A visit in, and getting things done

May 9, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This morning, I woke to find a message from my older daughter. She had been up all night, not feeling well at all. Her sister stayed up with her to be available to help out.

Not being in a position to cook for herself, she sent me some funds and a request. After talking to her about it, I added a Walmart trip to my list of places to go today.

The first order of business, was to load up the truck with garbage and recycling for the dump. My younger daughter helped me, but she had been up for more than 24 hours, so she was pretty dead on her feet! She headed to bed shortly after the truck was loaded.

Silly me, I headed out right away, forgetting that the dump is not on summer hours. They open at 10am now, not 9am. Thankfully, I remember that before I was a mile away, so I turned around and headed home. It worked out for the better, since I had time to have a real breakfast before going.

The dump was surprisingly busy today. Driving up to the pit, I found a row of four trucks, two with trailers, unloading. I rarely see more than two vehicles at once.

When I checked in with the attendant and told him I had household garbage and recycling, he said I hoped I had only glass! They have one recycling bin for glass, and the rest for general recycling. Six big bins, and they were all full. The recycling gets taken to the city for processing, and it hadn’t been done yet. After I was done unloading into the pit, I found the least over filled bin. Normally, as per instructions on signs, recycling would be removed from any bags; there’s even a separate blue bin, the size of a large trash bin, just for the bags. I didn’t do that today, and just set all the bags on top. When I saw the attendant going by, I made sure to tell him I was leaving them in the bags, so things wouldn’t get blown away. He appreciated that!

Once done, I headed home long enough to change out of my grubbies, then headed out.

On the way to the truck, I spotted this adorableness.

I’ve turned off the heat lamps in the sun room again, since it stays warmer overnight, but for the next couple of days, I’m leaving the heat lamp on in here. When things warm up again, I’ll shut it off during the day and turn it back on at night.

The cats were really appreciating the heat lamp!

It’s been a while since I’ve been to anywhere I could pick up a card, so I stopped at a small department store to get a Mother’s Day card and signed it before going to the TCU to visit my mother. I stopped at the nursing station first, to ask how she’s been.

The woman that had spoke to us before to talk about my mother wanting to see a doctor, and about her medications, was there. She told me that, after our little meeting, my mother had gone to the nursing station to watch her prepare my mom’s supper time medications – and was already telling her, they were the wrong medications.

They aren’t.

In the end, it comes down to my mother simply refusing to believe the nurses know what they are doing, and believing that they are deliberately messing up her medications, because she’s old and they want old people to die.

*sigh*

The staff tell her what the different pills are, every time they give them to her, explaining which is which and what they are for. She apparently just looks at them and nods her head, most times, and that’s about it. Yet I know she’s been writing notes on a pad she keeps in the drawer under her bedside table, of what she’s getting and when, writing down the descriptions of each pill and making little doodles of them, later on.

As we were talking, another nurse came behind the counter and settled in. Hearing us, she said, “Oh, we’re talking about [my mother].”

“Yes.”

“Ah…”

All I could do was shake my head. It’s not the first time I’ve had that response about my mother! She did clarify that this was a good “ah”. She was my mother’s nurse, this morning.

As we were talking, I brought up about my mother calling me, demanding I take her over to the clinic down the hall, so she could make an appointment with a doctor there. I had told her, I already asked them about it. They won’t do it. Which the nurses both confirmed with me. I told them, I had repeated this several times, until my mother hung up on me – and that’s the last time I have talked to her!

They wished me well on the visit. 😄

After getting updated on things, I went to my mother’s room to see if she was there. She wasn’t, so I headed to the common room. There were other people visiting with another resident in some armchairs by the door. My mother was in her favourite spot; an armchair right in a corner, between two large windows. Snoozing!

She woke right away, though, as I grabbed a chair and settled in beside her. I gave her the card, which she asked me to take out and read to her.

There wasn’t much to talk about, really. My brother had called her yesterday, as he and his wife were going to spend Mother’s Day weekend with their grandsons, in another province. The TCO recreation person had gotten permission from us to take her out for a Mother’s Day meal at a nearby restaurant, which is fully accessible. There were enough ladies to do this with, so they were splitting it between two days. I didn’t know which day my mother was going to be going, and I asked her about it. She said she didn’t go, because she hadn’t been feeling well. In the end, it worked out, because my sister visited that day.

She then asked me what I was planning for Mother’s Day and I ended up telling her about the all-terrain walker my husband got for me, which should arrive soon. Something that can handle being used around our yard as I work, and to keep hand in case I have another fall, like I did last year, where my daughter brought my husband’s walker for me to use to get back to the house. I even mentioned to her that I have my appointment at the sports injury clinic in the city on Monday. That got my mother talking about how my brother and I should really get my sister to be more involved in taking care of my mother, because I have so much to deal with, even though my sister doesn’t understand my mother’s medications like we do. I told her, it makes more sense for me to be the one, because I am the most available, and live the closest.

After a while, my mother brought up about wanting to see a “real” doctor at the clinic down the hall. There are three doctors that some in from the city, she says. Women doctors. She should see them. I tried to explain, again, that the clinic won’t do that. She is under a doctor’s supervision where she is, and there are nurses to take care of her. Nurses that play doctor, she told me. With some of them, she doesn’t believe they are nurses at all. One, because he’s male, and men can’t be nurses, in her mind. She had the same attitude about the male home care workers.

Before she could go off on another tangent, she then told me about the nurses messing up with her medications and not giving her what she’s supposed to, at the right times. She described an incident she says happened more than once that made absolutely no sense to me. Partly because she said she was supposed to have her blood pressure medication at that time, which I knew she didn’t. She got that one earlier in the day. She insisted, and then told me about how this person had given her her Tylenol, but not her other medications. When my mother brought it up, she claimed the person said she got was she was supposed to, but then took a pill out of a blister pack and gave it to her. My mother said she took it.

None of this made sense to me.

In the end, it was a short visit. My mother got her lunch while I was there. A chicken burger, with lettuce and tomato, cut in half, potato salad, canned peaches, tomato juice, milk and the hot water she requests in place of tea. She ate only half her burger, the potato salad, her peaches, had a few sips of tomato juice, but mostly drank the warm water. She offered me the other half of her burger, because she didn’t want it to go to waste. She said she doesn’t have as much appetite anymore. Overall, she seemed pretty down, tired and depressed. She did add that she looks forward to when it’s warmer, so maybe one of her children will take her out to that restaurant for dinner. Considering it was cloudy and trying to rain, I can understand that. Overcast and rainy weather always leaves me feeling drained and tired, too. The only time she showed any sort of energy was when the group of people across the room suddenly started to laugh. My mother glared at them, her eyes filled with absolute rage. That is something she complains about constantly, every time she’s been in the hospital over the years, and now that she’s in the TCU. Other people laughing. She has even berated people in restaurants for laughing. She complains about the noise and how disruptive it is, but I’ve come to realize, it’s not really the noise. She just hates other people showing happiness. Often times, she also believes that they are laughing at her, specifically. I think part of the problem is that she can’t conceive of other people being happy, because she, herself, never is. When – if – she laughs, it’s never out of happiness. It’s usually to mock people, or to try and manipulate them. I honestly can’t remember my mother ever laughing out of happiness, in all my life. I’m sure she had at some point, but I was probably too young to remember it.

My mother’s mind must be a terrible place to be in.

There was very little to talk about, so I helped her put aside the bedside table with the food tray so she could get up, and walked her to her room before heading out.

From there, I drove to the nearer city to do my Walmart run. Since it shares the parking lot, I swung by the Dollarama first, to see if there was anything to pick up. The gardening supplies are being stocked, and they have some really good stakes and plant supports and much better prices. They didn’t have much for those, this time, but I did end up getting a sprinkler hose. Something I can set up under a covered garden bed, so I can water without having to take the cover off completely. I do have a couple of soaker hoses, but they release water so slowly, it takes forever to water a bed. It’s just a cheap one, dollar store hose, so I don’t expect it to last very long, but it’ll last long enough that I can decide on whether it’s worth getting more. At some point, when the budget allows, we’ll probably get a drip irrigation system. Not until we trench a hose from the house and set up a replacement garden tap.

That done, I headed to the Walmart. I had a small list of my own, as well as stuff my daughter requested, and it didn’t take very long. I kept feeling like I was forgetting something, but had no idea what. It didn’t help that this location is still in the process of being renovated, and everything has been moved. It was also really busy, not just with customers, but with pallets, trollies, pallet jacks and more, blocking the aisles.

I remembered what I was forgetting, just now. I don’t even know where the section is, anymore. I was going to pick up water soluble fertilizer to add to the water for the earliest transplants. They’re getting big enough to need it. It’s will probably be at least 4 more weeks before any of them can be transplanted outside, unless I’m able to cover the beds with plastic.

That done, I headed home, though I did have to stop for gas along the way. Gas prices are still $1.889/L

After everything was unloaded and put away, I updated my siblings, then called the TCU. The woman I spoke to before visiting my mother answer the phone, which made things easier. I explained, as best I could, what my mother had told me. It didn’t make sense to her, either.

What I now know, however, is that the Tylenol they get comes sealed in blister packs. The medication my mother gets before bed, which is a blood thinner, not a blood pressure pill, comes in a paper packet that is torn open. My mother had said the nurse had waited and watched her take the Tylenol, but it had to have been her blood thinner – yet she’s never said anything about a pill being taken out of a paper packet.

I was assured that, when my mother is given her medications, each one is shown to her and explained. When talking to me about it later, it’s clear my mother doesn’t believe them. She’s had it explained to her, many times, that even though the pills might look a little different – or a lot different, as is the case with her eye vitamin – they still have the same medication and dose in them. My mother keeps saying, they are the wrong pills. Especially with that eye vitamin. Before, she had been getting the gel version, which is large and almost black in colour. Now, it’s a round white tablet.

I explained that this has been an issue in the past, when the pharmacy changed suppliers for one of her meds. It looked every so slightly different in size and tint. My mother decided that the pharmacist had changed her prescription and was giving her something else. My siblings and I explained it to her. The pharmacist explained it to her. The doctor explained it to her. She never accepted that. I told her about my mother having to have a lock box for her meds, and that I’d found a pill organizer with probably 50 pills in it that she’d taken out of her bubble packs, long before she got the lock box.

I don’t think the problem is that my mother isn’t able understand that the same medication can come indifferent forms. I think it’s more that she refuses to accept that as a possibility. She would rather believe people are incompetent, or deliberately messing with her medications.

*sigh*

Still, the nurse said she would look into what my mother described. She asked if I knew what the nurse looked like, or when it happened, but my mother’s sense of time has gotten very bad, and she only gave a description of things that bothered her for some reason. The hat the nurse was wearing, the fact that she had curls of hair hanging out from under it, behind her head, and that she was wearing a cross body “purse” (with how my mother described it, I don’t think it was a purse) that she never took off. It wasn’t much for her to go on. All I could be relatively sure of is that what my mother described would have happened after the nurse had her meeting with us, so within the past week. In the end, though, I can’t even be 100% sure of that. My mother made it sound like it was recent, but she’s done that about things that have happen days, weeks, even years ago. So who really knows.

Meanwhile, I’m getting messages, photos and video from my brother and SIL, hanging out with their grand kids. Oh, and their son and daughter in law, too. 😁 They’re having a blast! I’m glad they could make the trip out.

All in all, even with the short but rather odd visit with my mother, it’s been a good and relatively productive day. Tomorrow is expected to be cooler again, so I will use that as my excuse to get a real, honest to goodness, day of rest. I hadn’t pushed myself hard yesterday, but I still needed to get my husband to slather on the diclofenac last night. Even between that and the painkillers I took before bed, I was awakened this morning by sharp pain in my hips. Both of them. Which, strangely, lessened as soon as I was up and moving around.

I’m really looking forward to my appointment at the sports injury clinic on Monday!

Hopefully, I won’t have to deal with it again, tomorrow morning!

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

sigh

May 5, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Yup. More snow.

At least the rhubarb (second picture) can handle it. The garlic seems fine, too. I think my winter sown beds are toast.

I’m skipping the dump run today.

On another note, I got the new topical painkiller, diclofenac, applied last night. Between that and regular painkillers, I actually slept, with only a couple of interruptions, for nearly 10 hours last night. I could still go back to bed for another 10 hours, if I could, but I recognize that this fatigue is my usual response to dreary days like today.

Oh, dear. I just got interrupted by a phone call from my mother.

*sigh*

She was demanding I take her to the doctor. She wants me to walk her across to the clinic in the same building (the doors to the TCU are locked to prevent residents from wandering) and she would make the appointment herself. I tried to explain – again – that I already called about making an appointment for her and they said now, because of where she is. She is under constant medical supervision. The staff there can tend to her current needs. After several times asking, she finally told me why she wanted to go to the doctor.

It’s her ears.

She got her 5 days of mineral oil treatment, but no one has flushed her ears. I pointed out, it’s not even 9am yet. Give them time. It took a while before she told me that one of the staff had said she would find someone experienced with ear flushing, and then she left. She’s gone. Maybe it’s her day off (I have no idea if this happened yesterday or this morning; my mother’s sense of time is pretty much gone). I said again, give them time. If she said she was going to find someone with experience, she needs time to do that.

My mother went back to demanding I take her to the clinic so she could make an appointment, accompanied by various insults on how I’m “afraid of the doctor” and how she’s “not allowed” to see a doctor, and “is this Russia or Canada?” The irony of that is, she’s probably be getting better care in Russia right now, than anywhere in Canada.

I kept trying to explain to her how things work, but she ended up hanging up on me.

*sigh*

What a way to start the day.

And it’s still not even 9am yet.

The Re-Farmer

Snow, and medical stuff

May 4, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We got snow.

Beginning of May, and it’s been snowing all day.

Granted, it’s really light snow and melts as soon as it touches anything. We are still at our high of the day, 2C/36F, but the wind chill has us at -9C/16F

A good day to have my doctor’s appointment, since I wasn’t going to be able to get anything done outside!

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

In the end, it looks like having to cancel the previous two appointments because of the truck being in the garage so much turned out to be a good thing. Once I made the connection and decided to stop taking the anti-inflammatories to see if they were the cause of my bleeding, my symptoms quickly reduces and, as of today, are almost completely gone.

After explaining everything to the doctor, she agreed. Another possibility might have been PCOS related, but I’ve been post menopausal for so long, that could be ruled out.

Before the physical exam, though, we talked about my second reason for being there. I told her about needing to go back to the sports injury clinic regarding my left hip, then told her about my fall before Christmas and how, after all this time, I still have pain in my right knee, plus my right shoulder feels like it’s about to dislocate so often, and my elbow pain. She wrote it all up in a referral to the sports injury clinic, and a requisition for Xrays. Not for my elbow, but I didn’t push for that. That is most definitely nerve damage, and not something that will show up in Xrays.

Then I got the physical exam, PAP smear and swab taken, followed by abdominal palpitations, because of the pain I have in my lower abdomen that I don’t think is related to the bleeding.

Gosh, I hate those tests.

I did mention again that I’m prone to cysts and what I was feeling reminded me of when I ended up in the ER, years ago, except not at bad.

On the plus side, absolutely everything seemed normal except for one minor thing. She could actually see where the bleeding is coming from, which in turn confirmed to her that it was the anti-inflammatory that was the cause.

Since it’s been so long, she also wrote me up for extensive blood work, including checking my iron levels – understandable, considering how much continuous blood loss I’ve had over the past few months. I’ve also got a referral for an abdominal ultrasound.

It shouldn’t take too long to hear back from the sports injury clinic, since it’s been less than a year from my last visit. The ultrasound might take a few months or a year before I hear from them.

As she was writing all this time, I mentioned that there was a problem with not being able to take the anti-inflammatories anymore.

“The pain”, she immediately responded.

Exactly.

The prescription painkillers stopped working after a very short time. I’d requested trying anti-inflammatories instead, and they helped out incredibly well. I never even had to take the max three a day I was prescribed for. Usually, it was just once a day. Twice if I had to do a lot of shoveling or something like that. Now that I’m no longer taking them, I’m taking the Tylenol Extra Strength again. It works just as well as the remaining prescription painkillers I’ve still got. That and Voltaren.

Well, I now have a prescription for a topical painkiller. Basically, it’s Voltaren, but at 5 times the strength. I’ll just need to get some help applying it to some areas.

That prescription was faxed in to our pharmacy in town. After the appointment was done, I went straight to the lab next to the clinic for the blood tests and urine sample. After that, it was off to the hospital to get the Xrays done.

I had messaged the family about the new prescription, asking if anyone needed refills to be delivered on Thursday, so we could combine them. By the time I was done with the Xrays, though, there was a message from my husband. The pharmacy had called. They got the prescription, and did I want it filled right away?

