snow

Morning critters

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were doing very well, this morning. They both seem to be enjoying their recovery period in the sun room! Nosencrantz wants more attention than Butterscotch, but not enough that I can get a good look to see how the ear mite status is. Butterscotch is still so much calmer now. She’ll come over for pets and I was even able to pick her up this morning, but she will not let me check the surgical site. I’m not about to risk injuring it by forcing her; so as long as there aren’t any concerning warning signs, I figure she’s doing fine. Amazingly, she still has shown no interest in trying to escape the sun room, which is so totally different from the past. Granted, when we were trying to keep her in the sun room for lengths of time before, it was because she was about to have kittens. Once she had them, she was more than content to let Beep Beep parent both litters while she tore her way through the screen on the old door.

If this behavioural change keeps up, Butterscotch may actually be willing to become an indoor cat!

We shall see. After all those years outdoors, it would be nice for her final years to be in comfort and safety.

By the time I’m done taking care of the sun room kitties, there’s usually a crowd outside the door, waiting for their kibble! Chadiccus, however, was much more polite about it and wanting attention before food. :-)

The water in the heated bowl was almost completely gone again, and it had been very full. It does make me wonder what other critters are coming around at night, to drink. The snow around the kibble house and water bowls is too hard packed for tracks. One of these days, it would be nice to have a spare camera set up on the area, just to see what’s going on! :-)

I’ve not been seeing quite as many cats, all at once, of late. I haven’t seen Potato Beetle in a while. Since he came back, he had been more aggressive about being the Alpha male – though he was tackling the females as much as the males. That seemed to end after I found him with that injury above one eye. It was pretty minor and healing up nicely, the last I saw, but it seems that battle lost him his status. I think I might have seen him this morning, but he slunk away before I could get a good look and be sure.

While putting the food and water out, I heard a loud yowling from the outer yard. I’ve heard it before, but when I when to check, I couldn’t see where it was coming from. This time, I saw Creamsicle Baby out by the pump shack. I’m still not sure it was him, as he’s developed a very squeaky little meow. I went to check closer and decided the pump shack door needed to be shoveled out.

This is where the cats usually get in and out of the pump shack. When the driveway was cleared, a pile of snow was made near the pump shack. While it does not block the door, there’s a ridge of snow in front that’s pretty high. With the winds we’ve been having, more snow has drifted in front of the door. The cats are still squeezing their way through, as you can see in the photo above, but I wanted to make it easier for them. It took breaking up a lot of snow with the ice chipper before I could dig a path, but I got it clear.

The door opens inward, so I didn’t have to worry about digging it out too much. Once I got it clear enough, I went in and cleared away some snow that had blown through the hole.

I had a bit of a surprise when I opened the door, though. One of the lights was on! I forgot to shut it off, the last time I was in there. It’s a CFL bulb, not very bright, and not near a window facing the house, so we never saw that it was on. :-D Ah, well. No harm done.

When repairing the south facing window of the pump shack a couple of summers ago, I deliberately left an opening that used to have the chimney from a wood burning stove running through it. The stove is long gone, but with a pile of tires on the outside, and various junk on the inside, it’s a way for the cats to get in and out. The shack itself is just a frame with cladding on the outside, and I noticed a new hole in the wall, where some cladding has broken. It’s not visible from the outside, as there are sheets of aluminum against the bottom of the wall on that side.

On our list of things to work on is to fix up the pump shack. The concrete floor is badly cracked up, and the old cladding – which would be quite a bit older than I am – is looking water damaged and has gaps. It would be awesome to turn this building into a little workshop and, of course, we want to get the old well repaired. There is a lot of stuff in there I just don’t know what to do with, including bags of ancient clothing and rolled up awnings stuffed into the rafters, broken furniture, an old fridge that I remember my parents using for cream cans, and even an old, tiny, two burner electric stove sitting in the corner where the wood burning cookstove used to be. That old cookstove was what we used to heat water for baths, before my dad had the well dug next to the house and got running water and an indoor bathroom. If we can fix the well and fix up the pump shack, we could turn it into a summer kitchen for canning.

That would be very handy.

After clearing a cat path to the door, I put feed out for the deer and birds – interrupting two deer that were at the feeding station! I had to interrupt them again, to go switch out the memory cards on the trail cam by the sign.

That location is a real pain to get to in the winter!!! At least I don’t have to switch the cards as often, there. Between the snow and the plow ridges, I’m not at all concerned that our vandal will fight his way over to the sign and try to steal it, like the old one, or damage it.

Not even the deer will go through the area in front of the sign! A nicely plowed road is so much easier. :-D

Coming back to the house, I found these two babies, bellies full and watching the world go by in warmth and comfort!

These cats may be semi-feral, but they do get pampered as much as we can! :-D

Rolando Moon had claimed the prime real estate! She’s such a meany to the other cats, they don’t even try to fight her for this favourite spot.

Gosh, that expression! :-D

While still a bit chilly today, we’re supposed to warm up quite a bit tomorrow – perfect for taking Beep Beep and Fenrir in to the vet. My Weather Network app on my desktop has suddenly gone haywire, so I used the app that came with my computer.

