Just a short video of today’s harvest.
Not to shabby for a frost enforced harvest!
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2023 Garden: September garden tour (video)
Last night was our average first frost night, and there was no frost. The garden survives another night!
Check it out. 😊
May the frost hold off at least as long as predicted. Cooler night means things are slowing down, so if we’re going to get to harvest things, we need as much time as possible for it to fully mature.
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2023 garden: August garden tour (video)
Looks like it successfully uploaded over night!
Here is a tour of our garden, as of yesterday.
So far, there has been no phone call to reschedule, so I should be taking my husband to his medical appointment today. I’m not looking forward to it. It’s going to be such a painful drive for him.
I can’t wait until we are able to replace the van. I greatly appreciate having access to my mother’s car, but that little thing just cannot meet our needs.
I hope you like the video!
The Re-Farmer
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Morning kittens
I had to wash the eyes of only one kitten, this morning.
In the background, around the kibble house, you can see the little tuxedo. That one had the really messed up eye, but we couldn’t get anywhere near it. We still can’t, but it looks like the eye healed on its own!
I heard from the Cat Lady last night. Their cat that was more recently blocked has had surgery and is being monitored at home now. They’re going to be giving us their regular cat food, because they will now be buying only medicated cat food. !!! I just can’t imagine how much that will cost on a monthly basis. They have more cats inside than we do, and the UTI cat food is insanely expensive.
As for our own Leyendecker, I will have to go to the clinic today and see if I can get another syringe for his liquid meds. The last dose we gave him, he bit it hard enough to make a hole. He is responding to the medications – he’s got about a week left, just once a day, now. He still doesn’t seem to be eating much at all, but we’ve still got the problem that sent us to the vet in the first place. He’s peeing in all the wrong places! My younger daughter has taken on the task of deep clean up, and has been mopping the floors frequently. Considering the state of our floors, especially in the kitchen, that is not an easy job. The linoleum is worn down to the sub floor in places, and the mop catches on the edges. If we were using the sponge mop, it would be torn to pieces!
Now if we could just win that lottery jackpot, we could put in new flooring, along with all the other renovations this place needs! 😅
The Re-Farmer
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Well, it would have worked! (video)
Yesterday, I headed out to fix the water pipe to the garden tap. It was hot and muggy, and I had sweat pouring off my face, so if you hear me sounding out of breath in the video below, that is why!
The couplings did work. I had to use both of them.
But then… well… here’s the video.
So… that’s a write off.
In theory, I could just dig out the section between where the couplings are, and my unexpected find, figure out where the third leak is and repair that. However, the pipe is so old, and clearly splitting apart easily, it’s not worth it. It needs to be replaced completely.
So now my plan is to take advantage of end of season sales to pick up a heavy duty garden hose long enough to reach from the house to the garden tap, with slack. I am also thinking of picking up some pipe wide enough to run the hose through it. This way, the hose would be protected by the pipe after it’s buried, but if it does need repair, it can be easily pulled out, then put back in again, without having to dig another trench. It would be even easier to attach a line to one end before pulling it out the other way, do any repaires, then use the line to pull it back through the pipe.
I won’t dig up the water pipe until we have what we need to install a replacement, but I am now very curious as to just why there is that wider diameter section of pipe, and how far it extends. I’m also curious as to just how far the hose section coming out of the ground to attach to the house extends, and how it’s joined to the pipe.
Whatever was done obviously made sense at the time, and it did work for about 50 years, which is pretty darn good!
The Re-Farmer
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Kitten status and garden gathering
We’ve reached our predicted high of 26C/79F today, with 54% humidity. Tomorrow, we are supposed to hit 30C/86F.
The first thing I want to share with you is this adorableness.
I even got a bit of video.
This was the first time she nursed the babies in the comfort of my bed. She is so tiny!
And filthy. Especially her belly. Those kittens get her very dirty! She has gotten to the point where she actually enjoys being held and cuddled, so chances are pretty good we should at least be able to take a damp washcloth to her.
These next photos are from yesterday evening.
I spotted the two kittens in the junk pile, without mom around, playing. When it saw me, the black one went and hid, but the other one stayed and watched me while I took photos. The black one has a single small patch of white on its chest that I could see.
The third photo is of a kitten I’ve never seen before. I saw it again this morning, with two other kittens of similar size that I didn’t recognize. I have no idea which mother they came with. There are several of the more feral mamas that had kittens quite early in the spring, and I was wondering when their babies would start showing up.
Beside the main garden, there is an area we’ve allowed to grow wild that is now tall with what I thought was a type of alfalfa but, when I tried to look it up, I couldn’t find any images with white flowers like them.
Whatever it is, it was just buzzing with bees last night, and I managed to get a decent picture.
I also got a picture of our first fresh garlic – after cleaning it off with the hose!
The squash is our first Honeyboat Delicata. The one I hand pollinated from a different type of squash, as there were no Delicata male flowers blooming. There still aren’t. So far, it looks like the cross pollination took. Hopefully, we’ll have at least one Delicata to try and see if we like them, and if the Honeyboat variety really does store well. If so, we will plant them again – with purchased seeds, though, since the seeds from any we grow this year will likely all be cross pollinated.
And finally, a handful of Royalty raspberries I picked this morning! Most of those were from one plant, with a few from a second. The third is the smallest, and its berries are still unripe.
I’m still amazed we got any at all in their transplant year!
I forgot to get a picture, but one of the African Drum gourd female flowers was blooming this morning, so I made sure to pollinate it with one of the male flowers from another African Drum gourd. If it works out, it should be interesting to see just how fast the gourds develop, and if we have a mild enough fall for them to reach full maturity.
In other things, we’re concerned about Leyendecker. He’s getting his medications, but he’s still refusing to eat. We even mixed the new food with the food he’s used to, and he won’t eat either! He also spends most of his days just lying around, but that could be from the medications. This morning, while staying with him in the bathroom, trying to convince him to eat, he just sprawled tragically at the closed door. I took the opportunity to palpate his abdomen. He not only tolerated it, but shifted so I could reach better as I was pushing around where his bladder is. He had just gotten his medications, so it would have been too soon for the pain killers to kick in. If he were having blocking issues, my poking around would have been very uncomfortable for him, and I would have been able to feel an over full bladder. Neither was an issue. So we’re not sure what’s going on with him right now. 😟 We will continue to monitor him.
For now, I’m going to go help my daughter with juicing those cherries we picked. By request, we will be making jelly with them!
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2023 garden: July Garden Tour video
I was up way too late finishing this off, then set it to upload while I went to bed. It wasn’t until I watched it together with the girls this morning that I realized I’d inserted a video clip twice somehow. I don’t have the motivation to fix it! 😄
So there we have it: a tour of how the garden is doing, as of a couple of days ago.
I hope you like it! Feel free to watch it on YouTube and give it a like, subscribe, etc. if you wish. 😊
The Re-Farmer
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Squirmy babies!
Mowing last year’s lawn
Considering it took me two days to do a relatively small area, I figured it was worth a video!
I am so glad I finally got this done. There was so much dead thatch in there, I spent more time emptying the bad into the wagon, then hauling it away, than actually mowing.
The Re-Farmer
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Spot the kitten
Look who I saw, today!
If you look carefully, you’ll see a total of four kittens. Two stay hidden under the spirea.
It looks like the kittens in the cat house are no longer in the cat house. I did see the mama at feeding time. I hope she didn’t move them too far.
My daughter and I headed into town today to run several errands. As we were finishing up, she wondered if the haze we were starting to see what fog or smoke.
It was smoke.
We are now getting air quality advisories for smoke from fires to the east and north of us. Most are on the other side of the lake, but quite a few are way up north, too. As I write this, only two are listed as out of control, and those are nowhere near any towns or villages. Most are listed as under control or being held, with a few as being monitored. Our current fire year isn’t anywhere near as bad at other provinces, but most of those are turning out to be arson. Ours are almost all listed as natural caused.
Right now, I feel like I’ve been totally lazy. Once we got home and put everything away, I tried to catch up on a few things on the computer before changing and heading outside. I was falling asleep in my chair, though, so I lay down to close my eyes for a few minutes.
Almost three hours later, I suddenly woke up, thinking it was morning. !! My brain still feels foggy.
I might still get some work done outside, but we’re at the hottest part of the day now, so not quite yet.
It definitely feels like a wasted day.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 