This afternoon, I took advantage of pleasant temperatures to walk around the yard and the spruce and maple groves.  There was snow on the ground the last time I went into these areas, so I was able to get to areas I couldn’t before.

Walking through the spruce grove, it continues to strike me, just how many dead and dying trees there are.  Quite a few have already fallen, but many have not.  It’s slowly being taken over by broad leaf trees, but a lot of them are dead and dying, too.

This is from one of the spruce trees.

You can certainly see why it fell.  This is caused by carpenter ants.  They nest in wood and can cause all kinds of damage and, in this case, weakened the trunk enough for it to fall, probably in high winds.  When I was a kid, splitting logs in the basement for the furnace in the winter, I would sometimes split a log with a hibernating nest of ants in it.  They’d fall out into a sluggish mass on the concrete.

Then they’d go into the fire.

You don’t mess with these guys.

Thankfully, we’ve never seen signs of them nesting in the house itself.

Walking through the row of apple trees, which are just barely starting to show leaf buds in a few places, I discovered why the mystery box jammed into one of them hasn’t blown away.

It has a mystery bucket inside.

I’m sure someone had a reason to put it there.  I just can’t think of what it might be!

I started going into the maple grove next.  It used to border the garden, but at some point, a couple of rows of spruce trees were planted into what used to be garden.  The garden area was slowly made smaller and smaller over the years, with tree plantings.

So many are dead or dying.  What you see on the bottom left is where there is a water tap.  That used to be at the the very outer edge of the garden border.

This row of trees was planted some time after I left the farm.  Like so many others, they were planted way too close together.  Most seem to be dead or half dead.

I don’t think there’s much left to salvage of this old willow, but we’ll see better when it’s in full leaf.  I remember it being huge and healthy, when I was a child, as was a second one behind it.  That, too, has many dead branches on it, but it’s not as broken as this one.

I eventually made my way to the fence side of the house in our yard.  I was noticing some wasp nests, and remains of wasp nests, under the eaves when I suddenly realized I was looking at something that didn’t make sense.

That’s an electrical cable running from a hole into the “basement”, up to the roof.

When I was a kid, I spent many summer nights sleeping in this building, and even had sleepovers with my friends – back when it was still is decent shape.  There was no power hooked up to it.  We used candles and kerosene lamps for light.

Now that I think of it, I do remember one time when there was electricity being used in there.  My brothers also used the house, for parties.  I recall there was a stag held there one, and the next morning, I’d joined them to watch a movie on the TV that was brought in.  I also remember lights and music playing.  I had completely forgotten about that until now. I wonder if this wire was the source of the electricity?

So where does the line go?

Straight through the branches…

Over this dead tree on the other side of the fence…

Then it disappeared into the grass.

So I went around the fence and pulled it out of the grass to see what I would find.

There was far more length then I expected, before I pulled up the insulator – then there was even more wire before I found the plug.

From what I can tell by the electrical tape at the insulator, the wire is spliced.

And that plug… well.  You can see the inner wires are exposed.

I am guessing the insulator was attached to the pump shack, then the cable continued into the pump shack to one of the outlets inside.

It’s basically a giant extension cord.

I’m starting to wonder how no one ever caused any electrical fires and burned this place down, over the years!

Speaking of burning, as I was walking around, I could smell smoke.  I couldn’t see smoke anywhere, and have heard nothing about any new fires, but then, I didn’t see smoke or hear anything about the last two fires out here, for some time.

Meanwhile, my wonderful, awesome daughters got 4 van loads into the shed today, while I brought over my mother’s dressers from the bedroom, taking out the drawers and removing the mirror off one of them.  Even without the drawers, they were surprisingly heavy.  The mirror alone weighed more than any of the others we hauled out.  This bedroom set of my mother’s is of amazing quality!  It’s a shame she left them behind when she moved out, though I suppose they would have been too big for her current apartment.

By the time they were done unloading the last of the stuff into the shed, their bodies let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they were still sick.  I am so grateful that they got it done.  While they did that, my husband and I decided on how we’d arrange things for when the hospital bed is delivered, and I switched some things around.  We are at the point now that, once we get the call that it’s on the way, we need only to take out the bed we’re using now.

Once the box springs we are borrowing are loaded into the shed, we have nothing else that will need to go through the main part of the house into storage.  There is just the Old Kitchen and sun room to work on, so things can go straight outside from there.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer