Time enough for a post, before I head off to my mother’s. I’ve decided to leave early enough to hit the post office before it closes, then grab something for lunch with my mother. I’m seriously debating whether or not to bring some of the pierogi we made last night for her. On the one hand, it would mean less cooking for her. On the other, they are not like how she fills her pierogi, and that’s always a bad thing. Plus, with my luck, she’ll get the one pierog with a cat hair in it or something, and I’ll get lectures on what a horrible human being I am for having cats. Or she might actually appreciate it. Ha! Who am I kidding?
I don’t know whether to look forward to visiting her, or to dread it. Hopefully, she’ll be having one of her good days.
This morning, as I was getting ready to head outside for my morning rounds, some movement out my window caught my eye.
I knew the deer were going through our West yard, as the snow is crisscrossed with their tracks, but this was the first time I happened to be there to see them in daylight.
They are so fluffy!!!! I just want to smoosh my hands into their fur. <3
After the last couple of bitter days, we’ve screamed up to -4C/25F, which feels downright tropical! We’re already warmer than forecast. In a few days, we’re even supposed to hit 3C/37F! Which would be the perfect day to install our Starlink system on the roof.
If we get it by then.
FedEx never showed up yesterday.
Maybe when I go to the post office this morning, I’ll find they left it there? Here’s hoping.
The cats are certainly enjoying the warmer temperatures. :-)
When I came out this morning, the heated water bowl was bone dry! It wasn’t knocked over. Just empty. It makes me think that a larger animal is drinking the water. It could be my brother’s dog (I saw him on the security camera again this morning), but there’s even a possibility that the deer have discovered it.
Or it couple be something else.
While heading to the corner cam to switch out the memory card – and back again to change out the frozen batteries – I noticed some indistinct tracks along the path. At first I thought it was from a cat, but after a while, I could tell it was something else. Eventually, I got to a place where the tracks were very clear.
Looks like a raccoon had come for a visit!
Well, time to get some stuff done before I head out. Hopefully, at some point today, we’ll get our Starlink system! While it’ll be great to have the better speeds, that’s not the main reason I’m so eager for it. Our current satellites give us some pretty decent download and upload speeds. It’s mostly the connectivity. The new system should mean a more reliable signal. Plus, we’ll have unlimited data and not have to worry about that anymore, either.
I haven’t done my Critter of the Day pictures in ages. Usually, once we’re spending more time indoors, I start them up again, but they take quite a bit of time. I do very little post processing – maybe some cropping, or fixing the lighting, but that’s it. The main thing is to resize them so they don’t take up so much storage space on my WordPress account. Even after upgrading our account, I post so many photos, it adds up.
So I don’t think I’ll be doing daily critters, but I will post some every now and then. I recently uploaded the files from the DSLR in the living room, and this one made me smile. I just had to share!
I can’t help it. I just love it when we catch tongue blehps!!! They always make me smile. :-)
In the last little while, the deer have started to show up at the feeding station during daylight hours almost every day, and the yards a crisscrossed with their tracks. Though we’re just seeing a few at a time, there are definitely a LOT more that we’re not seeing!
So pretty. :-)
At least they are, now, when there is no garden for them to get into! :-D
There’s always a little something, when I do my morning rounds! :-D
My husband had been able to take care of the cats earlier, so when I got out, I just have to put out feed for the birds (and deer). By the time I came out, however, I found the new heated water bowl had been knocked over. There had to have been some sort of altercation at the entry of the cats’ house, because even the brick supports around it had gone flying, and the power cord to the bowl had been pulled out.
Not only was the new bowl empty, but the water in the other bowls was frozen solid!
Something better had to be found.
I quickly went to feed the birds, thinking about it, and noticed the chimney liners along the side of the house. Since cleaning up the pile behind the house, we’ve been using these to hold the insulation that gets put around the house every winter.
They were just the right size and shape. Was there one we could spare?
Not on that side of the house, so I came back around and looked at the ones along the back of the house. We have other things set up against the house to help keep the insulation from being blown away, so I was able to find one that looked like we could spare.
It’s the perfect size and shape!