My husband told them, yes.

So, instead of heading straight home, I headed to our pharmacy to pick it up, instead. I’ve already talked to one of my daughters about getting help to apply it to the areas I can’t reach, or reach well enough. At the very least, I will use it before bed, as the pain makes it very difficult to get any sleep at times.

I was out long enough that my daughter took care of feeding the outside cats. Slick showed up this morning and allowed pets. She was back again when my daughter was there. She got to pet Slick, Fancypants (he’s getting so much better at allowing pets!), Adam and lots and lots of Flopsy pets!

The boys seem to be leaving Slick alone now. Which means that 1) it should be easier to catch her now that she’s no longer being chased around by 5 males and 2) she’s probably pregnant again, by about a day or two.

We really need to get Slick to the vet!!!!

If we could get Adam, too, that would be bonus. She has been more friendly, too, but as with Slick, only while being fed. We can’t approach them, otherwise.

We’re looking at a few more chilly days and nights ahead; enough that I’ve turned the heat lamps back on for the cats. Looking at the long range forecasts, we won’t be getting past the chill for almost 2 weeks.

I’ve been reading that we are looking to get a very strong “super El Nińo” this year. Typically, that means a very hot summer. I won’t be holding my breath on that, either way.

Just as I was writing this, a weather group I follow sent out a message. Due to the dryness and high winds, several municipalities have have implemented bans on open fires. Ours is not included. We still have full ditches and standing water in places, yet the soil surface is so very dry. We got snow and rain today, but very little. We could really use more! I haven’t seen anyone doing controlled burns, even though they are needed. Too much wind.

I’m getting very tired of being cold.

Anyhow.

I’m glad I finally got my medical appointment. In a month I will have a follow up telephone appointment to go over the results of my bloodwork and swabs. Aside from that, everything is checking out as fine as can be, under the circumstances.

Hopefully, that will continue!

Now, if only that snow would go away and get replaced with just rain…

The Re-Farmer

Chicken coop build, day three – finished!

May 1, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had to make a run into town late this morning, so we didn’t even start on finishing the chicken coop assembly until much later in the afternoon. Which was fine, because it turned out to be an absolutely lovely day today.

The first thing I worked on was reinforcing the interior roost, then securing them in place.

Each corner got one of these flat braces. My original intention had been to have the horizontal roost resting on top of the vertical support, but it was difficult to get proper measurements through the tiny opening I had to work in. The roosts ended up too short by enough that I instead trimmed them about a quarter inch shorter so that they would fit in between the vertical supports, instead of on top. While the corner braces would hold them in place, these were cheap dollar store braces and I was concerned they wouldn’t hold the weight of chickens without bending or breaking. These flat braces are higher quality and will hold. The wood itself will break before those give out.

To secure the roosts, I had to use a little kitchen step ladder to be able to reach from above at the front, to set the roosts in place and line them up, while making sure they were flush against the front and back walls. There is just a bit of a height difference because of the white edging I had to account for. Both roosts had a vertical that sort of bent away from the wall, so I used one of the pieces for later in the build, jammed at an angle to brace the wonky side in place. Once they were solidly flush against the walled, I screwed them in place from the outside. Each end got three screws. Later on, I’ll use some sort of sealant on the screws to protect the wood from moisture.

The coop now has a roost on each side, on the inside.

The next stage of the build was to add the roosts that came with the kit, which were to be mounted underneath, on either side of where the ramp would be. For that, I needed an extra pair of hands and asked my daughter to come help. After I went inside and looking up online, just how they were supposed to be attached. The pictographs were really useless for that and even an image I’d shared with my daughter, showing how high off the ground they were supposed to be secured, looked like there was something else entirely going on.

She ended up basically taking over the build, and I was her assistant. Mostly because she can actually get down on the ground, and I can’t.

This time, though, we set a sheet of plastic on the ground as a drop sheet. Last time, my daughter was crawling around on the ground, she later discovered she managed to get cat poop on her pants. Ick.

Getting the exterior roosts in place was definitely a two person job. Especially for the front. With the area for the door empty, the sides sides were slightly spread out, and I had to push the entire side in and hold it in place while my daughter screwed the roosts in place.

After that, the floor between the two sides had to be installed, then the hinged ramp attached to the floor. That was all my daughter, as there was no room for me to do anything other than hand her screws.

That done, we had to attached the door to the frame by the hinges. There were a couple of plates that I’ve been using as spacers every time we had to attach a hinged door. After the door was hung, those plates were added across the insides of the frame’s corners at the opposite side, to stop the door from going past the frame when closed. Then the latch was added to the top, and the door and frame could be attached to the coop.

With the ramp on hinges, that could be lifted up and out of the way, so my daughter could go inside and screw the door frame to the coop. The ground isn’t level, so my job was to line up edges and corners and hold them in place – which required actually lifting the coop itself slightly, on one side – until my daughter got enough screws in to hold it in place, and she could do the rest without me holding things.

Once the door and frame were in place, there were a pair of cross pieces to attach between the top of the door frame and the back mesh wall of the coop. These were part of the roof supports.

The roof was the next thing to do, and it took a lot of figuring out what the pictographs were showing. We noticed some pre-drilled holes in some pieces and had to look at instructions a couple of pages later to see what they would be used for, and we could tell which direction they were supposed to face.

The roof supports were assembled in two parts before they could be set on top and secured to the coop. Then we could finally put on the plastic roof panels.

Which was more of a pain than it should have been.

First, was figuring out which side was up, as both sides were identical. They had pre-drilled holes in them that needed to line up with the supports they would be screwed into. Then there were the overlaps. After much shifting and flipping and trying again, it was the pre-drilled holes that determined which panel edge went on top of the other. It was not the way I would have expected it to, when it comes to drainage, but it was the only way one screw could secure both edges at the same time.

Once we got that figured out, and the panels were centered and lined up, we could finally start screwing them into place. For this, my daughter was using the little step ladder a lot, and we found a different problem. The ground was too soft and the legs of the ladder started to sink! I had a small piece of plywood nearby that I could put on the ground under one set of legs, which worked out very well. When it was time for my daughter to move the ladder to reach another section, I just kept moving the board.

We found other problems, though.

The screws for this part of the build are quite short. Too short for where the panels overlapped. After some digging around in the garage, I found a few that could replace some of the screws along the seams, but then we had a whole different problem along the front. For all the care we took to line up the pre-drilled holes with the supports below, the entire row of pre-drilled hold along the front were just a touch too far. The boards in that part of the roof were slightly warped. Probably from sitting in the box in the garage for over a month in the winter. There were extra longer screws in the kit and my daughter ended up using those, and not using the pre-drilled holes, to secure the roof panels. Some of the screws went in crooked and the tips got exposed, but not anywhere I chicken could hurt itself, so we weren’t too worried about it. We’ll have to go over the roof with sealant in places, anyhow.

Once the roof panels were on, the only thing left was to attach the hooks and eyes that would be used to hold open the two front doors for air circulation. For that, the hooks were first attached under the roof, and then we could use those to decide where to attach the screw eyes at the height we wanted the doors to be held open at. In spite of using a measuring tape and marking out where to attach them, we ended up doing one door at a different height than the other. The white edging in one of them had marks already on them that I mistook for the marks I’d made below! Which is fine. As long as they can be held open.

That done, the coop was officially assembled. We just had to move it.

Slight problem. The hinged ramp. With the roof in place, it couldn’t be lift up like when my daughter worked under it before. What we ended up doing was lifting is as high as we could through the open door, then quickly shutting the door before it could drop. We still had to push the ramp up through the wire mesh so the door could be closed but, once it was, the door itself held the ramp up and out of the way.

It wasn’t easy to move the hole thing. We were able to get grips on each end, because the wire mesh is on the inside of the coop, so there was enough of a lip on the frames that we could get our fingertips under there. The main problem was me and my janky elbows. I could hold the weight for only short distances before I could feel them giving out.

Still, we managed it, and set it up in front of the retaining wall, where the ground seemed to be the flattest.

It’s still not level, but at least the whole thing isn’t being twisted out of shape by uneven ground.

Where is how the finished coop looks, with all the doors closed, plus the back, which has no doors of any kind.

You can really tell in the side views, how the ground is sloping! In the front and back views, you can see the screws holding the inside roots in place.

Here are the three sides with all the doors open.

The coop was designed with the roosts below as a way of not having to deal with lots of chicken poop inside. With the added roosts sheltered inside, we’ll be adding bedding. The nesting boxes will probably get straw, but I plan to get pine shavings for under the roosts inside.

With the coop right up against the retaining wall, we can potentially secure it to the blocks so it won’t get blown over in high winds.

We will probably not be able to keep it there, though. It is facing west and the sun can shine right through the wire mesh, the sides might create too much shadow for the garden bed behind it.

One of the things I want to do if find a way to add wheels to it, so it will be easier to move around as needed. It might be easier to just make a pair of wheeled platforms that can be tucked under the ends, then removed once the coop has been moved.

This coop will work out fine for when we get our first chickens, and for the summers. It is not the strongest of structures and definitely not suitable for a Canadian winter, but the plan is to build a polytunnel in the garden this year, so that we can move the chicken coop into it for the winter. It will do until we can build a proper, sturdier, chicken coop. We’re just getting a few chickens to start; enough to supply us with eggs. Over time I want to get more, including meat hens, so we will need to expand things quite a bit. It will take time and materials we don’t really have, but at least now we can get started.

Meanwhile, we can get ready for the chicks to arrive at the end of May. We’ll need feeders and waterers (the ones my parents used are still in the old chicken coop, but I don’t know that any of them are useable, after so many decades since my parents had chickens), both for while we have the chicks in a brooding pen indoors, and for when they get moved outside.

Something else that will be coming at the end of May is our order of basket willow. I got an email from the nursery with several shipping dates available, and I requested the latest one. That will give us time to prepare where we will be planting them, beyond the outer yard, and working out how to protect them from the renter’s cows.

On a completely different note…

It is confirmed that Slick lost her litter. While working outside, I heard a commotion and it was Slick. She’s gone into heat again, and had a whole crowd of dudes wanting their turn with her. She was not happy about it, either. I sent a quick message to the rescue and they want me to trap her as soon as possible. I don’t think we’d be able to trap her specifically, though. However, she has been super friendly when we do the morning cat feeding, and we might be able to get her into the big carrier. Tomorrow morning, my daughter is going to come out with me to try and get her. If we can manage it, she’ll go to the rescue for however long it takes for them to get her spayed, then she will come back here.

If we can get her contained!

Here’s hoping!!!

The Re-Farmer

Chicken coop build, day one

April 27, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, we did get a lot done, but it isn’t complete.

I didn’t even head out until the afternoon. I wanted to wait until it got at least a bit warmed. I’m glad I did, because I got a phone calls from my mother and brother. They are back from their pilgrimage and he even visited my mother on Saturday, not longer after I’d left! We must have just missed each other that day!

The first call was from my mother, giving me the name of a doctor at the clinic in the same hospital building the TCU is in. Someone else there gave her the name of his wife’s doctor, and I got all sorts of details that were absolutely irrelevant. I eventually found out that her hearing has gotten worse, especially in her right ear, and so on.

Now, that last time I talked to someone at the nursing station about this, I was told that because the doctor in charge of the ICU does his rounds only once a week and can’t stay with any one person for too long, I would have to make an appointment at the clinic, instead. I had passed this on to my mother, but that was as far as it went.

I managed to get my mother to let me off the phone so I could call the clinic. I looked up the clinic’s website for the phone number, and also looked up the names of the staff.

The name she gave me was not for a doctor, but a Registered Nurse. There is no permanent doctor at this clinic; all the doctors come in from the city on some sort of rotation, so most of the appointments are doing by RNs. I knew my mother wasn’t going to like that.

Still, I called up the clinic and talked to the receptionist, explaining that my mother was right in the building in the TCU and wanted to make an appointment.

They can’t do that. It doesn’t work that way.

???

I told her what I’d been told by the nurse, some time ago, and it was not the correct information. In short, we have to book a family meeting with the doctor, an administrator, my mother and any family members that can be there (which would probably just be me) to talk about my mother’s needs. Which would need to be arranged through the administrator. Who wasn’t in today. She’d be in tomorrow, though.

So I called the nursing station at the TCU and talk to the nurse there. Not the same one I spoke to about this before. I explained the situation about not being able to book and appointment and my instructions, and she was all, yeah, that’s how it’s done.

*sigh*

She got my name and phone number and the administrator should be calling me tomorrow.

That done, I called my mother back to let her know. She was eating her lunch at the time, so I kept it short. She still tried to keep me on the phone longer, as she was eating and talking to me at the same time.

It took me a while to recover from the noises. I don’t think she had her teeth in.

Then, just before I was going to head outside, my brother called. He had just talked to my mother, having to do a three way call, because he needs to do her taxes and there is stuff missing. As her PoA, he could take care of it, but it would have taken 90 days, but if my mother talked to them in person and gave permission, they could do it right away. My brother wanted to make sure I knew about it all in case I got a call from my mother and she was sounding flustered or something.

I’m so glad he did that.

Finally, I could head outside and get started. I had been trying to figure out how to move the two big boxes from the garage to the yard, where we’re thinking to set it up, and never quite came to a conclusion. In the end, once I dragged a box out of the garage, I found I could simply walk it, rocking from one corner to the other, all the way across. It was surprisingly fast that way. The boxes where not the same size and shape, and one of them was more awkward than they other, but I got it done.

The next thing to do was unpack them both and sort everything on the lawn.

Then I brought my tool bag and a chair, then sat down to start going through the instructions.

They are pictographic instructions.

They’re not very clear.

Still, I got a fair bit of progress on the first section before I had to message a daughter for help. It needed to be stood up, but it wasn’t very stable yet and I didn’t want to risk breaking anything. My younger daughter came out to help – then stayed! In fact, she pretty much took over for me.

Which I really appreciated when I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. She kept working on it, trying to decipher the instructions for the next stage. We’d already had to take some things off and reverse them, because the images in the instructions looked the opposite of what it was supposed to be.

As I was eating, the phone rang again.

It was my mother.

She told me my brother had called, and it was about insurance. She doesn’t have insurance.

Did I mention how glad I am my brother filled me in already?

I explained to her that he called about her taxes. One of the things he had to get for her claim is her prescription information. Our province has insurance coverage for that, connected with our provincial health care.

She still doesn’t understand it. She knows she sometimes has to pay for her medications, and sometimes gets them for “free”, but doesn’t understand the concept of a deductible, or that the “free” is when the insurance covers the cost.

Then she started complaining about how my brother never phones or visits.

I pointed out, he’s been back from Spain for maybe 2 days, he just visited her recently, and phoned her today. “Oh, in general”. Then she complained my sister doesn’t phone or visit, and passed on stuff she wanted me to tell them for her. It seems she’s lost track of their phone numbers, and can’t figure out how to use the contacts list on her phone. The number here at the farm hasn’t changed since they had a telephone installed some time in the 60s, it’s the only number she remembers.

I had mentioned to her that I was eating and that I had to get back outside to help build a chicken coop, but still had a hard time getting her to let me off the phone. I messaged my brother right away, before I could forget anything, inhaled the rest of my “lunch” (it was well past 5 by then), then went back to help my daughter.

When I’d done in, we’d done as much as we could on one side of the coop at this stage, and the second side needed to be assembled. She had gotten some good progress on that by the time I got there again, but she was stumped at the next part.

It turned out she had attached the floor in reverse. There was nothing in the pictographs to show there was a difference. On the side that’s supposed to face the end of the nesting boxes go, there were pre-drilled holes for pegs. The walls for the nesting boxes are set in place with the pegs, first, then screwed into place through pre-drilled holes under the floor.

We had to take almost the whole thing apart again to fix it. The side walls also had wooden pegs, and a couple of them broke in the process. They were placeholders, though, so with two of us there, it got reassembled just fine.

We finally got to the point where the two sides are attached to each other at the back, then brackets added for the floor runs from one side to the other.

Before the section of floor was added, though, the roosts were supposed to be attached below.

The pictographs were particularly confusing.

By then, it was starting to get really cold. We were both in t-shirts, since it was nice out early. When I got inside and checked, I discovered we were at 5C/41F, but the windchill was -2C/28F

Definitely not t-shirt weather!

Here is a slide show of today’s progress.

The pile of packing foam sheets in the second picture got put back into a box to get it out of the way before I started assembling things. Even then, the wind was high enough to try and tear it out of my hands and snapped a couple of pieces!

While reading the instructions, I unbagged and sorted out the parts and pieces, which are in the second picture.

The third picture is when I had to get assistance to flip the whole thing upright. The mesh sections just didn’t have anything to support them, yet.

Also, I screwed up. I put two back panels on. My daughter fixed that while I’d gone in to eat. The front panel has a door that opens for air circulation.