Of course, all the apps are showing something different, since they all seem to be connected to different weather stations, even though they’re all supposed to be for our specific area. This is the only one that is showing us going above freezing, in the long range forecast. Above freezing in the middle of February? Yeah, I’ll take that, thanks. It’ll make things messy, but I’d rather have a nice, slow melt of all this snow, then for things to warm up all at once, later on. With the amount of snow we have this winter, as much as it’s needed, if it melts before the municipalities get a chance to clear the ditches, we’ll get flooding. Where we are doesn’t get too bad anymore. When I was a kid, there were a couple of sections of road that would get washed out every spring. Since then, a network of municipal drainage ditches have been dug through farmers’ fields that have been doing a good job of preventing that, as has taking trees out along the sides of the roads in strategic locations. There are still a couple of spots that are at risk of being washed out, if there is enough snowmelt all at once, but we are able to use alternative routes to avoid them.

If we have a wet enough spring, we might even be able to do a controlled burn in some sections of the outer yard this year. Wouldn’t that be nice!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Seeing those warmer temperatures in the forecast has me looking way too far ahead right now! :-D

The Re-Farmer

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Digging out; not as bad as I thought

/ Re-Farmer / 9 Comments

So the blizzard has passed, and has been replaced with extreme cold warnings. As I write this, we have warmed up to -26C/-15F with a wind chill of -34C/-29F

In our own little front yard microclimate, however, it felt a lot warmer, and the outside cats were out in full force!

A few were holding out for the warm water before coming out, though! :-D

The sun spot at that window must be very pleasant in there. :-)

As for Butterscotch and Nosencrantz, they would not let me take photos! Nosencrantz wouldn’t stop wiggling around, and Butterscotch just moves away. They are eating and drinking just fine, though unfortunately, from the smell I walked into, they are finding somewhere other than the litter box to do their business. *sigh* I’m sure we’ll find all sorts of “surprises” when the sun room gets its spring clean up. The litter box is being used … by one of them, at least.

Once the critters were fed, I headed out to dig us out. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it might be, though. We didn’t have a lot of new snow, which helped. The high winds were mostly moving around existing snow which, with our garage, meant blowing the snow off the roof and dumping it into a drift in front. The van might have been able to go through the drift, if we really had to, but we could not open the doors to the addition my mother’s car is parked in. It has swing doors that need to be replaced. One of them drags on the ground, so that area needs to be cleared a lot more thoroughly, just to open it wide enough for the car to drive through.

The other side of the garage, where the snow blower, lawn mowers and wood chipper is stored, also has swing doors.

We can’t get into there right now.

When our neighbour cleared our driveway, he pushed aside a snow ridge that was creeping in front of the middle section of the garage, where the van needs to get through. Unfortunately, he pushed it too close to the double doors to that side of the garage. There is enough space that we could clear one of the doors, which would allow us to at least get in, but not with our usual snow shovels. They are a strong plastic, but not that strong. We’ll have to tackle the pile with the ice chipper and a steel shovel before the snow can be moved and really, we don’t need to get into there that badly!

Once the front of the garage was clear, I checked out the driveway and was pleasantly surprised. The road itself remained clear enough that it won’t even need to be plowed. The main road would have drifted over, but I’m sure that’s been cleared by now.

The drifting over the end of the driveway wasn’t all that bad. In fact, I could see the tracks of a vehicle using our driveway to turn around. With the walls of snow left by the plows, our driveway is the only one nearby that’s open enough to do that. All the other driveways for about a mile in either direction are into fields, or empty properties, so no one’s keeping them clear.

I did have to dig out the gate. I’d opened it before the blizzard hit, just in case. They weren’t drifted in place too deeply, but the snow was packed so hard, I had to use the ice chipper to break it up, first.

The bottom of the gate is normally about 6-8 inches above the ground, when open.

I was mostly concerned with this side. While swinging it open and closed, we noticed it started to shudder and vibrate. When our vandal busted up the hinge pins, my brother replaced them with pairs of J pins, so that no one could simply use a jack to take the gate off anymore. My concern was that a pin had snapped in the cold. I was able to check the top ones before, but couldn’t see the bottom ones. So this morning, I used the ice chipper and shovel to clear it away to check, and they were fine.

The shudder was also gone when I swung the gate back and forth, so it looks like it was the build up of ice and snow that was causing it.

On this side, I had to dig things out a bit more, just so we could swing it open further – and dig out the little path to the mini solar panel powering some decorative lights we have on the fence. We used to have several strings of white LED Christmas lights all along that fence, but they got very weathered and I finally just took them off. At some point, we want to have lights along the fence line again, but until then, the mini string of solar powered LED lights will go. The solar panel just needs to be kept clear of snow, and it’s resting on the hub of that wagon wheel in the fence.

Interestingly, the hardest area to dig out was the path to the trail cam. Talk about hard packed! I had to use the ice chipper on almost the entire path. But I got to it, and was able to switch out the memory card – and got to see the vehicle that used our driveway to turn around it! :-D I don’t know who it is, but it’s a truck I see regularly, and I am jealous of the plow attachment. ;-)

On my “when we win the lottery” shopping list is either a RAM 1500 or an F150 (the top two highest rated trucks for winter driving, last I looked) with a plow attachment.