The bowl is so big, I added bricks as spacers between it and the shelter. The cats immediately were all over it, until I refilled the other water bowls, too. They were very thirsty!
We will have to plug the bowl back in later, once there are two people available. With the snow accumulation, the counterweight doesn’t quite reach the ground, so one person has to hold up the roof while the other does what needs to be done, inside. When we do our monthly shop, we’ll pick up a short, appropriate extension cord that can be safely used, so we can at least not have to worry about the cord being unplugged. Not too short, though. I want to run it along the frame of the shelter, just under the roof, so there will be no issue with the cats knocking it about, and no critters chewing on it.
Thanks to my daughter digging out more paths, I was able to get at the back of the garage and the outhouse. To clear access to the outhouse, my daughter had to break up that fallen piece of tree. It was warm enough to no longer be quite frozen to the ground, but that’s as far as it’s going to be moved until, most likely, spring.
When switching out the memory card in the trail cam by the new sign, I noticed these tracks. Something had walked towards the corner, stopped, then turned around. At first, I thought they were foot prints, they were so big. That didn’t seem likely, given the piles of snow from the plow. Not even our vandal is that dedicated to causing problems! The question was, did whatever made it go far enough to trigger the motion sensor on the trail cam?
The answer is, yes!
Would you look at that majestic beauty!!
While doing my rounds and seeing deer tracks, I had been noticing some hoof prints much larger than the others. I’d say, we’ve captured the beast that made them! And what a handsome fella he is!
I’m pretty sure we’ve been seeing this same buck visiting our place since we moved here. If it is, this would be the fifth winter of visits from him. :-)
It’s been a while to see deer in the trail cams, but this morning, I saw a whole bunch!
These were the first to come by.
It’s really hard to tell, but there is a third deer on the other side of the fence. They like to slip between the barbed while in this spot.
The little one nearer the fence, which would have been born this spring, went through, but the adult in the foreground ended up waking off towards the driveway.
Then this guy showed up…
A handsome three point buck!
What a catch! I rarely use image enhancement on my photos (mostly because I don’t know how and don’t care enough to learn), but I did use the auto fix in my software on these ones, so you could better see the deer jumping the fence.
The “light” behind him is actually a reflection. That’s our driveway marker, which shows up in the infrared flash looking like a bright light.
In previous years, we would be buying deer feed and including it with the bird seed at the feeding station outside our living room window, but with our mild temperatures this year, there has been no need. We’ll probably start supplementing them once there is snow on the ground that stays. Which may not be until mid-November, if the long range forecasts are right!
Today is supposed to be hot again, so I wanted to make sure to get the garden watered early in the day, while it was still cool. I started with the soaker hose at the squash tunnel, then went around checking the melons, squash and gourds.
I was extremely disappointed to find this.
Our one and only Teddy winter squash was gone.
Et.
Munched.
Masticated.
The two Teddy plants are blooming, and there is even a female flower developing, but that one baby squash had grown so much after the rain, I was really looking forward to watching it develop.
This is one of the nearby Little Gem winter squash. There were no developing squash down here to be eaten; those are much higher on the trellis. Still, it means energy will be going to recover from the damage, instead of into developing squash.
Thankfully, that was the only damage here. The melons and gourds had no critter damage. I did find one of the nearby Dorinny corn had been gotten into, the remains of a cob on the ground. The corn may have been a deer, but I figured the squash was a groundhog. The deer don’t go along that side of the garden beds, preferring to walk through the open areas in the middle.
I was wrong.
When I checked the garden cam, I almost missed the shadow moving in the darkness. It was a huge raccoon! So big that, if it hadn’t turned at the end of the bean bed and I could make out its tail, I would have thought it was a bear cub.
I continued checking the beds, and was so disappointed to find this.
A deer got into the Montana Morado corn. In the above photo, several stalks in the outermost row are gone.
I found corn cobs scattered on the ground, each looking like they had only a single bite taken out of them.
Hoof prints left no doubt as to what was responsible for this damage.
The deer had traipsed right through the middle of the corn block, leaving damaged plants and nipped corn cobs in its wake.
These are all the cobs I picked up off the ground.
I think it would bother me less if the deer actually ate the corn, rather than taking a bite here and a bite there. and leaving a trail of damage.
On checking the cobs, you can see that a couple of them were almost completely ripe, if poorly pollinated. When ripe, the kernels should be an even darker purple.
One cob is looking like it was going blue, instead of purple!
Several of the cobs had been beautifully pollinated, full of developing kernels.
I am so incredibly unhappy. Clearly, the flashy spinny things around the corn block are no deterrent.
Not even our purple beans escaped damage. The purple beans are lusher and bushier than the green and yellow beans – except for at this end of the row, where the leaves have been thinned out by nibbling.
And here is the beast that did the damage – nibbling on a sunflower!!!
I. Am. Not. Impressed.
I even added bells to the lines around the corn and sunflower beds, but the deer came from the other side!!
Venison is sounding very good right now.
What a disappointing way to start the day.
Other things went well, though, and I will save those for other posts!
As I write this, we’ve had several rainfalls, and even a couple of downpours. We’ve had more rain today than we have had all year until now! It is so exciting!
We actually got our first bit of rain this morning, while I was quickly doing my rounds. In fact, it was a bit of a problem at the time. While changing the micro disc cards on the driveway cam, the card I took out of the camera slipped through my fingers and fell to the ground.
I never found it.
I had a fresh card to put in and came back several times today, and nothing. I have extras, but I’d really hate to have lost it completely!
When checking the garden beds, I found a couple more sunflowers got nibbled on.
Almost every one of the transplanted Mongolian Giant sunflowers in this row have had their head bitten off. :-(
The culprit was caught on the garden cam!
Anyhow.
This morning, I made a trip to the smaller city to do the Walmart part of our monthly shopping, then swung by town on the way home to pick up my husband’s prescription refills. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized mine weren’t in there. I’ll have to remember to call them and get mine delivered. I only have one prescription, compared to my husband’s bubble packs and injections.
I wanted to make sure I got all the errands done early, because we were going to have visitors this evening. My brother and his wife were going to swing by, on their way to somewhere else. I’ve been sharing photos of the garden progress with them, and they wanted to see it in person.
It was while they were on the way over that the first thunderstorm hit. It stopped and started a couple of times, then stopped before they arrived. Meanwhile, during their drive, they saw no rain at all! It wasn’t until they got close that they finally saw wet highway. When they got here, we did the tour, including my showing them where the groundhogs have been hiding out.
I saw one crossing by the spruce grove just before they arrived, heading under the junk pile. When I took a look, there it was, watching me!!!
The cheeky little bugger.
While checking out around the junk pile, I was disappointed to see this.
These are Saskatoon bushes. We have a couple of them here, and they are in terrible shape. Not only do they show signs of fungal disease, but their leaves are riddled with insect damage, and little growths where insect eggs are. There is even a sudden grown of lichen on the trunks and branches! Lichen is supposed to be slow growing, yet these bushes, and even the dead branches on nearby spruce trees, have suddenly turned bright green and thick. Or perhaps it’s just the rain waking up what was already there? That sounds more likely.
There are a few places where we will have to clear out the diseased trees and bushes, then not plant anything nearby for a few years.
We were just finishing off our tour of the garden beds with my brother and his wife when it started to rain heavily again. We still have the gazebo tent set up, where we had painted the kibble house. The kibble house it back where it goes, so we had plenty of room to be sheltered from the rain, while still enjoying the lovely cool wind and freshness. They were really hoping some of the rain would make it their way; they’ve been pretty much as dry as we have, and while they have had a bit more rain than we have this year, it’s been more like a tease than anything else.
When the rain let up a little big, we made a dash to the pump shack. I had asked my brother if he remembered when the pump got changed, and he wanted to see what I was talking about.
He had no idea.
He remembers better than I do, what the set up was like before, when there was a motor to operate the pump with electricity. When I pointed out that the current pump was not attached to anything, but just sitting on the pipes, loose enough to move while I was pumping, he mentioned something interesting. It seems the pipes into the well are “floating”, and the pump itself will actually move up and down with the water table. !! He also described the piston system at the bottom of the well. The fact that I could get water but couldn’t keep it going suggest to him that the O rings are giving out.