I was too late when I got the fourth picture of Judgement. He had been napping on the roof panels for much of the time, but then he started rolling around luxuriously on them. Of course, once I got my phone out to take some video of his adorableness, he stopped. At least he pretty posed for a picture! 😄

The fifth and last photo is where we stopped. My poor daughter’s back was killing her by then, so I took care of stacking the remaining pieces close to what we’ve got assembled so far.

What I should probably figure out before we put the ramp, door and roof on, is where I will be adding roosts on the inside, in front of the nesting boxes. There are two roosting bars, under the floors on each side. Which, to me, seems completely exposed. the bottom is wire mesh on all sides. We get a lot of wind. Unless we make covers for the mesh bottoms, the chickens aren’t going to enjoy roosting there!

This is most definitely a “summer” only coop. We’ll have to prioritize protecting it in the winter. That’s one of the reasons I want to build a polytunnel in the main garden area. We can stick the whole coop inside for the winter. The entire structure is relatively light, so moving it would not be that difficult.

It’s going to be another month before we get chicks, and another 4-6 weeks before they go into the coop, so we will have plenty of time to figure it out!

The next several days will be chillier, and then we’re supposed to warm up again. If all goes well, the coop will be finished tomorrow. I don’t want it to be sitting outside, partially finished, for too long. At this point, if we get high winds, it could be blown over quite easily.

One other thing that has made the built more difficult than it should be is the fact that we have no level ground, anywhere. We’re working on one of the most level places, and it should be okay once it’s completely assembled, but it made two people a necessity to attach some parts – one to pick the corner of the coop being worked on and hold the pieces aligned with each other, while the other drove the screws in.

In other news, I’ve heard from the foster that’s taking care of Frank. Her two babies that she rejected are in another home with experienced kitten bottle feeders. Frank is absolutely traumatized, though for a cat that just had major surgery, she sure is active! She growls and hisses at humans, but is curious about the cats that show up at the special screen door they have. Looking at some video I was sent, I think she actually is liking the amenities of indoor life. As much as a traumatized cat can! Considering all they had to do to get her to the vet for her C section, then get her back again, it’s going to be difficult to calm her down. Still, it will be easier than when she was outside. After she escaped when we tried to get her spayed, it took months to regain her trust, but we didn’t have constant access to her to work on it, either. We just saw her at feeding time, mostly.

Hopefully, it will all work out in the end. Frank really is a sweetie, once her trust is gained!

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

What a day

April 25, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

My original plan. It’s colder today, so I was going to wait until we got near our expected high of the day, do some work outside, then visit my mother.

Of course, that didn’t quite happen as planned. I never got any work done outside at all.

After my morning rounds, I had breakfast and spent some time catching up on my computer, which is working very well again right now. Which is when I found posts on FB from the rescue, talking about Frank!

The intake person still has Frank, and Frank has not warmed up to her or anyone at all. At most, she came out of her hiding place and had a nap on the floor in full view, once.

Well, yesterday, she went into labour, but it was clearly not progressing. They had to take her in for an emergency C section, and managed it only because she had hunkered down into a cat cave. They were able to slide the entire thing, with her in it, into a large dog crate. Once at the vet clinic, they apparently had to use a net to get her!

She had three kittens. Two survived, but Frank didn’t want anything to do with them. Volunteer fosters with experience bottle feeding newborn kittens have stepped in, and as far as I know, Frank is still at the clinic, recovering from surgery.

Poor Frank!

So far, her two baby boys are doing well with the fosters.

Once I saw the posts, I messaged the group chat I have with some people from the rescue and we were talking about her, when my mother phoned.

After our hellos, I told her I’d been planning to visit her later today, after I got some work done outside.

I was promptly informed that she was more important than anything else, and I needed to visit her.

No, she didn’t have any emergency, though she did bring up her ears and hearing problems. I tried asking her if they were doing the oil treatment to be able to clear her ears if it was a wax build up, as she has had happen in the past. She made some disparaging comments about the staff and I knew I wasn’t going to get a straight answer from her.

In the end, she asked me to bring her some Ginger Ale – just a small bottle – and a tube of Voltaren that she wanted me to bring to her and hide from the staff.

*sigh*

My mother had been asking for a particular cushion with a crocheted cover she wanted me to bring to her. I had found two almost identical ones and already had one of them in the truck to bring to her. After our call, I quickly changed out of my work clothes and headed out, just before lunch time. I stopped at the pharmacy to get her Voltaren, then went to the grocery store to find the small bottles of Ginger Ale. I’d considered getting her the tiny pop cans, instead, but a 6 pack of those costs almost as much as a 12 pack of full size cans! So I got her a 6 pack of Ginger Ale.

On entering the grocery store, though, I saw a sign saying their had seed potatoes in stock. I ended up getting a 5 pound bag of Yukon Gold and another of Viking Red, which I am not familiar with. I don’t know if we’ll get more potatoes later on, but we will at least have as many as we planted last year. It depend on what space I’m able to get available.

When I got to my mother’s, I stopped to talk to the nursing station first. The nurse there today actually worked at the hospital while my mother was there and remembered her, though I don’t think my mother remembers her back. I asked about my mother’s oil treatment for her ears, mentioning that my mother had specifically brought up that her right ear is worse. She dug out my mother’s file in their note book, where every shift’s nurse writes down things of note for the next shift, and for the doctor when he does his rounds once a week.

My mother’s file has a lot of notes.

She found the notes from the nurse to did my mother’s ears. She got the mineral oil treatment for three days, then he flushed her ears. The notes said her right ear was clear, and only a small amount came from her left year.

Since it is now confirmed it’s not a wax build up causing the problem, we talked about the situation for a while. In the end, we would have to make an appointment with an audiologist in the city ourselves, but once we let them know when the appointment is, they would arrange the transportation, since my mother would have to use her wheelchair. A family member could accompany, of course.

While the nurse was reading the notes on my mother’s file, she spotted something of concern for me. My mother has a new room mate now. A very frail woman. It seems my mother has pushed her walker and something else of hers out into the hallway, angry that they were … in the way? It wasn’t very clear.

That got me to asking about the possibility of my mother getting one of the private rooms, if one opens up. My mother will always complain about her room mates, no matter what, and she did have one that was apparently aggressive towards her, in the other TCU, but this is about my mother’s behaviour towards her room mates, not the other way around. The nurse took notes about that. We also talked about how my mother is on the waiting list for a particular nursing home. There’s no way to know now long that would happen, though.

We also talked about my mother’s medications, as the notes say she keeps asking about them. It turns out the “extra” pills my mother is getting are just multivitamins. This has been explained to her, but she doesn’t seem to get it.

Before going to my mother’s room, I showed the 6 pack of Ginger Ale bottles I was bringing to my mother, but also told her about the Voltaren, and that my mother asked me to keep it a secret from them. I explained, it’s just for her knees, which she can apply herself. That’s it. They already do her back and hip for her. The nurse agreed that it would be fine for my mother to have some to apply to her knees, herself. I just made sure to remind my mother later that I got her the extra strength version, so to use it only once every 12 hours.

When I got to my mother’s room, there was a cleaning staff member there, offering to take my mother’s lunch tray away. There was a note my mother had written on a napkin that she asked about, and it was for the kitchen staff. She wrote that they were giving her too big of a glass of milk and she couldn’t finish it and didn’t want to waste it, so she wanted a smaller glass. The woman tried to explain to my mother that she can’t write a note like that, or tell someone like her about it. My mother needed to go to the nurse so they can write it down in the instructions for her meals. My mother wasn’t understanding why; she felt writing the note should be enough. Since I was there and heard all this, I said I would take care of it and went back to the nursing station.

After explaining the situation, the nurse got out the folder with instructions for each residence and found my mother’s. She already had instructions to have a cup of hot water to go with her milk, so she can mix them together.

I spotted the problem.

They give her a full cup of milk, and a full insulated coffee/tea cup of hot water. Both are so full, she can’t combine them.

There are now instructions to give my mother only a half glass of milk with her meals, and she will have the room to mix her milk and hot water, the way she likes it, now!

As I was walking back, I crossed paths with the cleaning lady, and she started saying how she is surprise she hasn’t run into me before. She’d worked in our little hamlets single hotel/restaurant/bar for years.

Turns out, she’s a neighbour. She’d been to this farm, years ago, probably while I was still living here! When I asked her name, I did recognize it, though I certainly didn’t recognize her. Too many years have passed.

I told her I’ve been living in other provinces for some 30 years, and we’ve only been back for 8, going on 9, years. Plus, we don’t go out much. 😄

It turns out she knows our vandal quite well and mentioned him in passing, since she sees him all the time and knows how close we used to be. Even as she talked about him and started to cringe, commenting on “how he is” now.

*sigh*

As we were talking, my mother popped her head out of the room and we both greeted her. Not long after, she popped her head out again and told me, “I thought you came to visit ME!” I told her, “I was just saying hello to my neighbour!”

We said our goodbyes and I went to my mother’s room. Her room mate was not there, so we stayed there for my entire visit. As I came in, the first thing she did was tell me to close the door. There is someone across the hall that has his TV on and she found it too loud.

For someone who is having hearing issues, it’s surprising how much it bothers her, because it really wasn’t that loud. She had her own TV and radio on in her apartment when I’ve visited her, much much louder!

The visit went… okay. It certainly has been worse.

She complained about her pills, convinced that they are deliberately messing with her medications because they want old people to just die.

She brought out a list she’s been writing, of how many pills they give her and when, and now they’re giving them to her at the wrong times and the wrong amounts. She wouldn’t let me actually see the list, though.

I told her I talked to the nurse about her ears and she told me the flushing was done by a Filipino guy who says he’s a nurse, but who knows what he really is, and how nothing was flushed out of her ears. I told her, that meant there was no wax build up and explained about needing to get her ears tested in the city. That got a derisive comment about how they are just trying to push responsibility for her onto someone else. Why can’t the doctor do it? I had to explain, she needs to go to a specialist with the training and the equipment for it. A regular doctor can’t do it. She disagreed.

Oh, and she thinks her pills are causing her hearing loss. And eating is causing her breathing problems.

She complained that I brought her a 6 pack of Ginger Ale, when she only asked for one bottle.

She complained that the noise from the TV was breaking her sanity and literally killing her.

She complained that there was a chair in the corner of the room, where she stacks some of her stuff, because it’s ugly and big and doesn’t suit the room and she has asked for a shelf, instead. The chair is not big, not ugly, and all the double occupancy rooms are furnished exactly the same. She just doesn’t want it there.

She tried to make me take a pocket book on the life of Princess Diana that someone gave her but she has trouble reading because her eyesight is going. I tried to politely decline, so she tried to tell me to give it to my daughters. They need to read, too. I told her, we all read. What do we read? All sorts of things. We just don’t have any interest in the personal life of a dead princess. She took issue with the fact that we don’t read the things she thinks we should be reading.

At one point, she actually asked me what was new. I told her, she already knew about the well pump. That was pretty much it. She told me, she didn’t want to know about that, it’s our business. I told her, then don’t ask what’s new if you don’t want to know! She then explained she meant if we watched anything new on TV. I reminded her, we don’t watch TV.

I tried to tell her about uncovering the garlic bed and how they’re already sprouting, and got a lecture about how it’s too early to uncover them because it’s still too cold. Then went on about how, after we first moved here, she had offered to hire someone to plow the old garden area for us to garden in, but I said no. I told her, right… I said no. Because that would not have been a good thing. I tried to remind her, we don’t have a herd of cows with manure we can add to the soil, like she did, and the soil is very poor now. That’s why we are doing things differently.

That got the same response as mentioning the well pump did.

When the door opened and someone assisted my mother’s room mate in, my mother immediately began to complain about the TV. I told her, maybe they are hard of hearing, too? Oh, but then everyone has to suffer. I pointed out that not all people are bothered by it, and just tune it out (which I had already done during). I reminded her that some people always have a TV on, like my in laws did, just for background noise. Oh, that must be why she (my late mother in law) died.

…

I told her flat out that this was a very terrible thing to say.

My mother was completely indifferent and unapologetic.

Needless to say, I didn’t stay too much longer.

By the time I got home, it was late in the afternoon. I finally had my lunch, then headed out to feed the outside cats. I never did get any work done in the garden. I’ll have to make up for it, tomorrow.

I did get more messages from the rescue while I was with my mother, and they are talking about trapping cats. After what happened with Frank, the intake person really wants to get the females done, so no other cat has to go through what Frank is going through. It turns out Princes Auto has an 80% off sale on traps right now, and two people have already picked some up.

When I headed outside to do the second feeding of the day, I managed to get a good picture of one of our most feral females.

We have not named her. I am open to suggestions!

I have not seen Adam or Slick today at all, but this one, and Sprout, who is just as feral, have both shown up. I strongly suspect this white and grey is not nursing, because of how often I am seeing her in the inner yard. I find it hard to believe she didn’t get pregnant, when she and others went into heat in January, which is really, really early for that. Which suggests to me she may have lost a litter. I had no way of knowing, though, and we don’t see enough of her body to be able to tell if she’s nursing.

The second picture in the slideshow above is of the two big traps we have, which I sent to the rescue chat group. We have two others that my brother gave me, but they are more appropriate to catch squirrels, not adult cats. The thing is, if we were to manage to trap a cat, we’d have to get them in somewhere immediately – and we still have to find a way to monitor the traps. The intake person agreed, yes, immediately, but I asked, immediately to where? I have not had a response yet. As far as I know, I can’t just show up with a cat in a trap at a vet clinic and request a spay or neuter. Especially since the only clinic that we’re dealing with (with special rates and arrangements with the rescue) is a 45-50 minute drive away. So where would I go with them once they are trapped?

Other folks in the chat group were talking about coming here, as a group, with traps to get as many as possible for spay or neuter and release. Which would be the best plan, since they would be able to work something out before they even arrived here. The intake person wants me to focus on females only, but there’s no way to pick and choose who gets trapped.

We shall see what actually ends up happening.

So that is where I am at now. A very different day than expected!

I do hope Frank heals up well, and they are able to find a way to get her adopted out. While we are more than willing to take her back, I’d hate for her to become an outside cat again, and it would be too much for her to join the crowd of inside cats we already have.

Ah, well.

What will be, will be.

The Re-Farmer

Feeling thankful

April 24, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today has been pretty chilly, compared to yesterday, but it was still warm enough to get stuff done in the garden. I’ll actually put together another video on how that went. Probably not today, though.

Before I headed outside, I had a rather alarming start to the day, when I tried to log into my computer.

I got this.

Yes, that’s cat hair all over my monitor’s screen.

I have never seen this particular warning before. I also couldn’t really fuss with it, either, as I needed to have my breakfast, then head outside to get the winter sown beds uncovered. So I got my husband up and told him what was going on and he said he would look at it while I was outside.

He had to go into my bios to reset it.

It turns out part of the problem is all the photos and video I’ve got.

This is a new computer, which I got after my previous desktop died an ignominious death. When looking for another desktop, I was surprised to find that pretty much everything only had 500 Gigs of storage space. When I got my previous one, they all had at least 1T. I’ve been transferring files to an external hard drive as I am able, but it was already mostly full with data rescued from my old computer. Still, I needed to free up space on my computer; it’s slow going to transfer over USB, so I’d do things like one month’s worth of photos and video at a time.

In spite of that, after I uploaded the photos and video I took for my last gardening video, the files took up enough space that the computer just couldn’t process my log in.

As we were talking about it when I came in for lunch, my husband mentioned that he had a 2T hard drive on his old computer; we’ve kept both our old computers for salvage purposes. He wasn’t sure if my new computer had the ports for it, though. He got it out of his old computer to give it a try after I finished my lunch, and headed back outside.

It worked.

As soon as I was able to, I started transferring files. I was able to transfer all of our 2025 trail cam files at once, instead of one month at a time, in a very short time. Had I tried to transfer the 2025 fold to the external hard drive, it would have taken more than an hour. That one folder turned out to be what was taking up the most space.

I really need to delete more trail cam files, but I enjoy keeping files with, say, herds of deer going by, or cats – some we no longer have – running around. Of course, I also keep the files that show our vandal creeping around, too.

Moving that one folder almost doubled the available space I had.

From now on, all my photos and videos will be going straight to the 2T hard drive; something I used to do regularly, with my previous computer. I was able to transfer it all in mere moments.

My desktop is doing much better now!

Meanwhile, I was able to get a decent amount of work done in the main garden area. I focused on the garlic bed first, and found lots of garlic already emerged – and a surprising number of chard and spinach seedlings! They were trying to grow through two layers of mulch (first a leaf mulch, then the straw mulch I added later), though, so they were all very leggy. I don’t know if they’ll make it. That bed is now clear and protected by netting, though, so they at least have a chance.

The next bed I worked on has the radishes and turnips in it. This one has the two rows closer to the sides of the bed, with the middle open for what will probably be pole beans later on. There was a surprising number sprouts on one side – the radishes, if I remember correctly. This bed got covered with the 6mm poly I had order a couple of months ago.

By the time that was done, it was getting late, and my daughter was treating us to pizza at a place that opens at 4pm. We all got different 18″ jumbo size pizzas, which is enough to feed us for several days!

After the order was phoned in, I headed out to the truck but just had to stop to get this picture.

These three in particular just love the isolation shelter! With the cooler temperatures, I turned the heat lamp back on, too. That’s Furriosa, curled up in the hammock under the lamp.

On the way to town, I stopped at the general store and post office. I was able to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble, along with getting the mail.

There was a surprise parcel waiting for me!

From there, I continued on to town, first stopping at the grocery store; my daughter had sent funds for a few things from there, to go with the pizzas, as well. Last of all, I got the pizzas, then headed home.

The truck smelled amazing.

Once everything was unloaded and put away, I opened up the package. It was from a dear friend that was a neighbour before we moved out here. Along with some things for the garden, and treats as “bait” for the outside cats, I found this, well wrapped in a tiny box.

How utterly precious! The teeniest most adorable bunny, ever!

And yes, I did scrub my hands after I was done in the garden. Honest. 😄

In between the stops I made while going to and from town, I got some messages from my husband. Out of curiosity, he looked up the price for the exact same SSD, 2T hard drive he scavenged from his old computer to install into mine.

It now costs $925.

Before taxes.

Out of curiosity, my husband looked up the invoice from when he bought it a few years ago.

Less than $250 AFTER taxes.

For the EXACT same hard drive. That’s on Amazon. No idea what the local prices would be, or if anyone even carries it anymore.

In the end, there was much to be thankful for today.

Thankful that my husband could get into my computer in the first place. Thankful he had a spare 2T hard drive, and my computer is now breathing easy again.

Thankful we didn’t need to spend almost a thousand dollars for a new one!

Thankful for the work I was able to get done in the garden today.

Thankful for my daughter treating us to pizza. Gosh, it’s been ages since we’ve ordered in pizza.

Thankful that I was able to get a 40 pound bag of kibble, right at our own hamlet’s general store and didn’t have to drive to towns to the north and south of us for one.

Thankful for a wonderful and thoughtful friend who sent us a delightful care package.

All in all, life it really good!

The Re-Farmer

A leaky surprise, and blinding

April 22, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s a good thing I know how to touch type! 😄 I’m home from my eye appointment, and my eyes are still massively dilated.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I had quite a surprise when I did my evening checks in the basement. In the morning, everything around the well pump was almost completely dry, after pipes and fittings were replaced.

In the evening, there was a significant amount of water.

I took some pictures, emailed them to the plumber, then phoned him. It was later in the day, but this is a 24/7 plumber, and he actually answered the phone.

We talked for a while as he looked up the photos I sent him and was really surprised by how much water there was. He said he wasn’t able to come out tomorrow (meaning, today), but I told him that was fine, because I had my medical appointment. He did have a suggestion for me, though, after I described where the leak seemed to be coming from. He suggested I try tightening the screw clamps. The plumber that did the work had used an impact driver to tighten them, so I never even thought that they might be loose, but I was certainly willing to try!

He even told me what size socket I needed, which meant I didn’t need to bring the whole tool box down. 😄

I was quite surprised by how much I was able to tighten them – and I tightened all of them, on both pipes, just in case. When I’d tried it before, after the new pump was installed but it still had the old pipes, I had tried to tighten the clamps with a screwdriver after spotting one of the leaks, but couldn’t even budge them.

Once done, I swept away the water into the sump pump reservoir, then left it for the night.

Happily, this morning, everything seemed to be drying. I sent a picture to the plumber and let him know. I checked again just a little while ago, and it still looks fine.

The first picture in the slideshow above is what I found last night. The second is the one I took a little while ago, so maybe 20 hours later.

Hopefully, it will hold this time!

As for today, my daughter and I headed out after having a late breakfast. My daughter is coming down with something and her lymph nodes are all swollen, so she could barely talk, but she could still drive me home. We left early enough to stop at a grocery store right near the eye clinic to pick up a few things my husband asked for, then I popped into another store briefly, just to see if they had anything we needed. Even with all that, then taking the time to eat lunches in the truck, I was at the eye clinic early.

They were good with that, and even got me started early!

I got the pre-tests done, first, then only had a short wait before the doctor called me in. With my regular vision test, there was very little change. I could get a new prescription, but it really wouldn’t make much difference.

Then she did the drops to dilate my eyes.

Ouch.

I joined my daughter in the waiting room for the 15 minutes it took for my eyes to dilate, then I got a series of photos taken. I have the tiniest of hemorrhages in my eyes that they are monitoring with these.

After the photos were taken, I had a few more minutes to wait before the doctor called me in and we went over the images. Minor changes. Some of the hemorrhages were gone, some faded, and some tiny new ones in other places. Nothing of concern.

Then she did the direct examination, under a bright light.

Ouch.

Everything is checking out okay, though.

That done, I went to book my next appointment in 6 months – that one will include a field of vision test – and settle the bill. I wasn’t sure how it would work with the change in our insurance, and there was only so much information she could access in the system. In the end, I just paid the bill in full ($60) and got the receipt for my husband to submit to the insurance company later.

I thought I was doing fine until I stepped outside in the the bright sunshine! I was almost completely blinded, and had to get my daughter to lead me to the truck. The first thing she did when we got there was get my sunglasses that fit over my regular glasses on me.

What a sweetheart.

(My husband submitted the claim, then we talked about his insurance changes. It turns out that we have the same policy numbers as before. Which means, even though they don’t send out a physical card anymore and want us to use an app, I still had all the information needed on the old physical card that I could have shown the receptionist!)

I’d considered things like getting gas on the way out, or stopping at my mother’s to drop of the cushion I think she was asking me about, but nope. Not today. We went straight home!

Things are a lot better, but my eyes are still burning. I did manage to feed the outside cats while my daughter put away the groceries we got, and gave my husband the receipt for the insurance company, but I think that’s about my limit for the day.

I’m happy to say that both Slick and Adam showed up at feeding time, and I was able to pet Slick a little bit. I was able to pet Adam a lot! She even let me fuss in her fur to try and get a burr out of her side a little bit.

The rest of my day is going to be really quiet, and I’ll be trying to keep my eyes closes as much as possible. Even now, in just the time it took me to write this, the burning is increasing.

So I will say good bye for now!

Until next time…

😊

The Re-Farmer

A beautiful day!

April 21, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We’re at 10C/50F as I write this. “Real feel” at 12C/54F – and we still haven’t reached our high of the day! Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer.

I am so enjoying this.

First up, I made sure to check on the well pump this morning, and I’m happy to say…

… everything is drying up nicely, and there is no sign of any leaks.

The picture is out of focus because that corner is completely dark, so the camera didn’t know where to focus before the flash lit up.

There is moisture on the floor below showing, but that is normal for this time of year. There’s a low spot where any water seeping through the concrete puddles, and I sweep it into the sump pump reservoir regularly.

Then I headed outside to feed the yard cats, and was even able to do a head count.

Twenty seven. There were 27 cats this morning!

This included Slick, who made a brief appearance.

She is no longer very round.

*sigh*

Then she disappeared.

I checked all the places we set up that I hoped she would use to have her kittens, but they were all empty.

I did find Gouda in the catio, enjoying the fresh straw on the hammock.

There is a beautiful feral tuxedo I saw this morning that I think actually lives across the road from us. He likely calls two colonies “home”.

Once the morning routine was done, I headed to the town north of us to sign the form for our taxes, then take my husband’s home for him to sign, before taking it back. It’s a half hour drive to this town, so doing this meant a total of 2 hours of driving time. Happily, the truck behaved the entire time.

Which is good, because tomorrow I have my eye appointment that my daughter will need to drive me home from.

Meanwhile, I’d messaged the rescue chat group about my count this morning, and we talked about how to at least get some of the friendly males neutered. With that in mind, I did a bit of clean up in the isolation shelter. Later on, when the ground is dry and we can set up a hose, we will move the isolation shelter away from the house and give it a through spring cleaning. For now, though, I wanted to clear out the bottom level. We haven’t been able to change the two litter boxes under there for a long time, because of the box shelter we set in front of the ramp door in the winter. It is warm enough that I moved it out completely and left it set aside, so we’ll be able to access the bottom regularly now. I left the emptied litter boxes out, only one of which will make its way back into the shelter. The other will go into the cat cage in the sun room, where I hope any mamas will bring their kittens.

