I actually made this video shortly after we got the camera, using the still-new-to-me Movavi software. There was a new update when I opened the software, which I downloaded first. I made the video – disappointed to discover music files I had been using before had been completely replaced with new ones, but everything worked fine.
Until it was time to export the finished video to a format that could be uploaded, and I kept getting error messages.
After many failures, I sent a message to customer support that never got answered. I also saw in their beta community that others were having this problem, and the recommended solutions did nothing.
Today, I opened the software to find a new update. I downloaded and installed the update, and now it’s working just fine again!
Since this was made, the camera has been moved slightly, but that’s about it. So far, everything is working just fine.
There is also, most definitely, a second grey and white tabby. I spotted it running around in the sun room. Unlike this guy, who will now come up to me for attention, this one ran away. It seems to be a bit bigger, has more white, and the tabby colours are more defined and grey, without any of the brownish fur this one has on his face.
I had to make a run into town this morning to pick up more dry cat food. If I’d had more to pick up, I would have gone to the city for the much better prices, but it wasn’t worth the cost of gas. As it was, when I got to the grocery store, there was only one large bag – 8.5kg – left on the shelf. The guy stocking the shelf nearby saw me looking and told me they simply have not been getting dry cat food. They had been getting them weekly (finally, after more than a year of shortages), but now, nothing. He added that he didn’t know if the other grocery store had any. I’m glad he did, because I forgot that store existed. Where we usually go is on the edge of town, while the other is in the middle of “downtown”. I bought their last big bag of cat food, then went to the other store and was able to get another 7kg bag. We should be good for the rest of the month, I hope!
Yesterday, I tried making a video with the before and after pictures of the day’s wood chipping, using my new Movavi software. There was a new update when I opened it up, which I downloaded, so it was a while before I could start. I was able to record voice over within the software, though the only microphone I have is on my headset, so the sound quality was not the best, but it’s handy not having to open other software to do it.
Then I tried to save the finished video in a format that I could upload, and kept getting an error message.
The new update has a serious bug!
So I tried again, using the default photo/video viewer that came with my computer. It’s little more than a slide show, quickly put together, but this way it doesn’t take up more space in my WordPress media.
They got the job done just in time! Not long after, a thunderstorm rolled in and actually hit us (unlike all the other storms and rain that passed us by). Heavy rain continued through the night. The garden is just loving it!
We’re bright and sunny and hot right now, so I’ll be waiting for things to cool down before I start mulching the highbush cranberry and silver buffalo berry. It’ll be good to do that after such a heavy rainfall.
Oh, my goodness. This took way more time and effort to make than usual! Starting with going back later in the day to record new video because I made too many goofs, the first time around. I mean, how did I accidentally say “corn” when I meant to say “peas”? Repeatedly!! 😂
It also took all day to upload the file. Yes, it’s more than half an hour long, but it still shouldn’t have taken more than 8 hours to upload.
But, here it is. A tour of our garden, including fruit trees this time. It’s been a very rough year for the garden, with some complete losses, but we do still have something to show for it, at least!
I hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to let me know what you think!
Sunday is normally our day of rest, though of course work still needs to be done. Today, however, is going to be more of a day of rest than I’d hoped. We had rain overnight, and everything is still wet, so finishing the mowing is out. We’re also still getting all sorts of weather warnings, from severe thunderstorms to high water levels from rain falling elsewhere. At least we’re not getting tornado warnings in our area.
The garden, at least, if finally seeing some grown spurts. I’m most happy to see how this bed is doing.
That Kulli corn has been staying small for so long, I was starting to be concerned, but it is finally kicking in. I hope the beans planted with them are helping!
Hungry kittens are brave kittens! Nice to see them actually inside the kibble house, instead of hiding under the cat house.
There was an unexpected harvest this morning. Just a tiny one.
I checked on the wild strawberry patch, and could actually see the red berries from a distance!
The berries are so tiny, they are hard to pick! Many were already over ripe, but there are still lots of under ripe ones. This is the most we’ve seen since we found the patch while cleaning out the maple grove.
At some point, I would like to prepare a bed for them and transplant as many as I can, so they’re not fighting with grass and weeds to grow.
While moving things over to the burn barrel, I found another surprise in the branch pile.
One of the other litters of kittens has emerged! I had no idea there was another litter of kittens in this branch pile. Definitely the largest litter we’ve seen, too. There are six of them.
So adorable!
The cats are going to miss this pile of branches when we finally get it chipped!
We got another, far less pleasant surprise.
Our first spring here, one of the things that suddenly gave out was the drain on one side of the kitchen sink.
Well, the other side has finally given out, too. I heard some dripping a couple of days ago and asked my daughters to check it for me, as I can’t get under to look properly. My younger daughter found where it was leaking. When examining it from below, she was actually able to push the whole thing upwards!
So today, I’ll be making a trip to the hardware store to get the kit to replace it all. They open in about half an hour, so I’ll be heading out soon. At least we know, since we’ve already had it happen before, what we need to fix it! :-)
It took until just past 2am for my video to upload – only for YouTube to end processing, because it was longer than 15 minutes. I’m sure I’ve uploaded videos longer than that in the past. Worse, to fix the problem, I had to give them a phone number to verify my account – then delete the upload and start all over again.
Five hours later, the upload is done, but YouTube is still doing their checks, including HD processing. I’ve never had any troubles like this before!
But, it’s up! And here it is. I hope you like it, because it was a real pain to get it available! If there are any troubles viewing it, please let me know.
Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!
With spring finally arriving, the days getting longer, I find myself wanting to spend as much time outdoors as I can get away with – which made me think of an outdoorsy YouTube channel I follow!
This channel is still relatively new at the time I’m writing this, but I’ve included its creator in my previous series of Recommended sites, Maritime Gardening. Outdoors on the Cheap is all about enjoying the great outdoors without breaking the bank! In fact, I’ll just let Greg explain it himself.
The range of topics covered is quite broad, including everything from why he wears a neck knife, to how to make a fire if you’ve fallen into the water while in the woods, to using an ax and a knife to carve a tree into a paddle, to…
… making a comfortable chair in the woods.
You’ll find videos on the best and cheapest boats you can get to enjoy some fishing, how to repair it if necessary, and videos on how to load them into your vehicle.
He even talks about how to deal with some of the more psychological aspects of overnighting in the woods.
Along with videos about fishing, hunting, rifles and snares, you’ll find survival information, such as what to include in a fire kit, and plenty about getting good use out of cheap, basic axes and knives, then how to take care of them.
I’ve been watching a lot of videos exploring different ways to make survival shelters, which all have their own benefits, but it’s rare indeed to find any quite as basic as someone building a shelter and fire after a Canadian ice storm.
The channel is just chock full of practical, basic information.
I just really like how down to earth these are. You really get the sense that pretty much anyone can follow along and do the same, and not have to be… oh… ex-military, or some survivalist guru.
So I definitely recommend checking out the Outdoors on the Cheap YouTube channel, and if you go to the About page, you’ll find URLs to follow on Twitter and Facebook, too.
I now have this sudden urge to go out in the bush with some basic tools, and just… doing stuff. :-D
Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!
I sort of hesitated to include this one in my Recommended series, because it seems like everyone knows MIgardener! Still, I’ve been learning a lot from their YouTube channel, and have already included some of their videos in previous posts, so here it is! Be sure to check out their About page for links to various social media, and check out their website here.
While it’s their YouTube channel I spend most of my time on, the website is a dangerous place for me to be, because they sell seeds! This year, I tried to focus on Canadian seed sources for most things. Especially if it’s a supplier that grows their own seeds in our climate zone. But I’m a sucker for seeds, and MIgardener has things I haven’t seen anywhere else, which is another of my weaknesses. If a variety is uncommon or rare, I want to grow it, so I can save seeds and help keep it from being lost!
That, and I just plain like trying new things. It’s not like these are varieties we’ll find in the grocery stores, or even the farmer’s markets, so the only way to find out if we like them is to grow them!
Quite a few people on the gardening groups I’m on have bought seeds from MIgardener, and have had nothing but positive things to say about them. I like that the website has characteristics you can select, or in/out of stock seeds.
As I write this, when it’s on “all seeds”, there are 669 products to choose from. When I selected “cold hardy” only, that number drops to 58!
They also have a curated Homesteaders Collection of seeds that looks really good. I appreciate that they’ve been chosen for things like canning and storage, as well as fresh eating.
Their videos cover every aspect of gardening.
Do you want to start seeds indoors? Should you start seeds indoors? Is starting early better? He covers it all.
Looking to build some raised beds to transplanted those seeds you started indoors into? He’s got you covered.
Need to figure out where to put those raised beds? He’ll help you figure that out, too.
It’s not all about growing outside, though. Are you a coffee drinker?
Yeah. They sell coffee seeds, too. There are videos on how to grow a variety of fruit trees and berries, too, as well as a number of specific herbs and vegetables.
They don’t just talk about their successes, though.
They’re open about their failures, too.
Right now, there is a huge interest in saving seeds, and they’ve got a playlist on how to save seeds from a wide variety of plants.
Yes, they sell seeds, and are also teaching you how to save seeds, so you don’t have to buy more of them!
Of course there are videos on harvesting your crops, as well as videos on how to cook, can and preserve them. They’ve been putting up videos for 11 years, as of this writing, so there is LOT of information available!
Whether you’re a beginning gardener, or an experienced gardener what wants to look up specific information, I definitely recommend checking out MIgardener. It will be time well spent!
Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!
After my recent post about being able to get a generous amount of cardboard to start new garden beds, I wanted to share about a resource I found fairly recently. Perma Pastures Farm. You can visit their website here – definitely visit their About page – or peruse their YouTube channel here. You’ll find more links in the description boxes of their videos.
I must really be a sucker for punishment, following all these homesteader channels that are in much warmer climate zones than we are! I’m loving it, though, and a lot of what I’ve been learning from them can be used in any climate zone. Like this video on creating an “instant garden”.
Which is basically what we’re doing right now, in what will be this year’s potato beds.
I’d love to have a broad fork like that! I’m not sure how much use we’d get out of it in our old garden area, though, considering how rocky it is. It looks like a really awesome tools, though.
Permaculture is one of a number of things I’ve been discovering, where I was already working towards it as a goal, without knowing there was a name for it. :-D
I like how they’re finding ways to make use of areas that often get forgotten about or ignored. I look forward to seeing how things work out with their hügelkultur hill. I also appreciate how he encourages doing things unconventionally.
Suddenly, I’m thinking of my mother and how she gets because I’m gardening differently than she did! :-D
What an amazing polytunnel they’re working on, all from recycled materials!
Hearing them talk about comfrey, and that it’s something they sell, I got curious and looked it up. I was already familiar with comfrey for wound healing. After we home birthed our second daughter, my midwife provided us with powdered comfrey to apply to my perineal tear. It worked incredibly well. What I didn’t know was all the other things it’s good for! It looks like something we might even be able to grow in our zone, too. Definitely something to include, as we start incorporating more herbs into our gardening.
Of course, not all their videos are about about growing things, and sometimes they cover other topics completely. In fact, it was one of those videos that showed up in my YouTube feed that first introduced me to the channel. It was this video…
Yeah. THIS. 100%
After seeing this video, I just had to check out their channel and subscribed in a heartbeat.
Being Canadian, when I spotted the title, I just had to check this one out.
This was made in early February, 2022, not that long after the Freedom Convoy began making it’s way across Canada, to protest for our constitutional rights and freedoms in Ottawa. Which, by the way, is still going on, in various ways, even after our Prime Dictator illegally invoked the Emergency Act and continues to hold political prisoners. At the time of this writing, Canada is still under a de facto dictatorship. I’m glad he was able to come to Canada before we went completely insane.
Other topics you’ll find videos for include things like how to care an eating spoon, all sorts of videos on chickens and pigs – vital parts of their permaculture – butchering deer or lamb, cooking videos; pretty much anything homestead related.
And for those of you who would love to buy some land for potential homesteading, I leave you with one more video…
… an alternative way to be able to buy some land. Well worth checking it out.
While working on the old kitchen garden, I stepped a way a moment and came back to find this.
A chickadee was gathering some of the cat fur we’d tried leaving in the garden beds to deter the groundhogs. It didn’t work, but now a chickadee is gathering it to line its nest!
Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!
Here’s one for the foodies out there – especially if you like Ghanaian food! Sweet Adjeley, however, goes well beyond amazing looking stews, breads, snacks, sauces, and drinks.
Also, she has her own theme music. How cool is that?
There are a lot of videos here for those who are looking for how to make pantry essentials – and more! – from scratch. Which is how I found this awesome channel, when I found this video.
Somehow, I thought making tomato paste would be more complicated than this. Tomato paste is one of our pantry staples, but we haven’t been able to get our favourite brand since we’ve moved. I admit, we got very spoiled by having access to a particular local grocery store when we were still living in the city! :-D
After seeing this video, I felt making our own tomato paste was actually worth trying, and that’s why we’ve got so many Cup of Moldova paste tomato plants started! :-D
Of course, once I found this video, I had to keep looking, and was quickly joining the Sweet Team and subscribing, when I found videos like this.
Well, that looks like something well worth making! We don’t usually do shrimp, though. We do, however, regularly have chicken and beef.
We’ve made mushroom powder before, and mushroom ketchup, which gives both a liquid and powdered seasoning, but never powdered meat. I’ve made beef jerky, but it never occurred to me to powder it!
We’re going to need to invest in a blender, though. It’s been a long time since we’ve had one. They tend to not last very long for us, so the next one we get, I want to save up and get something more durable!
Of course, there’s also these kitchen staples.
Again, how easy is that?
We’d be dehydrating in our oven for now, but I don’t mind our home smelling like onions or garlic. ;-)
This one was a surprise to me.
Yup. Milk powder – there are actually two videos on making powdered milk. Which we’ve been adding to our stash lately. It’s become quite expensive, too. While I don’t see us taking the time to make the powder ourselves, if we had our own milk cows, it would be a worthwhile way to use up excess milk.
Or we could make mozzarella.
With or without using rennet.
Among the other pantry staples you can learn how to make are a variety of flours (such as plantain, cassava, fufu, etc), corn starch, marinade cubes, ketchup, cream cheese, yogurt and more. You can even learn how to make your own extracts.
There are a wide variety of snacks, too. I really want to try these!
I have a thing for cornmeal. ;-)
There are so many delicious looking savoury dishes I’d love to try, I could include at least a dozen more videos here! Plus there are non-food or drink related videos, like how to make your own shower gel, disinfectant wipes, do your nails, visits to markets…
But I won’t do that to you… Instead, I recommend you check out Sweet Adjeley yourself!
Funny. After going through so many videos, trying to decide which to include here, I’m suddenly feeling rather hungry. :-D
The Re-Farmer 