I should probably buy a ticket… ;-)

So we are now cleared out enough to get the van out of the garage and drive. We’re expecting a delivery from the pharmacy today, so the gates are being left open. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of our vandal in the trail cam files, so it looks like he’s actually avoiding using the roads past us entirely. Which is not something I intended as a condition, as that’s just not realistic in our area, but who knows what the judge or his lawyer managed to drum into him! Anyhow, between the court order, and the weather conditions, I think we’re okay to leave the gate open for a while, though I’d rather never have to close it at all.

The paths around the yard are pretty filled in. I’m leaving that job for my daughters to do, later!

For now, I’m going to call our mechanic back and book that oil change again!

The Re-Farmer

A new path, and more convoy talk

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

The wind changed direction this afternoon, so I took advantage of it and headed outside to shovel the path to the compost ring that was completely filled in. Knowing we would be getting a delivery from the pharmacy this evening, I made sure to unlock the gate, first. The driver always calls when he’s close so we can unlock the gate, but I knew I would still be outside when he did.

Once I got the path to the compost ring clear, I continued on and cleared the path to the back door of the garage. It want much faster, since it doesn’t get blown in as much.

I had just reached the back door of the garage when I saw a car pulling up near the chain link fence.

To go to meet him, I had to take the path to the compost ring, across to the house, then down the sidewalk to the person gate he’d pulled up to.

I’ve been meaning to make a path from the back of the garage to the vehicle gate for a while. I wish I’d done it earlier! LOL

By the time I was done, it was getting dark. I had to adjust the lighting in this photo, just to see the new path! It now joined up with the path dug along the garden bed between the two gates, where there is a path to the driveway.

Normally, the inner yard would be cleared of snow enough for us to drive up to the house, with room towards the outhouse for turning, and we wouldn’t have needed all these little paths. Last year, we were able to keep it clear just with our little Spewie, but there is too much snow for the little thing, this year. We probably could have done it if the big snow blower was working. When I was a kid, my dad would use the old Farm Hand tractor to push snow into a pile about where the kibble house is now. It would reach most of the way between the house and the maples that our now outside the chain link fence, but used to be part of the inner yard back then. I remember one year, my siblings and I carved the pile of snow into three sets of stairs, with tunnels in between, leading to a two step platform at the top. The centre staircase had a wide, curved bottom step. We wanted to carve a throne at the top, but the snow pile wasn’t tall enough. :-D Gosh, that was fun!

This year, we’ve got snow more like what I remember as a kid.

Anyhow, without the heavier equipment, paths will have to do!

It was as I was near the garage door, and having to fling the snow ever higher, that I finally noticed just how deep it was.

I couldn’t quite stretch my arm out far enough to get a good angle, but the snow here is about hip height on me. Maybe a bit higher.

No, not all of where I was shoveling was that deep, though I wasn’t exactly shovelling right down to the ground in most of the paths, either.

After I cleared the new path, I kept on going, clearing the path in front of the garden bed, then scraping the sidewalk and clearing it wide enough for my husband’s walker. Which is really handy, when we have to use the wagon to haul stuff from the van to the house, like the sack of deer feed and other stuff I picked up today. Then I went ahead and cleared the cat paths, too, while there was still light out.

Clearing those paths is getting harder in places. The piles of snow from all the shoveling are getting high enough that the new snow I’m shovelling slides back down if I don’t throw it far enough – or falls into another path if I throw it too far! LOL

The cats were very happy with the cleared paths. :-)

As I write this, I can see more snow blowing around in the live feed from the security camera. I’m glad I got it done when I did! It’s still rather warm out – only -8C/18F as I write this. We’re supposed to have a high of -18C/-0.4F tomorrow, then it’s supposed to warm up a little bit again, and stay there for the next week. Much nicer than the couple of days of deep freeze we got, when our mini-convoy headed out, and the big one passed through our province.

That’s one of the amazing things about the convoy for freedom. This is happening in Canada, in flippin’ January. A friend of mine in the city had gone out to cheer the convoy as it passed by. She estimated there were about 150 people, just around where she was. It was about -32C/-26F where she was, at the time. In places, the convoy is so long, it took 4 hours to go by, with people outside, cheering them on, the whole way!

As the main convoy makes its way from the Western provinces towards Ottawa, more mini-convoys from the Eastern provinces are starting to make their way out as well. They don’t have as far to go, so they started later, timed so everyone gets there on the 29th. I heard there were so many trucks from Newfoundland, they got a ferry out just to take the trucks across. I’ve also heard that one of the border crossings into Ontario had so many truckers from the US coming in to join the convoy, the line stretched back 70 miles!

Our mainstream media has been avoiding reporting on it as much as possible, but they can’t avoid it any more. Of course, they are misreporting it, completely. One of the things they’re doing is wildly underreporting how many trucks there are. It’s just a few trucks, according to them. Not very many. There is also the usual, predictable slanderous reporting. They’re portraying the truckers as “anti-vaxxers” (most of them are vaccinated, and if they’re coming in from the US, they’re allowed to cross only if fully vaccinated), of course. Today, they’ve been ramping up the disparaging portrayal. The truckers are white supremacists, right wing, extremists, racists, and homophobes. You know. All the tired old insults that get thrown out so much, the terms have lost all meaning. Then there is that truly Canadian insult that comes from the leftist media that gets trotted out every election, and is being trotted out now. The truckers are inspired by *gasp* “American style politics.” Apparently, being compared to Americans is supposed to be an insult. This time, one news station even suggested that the convoy is somehow inspired by the January 6/2021 protests in the US that the media continues to lie about. They are really pushing the idea that the truckers and their supporters are violent crazies. Oh, and another claim that is supposed to be an insult: the truckers are “anti-government”. Because if you don’t 100% agree with what the current government is doing, that can only mean you are “anti-government”.

It’s all BS of course. Unfortunately, too many people believe it, and it’s endangering lives. A number of trucks were found to have their pins pulled. In one incident, a trucker who was not part of the convoy, and did not agree with it, apparently deliberately rammed his own truck into a truck that was part of the convoy. It’s been portrayed by the media as an “accident”. With the way the media is whipping up hatred and division – while accusing the truckers in the convoy of spreading hatred and division – they may very well get people killed.

And our Prime Dictator? Apparently, he’s on vacation in Costa Rica right now, though I don’t know if that’s true.

Thankfully, we have independent media who reporting on the convoy with better accuracy and truthfulness. Best of all are all the people who are documenting it themselves and posting about it. Like this guy.

Language warning!

It’s absolutely amazing! Our Prime Dictator has actually managed to accomplish something useful, in spite of himself. He has united the country. Against him! I have never seen so many wildly diverse groups, completely united in their support for the convoy and the push to end all the mandates.

The guy who made the above video is just one of many supporters, and he can only cover so much. We are also seeing many First Nations groups stepping forward in support. FN peoples are notorious about not getting involved in anything that could be considered even remotely political, with good reason. I’d mentioned before that a group of Hutterites had planned to set up kitchens to feed the truckers. The police wouldn’t let them, apparently because the parking lot was too full, so they drove 2 1/2 hours to the next major city, ahead of the convoy, and set up there, determined to feed them all. The GoFundMe has, as of this writing, reached over $5.7 million. I can’t even estimate how many hundreds of people are even joining the convoy in their own vehicles, so it’s not just a convoy of long haul truckers, but of all sorts of vehicles, too. Then there are the people getting together to prepare meals in take-out containers to hand out to the truckers, people arranging for things like porta-potties along routes where public washrooms are few and far between, and on it goes.

Meanwhile, there is stuff like Facebook deleting groups supporting the convoy, all of Toronto’s traffic cams along the 401 not working, people posting their own videos on social media are finding there is no share button for some reason, and I’ve lost track of the number of people I know who have found themselves suddenly restricted from posting on social media, and not knowing why. For all that, there is still tonnes of stuff out there, for all to see, showing what’s actually happening, and how huge this whole thing is.

Our Prime Dictator has already tried to call in the military and RCMP to stop the convoy, and they refused. So far, publicly, he’s been vocal about framing the truckers as angry (duh!) and potentially dangerous people, chastising them and their supporters for being angry, saying we don’t want to be that way as Canadians. Pure gaslighting, of course. The only truckers he’s talked to is an organization that is heavily connected to the Liberal party, condemns the convoy, but does not actually represent the truckers at all.

It’s a remarkable thing to see happening, and I honestly don’t know how it’s going to turn out. What I do know is that it is going to affect all our lives, here in Canada.

The Re-Farmer

Update: I just had to include this video, too.

How quickly things change!

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Today we have been steadily warming up. When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, it was up to -15C/5F and looking lovely.

Lovely, until I actually stepped outside.

The wind was coming from the south again, which means we were getting the full brunt of it. The wind chill at the time was around -35C/-31F. It actually felt colder, after things had warmed up, than it did when we were at -25C/-13F.

The south winds whip around the corners of the house, blowing snow into the kibble house! I had to knock snow out of all the kibble trays before I could put food in them, then dig out the water bowls. You can see in the photo, the crust that formed on top of the heated water bowl.

Smart Nosencrantz, quickly ate, then went back into the nice warm shelter!

The path to the compost heap is completely gone.

I was going to shovel it out this morning, but the winds were just too severe. Instead, I went to the gate at the driveway. As long as we’re on the inside of the gate, the trees in the old hay yard block most of the winds from the south.

With the snow we’ve been having, it’s been blocking our ability to open the gate all the way. When our angel with the front end loader cleared our driveway, there was less space at the gate because of this, creating a bit of a bottleneck just inside the gate that was slowly closing in, more and more. I was able to clear enough know that we can at least swing the two sides of the gate until they are 90 degrees with the gate posts.

Note how nice and bright it is in the above photo. Wind was the only issue to deal with. I had to go into town later, and of course checked the weather. We were supposed to get snow later, but the weather radar showed clear skies. I kept zooming out to see where this weather system was, but everything was clear. I thought there was something wrong with the data until I zoomed out enough to see some rain heading across towards Florida. !! And yet, when I went online, I was seeing people reporting road conditions on the highways, talking about poor visibility and drifting highways. ???

The call we got about Cabbages came just in time, as I needed to head out before the general store our post office is in closed for the day; they are open only half a day on Wednesdays. We had some packages to pick up there, then I had to go to town to pick up a Purolator delivery at their drop off point, since we are not in their delivery zone.

What a difference a bit of time makes.

Clearly, the weather radar was messed up. It had started to snow by the time I left, and the couple of miles on the main gravel road to the highway was drifting over quite a bit. In the time I spent at the general store to get our packages and some more deer feed, the winds were dying down, but the snow was heavier.

Then there was the drive to town. Yikes! The closer I drove to the lake, the heavier the snowfall, and the worse the visibility. The roads were not icy, though, so it was still okay to drive, if a bit slower.

The parcel I went to pick up, however, wasn’t there. We had gotten a call from Purolator to find out where they should drop the package off; it was either the town we usually go to, East of us, or the town my mother lives on, which is further away. When we told them where to drop it off, they said the package would be there by 11am. When I got there, however, the person working there told me the drivers always come at 2pm!

Well, we certainly weren’t going to come back today, but we do have a week to pick it up, once it arrives.

This place is also a small convenience store that also does takeout. Since I was there anyhow, I splurged and got a bucket of mini donuts. :-D Happily, I had a small insulated bag in the van to keep them warm for the drive home. So it wasn’t a wasted trip, after all. ;-)

As for the drive home, the snow was falling even more heavily, especially in our area.

I’m so glad we’ve got good snow tires.

This is what it was like when I got home, keeping in mind that the camera on my phone automatically clears images up, so I can actually see more in the photo, than I could while taking it!

Then it was gone.

As I write this, the snow has stopped, and I can barely even see branches moving in the trees outside my window. We have warmed up to -8C/18F, and are still expected to reach a high of -3C/27F. Not quite as warm as had been forecast previously, but I’m certainly not complaining!

I’m glad this winter has been so much milder than the last two winters, and certainly thankful for the snow we’re having, that will be such a boon to farmers in the spring. It does make getting around more difficult, though!

The Re-Farmer

Morning rounds still have to be done, and more convoy talk

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

After the very sad call this morning about Cabbages, I headed out to do my morning rounds and take care of the outside kitties.

Though the temperatures at the time were about -28C/-18F, it actually felt a lot warmer. At least around the house. There was a wind chill, but the wind is from the west, so we weren’t really feeling it. The outside cats were a lot more active, too.

It was feeling warm enough that I shoveled out the burn barrel again, and got it going.

We clear enough space to have room for the bags of burnables. That wall of snow is now taller than the barrel in places!

We couldn’t use the burn barrel in the summer, because of the drought, but we are now burning the wood pellet cat litter, instead of having a cat litter compost behind the outhouse. With so much snow around, I let it go down to a smolder, then put the cover on and leave it. It can continue smoking for days. As the pellets are used by the cats, they break up into sawdust. Which then freezes when the girls dump it into the burn barrel. By leaving it to smolder, the sawdust slowly thaws out, dries out, then smolders. It can take a few days, but it eventually gets burned away. It’s been so cold, though, I’m still finding frost inside the burn barrel when I uncover it, even as smoke still rises from the contents!

As soon as I cleared the area around the barrel and moved on to clear the path to the electricity meter, the space around the burn barrel got filled with cats! Not only does the space give them shelter, but the smoldering barrel gives off a bit of heat, too.

Still not as cozy as an insulated, sheltered, sun spot!

Oh, I got a peak at Potato Beetle this morning. The wound on his head seems to be healing up just fine. I could barely see the wound, and he looks more like he’s got a weird bald spot.

In other things, I’ve been keeping on top of what’s going on with the trucker convoy. This is something that affects us, even out in the boonies. We are surrounded by farms, and farmers need truckers. Heck, a lot of them have their own trucks. Most farmers have to have some other source of income. Farming doesn’t pay very well and, unlike most businesses, farmers have to buy retail and sell wholesale, instead of the other way around. So everyone around here is very supportive.

So are many others.

Last night, I heard that an estimated 10,000 truckers from various US states are heading for the border to join the convoy. Those that are not allowed to cross the border plan to stay at the border. Chances are, there are even more truckers from even more states by this morning.

The provincial convoy that started yesterday is still at the city. The national one is expected to arrive this afternoon, and they will join up and continue on to Ottawa.

In the Facebook groups supporting the convoy, I’m seeing numerous restaurant owners announcing that anyone in the convoy will be fed, for free. Food truck owners are announcing where they will be setting up to provide food. At least one of the Hutterite colonies has announced they are setting up kitchens in one of the muster points to feed everyone in the convoy.

Garages are offering free mechanical repairs.

People are offering their extra bedrooms for overnight stays, and bringing meals to the truckers.

The GoFundMe has topped $4,000,000. Because of how eager our government and GoFundMe are to prevent the money from actually getting to the truckers, there is a whole process worked out where truckers will be submitting receipts to be reimbursed for expenses, etc.

I haven’t confirmed it yet myself, but people have talked about finding the traffic cams along the convoy route are showing images of empty roads, or have simply been shut down.

The mainstream media is finally reporting on the convoy, but have been misrepresenting it like crazy. Almost all that I’ve seen have been reporting wildly lower numbers. A CBC article that tried to claim the truckers were protesting icy road conditions was so inundated by people calling them on it merely added a “correction”, saying they were talking about a different protest. Which they weren’t, because there were no truckers out there, protesting winter. Others I’ve seen have tried to say the truckers are protesting only the most recent mandate made against them. They aren’t. They are protesting to have all government mandates and restrictions for everyone, ended. That last mandate against them was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, after being treated like crap for years.

Commenters have been calling out the media like crazy for their misinformation and sloppy reporting. What’s interesting as well have been the (very few) detractors. I’m seeing people say things like, what difference does it make for them to protest in Ottawa, when it’s the US that won’t let them cross the border. Which has nothing to do with what the convoy is about. I’m guessing some media somewhere claimed that, and they believed it. Others have been calling the truckers selfish and making the usual insults about people just being scared of needles. I’m still seeing people saying that losing their jobs is just a consequence of their “choice” not to get the vaccine, and calling them anti-vaxxers. Most truckers are vaccinated, bigots don’t care about truth or reality.

I think the funniest detractors are those trying to portray the truckers and their supporters as PPC “cultists” (the PPC are the People’s Party of Canada, a new party that ran in the last federal election). Even more laughable are those trying to accuse the truckers of “dividing Canada”. I haven’t seen Canada more united over something in my life. I’ve even seen people dismissing the truckers for protesting now, instead of when our Prime Dictator called a useless, early election.

Oh, I just tried looking something up and saw that the GoFundMe has now exceeded $4.4million. Someone posted a screencap showing a $10,000 anonymous donation. I also just found this screencap.

May be an image of text that says "#TruckersForFreedom ForFreedom #FreedomConvoy2022 Rollando Lepageo Colorado 420 trucks Georgia 675 trucks South Carolina 650 trucks California 19,000 trucks Heading to Canada 1h Love Reply 2 2:55 AM. Jan 25, 2022. Twitter for Android"

If for some reason you can’t see the image, it reads:

Colorado 420 trucks
Georgia 675 trucks
South Carolina 650 trucks
California 19,000 trucks
Heading to Canada

Way to go, California!! Assuming that’s not a typo. That’s a massive number.

Not on this list are the trucks coming from Tennessee, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Alaska and Florida, that I’ve seen elsewhere.

The most recent update I’ve heard is that the main convoy from BC is now over 150km long. That’s over 93 miles. I don’t think they’ve even crossed the middle of Canada yet, and more mini-convoys are joining all along the way.

What I’m not hearing is much from our politicians. Including our own Premier. I might just be missing it. As for our Prime Dictator, I’ve heard he’s on another vacation. The truckers are supposed to arrive in Ottawa on the 29th. Parliament was supposed to resume today, though from the parliamentary calendar, they’re scheduled to sit in parliament for only 1 day this month, and that’s on January 31.

The truckers and their supporters don’t plan to leave Ottawa until all mandates and restrictions are lifted.

It should be interesting to see how our “leaders” handle this.

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and a day of surprises

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This morning was quite chilly, but that didn’t stop the kitties!

We didn’t get much new snow, but it was blowing enough that I had to dig out the water bowls again.

Hmm. As I write this, I’m noticing the red flash on a weather alert on my desktop weather app. It’s an extreme cold warning. We’re supposed to reach -29C/-20F tonight, with wind chills of -40C/-40F!!

While doing my rounds, I made sure to check the end of the driveway, since I was expecting to head out with Cabbages today. The road was plowed, and it looked like we would be able to get through the end of the driveway without too much trouble.

When I came back to the house, I found myself being watched!

I love how Nosencrantz is still licking her chops. :-D

As cold as we’re supposed to get tonight, this afternoon warmed up to -17C/1F, so the cats were up and about when I started getting ready to take Cabbages into town.

I found Agnoos sitting on the sun-warmed black plastic of the snow shovel! I wasn’t quite fast enough to get what would have been an adorable picture of him, but I rather like the action shot I got, instead!

After starting the van to warm it up, I went to unlock the gate and found my first surprise.

The end of the driveway was cleared! We never heard or saw a thing! That was so very sweet. I just am assuming it was done by one or our renter’s hired hands, while on his way to somewhere else.

After opening the gate, I backed the van up closer to the gate in the chain link fence, so that Cabbages would be out in the cold as little as possible. Then, because I didn’t want to leave her, I didn’t stop to close the gate behind me and just headed into town. I would love to leave the gate open all the time during the day, but we’re still not quite sure our vandal would be able to resist coming in, despite the court order to stay away.

Which is how we ended up with my second big surprise.

The driveway was done while I was gone!!

The girls were cooking when my husband told them to look out the window, where they saw a yellow front end loader suddenly go by. This was a huge surprise for them, because they didn’t know I had left the gate open! Normally, I would have asked one of them to lock it behind me, but it was a last minute decision.

As you can imagine, once I was settled inside, I sent a thank you message to the renters. We have got to do something for them as a thank you. They won’t even accept payment for the fuel!

Since the driveway was cleared so nicely, I didn’t have to back up to the chain link fence to unload. I could park in the garage and bring the wagon over to haul the cat food.

And some honey. I had noticed my cousin snow blowing the driveway to their honey house while on the way to town with Cabbages. He was still there when I came back, and I happened to have some cash on hand, so I bought a couple of kg of his creamed honey. What a treat!

While going to the sun room to get the wagon, I found myself with a co-operative model this time.

Agnoos was perched on the sun warmed black plastic of the other snow shovel this time! :-D

As I am writing this, I can see the live stream from our garage security camera. I’ve bene seeing cats running around in the cleared driveway the entire time I’ve been writing. Right now, I can see The Distinguished Guest, sitting in a big, black, fluffy loaf in the middle of the driveway, and a bit of another cat, next to the wall of snow on one side. Oh! There’s another one, making its way through the snow from one of the sheds, into the cleared driveway.

They are appreciating our neighbours as much as we are!

They are just fantastic people! I am so glad they are renting the bulk of the property from my brother. We have such awesome neighbours.

The Re-Farmer

We made it!

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We made our much needed trip into town!

As I write this, we have warmed up to -7C/19F, with a wind chill of -13C/9F. It was just a couple of degrees colder and had stopped snowing when my daughter and I headed out to town.

For all the clearing we did, once I started down the driveway, I didn’t dare stop until I got to the road. My daughter could take care of the gate for me, so that worked out.

The winds were still coming from the south-southwest (as I write this, they are now coming from the northwest), and the roads were drifting over, but we were still able to get through all right.

We were a bit too fast with our shopping, though, and when we stopped to get the mail, the post office wasn’t reopened for the afternoon, yet. So we unloaded the van, put stuff away, then my daughter crawled through their upstairs window to start shoveling the roof while I waited until I could go back to the post office to pick up our packages. If we didn’t get them today, we wouldn’t be able to get them until Monday.

I was heading back out in less than an hour, and by then it had started to snow again.

Very picturesque, but the visibility had dropped dramatically. I’m glad I only had about 3 miles to go!

Once back, I brought out the telescoping roof shovel we’ve got, to get some other parts of the roof. I did as much as I could reach over the sun room which, unfortunately, isn’t very far. I was able to clear under the Starlink dish, however, and I’m glad I could. Once the snow under it was moved, a whole bunch more immediately slid off the dish. I really appreciate that these dishes are self heated!

The cool thing is, even though there was snow built up on the dish, we’ve had almost no noticeable loss of connectivity. There was an hour last night that had a series of short outages, due to network error, while this morning there was one, due to obstruction, but in all that, there was only one that was long enough for even be noticed.

Aside from the sun room roof, I also got as much as I could off of the entryway roof. The west side of it had a drift that was at least 4 feet thick!

I’m glad we got that done, though I’m a bit concerned about tomorrow. We’re supposed to meet with the woman that will be fixing our cats, to pick up donated cat food and drop off Cabbages into care. With the way things are blowing, we might have issues getting out of our driveway. I do expect the plows to be out already, but it’s hard to say when our gravel roads will be done.

It’s a bit late, considering Cabbages is to be taken in tomorrow and getting vet care through this organization, but one of the things we picked up today was cat milk. We need to get more calories and nutrients into her, and I’m hoping she’ll actually like this stuff enough that we won’t need to use the syringe. I’ll be trying that out once I’m done writing this post.

It does look like the snow had stopped again, so that’s a good sign for getting out tomorrow! Though we are supposed to be getting cat food donated to us, I still looked for some while at the grocery store, and the big bags were out of stock, just like the stores in the city. There have been real issues with lack of inventory for quite some time. Particularly in the big bags. We were never quite able to stock up adequately. All the more reason to be thankful for the donated food!

Now if we can just pray that we don’t get snowed in – and neither does the woman we are supposed to meet up with tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Lovely snow

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So the snow that was originally supposed to start this evening and continue on through tomorrow, arrived last night.

The snow was pretty much stopped when I went out to feed the critters. I had to dig out the non-heated water bowls.

Then I had to shovel the path to the feeding station so I could put seeds out for the birds and deer.

Then I kept shoveling.

I am so glad I cleared the paths of the hard packed snow, yesterday. The snow we’ve been having is all light and fluffy, so it made clearing the paths again very easy work!

By the time I reached the garage, the snow was coming down in big, fluffy flakes. We are at a lovely -13C/9F right now. The wind chill is -24C/-11F, but it’s coming from the north, so most of the inner yard is well sheltered. It only got a bit blustery when I reached the bird feeder.

I did most of the paths, but not all of them. Later on, we might break out little Spewie and see what we can do about the driveway. Mostly, we’ll need to clear the end of the driveway, and that will likely need shovels. I don’t think Spewie can handle that! Not only will we have a plow ridge to deal with, but there’s no shelter from the winds there, so it’ll be drifted over and harder packed.

At some point, we’ll be able to set up the snow fencing that we’ve got, rolled up behind the old garden shed. I don’t know where it was used before we moved here, but it would be good to set some up on both sides of the driveway, for both the north and the south winds.

When I came inside and hung my coat on a chair to dry, I discovered this…

I somehow got snow in my hood! :-D I didn’t use it because the only way to keep it on is to close up the flaps in front. They go in front of my mouth and I can’t breath, so I keep having to jam it under my chin, which pulls the hood over my eyes. So I wore a cowl, instead. I guess that left my hood to be catch snow! :-D

I put it in a water bowl we keep near the kitchen for the cats, that happened to be empty. Within minutes, there were three cats checking it out, and a fourth watching because he couldn’t squeeze in. All of them orange. It was funny, except for having to step over them to get into the kitchen! LOL Within minutes, the snow was all gone!

The view from the garage cam, not long after I came in. Looking at the live feed as I write this, the visibility has dropped even more, and those cat paths in the snow are almost completely gone.

I know people in the south of the province probably wouldn’t agree with me, but I am really happy will all this snow. It will be so good for the fields in the spring, and for the water table. Our municipality was among those that declared an agricultural disaster because of the drought, which allowed for farmers to get some financial assistance. So many lost entire crops – again! – and many were struggling with the the decision to cull their animals, because there was no feed to be had. Not that things are any better now. Thanks to the unnecessary, draconian government restrictions, animals aren’t getting to market. Tens of thousands of chickens are being culled. If the various government bodies don’t let up on their medical tyranny, we’re going to have major food shortages, even as farmers are having to throw away food because there’s no way to get it processed and to the stores. They’ll be blaming it on the Wu Flu, but this is the direct consequence of going against the emergency plans all levels of government already had in place.

We’ve long had the dream of being as self sufficient as possible. After moving here, I kinda hoped we would have more time to get there, though!

At least we’ve got our seeds in, and other orders processed for spring shipping. We’re going to be relying on our garden a lot more this year, if things don’t change!

Another reason to be glad for this snow. We are really going to need this moisture.

The Re-Farmer

Getting stuff done outside

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Though today has gotten a bit colder than yesterday, at -15C/5F, it’s a lot calmer out there, and bright and sunny. We are actually reading a wind chill of -21C/-6F, but the wind is from the north, and we are well sheltered in that direction.

Which means I got more done outside!

Of course, feeding the critters was top of the list.

I counted 18 this morning. I did not see Ghost Baby, and I think Junk Pile is the other “missing” cat. I was quite happy to see both Butterscotch and Nosencrantz this morning.

Nosencrantz doesn’t look too happy to see me, though! :-D She’s all “stop petting me, and taking my picture. I’m trying to eat!”

I was able to do a burn this morning, scrape the sidewalk clear, and dig out some of the blown over paths.

Though we didn’t get much snow, the blowing winds made a big difference. I was lifting out solid chunks of snow. I actually took advantage of that while shoveling around the burn barrel, to make a higher “wall” around it. This is snow fort building snow! :-D

The path to the compost was so solid, I ended up having to bring the ice scraper to break it up before I could use the shovel. Because of the wind direction, the path from the compost ring to the back door of the garage was almost clear, and the shelter of the garage kept the path to the outhouse from getting drifted over.

We’re supposed to get snow starting tomorrow evening. I’m now seeing snowfall warnings of 20-35cm (8-14 inches), however they are mostly for the south and eastern parts of the province. We shouldn’t get anywhere near as much, where we are. Local forecast is currently for 5-10cm (2-4 inches).

So if there’s anything we need to get in town, just in case, now is the time to do it!

Well. Maybe after we’ve shoveled the end of the driveway again.

The Re-Farmer

On the right path

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While one daughter stayed indoors to do baking, another daughter and I went out to dig paths, before the temperature dropped too far.

The main path, from the house to the front of the garage, gets dug wide enough for my husband to get through with his walker, or we can haul things from the van with the wagon. In the outer yard, we also maintain paths to the meter and the burn barrel. We decided against going to the dump today, but I was at least able to do a burn while shoveling, so we don’t have those bags taking up space any more.

The area around the cat shelter and the kibble house got cleared earlier this morning, as I dug the non-heated water bowls out of the snow. This afternoon, we dug out the paths to the kibble tray under the shrine, and I even dug out the path from their kibble house to the corner of the storage house, where they get in and out of the space under it.

Paths to the feeding station and compost ring are cleared, as well as this path from the compost ring to the back door of the garage. You can sort of see the path to the outhouse, too.

I also made sure to shovel the front of the garage, so we can swing open the doors to where my mom’s car is parked on one side, and where the lawn mowers and little Spewie are stored on the other.

It would probably be faster if I took Spewie out to clear the paths, but I really don’t want to fight with so much extension cord. For the main paths, the snow has been so light and fluffy, it’s almost easier to just shovel, and I don’t mind the exercise! I really ought to bring the little snow blower out, though. We have yet to make a path to the fire pit, and it would be good to have a path around the entire house. Especially to where the septic tank is, just in case.

It’s one thing to clear paths we’ve already been keeping up on, but when the snow is knee high, it’s a bit much to be breaking entirely new paths! LOL Mind you, the snow is deeper than the snow blower is high, so maybe it’ll be easier to shovel it, after all.

I do wish we’d been able to take the big snow blower in to be fixed over the summer. It would be quite handy right now!

The Re-Farmer