The straw that was put in the lower level for the winter was thoroughly pooped on. I had to use a garden hoe to reach the far corner and drag it all to the ramp door. That all went to the litter compost behind the outhouse.

It was so warm, I shut off the heat lamp in the isolation shelter as well as both of them in the sun room. With overnight temperatures looking relatively mild from now on, we shouldn’t need to turn them back on again until the fall.

By the time I was done with the isolation shelter, I was starting to hurt again. Definitely something wrong going on in my abdomen. I would not be at all surprised to learn I’ve developed another large cyst. Doctor’s appointment is in the first week of May. We’ll see how it goes from there.

With my eye appointment tomorrow, I won’t be able to work on the garden beds I meant to, but I should be able to gather the materials I’ll need later today. The days are getting so much longer, I’ll have time for that. I think I’ve figured out what I want to use to protect the dwarf peas in the wattle weave bed from the cats, once the straw mulch is removed. Once I’ve got everything I need handy, it won’t take long at all to get the beds cleaned up and protected.

From twenty. Seven. Cats.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Here’s hoping!

April 17, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It feels like it’s been such a long day!

But first, the…

… cute sneak thieves!

The cheeky buggers! Both raccoons and skunks are now regularly seen in the sun room. While the camera didn’t catch them last night, I know they go into the isolation shelter, too.

*sigh*

The storm system that hit yesterday hasn’t been too bad, over us. Our weird climate bubble has rescued us again. We got a bit more snow, and it was still snowing this morning, but that’s it. The town my mother is in got pouring rain during the night! So did the city. The highways group I’m on had many reports of poor driving conditions on the highways.

My younger daughter came along for our errands of the day, with our first stop being the post office to pick up a parcel. The paved roads near our little hamlet were already starting to melt, even as more snow was falling. As we got closer to town, however, the road conditions slowly got worse. I found myself doing about 80-85kph/50-53mph all the way, instead of the 100kph/62mph speed limit. It was very messy and hard to see where the lanes were, the closer we got to the lake, which is pretty typical. I’d heard of one road, just before town, being washed out and we could actually see the damage as we drove by! Still, I’ve driven through much worse.

Our first stop in town was to drop off the truck at the garage. We’d left early, knowing it would be slow going, and ended up only about 15 minutes early instead of the half hour early it normally would have been, in good driving conditions. I just had to drop off the keys, and then my daughter and I – remembering to grab canes – started walking.

First thing we did was get a breakfast, since neither of us had eaten before we left. We took our time about it. My appointment was a drop off time, not a scheduled work time, and it looked like it was just the owner in today, so I knew it would likely be quite a while. We did have other errands to do, but not until after we got the truck back.

We decided to walk over to the second hand store, just to see what we could find.

Treasures. We found treasures.

Specifically, there were a couple of hand crank meat grinders. One looking very much like the one I found in the old kitchen that I remember using when I was a kid, which has missing parts now. The second hand one we were looking at even had a spare mincing plate, though both were coarse grind plates. There was a second one, much smaller, that had two spare mincing plates, and was the same price.

After hemming and hawing, I finally decided to go ahead and get the bigger one.

Then we started looking around and I got a few more things, the most expensive costing $2. My daughter admired a couple of items that I ended up getting for her, including a matcha bowl and saucer set, and a fabulously retro pitcher. For myself, I got a serving bowl, an old Mennonite cookbook, and a couple of books with plans for making things like furniture and garden structures. My daughter got herself a DVD and a couple of novels.

One thing we both spend quite a bit of time looking over was an old China cabinet, selling at only $80. The set up we have for our dishes, serving bowls, etc. was great when we first moved out here, but we now have a lot more cats. The shelves are open in the front, and that’s become a problem. That cabinet would actually solve a lot of storage space problems we have right now. What we couldn’t figure out, however, is how we would get it home. Yes, it would fit in the box of the truck, but none of us are able bodied enough to load and unload it.

We didn’t get it.

Once we paid for our stuff, we were then stuck with carrying them around! The meat grinder alone is cast iron, and weighs about 15 pounds. It got its own bag. The rest all together weighed more. Not normally a big deal, but we were both caning it and, with my right elbow still messed up, I could only carry the grinder with my left arm.

We’d already done a fair bit of walking by then and needed to sit down, so we headed over to a donut shop for drinks and a donut each. It was a place we could hang out for a while and not be taking up needed table space.

By the time we were done there, enough time had passed – about 4 hours altogether – that I figured we could head back to the garage, even though we hadn’t been texted yet. The walk was slow going. My poor daughter was in so much pain, I could see she was fighting not to cry. 😢

When we got to the garage, the truck was still up on a hoist and almost done, so we went into the office to sit down. I made sure my daughter sat in the normal sized chair by their desk. They have other chairs, but they are much lower. Hard to get in and out of when your knees or back are shot, but I was having an easier time of it than my daughter was.

It was past 2pm by the time we got to the garage, though. The original plan once the truck was done was to do a quick stop at the grocery store, then a gas station, then drive to the town north of us to the tax preparer. I had my form to sign, but we’d then have to take my husband’s form home for him to sign, then I would drive it back. Then we were going to go back to town again, as my older daughter wanted to treat us to take out and sent funds for it. Altogether, it would have been an extra 3 1/2 hours of driving, at least, and the tax preparer’s office closed at 5.

We were both already in too much pain, so I called them up instead and said we weren’t going to make it today. I was assured that was all right. We’ve got until April 30 to sign the forms!

I’ll do it on Monday.

It wasn’t too much longer before the truck was done and it was backed out of the garage. My daughter took our stuff to the truck while I settled the bill – just pennies over $388, in the end. Hopefully, that will solve the problem and we won’t be back again for some time!

I know where my tax return is going.

*sigh*

As we were talking about it, he told me that, if I don’t come back for anything until after June, they won’t be there anymore. They are moving locations! They are going from about 2,400 sq ft to about 35,000 sq ft, in an industrial park – and he bought the building, so no more renting! That is so awesome! They opened a second location last year, and are doing well enough to expand locally, too. I congratulated him, of course. I’m so happy that they are doing so well. There are a surprising number of garages in this town, so for him to have enough business that he can expand like this tells a lot.

That done, I went to the truck – then had to get my daughter to go behind me to guide me as I backed out, as there were a couple of vehicles making for a tight space. While we were doing that, the owner came out to get one of them, to drive it into one of the bays. He was chuckling a bit when he saw what we were doing, but it did give me a chance to quickly talk to him. The check engine light was still on. I figured it should turn off on its own in short order, now that the new sensor is installed, which he confirmed for me.

Once parked at the grocery store, my daughter stayed in the truck, as she was in too much pain for more walking. We only needed a few things, but I went through the whole store to see if there was anything I was forgetting. Of course, there was, so I’m glad I did.

From there, it was to the gas station. I put $50 in the tank, which gave me a quarter tank at $1.799 *sigh*

Next, we headed to the Dairy Queen for take out – and the check engine light was of by then. My daughter came in with me, so she could choose for her sister and herself. For treats like this, we order a combo meal each, plus an extra burger each, so it took a little while longer for it to be done! I even remembered to bring in a hard sided grocery bag to make it easier to carry the hot food. My daughter ended up with the tray of drinks on her lap for the drive home.

Unfortunately, while the road was in better condition by then, and almost completely clear of ice and snow, it’s a rough ride. The road needs resurfacing. She didn’t get splashed too badly, though! It got smoother once we were on the gravel road again.

Once at home and unloaded, it was late enough that I went straight to feeding the outside cats, making it safer for my daughter to drive out of the yard and park the truck in the garage.

During the drive home, I’m happy to say that oil pressure gauge was right were is was supposed to be, the whole way. Here’s hoping that new sensor will keep working properly! It’ll take a bit more driving before we know for sure.

Tomorrow, I should go visit my mother, at the very least.

Now that we’ve got this last bit of work done on the truck, we have quite a few things to catch up on, little by little. Plus, I’ve got my eye appointment next week, which my daughter will have to drive me home from, and FINALLY, my third attempt at a doctor’s appointment in the beginning of May. If all goes well, I won’t have to cancel any of that!

Here’s hoping!!!

The Re-Farmer

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: