toilet or washing some dishes. It seems the pump’s float had been triggered recently enough that it didn’t happen. I did consider asking a daughter to turn it on manually, so I could see how it flowed with the new set up, but in the end, decided against it. If the tank was recently pumped out, there might not have been enough greywater to run through, and I didn’t want the pump running dry. I can check on it later and will be able to see.

Once the septic guy empties the tank, it will be a while before the grey water side is filled enough to trigger the pump. Hopefully, that will give the soil enough time to drain. It shouldn’t need long, since it’s all sand and gravel, but we do have a lot of clay, too, so it’s hard to say. Between the cleaned up diverter, the heat tape that’s still on the above ground portion of the ejector, and the wind shelter my brother built around it, hopefully it won’t freeze again this winter!

So that was the main project I wanted to work on today. I still want to head out again later to see what else I can get done while it’s still light out and warm enough. I don’t be digging up and cleaning any garden beds, but there’s always something that needs to be done! Since I’m taking the truck in on Thursday and going to my mother’s on Friday, I basically have today and tomorrow to get as much done as possible. After Friday, the day time highs are expected to just barely rise above freezing, so it’s hard to say what progress can be done after that.

I can’t believe almost half of November is already gone. Where did it go???

The rest of the month is expected to be relatively mild. With or without progress outside, I am appreciating that. The older I get, the less I enjoy winter. My hands are cracking and splitting from the dry cold already, just for starters. Winter is just rougher on everything, from our bodies to the house to the truck to the yard cats… everything!

So I am enjoying and appreciating every bit of mild weather we can get!

The Re-Farmer

What. A. Day.

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… and it’s only 6pm.

What I was planning to do, after finishing my post this morning, was get a couple of hours a sleep in before my younger daughter and I headed out for errands.

Then my husband asked me if we had an extra box fan somewhere, because his just stopped working.

I remembered that we had one in the new basement that would normally be set up in the old basement window. We haven’t had to do that yet, this summer, so I was going to go get it. I was next to the door to the old basement, so I was going to go through that way to get it.

I didn’t make it all the way down the stairs, when I had to go back up and get my rubber boots.

Our septic was backing up the floor drain.

Now, on the plus side, it was just toilet paper, really. There was enough of it, however, to actually lift the floor drain cover up.

Once booted and gloved up, I opened the access pipe. It, thankfully, was not full of TP. So some water was still getting through, somewhere.

Thanks to the commercial drain auger we have, I was able to punch through the clog – right at the bottleneck, of course, – and get things draining. I didn’t even have to turn on the motor, and just used the drain snake. It’s rigid enough that I could push it through manually – and I could tell immediately when I got through, as what standing water there was, flowed away. I took the hose and ran water through the length of the pipe and into the tank, and nothing backed up. The septic pump did turn on, though, which was a good sign.

Nothing from the floor drain, though.

For that, I had to manually remove as much as I could into a garbage can. It wasn’t actually a lot, once I saw it together in one spot, but enough to be an issue for the size of pipe.

Once I got the bulk of it out, things started to flow and I could use the hose in the access pipe, flushing it back to the weeping tile under the new basement as well.

Then it was time to clean up the floor.

So that was a big, messy job though, thankfully, not as gross as it could have been!

While the water was flowing freely again, we did need to empty the tank. We normally would have done it in early spring, but too many other things messed up our budget. I was really hoping we could last until fall. When pushing the drain auger and the hose all the way through into the tank, I could feel how full it was. So, once I was done and cleaned up, I called the septic company and left a message.

He called back almost immediately.

He will be coming out tomorrow morning.

On updating the family – and assuring them that yes, we can use the toilet! – and telling them I’d have to take cash out from another budget, my older daughter came to the rescue, and transferred over enough to cover the bill. Including tip!

She was still on for getting Chinese food for my birthday, too.

What I think we need is to replace our entire toilet. We’ve already replaced the riser, but it just doesn’t hold a lot of water. The tank is lined, so there isn’t as much there, but there’s also very little in the bowl, even though I’ve set the dial on the riser to max. Meanwhile, there is some sort of leak in the overflow pipe, and we would have phantom flush, unless I allowed the refill hose to fill the tank directly, instead of through the overflow pipe. As a bonus, the tank would actually refill quickly, instead of taking forever.

There are other issues with the toilet, like no shut off valve, but I really like it. The bowl is 18 inches high, instead of the standard 16.5, so it is much better on the knees and back. My daughter and I did some searching and we found a 17″ one that has smooth sides under the bowl, so it’s easier to clean. That’s what we would replace it with, if we could. Price after taxes, though, would be heading towards $400. So that’s not going to happen any time soon!

Speaking of the price of things…

I got the estimate for replacing the door and frame in the entryway.

*sigh*

Over $4100, after labour and taxes.

The problem isn’t the pre-hung door. Even taking into account we are getting a more expensive one, with a window that can be opened. It’s the stucco. To remove the old frame, they’ll have to cut through the stucco to get it out. Then, once they’ve measured with the new frame, cut more stucco to size before installation can be done. Then they’ll hopefully be able to install the old storm door. This is not going to be a quick and easy job.

The estimate even says that, while they’ll try to be as careful as possible, there may be issues with the stucco breaking up, so if they have to repair that, it would be an additional cost.

That’s more than double what I though the cost might be. With how much it’s going to cost when the truck gets worked on through our insurance claim, plus so many other things sucking away at any emergency funds we had, we simply don’t have it. We might have to have another talk with the bank and try to come up with something.

When I told my mother that the door and frame needed replacing and why, she had asked me to let her know how much it cost. She would help.

There’s no way she’ll be doing that with the bill this high. Talking to my younger daughter about it and mentioning what my mom had said, she just laughed out loud. As she put it, that kind of money is “vandal” money, not “us” money. Our vandal would go to her for money, constantly, and she almost always gave in, and often more than the amount of this estimate. But to help us or my brother? Nope.

I don’t know what we’re doing to do, but we have 30 days to accept the estimate. After that, they have to do another estimate. Also, 1/3rd needs to be paid up front, before they start.

So that was another downer.

Things got better after that, though, as my daughter and I headed out…

Not without interruption.

Our phones started going off with emergency alerts. Due to wild wires, our province has again declared a province wide state of emergency. Evacuation orders are in effect in some of the reserves up north. Nothing in our area, though, so we are all right where we are. After pausing to check the fire maps, we continued on.

Our first stop was the post office, to get her birthday present: a new cane. My husband had ordered one, months ago, and it never arrived because the delivery company messed up. After giving on on that order, my husband and daughter went looking, and found this for her.

It is a Kommando Tactical Survival Hammer.

It’s also not a pretend novelty item. This thing is solid and functional.

Most importantly, it is a very comfortable cane for my daughter.

She thinks it’s absolutely hilarious, and she loves it! She started using it right away, and hasn’t stopped.

Cane acquired, it was off to town. First stop was the Chinese restaurant. My daughter went in to place the order, and then we were going to the grocery store while it was being made.

My daughter forgot her wallet.

We decided we could drive back to get it, giving the restaurant an estimated time it would take us, and then off we went.

Into rain with drops so big, I thought they were hail!

Sadly, no rain reached our place.

We got home, my daughter dashed in, and we were off again. Just in time for the food to be ready for pick up!

As I was catching up to my daughter in the parking lot, my phone began to ring.

It was home care.

*sigh*

Thankfully, they weren’t calling about tonight, but for tomorrow morning. Which worked out, actually, as I knew my mother would be needing a grocery shopping trip and probably laundry, etc. By the time I was off the phone, I was having to hold the doors open for my daughter, with the food!

That done, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things on their list – including a cake for me!

Thankfully, I remembered to go to a bank machine before we left town, so we would have cash for the septic guy tomorrow. I’ll be at my mother’s before he gets here, so I’ll be leaving the gate open, and have the cash ready for whoever is available at home to pay him, then make sure the gate is closed, afterwards. With how or vandal has been behaving, none of us feel we can leave the gate open for long.

That done, we could finally head home! Once everything was unloaded at the house, I started feeding kitties to get them away from the truck, so my daughter could park the truck.

She is fine with driving, which means I don’t have to reschedule my eye test next week.

There was still a lot of dry kibble out – the cats have not been eating as much, in this heat! – but I got the kitten soup out. As I was going to set the bowls out for the feral kittens, I spotted a pair of ears in the front window of the isolation shelter. Someone was in the hammock, but was so small, only the ear tips were visible!

It turned out to be Grommet.

Which means Grommet got the biggest bowl of kitten soup, all to himself!

That done, I left the girls to get things organized and called my mother about tomorrow. When I said I got a call from home care and that I would be coming in tomorrow morning, she started to get angry, but I distracted her by saying I could do her grocery shopping and laundry. It turns out she was already starting a grocery list, because her fridge is getting empty.

😄

We ended up talking for a while, and I did tell her about what our vandal has been doing. When repeating some of the things he said, even my mother was saying, how is that his business? Why does he care?

At one point, she brought up going to the police about it, and I told her I probably should, but we’ve had so much going on, it’s just really difficult. Out of curiosity, I brought up the septic backing up into the basement, which she didn’t even acknowledge years, and that we got an estimate about the door, reminding her about the front door and frame needing to be replaced. She just vaguely said that this was stuff to talk to my brother about.

Then she offered to call the police for me, herself. After all, this was happening at “her” place.

…

I told her, no. You aren’t directly involved. This is for me to do. So she left it at that.

Yeah. She’s already backed out of her offer to help with the door and frame replacement. I doubt she even remembers making it.

We ended up talking for quite a while before I could finally say goodbye and have supper. The rest of the family was already done by then! I hadn’t realized just how long the call turned out to be.

The food was delicious, as always. We got enough to feed us for a couple of days, at least! The less cooking we have to do in this heat, the better.

It’s now coming up on 8pm as I write this, and I’ll be doing my evening rounds, soon. Looking at the weather radar, we are still under severe thunderstorm alerts. There even seems to be a system heading our way that will actually pass over us, in a couple of hours. Which means rain, for a couple of hours! Maybe. 35% chance of rain.

So… do I water the garden again tonight, or leave it for the morning? We’re still at 25C/77F, humidex at 27C/81F, and we won’t be reaching comfortable temperatures until about 3am. The humidity is at 81%.

I’ll see how things look while I’m doing my checks. To be honest, I’m ready to crawl into bed right now. The heat has sucked all the energy out of me. Which is insane, because we’ve got AC now, and it’s so much better in the house than in previous years! My heat tolerance is dropping so much, as I get older.

This day has turned out to be all over the place. Tomorrow doesn’t look like it’ll be any better. While I’m at my mother’s, I’m going to miss my brother and SIL as they come out to take their trailer to somewhere else for the next while.

I need sleep.

The Re-Farmer

Well, this heat was good for one thing! Plus, a surprise.

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My daughter and I headed outside for what was supposed to be one last check around the yard. That one raised bed cover needed more fussing with to keep the plastic from ballooning.

As we were finishing up, I asked her to go into the basement while I went to the ejector, so we could test it out. The septic pump had gone off not long ago, so I asked her to run the pump manually for just 30 seconds. My brother told me he’d left the cap off, in hopes it would warm up better in today’s heat.

Yes!!!! It’s working!!!

The stand pipe promptly got filled, because there is still ice on the bottom, but the venture pipe is finally clear! Every now and then, the water coming out would go completely black as it cleared settled gunk out.

My brother was so thrilled to hear the news!

Now, we just have to hope the warmer water flowing through will keep it from freezing up again, and actually help melt the ice in the stand pipe and the frozen ground, faster.

After messaging with my brother for a bit, I went to get a screwdriver to put the cap back on, forgetting that the screw on the elbow portion is a different size. So it was back to the house to get a smaller screwdriver and get it all put back together. My daughter, meanwhile, left the valve to the diverter closed. We’ll leave the diverter set up for a bit longer and, once we are sure it’s not going to freeze up again, we’ll store the pipes and hose used to direct the flow away from the house, then put a cap on the end of the pipe from the basement. With the valve installed, the diverter pipes in the basement can stay permanently, so if we ever had another emergency like this, all we would need to do is set things back up outside, then open the valve. Which, hopefully, we will never have to do again, but you never know, with this place!

While going back and forth to the house through the sun room, I made a sudden discovery.

With our water bowl shelter set up, we’d put a blanket in the back for cats to lie on. Then we added a couple of cardboard boxes, over time, just because cats love cardboard boxes. Plus, it would give them a bit more shelter from the elements, particularly in the winter.

This spring, while moving some of the cat beds around, I added one of them into the shelter, turning one of the boxes sideways and shoving half the cat bed into it, to create a sort of private cave. Something a mama might feel safe enough to have babies in, even. Not likely, considering the water bowls are in there, getting refilled a couple of times a day, and plenty of cat traffic, but you never know, right?

This afternoon, while topping up the water bowls, I spotted black fur on the cat bed, with the rest of the cat hidden by the box. My topping up the water bowl didn’t seem to disturb it, though, so I figured it was sleeping.

Well, apparently it wasn’t sleeping.

It was giving birth.

When going by this evening, I startled Poirot, and her new grublings!

It appears she has three. A white and black, a black with some white on the belly, and one that looks almost all white, but possibly with some cream patches, like Ghosty was when she was tiny.

After I was done putting the cap back on the ejector, I saw that Poirot was comfortably nursing, so I got a can of wet cat food for her. She is one of the more feral cats and doesn’t let us go near her, so I put it into a wider container, so I wouldn’t have to get too close for her comfort. She did start to get up, babies suddenly disturbed from nursing, and looked ready to either run away or go on the defense, but that gave me space to put the container into the cat bed with her.

I then stood guard to make sure no other cats went after her food while she was eating.

She must have been very hungry, because she ate the entire can and was licking the bowl clean before I could finally reach in and move it away.

We’re supposed to have some very cold nights coming up, so I’m hoping to perhaps move her and her babies into the cat cage.

While standing guard, I was hearing some maternal noises behind me. It was the white and grey mama.

She was trying to lure Eyelet away. Probably to wherever she has her third kitten hidden. I tried to discourage this and kept putting Eyelet back in the sun room. If she gets them away from the sun room, they won’t be getting their wet cat food anymore, and we won’t be able to socialize them. Well, Eyelet is quite happy with human attention. He brother is not!

Oh! I just thought of a good name for feisty brother!

Grommet!

Anyhow, I definitely would like to get them socialized, so they can be adopted out.

I’ve talked to the Cat Lady. This will be her last summer working with rescue. It has been taking a toll on her health, and she needs to back off. It’s a real struggle for her, as she’s been doing this since her teens, and she feels like she hasn’t made a difference. She says she will get three spays and a neuter for us over the summer, before she stops entirely. She also gave me the name of a no-kill rescue in the city she trusts that might be able to help out. This would get us on a wait list, but if we work on socializing the kittens, they might be able to have room to take them in for adoption by the time they are old enough to wean. So that’s a call I need to make, tomorrow.

Anyhow, finding Poirot just after she gave birth was a surprise. I suspected she was pregnant; the only reason we realized she was female was because I saw one of the other cats having his way with her. She didn’t look pregnant, though! She’s a fluffy cat, but not THAT fluffy, that we couldn’t see. I’ve even been looking at her, any time I’ve spotted her in the last while, trying to see if she was looking rounder or not, and deciding, not. Now she’s got three babies!

Meanwhile, I’ve moved the trap closer to the kibble house. I’ve even seen cats lounging in it – usually Syndol, who is already done! Now that it’s closer, and the overnight temps are warmer, I want to actually set the trap and see who we catch that isn’t already fixed. Tomorrow is Monday, so if we do one, Wednesday is the earliest we could get a cat to the clinic – if they can take us in on such short notice – because my daughter and I have medical appointments on Tuesday.

Here’s hoping!

The Re-Farmer

Oops!

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He meant well…

😄

Okay, a bit of a refresher on this one, regarding our septic pump emergency diverter set up, outside.

The end of the diverter pipe sticks through a hole in the wall by about a foot; maybe a bit more. I never really looked closely before it was covered. The hole itself is less than foot above the ground.

My brother found a couple of 10′ lengths of white, 4″ PVC pipe that fit together. This was set over the diverter pipe to direct the flow away from the house. We set a brick under the 4″, to raise it and hold it up against the diverter, with the edge right up against the wall of the house. We used what we could find to put under the 20′ of pipe so that it wouldn’t bow along its length, while maintaining a downward slope. The very end of the pipe was on a brick to keep it off the ground, so there would be no chance of it freezing closed. Later, I wrapped insulating material around the pipe at the house end, and where it had contact with supports, to further protect the pipe and ensure nothing could freeze in there.

This set up had the effluent drain away from the house, but not that far. With the lay of the land, the water would drain over the frozen ground, towards the corner of the old kitchen garden and pool there.

In the fall, my brother had brought a 6″ black flexible pipe that’s about 50′ long. This was to use on the diverter to direct the flow into the trees, while the ejector was being replaced. We ended up never needing to use it, and I eventually took it to the barn for storage, along with the rest of my brother’s stuff.

When the ejector froze and we set up the rigid PVC pipe for the emergency diverter, I brought out the flexible pipe again, just in case. There was too much snow on the ground to do anything with it, yet. Eventually, I dug a trench in the snow, brought a wide board that had been found and was being stored in the garage to use as a supportive ramp, and set the flexible pipe (I supposed I should be calling it a hose, not a pipe, but whatever…) over more than a foot of the rigid pipe’s end. This is what the end result was like.

I pushed the insulating material back quite a bit to fit the hose on. The ramp is on the brick that had been supporting the end of the pipe, so the top of the ramp is just a bit past the end of the rigid pipe. I’d brought another brick along, expecting to need it to keep the board from bowing, but ended up not needing it. Instead, I set it hear the hose/pipe connection, on the side where it looked most likely to be pushed off the ramp by a cat or racoon or something.

In the second picture, you can see the rest of the hose snaking its way down the snow trench. The effluent could now drain well away from the house.

There were a couple of problems with this.

The main one is that, while it slopes away from the house AT the house, the ground is not level.

At all.

What I would regularly do during my morning rounds was check on the pipe, to make sure it was still tight against the house. I would then check along the hose a few feet with my foot until I could feel the weight of water inside. From just above there, I would use my foot and drag it along, under the hose, to slowly work the fluid to the end. I could sometimes hear ice breaking up and moving along inside, too, and much of the ice would come out the end, too. I usually did this at least twice, sometimes three times. Some mornings, however, were too cold. The warmth of water flowing through the hose, as well as the black plastic heating up in the sun, melted the snow in the trench down to the ground. When it got cold enough, the hose would be frozen to the ground. I didn’t want to mess with it and risk cracking the plastic, so on those days, I’d just leave it. With the hose being 6″ in diameter, I really didn’t need to drain it at all, as there was no way the ice could build up enough in there to block it completely.

Using my foot to drain the hose, however, allowed me to identify two lower spots where more water, slush and ice would collect. After hunting around, I ended up bringing over the covers for a couple of crane crates my brother gave me. The crates have been converted to wall shelves in the garage, and I meant to attach the lids with hinges in such a way that they would swing down and could be used as surfaces. Instead, I have put them under the hose over these low spots. They will get too damaged to use as I intended by the time we’re done using this set up, but this is needed more.

The other issue I realized is a combination of two problems.

One, by the end of the hose, the ground starts to slop upwards again. Enough that some of the effluent would actually flow back down the outside of the hose, rather than all of it flowing away.

Two, the very end of the hose has a curl to it, and it was curling upwards. Water could still flow through, but once the pump stopped, the hose could never fully drain, so there was always a layer of water in the bottom of the hose, even on the more level ground.

There were two possible solutions to this. The easiest was to just rotate the entire hose, so that the end would curl downwards instead of upwards. So I tried that.

I call attention back to that second picture. You see how the hose snakes slightly from side to side?

Well, those bends in the hose stay, even after being rotated. So instead of side to side wiggles, there were up and down humps.

I rotated it back and left it. The side to side wiggles are at least flat on the ground!

The other possible solution was to use something to straighten that curled end. The easiest thing would be to put something long inside, heavy enough to hold the curl down. That was not really an option, though, as anything inside the hose would obstruct the flow of effluent and create a surface for it to freeze around, among other things.

The other way to do it would be to weight it down on the outside. Being a round hose, though, it’s not like I could just put something on top of it; it would just fall off. I needed something that was large enough and shaped so it could fit around the hose, heavy enough to hold it in place and stable enough to not be easily knocked over.

I had yet to find anything that fit the bill, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. Water was flowing through well, and there was no change that enough water would be stuck in the pipe as to freeze and block it completely.

What I hadn’t thought to do was tell my brother these details. It seemed inconsequential.

Yesterday, before we tested the new bypass valve, my brother had gone out to make sure the pipe was still tight against the house. When he came back, he told me he added more support to it, so that the diverter pipe was against the bottom of the larger pipe, not the top.

He then mentioned that the end of the hose was curled upwards. I told him, yes, I had noticed it was.

Then he told me he “fixed” it by carefully rotating the entire pipe.

I told him I’d tried that, but it left me with raised sections of hose where it bends. He concurred with that and said that it was warm enough for that not to be a problem.

Which lead me to believe that the “humps” created by the side to side wiggles in the hose had flattened themselves out. I was surprised by this, because it was still pretty chilly out there, but that black plastic does still heat up in the sun quite a bit. Especially when it’s protected from the wind, like the hose is protected by the walls of the snow trench it runs through.

Then I forgot about it, as we got busy testing the new bypass valve.

Until this morning.

I’d heard the septic pump go off during the night, so when I was doing my morning rounds, I knew it would be a while before it went off again. Still, I made sure to check at various key points, and everything seemed fine.

There was a “hump” in the hose near the end, though.

When I went to try and drag my foot under the hose to see if it needed to be drained (with the temperatures last night, I expected anything in there to be frozen), it wouldn’t move…

… and not because it was frozen to the ground.

It was heavy with ice inside.

I checked around and, as far as I could tell, the last time the pump drained the tank, it did flow out the end, like it is supposed to.

Sort of.

Once the pump stopped, any water that couldn’t make it over that hump just pooled in the hose and froze during the night.

The question was, how full was it? Was that hump high enough that the backed up water filled it completely? I honestly couldn’t tell.

I did have to flatten that hump, though.

After doing some digging around, I eventually found something in the side of the garage we store our lawn mowers and snow blowers in. It was a piece of metal that used to be part of a fluorescent light fixture. It was about 3′ long and shaped to fit around fluorescent bulbs, in angles, not a curve.

It was the best I could find.

I took it over to the end of the hose and, after flattening it a bit, could set it over the humped part. I’d brought a brick over to weight it down, and there was another brick my brother had brought over to set under and support the hose, but the two together were not heavy enough to flatten the hump, so I went and got a flattish rock from by the house that we’ve been using to weigh things down, as needed. While I had flattened the metal piece enough to fit over the hose, it still took some doing to get the weights on it and stay there.

I knew the set up would fall off easily, but as long as it held while water was flowing through, that would be fine.

I then had to wait inside until I heard the pump go off again.

When I did hear it go off, I went to my window to check but, while I can see the far end of the hose, I can’t see if anything is coming out of it. So I opened my window to listen.

I heard splashing sounds, near the house.

Dang.

Of course, the pump shut itself off before I could even get my boots on, but I was soon outside to see what I could see.

Thankfully, the splashing was NOT coming from the pipe where it butts up against the house.

It WAS coming from where I thought was most likely. Where the hose goes over the pipe. Effluent had backed up the ramp until it was coming out the space between the 4″ pipe and the inside of the 6″ hose.

I checked the other end, and it was completely dry. Nothing made it out the other end.

The first thing to do was to get as much water out of the hose as I could. For that, I lifted the hose at the end of the ramp and work my way up, so it could flow out where the water had been draining while the pipe was running. I had to do that a few times before I was satisfied I’d got most of it out.

I then had to do the same thing, in the other direction. No dragging my foot under the hose this time, either. I had to physically lift the hose with my hands and slowly work my way to the end.

Of course, the weights on the hump fell off long before I reached it.

On the plus side, water started flowing out the end well before I reached it, too, which means it wasn’t completely frozen closed.

All the way along the hose, I could feel ice and slush moving around. If that hump had been just a touch lower, water would have been able to get through to the end, I’m sure.

Once I got to the end, I made sure to lift it enough to get a good amount of ice out.

Then I went back and did it again.

It could probably have used a third time, but lifting that slush filled hose while bent over and trying to walk was NOT good for my back. I wasn’t going to risk injuring myself, when I could tell that water would flow through.

The first photo above shows where the water was coming out from the top of the black hose, then draining down towards the corner of the old kitchen garden. You can even see that the water is still flowing over the frozen ground.

I did make a slight attempt to rotate the hose back again, but it’s still too full of slush to bother. Instead, I put the metal piece back and weighed it down again. I have up trying to put the bricks right on top, as they just kept falling off again, so I set them on the sides. The rock was staying on top well enough, at least. The main thing is that the hump is flattened.

You can also see the larger ice chunks I got out of the hose.

Now that it’s weighted down, when the pump turns on again, the relatively warm water should actually help melt and clear away some of the slush inside the hose, opening it up more. It should not back up the ramp to the top of the hose again.

It’ll take a few showers, much washing of dishes and flushing of toilets before the pump is triggered again, though!

Meanwhile, the day continues to warm up, which will also help. Right now, we are up to -9C/16F, but the “real feel” is -3C/27F. Our high of the day is supposed to be -6C/21F. The 10 day forecast shows we’ll have a couple more days – not consecutive – with highs below freezing, then we’ll be going above freezing and staying there. Looking at the monthly forecast, we are expecting to get as warm as 8C/46F before the end of the month. There are supposed to be a couple daytime highs just dipping below freezing in the first couple of days of April, and then that’s it. Daytime highs are supposed to remain above freezing from then on. We’re even seeing highs of 17C/63F predicted for the middle of April, but of course, that far ahead, the forecast will change many times.

I’ve updated my brother about the situation with the hose outside, of course. As we were talking, he told me he’d been thinking about that ejector situation. His thought is that, with how saturated the ground became, because of the leaking old ejector, the ground froze far deeper than normal. Which is certainly possible in an area what was freshly excavated. There’s no way to know until it thaws, though. For that to happen, though, our overnight lows need to stay consistently above freezing for quite a while, for it to thaw out that far down. Unless we get an unusually warm spring, we’re looking at the end of May or into June.

Bypass installed!

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Have I mentioned, my brother is the best?

Today, he worked on our septic plumbing again. This after already spending a couple of hours outside, doing things among their stored items, and being sick, too!

A few days ago, they’d gone out for dinner and he’d ordered a “Canadian burger”. Yeah, one of those virtue signaling things so many places have been doing, suddenly pretending to be patriotic because our government and media have told us to hate the US right now. Just a few years ago, the same people were calling Canadians who flew the flag and displayed patriotism racists and Nazis and white supremacists, just like Americans – or at least the Americans they tell use to hate. People were arrested for flying Canadian flags, banned from businesses, their property vandalized and even physically assaulted. Now, suddenly “American style patriotism” is no longer bad. Funny how easily people can spin on a dime and not see their own double standards.

Ironically, the restaurant was a US franchise.

Anyhow, the burger made him incredibly ill. He thinks the beef wasn’t fully cooked and he was hit with e. coli. He said he was still operating at only about 80%.

His 80% is more than a lot of people’s 100%, though! The guy is amazing. I don’t know how he does it!

I had other things to get done before I went back to working on the basement, so I didn’t get to help or watch while he figured out how to install the new bypass. I cleared another section in the new basement enough to mop it, then joined him after I set the blower up to dry the concrete floor. By that, he was pretty much done and ready to start testing. He was quite happy that it worked out much easier than he expected.

This is what he installed.

The pipe to the ejector now has the T insert in it. Under normal circumstances, effluent would just go straight through this pipe and to the ejector, out by the barn.

In the next photo, you can see the ball valve in the emergency diverter pipe, in the open position.

I was really curious how he would work with that diverter pipe. It had a very strong curve to it, in the wrong direction! What he ended up doing was first, rotating it so that the curve was in the other direction. Then he used his heat gun on a substantial section of it, until he could straighten it out enough that it could be attached to the T. He had to stand there and hold it straight until the pipe cooled enough to hold its new shape.

Of course, he had to cut sections out of both pipes to install the T and the ball valve.

While this was being worked on, the family was concerned about using the water. The septic pump was turned off while he worked, of course, but it had gone off not very long before he started, so there wouldn’t have been very much water in the greywater side of the tank. Any time I got a message, asking if it was okay to flush or shower or whatever, I encouraged them to use plenty of water, so we could have something to test with!

Before testing it, my brother went outside to check the diverter at the house end to make sure nothing got knocked askew while he was manipulating the pipe around. Once that was done and he was back inside, he turned the pump on manually – an easy thing to do, thanks to the second switch he installed for that! – and checked for leaks. There was a tiny leak at the elbow before it goes out of the house, so he tightened the screw clamp and added a second one, just to be safe. There was no leak when he turned the pump on again.

So we knew that effluent was flowing through the open ball valve in the diverter. We could see in the filter that water was flowing, and we could hear it, too.

We didn’t test for long, though, as we didn’t want to actually empty the tank.

The next test was with the valve closed. We were both watching that filter closely and, while there was movement, it didn’t look like it was flowing. The only way to know for sure, though, was for one of us to go to the ejector, while the other turned the pump back on.

My brother went to the ejector, then video called me on Facebook messenger, so we could see and show each other what was going on. Once he gave the go ahead, I closed the ball valve again and turned the pump on.

Nothing happened.

No flow out the ejector.

We waited a while to be sure, before I shut off the pump, then opened the ball valve again.

Which is just awesome. Without the valve, the only way to test if the ejector is working would require switching pipes – then switching back again when the test failed. Not only is that messy, but every time that is done, there is a risk of breaking something.

What this means is that the emergency diverter is now a permanent set up. Once the ejector is working again, we can close the valve, but can be ready to simply open it again, if we have more problems in the future.

We won’t be able to do anything with the ejector until things warm up a lot more. My brother thinks it’s most likely still frozen at the bottom. I think there’s something blocking the venturi valve. Worst case scenario, the pipe from the house itself is clogged, somewhere. That’s more than 300 feet of pipe, and a clog could be anywhere in there!

Either way, we won’t be able to find out until spring thaw.

Until then, the emergency diverter is our life saver!

Once the bypass valve was installed and tested, my brother headed out for home, with plans to visit our mother along the way – and bring her a hot supper to share. No meals on wheels on the weekend, so I’m sure she would appreciate it. I just hope she treats my brother well this visit. She’s really been on about how he was “keeping secrets” from her because they were so quiet about selling their acreage and moving, even though she knew that was why they brought their equipment here to the farm. I think she even forgot that they’d done that. Ah, well. I’ll find out later tonight!

I am quite pleased with how things have gone today. While I don’t have my seed starting set up in the basement yet – quite a bit more work will need to be done down there, still – I did get good progress down there, and was able to reclaim my work station. My brother got the bypass valve installed and, while we were doing that, my daughter was spring cleaning in the kitchen and dining room. She was able to get all the cat hair off the walls, ceiling, cupboard doors, the ceiling fan, pictures on the walls, curtain rods, etc. That alone was a HUGE job. With so many cats, of course there’s cat fur everywhere, but when it sticks to the walls and anything on them, it doesn’t want to come off! It won’t even vacuum off. She had to get right in there and scrub. She did an amazing job, though by the end of it, she was really needing painkillers!

So was I, by the end of it all. I haven’t gone up and down the stairs so many times in one day since we cleared and cleaned out the basements. Yes, I took my prescription painkillers in the morning, but even those can only deal with so much, and I can’t take more during the day, since I save my second allowable dose before bed. Pain is more of a problem when I’m lying down and trying to sleep than during the day. I can put up with it more when I’m up and about. Once I’m in bed, it keeps me from getting sleep. I did take some acetaminophen, though, to help take the edge off, at least.

I have a few last things to do in the basement before I call it for the day. Tomorrow is Sunday, which I try to keep as a day of rest. This will make sure I don’t over do it and put myself out of commission for days. As long as we get something set up for seed starts within the next week, it should be good. Most, if not all, of the seeds I ordered should be in by then.

From there, it’s the fun part: going through all the seeds and choosing which ones to start and when!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and diverting the diverter

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

We’re a bit cooler this morning, though we were above freezing for most of the night. As I write this, we’ve continued to cool down to -9C/16F, though our high of the day is expected to be -4C/25F. We’re expected to get a bit of snow in the afternoon. Tomorrow is supposed to have a high of -11C/12F, and then we’re supposed to start warming up again.

All in all, some excellent February temperatures, making my morning rounds much more pleasant!

Pleasant for the yard cats, too.

After topping up the heated water bowl, Kohl came over, wanting pets. Once I started petting her, the tabby pushed his way through, then Stinky jumped through the window and pushed them both away!

It’s not easy to pet three cats with one hand, at the same time. 😄

Sadly, I could not get close to this one, for pets.

This little… dude? … was tucked under a chair we keep by the door. I like to leave some food for the shier cats on the landing under our door, where they can be on the mat to eat, rather than the cold concrete.

I want to snuggle that baby.

I didn’t get snuggles, but I did get to pet this lady!

Adam allowed pets!!

Only because she was eating on the cat house roof. I still can’t walk up to her, though once in a rare while, if she’s loafed in one of the platform beds in the sun room, she does let me come close enough to pet her. Very rarely.

As things have warmed up, the excess kibble that was in all the trays is finally being eaten. On the cat house roof, an insane amount of kibble was uncovered as the snow melted. The kibble was softened by the melting snow, then froze solid, so they can’t eat it. It seems strange to be dumping fresh, not-frozen kibble on the cat house roof when there are literally piles of kibble on either side!

Today, I continued something I started yesterday. Before we headed to the city, I started getting the large, flexible hose my brother brought for the emergency diverter. When he’s used the emergency diverter before, this was the hose he used to divert the greywater into the trees. That was in the summer, though.

This winter, he had found a couple of length of 4″ PVC pipe that was set up instead. It works great, but the effluent isn’t being drained very far from the house. The slope of the land has it draining towards a corner of the old kitchen garden’s retaining wall. With the frozen ground, it spreads pretty far, so there’s quite a lot of ice building up under the snow.

The 6″ flexible pipe was already brought out and half buried in the snow. With the sunny warm days we’ve been having the black plastic didn’t take long to get exposed.

Yesterday, I shoveled out a trench in the snow along the pipe, so that I could pull the whole thing closer to the rigid pipe the diverter is draining through. The flexible pipe would later be laid out in the trench, after it was attached to the end of the rigid pipe, but not quite yet.

The closer I got to the house, the more I had to use the ice chipper to break up the ice that had built up under the snow as best I could. With the melting and thawing we’ve had lately, the snow has a thick, hard crust on top. I used that to build a sort of wall to one side, so that the next time the pump started running, more grey water would go towards the trench and thaw out the ice a bit, before it melted through the wall of snow and drained towards the corner of the garden again. With the snow dug out to ground level for most of the trench, it would also thaw out faster once we got any sunshine.

That is how I left it, so nature could do its thing for me, until this morning.

The main thing about the flexible hose is that water might puddle in parts of it and freeze it closed. It needed to have support where it joined with the rigid pipe, in particular. So this morning, I dragged out a board from the garage. It had been uncovered among the stuff in the barn, while my brother was bringing his own stuff in, and I snagged it to use somehow in the summer.

Well, I have a use for it now.

After using the ice chipper a bit more – yes, the effluent did actually soften and thaw things about a bit, before melting through the snow all, so that actually worked – I set up the board.

Originally, I was going to set it up in front of the end of the rigid pipe and support it with a brick at that end, to form a sort of ramp for the flexible pipe. To put the flexible pipe on, though, I had to push back the insulation I’d wrapped around the end, where it rested atop another brick to keep it off the ground. In the end, I was able to put the board under the brick that was already there, and maintain the slope of the rigid pipe.

In the first picture, you can see how the board is set up now. The flexible pipe fits nicely over the 4″ pipe, and I’ve got a foot or so of the rigid pipe in there. I pushed the flexible pipe up to where I’d pushed back the wrapped insulation, which will cover what little gap there is. I ended up setting the brick i no longer needed against one side, to hold it in place, as the direction changes slightly.

You can see Syndol was quite interested in what I was doing! Out of frame, on the other side, Judgement was also watching… and judging!

The second image shows the pipe running down the trench in the snow.

I will leave it like this for now, to allow the relatively warm water to flow through it a few times, and for any sun we get (no sun likely, today!) to warm up the black plastic. In a day or two, I will work my way along the flexible pipe to straighten it out more, if necessary, and move snow against it to hold it in place. The very end is a bit of a potential problem, as it has a bit of a curl to it that I can’t do anything about. Of course, it curls upwards. There’s no way to shift the pipe around to have it curl down, instead. The pipe is just too stiff with cold and won’t straighten out, and I don’t want to crack it, trying. We’ll just have to keep a close eye on it. With temperatures now warming up as we head towards spring, there is very little concern that it would freeze closed completely. Any ice that does form would likely be melted away by the next flow was water.

The pump hasn’t been triggered since before the flexible hose has been added, so I likely won’t be able to see how it’s working for some time. The handy thing is that I will be able to see the end of the flexible pipe easily from my window.

I don’t foresee any problems and, now that I’ve diverted the diverter, it will be good to have the effluent get drained so much further from the house.

The Re-Farmer

Here we go again, again!… again

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Okay, first things first.

Yes!!! We can use our plumbing again!

But no, the problem has not been fixed. In fact, it hasn’t even been identified.

When my brother got here, the first thing we did was see if the problem was with the pump itself.

I have learned a lot about this pump today!

The back valve was removed, and it was fine. Just a bit of gunk that would not have affected how it worked.

Since it was off anyhow, I gave it a thorough cleaning, along with the length of pipe and elbow that would be reattached to it.

From what we could see inside the back valve’s opening, the disc-type thing that would spin was also clear.

The pump has clean out valves, though. I had no idea what they were and couldn’t even see one of them without having to look around the outflow pipe from the filter. That was the next thing to check. Those have probably never been opened before, but my brother managed it. He took the bottom one out first, which was the drain, which is when we got a real hands on idea of just how much water is in that pump’s cannister section!

Trying to see into those openings was not easy. My brother got me to turn the pump’s switch on and off quickly, just so he could see things turning inside, using his phone as a flashlight. Everything looked fine. He did some cleaning around the thread and even poked around with a wire, but it was not all that gunky, either.

With everything checked and cleared, we tried again.

The pump ran, but no change. No water would flow.

Okay, maybe we just needed to prime the pump.

I had no idea there was a valve for that. As with the cleanout valves, it took a lot to get it open. Once it was, we used the hose I keep hooked up to the old laundry’s cold water tap all the time, because it’s just so handy. Once it was full, he closed it up again (making sure to Teflon tape everything, along the way), and we tested it again.

Nothing. No flow at all. The only change I could tell was that, with everything all nice and clean, the motor was running a bit quieter.

Okay, the pump seemed to be working. Could it be that something was blocking the tank’s outflow pipe?

There was only one thing left to do.

Put the emergency diverter back on.

If it worked after that, then we knew the problem was not at the house end.

Thankfully, when we switched it out before, I told my brother to just leave it aside. I would put it away in the spring, and then reseal the hole in the wall that it runs through. Which meant it was just a matter of switching pipes.

The outflow pipe from the pump to the ejector, however, always has water in it. It’s just a gravity thing. So we got a bucket handy before starting to take it off. As soon as my brother wrestled it loose, I got the bucket under it, so we did manage to catch most of it, but not all!

Yeah. I got splashed.

That out and set aside, the diverter was put back on. After double and triple checking that every thing was tight, we tried again.

Yes!!! It worked! Finally, the septic tank was draining!

My brother and I headed outside to check the other end, while my daughter stayed to monitor the pump. It emptied the tank and shut itself off before my brother and I could get to where it drains into!

Which means that the problem is somewhere from the house to the ejector.

We went to check the ejector.

The heat tape was not warm, but it has a regulator and will shut itself off based on temperature. Today has been a warm day, and is still warming up (as I write this, I see we just reached 0C/32F), so that makes sense. The extension cord’s plug has an indicator light on it, so we could see that it had power. Everything looked fine.

That doesn’t mean it’s not the ejector, though. It just means, we know it’s not frozen.

What it could be is that there is gunk in the venturi valve that finally just blocked the whole thing. The only way to know for sure is to pull it out. Which would require removing the heat tape, unscrewing the elbow at the top, unscrewing the cap, and removing both, then very carefully pulling the venturi pipe out of the stand pipe, so we can see the valve at the bottom.

Which we will NOT do until spring.

Yup. We’re on the emergency diverter for the rest of the winter, at least.

If it’s not the venturi valve being blocked, then it’s the pipe itself. A build up of crud inside the pipe could have come loose or something and blocked it entirely. Based on how well the water flowed out of the ejector after we got it thawed out and hooked up again, the pipe was running pretty clear. The only real hint that there was a problem was that it took longer for the pump to empty the tank than it did before.

There is nothing we can do about it until the ground thaws out.

Once the diverter was set up and working, my brother was prepared for another job.

Installing the power diverter switch.

The pump could be turned on and off using what is basically a light switch on the wall. Under normal circumstances this is in the “on” position at all times. The pump itself is triggered by the float and pill switch, inside the tank.

Sometimes, however, there is a need to check the pump, when the tank is not full enough to trigger it on. With all the septic problems we’ve been having, we needed to be able to turn it on manually, from inside the basement. The alternative would be to open up the septic can and use something long enough to catch the cable and raise the float. That’s something we want to avoid doing even in the summer. Not a chance, in the winter!

My brother set up a couple of wires set up outside the switch box that would allow us to turn it on manually. The pump’s switch would be turned off, the wires outside the box would be attached to each other, the switched turned on again, and the pump would run. When we were done testing it, we’d turn off the switch, undo the wires, cover and tuck them away again, then turn the switch back on so the pump could be triggered by the float again.

Well, not anymore.

This is how it was set up before.

You can see the black covered wires from the pill switch coming up from below and into the box. The two wires sticking out the side from the same opening were the ones that could be joined to turn the pump on manually.

There was no schematic, so my brother had to be particularly careful in figuring out what was what. There were the wires from the breaker box (which was off, of course), the wires from the pill switch, the wires from the motor, the ground wires, and the manual diverter wires that all had to be kept track of!

He installed a new box, got all the wired sort out and attached to new switched, and put it all together, with one special feature, which you can see by clicking through to the next image (which Instagram, once again, messed with, so it’s off to once side instead of centred. *sigh*).

The manual switch has a safety cover on it, so that there is on way it can be turned on by accident!

Then he left the blue protective film on more me, because I commented on how I liked the blue colour. 😄

Of course, once everything was together – and before it was all closed up – the breaker was turned on and it was tested. I even made sure to get video of him explaining the which wires were which, so we can refer to it in the future, if need be.

My brother is so awesome. I don’t know what we would do without him! It even came up in our conversation today; my brother is the last living person who really knows this place. Another reason why I try to document everything, and learn as much as I can from him!!!

Once he was done with all this and his tools were safely put away and to the side, I did the floor pipe maintenance thing with the hose, showing him where I was hitting bottlenecks – except the second bottleneck wasn’t there! Or, at least, the hose passed through the opening just right, because he was there. 😄

Once that was done, I helped him haul all his tool boxes, bins and bags up and to his vehicle while my daughter, sweetheart that she is, took care of washing and disinfecting the floor. Mostly with one arm, since her ganglion is just not going away this time.

My brother may have finished up in the basement, but not with here! After loading up his car again, he went on to do things in their various storage areas for a couple more hours! Hopefully, the roads will be gone. We have just reached our high of the day; 2C/36F and are starting to get a bit of mixed rain and snow. We’re supposed to stay at this temperature through to tomorrow, even overnight.

Meanwhile, one of the first things I did was call dibs on the shower, after having been splashed while switching out that pipe. The honeypot has been put away, and we no longer have to use basins and buckets to keep water from draining into the full septic tank.

It feels so good to be able to shower again!

And use a flushing toilet instead of the honeypot.

Ah, the things we put up with to live here! 😄😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Well, that didn’t turn out as planned

/ Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

We’re looking at a gorgeous day today. Bright and sunny, with an expected high of -5C/23F. Which we are as I write this, shortly past 2pm, with a “feels like” of -1C/30F

My one outing planned for the day was a trip to the dump, which is open long hours on Saturdays. I was up at my usual time, which is when all the cats seem to want to use all the litter boxes at the same time, and start getting antsy for the kibble. I topped up their bowls and closed up my door so Butterscotch could use the litter without being harassed by other cats, then tried to get a bit more sleep before heading outside to feed the yard cats, then load the truck.

Butterscotch, however, decided she really liked having the room to herself (Freya was there, but she just chills on my bed after she’s dong eating) and was racing all over, before finally settling down on the cat shelf by the ceiling.

She may have settled, but quite did not happen. Instead, I got a phone call.

It was home care, letting me know there wasn’t anyone available to do my mother’s med assist this morning.

So I quickly got up, updated the family, then called my mother to let her know there was no one available this morning, and that I would be there within the hour.

My mother is convinced that no one is showing up because they want to “fix her” – meaning, keep her from getting care and med assists, so that she would die. I told her, they are short staffed. They’re always shorted staffed. There could be many reasons no one was available.

She refuses to believe that. 🫤

After reassuring her that I would be there to give her her pills, I took care of the outside cats then headed out.

The outside cats were loving the relatively mild morning! Rolando Moon (in the second photo) was just rolling in the snow.

I noticed something about the kids in the isolation shelter, though.

One was missing!

No Grink!

I eventually found him, eating in the kibble house. It’s the first time I’ve seen him out of the isolation shelter in weeks!

Anyhow…

I had reached my mother’s town and was about to turn down her street when my phone started ringing. I don’t have hands free, so I left it to ring, but I immediately thought that it was home care again. As I got to her building and parked in my usual spot, there was one other vehicle there. Again, I felt sure this was home care, and that they’d found someone to do my mother’s meds.

After I parked, I checked my phone but did not recognize the number. I was about to listen to the voice mail message when a woman with a clip board came out from the car.

Yup. She was from home care, and she had just called me, hoping to catch me before I left, to say my mother’s med assist was done. We have never met in person before, but she said that when she saw my truck turn onto the road, she just knew it was me!

She updated me on how things went with my mother. The person who was scheduled to visit my mother this morning had called in sick. The person I was talking to was the weekend schedule coordinator, and she had tried to find another home care worker to visit my mom. Unfortunately, none of them would have had the combination for the lock box in their sheets, so she did it herself! She said she would be back to see my mother again, for her other med assists.

Since I was there anyhow, I went in to see how my mother was doing.

She was complaining, so she was doing well. 😄

She was making a big deal over my having to drive all that way, and how it was such a bother, etc. etc. I told her, this is my job, and I’m happy to do it! Moving out here was not just about taking care of the property, but to be close enough to help her when she needed it, since my other siblings live so much further, and have jobs. Mostly, though, she was demanding my brother come out at the drop of a hat, even though he lived the furthest. Especially after the title of the property was turned over to him, so that it would no longer be in the will, due to the antics of our vandal. If it were my brother who had driven all this way out, she wouldn’t have had any such feelings. If anything, she would complain that he didn’t do enough. Which is how she behaved before we moved out here, and he did come out more often.

While I was talking to her, I noticed her pulse oximeter was still on her table. I’m actually surprised she hadn’t hidden it away. So I got her to sit back and relax while I set it up.

Her heart rate and O2 levels are better than mine!

Then I asked her if there was anything I could help her with, such as getting dressed for the day or empty her commode. She said no, but that’s when I found out her morning visits have not been going this. They were supposed to be scheduled extra time for this, and it sounds like this hasn’t happened.

I’m going to have to call the case coordinator back and bring that up. I’m also going to have to bring up another issue…

As my mother was griping about home care not making it in (no sympathy at all that someone had called in sick, nor appreciation that someone else went out of her way to get to my mother and give her her med assist) and it’s such a bother for me to drive aaaaalllll that way (which is about half the distance my sister would have had to drive, and a quarter of the distance my brother would have had to drive, though neither of them were available)…

It came down to her meds being in a lock box, but if there is an “emergency” like this, she could just take her pills herself…

…

… as she indicated to the top of her fridge, where there is a pharmacy bag with her unopened bubble packs.

The only bubble pack in the lock box is the one that home care aids are actively using, along with their duotang of forms they initial every time they do her meds, and her inhaler.

I suppose it would be a tight fit, but doctor’s orders are, my mother does not have access to her meds, because she messes with them.

I didn’t do anything about it at the time, as it would have brought about a rage reaction, but I did tell her this was not a good thing – and that her continuing to rail about how her medications shouldn’t be in a box, and to leave them on the fridge, and don’t tell anyone they’re up there – we all examples of why she needs to have her medications in a lock box to begin with!

I’ve already updated my brother on that, but will also be talking to the case coordinator about it. It might be having all 4 weeks of bubble packs in the lock box made things a bit tight, but when my brother and his wife brought the new, bigger lock box, everything fit in there just fine. They should never have been taken out. The home care workers had been putting them on the fridge, out of my mother’s reach, before we got the lock box, but apparently, my mother can reach them. If nothing else, she could use her cane to simply knock the bag down.

So… that was a thing.

I asked my mother if there was anything else I could do, and she remembered a couple of things we forgot to put on her shopping list yesterday. So I went to the grocery store to get those for her, as well as a sandwich and a drink for myself. I hadn’t had breakfast yet and was starting to feel ill and dizzy.

That done, and once I was sure nothing else was needed, I headed to the gas station to top up the tank again. Before heading home, I updated the family, adding that I would back the truck up to the house so we could load it for the dump run.

It’s been a while since we’ve done a dump run – there was no way I was going to do it while we were being hit with the worst of the last polar vortex – so there was quite a bit. She moved the bags into the sun room for me, then I took them to the truck. She can only use one arm for this, since her ganglion is still really painful. Once the regular garbage and recycling was loaded, we had the very careful job of loading the bags from the honeypot. It’s been warm enough, only one of them was partially frozen. Even with using the stove pellets to absorb liquid, some of them definitely got extra care in loading! With four adults, with always at least one person having digestive issues, it seems, we’ve had to change the bags out quite a bit!

Double bagged, of course.

Once loaded, it was a quick run to the dump and then home. Before I left, though, I had a quick talk with my daughter.

Last night, my husband brought up the idea of going to town to a restaurant, just to have somewhere to use a real toilet again, instead of the honeypot. He would have done right then and there, if it hadn’t already been too late in the day for such a trip. I did, however, go through the budget and crunched some numbers, and found that we could manage it.

So I asked her to bring up with my husband and her sister (who was in bed after her night’s work) about this being an option.

When I got back, we were talking about my taking my husband and younger daughter out for a lunch, then taking my older daughter out for supper, after she’d had her full day’s sleep. My husband, however, had a really bad pain night and was simply not up to it an outing, and asked us to bring something home for him, instead.

So my daughter and I headed out and chose to go to a newer restaurant in town, that is associated with a brewing company. The city we lived in before we moved out here had a HUGE craft brewing community, and my daughters enjoy good beer, so we used to go to these whenever we could. I don’t like beer, myself, but I was willing to taste test theirs. 😄 This is the first time we’ve got to a restaurant/craft brewer since moving out here, so… more than 7 years.

We ended up both getting bison burgers (both skipping the jalapeno and I skipped the tomato). My daughter upgraded to a poutine with hers, while I got the coleslaw instead of regular fried. The burger was really good – and very messy! My daughter really liked her poutine, too. My coleslaw was surprisingly bland, though. It wasn’t bad, by any means. Just not what I expected. Both our meals also came with a couple of spears of pickles, with the cucumbers pickled in their own signature beer brine. My daughter also got a pint of one of their signature brews, which she quite enjoyed.

Once we were done there, we stopped at the DQ to pick up a meal for my husband, then headed home.

For now, I’ve got a bit of a break. I’ll be heading outside again to do the evening kibble and warm water soon. It’s so night out, I might not even bother putting on a jacket! I certainly didn’t wear my down filled parka today.

Then, I intend to wrangle my older daughter out of the house for supper. Knowing her, she will try to refuse. She has barely left the house – even to just go outside in the yard – in years. A down side to living in the boonies. Her work is all digital, so she doesn’t have to go anywhere, and since she works nights and sleeps days, she’s not around to go on trips into town or whatever.

What I really want to do right now, though, is go to bed! I got very little sleep last night, my attempt at sleeping in failed, and instead of just one outing today, I have had three, with one more in the works.

I guess it’s a perk that, with all this extra running around, I get to use public washrooms and eat food other people cooked but, to be honest, I would be just fine staying home. I do want the rest of the family to be able to get out, though. I really wanted to get my husband out. It’s been a rare thing for him to have an outing that doesn’t involve medical appointments!

I really, really hope my brother can get that pump working again, tomorrow. This is the longest we’ve had to use the honeypot, do sponge bathing, etc. yet, and we’ve had all sorts of plumbing problems since moving out here. At least we do have access to hot and cold running water. We just can’t let it go down the drain to the septic tank in any usual amounts.

Ah, well. It is what it is!

The Re-Farmer