We are still left with the mystery of what happened to the motor and the frame that supported it.
Later this evening, my mother phoned and I remember to ask her about it. Not only does she not remember, but as far as she knew, there was never electricity to that pump. She insisted it was only ever manual. This tells me that it was my dad that had it set up, after they moved out here. As far as I remember, there was always the electric system, which suggests that it was installed in the 5 or so years before I was born, but my mother no longer remembers this at all. I find that a rather strange thing to forget!
Which leaves us with the mystery of what happened to the old pump system. I suppose it’s possible my late brother had it removed, perhaps with plans to get the old well repaired? I can’t think of any other reason someone would have removed it. If he had, however, the parts and pieces would still be around, and they aren’t. So what happened to it?
It seems that there is no longer anyone alive that could tell us.
By the time we were done looking at the pump, it was starting to pour again, and my brother and his wife still had other places to do, so they had to quickly head out. I’m really happy they were able to stop by, and we could show them how things have been going. Including with the woodchucks. My brother brought up a possible solution, and it’s one I’d already taken steps towards. Hopefully, it’ll work and I’ll be able to post about being free of woodchucks! We shall see. Until the problem is solved, however, I’m not even going to try to plant the fall spinach and lettuces I was planning on. I’m not going to go through the effort, only to have it eaten!
I think I may have come up with a way to keep the grasshoppers off, too. They are decimating our poor radish and kale seedlings as thoroughly as the groundhogs have been wiping out our carrot beds!
At least our garden beds have finally had a thorough soaking. No amount of watering with the house can match a good, solid rainfall!
Here’s hoping the rain helped with the wildfires to the north of us, too!
I have a bit of time before I head off to pick up our meat pack, and just had to make a quick post.
It was a bad morning in the garden.
While heading over to switch out the memory card on the garden cam, the very first thing that I saw was this.
Of the surviving Dorinny corn, there was one plant on its own at the very end of a row. It is now in two rows.
The critter didn’t even eat the whole thing. It just chomped on half a corn cob.
Another Dorinny corn got it’s developing cob torn off and nibbled on.
This one got to me. These are the transplanted Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. The ones we started indoors months ago, but didn’t actually germinate until all the others were direct sown or transplanted. While small, they had been doing well. Now, all but one have their heads chopped off, and the one that didn’t, is broken.
You can see the single surviving pink celery transplant, near it. That got ignored, at least.
Then there’s this. You can even see the hoof print in the ground!
This is the purple corn, way on the other side of the garden. The last two corn in this row had already been partially eaten and were growing back, only to be eaten again. A third one has it’s tall stalk broken right off, and you can see it lying on the ground. Thankfully, that was as far as the damage went, with the purple corn.
And here we have our culprit! At least for the Dorinny corn and sunflowers. The tracks in the purple corn head in the opposite direction, so it was either another deer, or this deer took the scenic route.
In the trail cam files, I did see a woodchuck in the sweet corn during the day, but there was no damage to that corn. It looked like it was eating the grass or weeds in the path.
The woodchuck – or another of them – is likely the cause of this damage, in one of the summer squash. It’s definitely not a deer that did this.
*sigh*
Later today, I’ll be moving some of the things we put around the tulips to keep critters away. The tulips have died back and they are no longer needed there. The bells and spinners would probably be useful in startling critters. Clearly, the flapping grocery bags, motion activated light and aluminum tart pans are no longer enough.
I suppose the damage is pretty minimal, given how much we’ve got planted overall, but even a little bit adds up after a while. It’s so frustrating.
When we plant trees where the temporary garden beds are now, we at least know we’ll have to take extra steps to protect the saplings from critter damage.
My morning rounds were shorter today. I did not water all the garden beds this time. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the weather radar, and we might actually get rain!
Yesterday evening, I grated a whole lot of soap to scatter around in the old kitchen garden. It either worked, or we didn’t get any critters visiting last night.
This morning, I raided our spice cupboard. The newly planted beds of radishes, chard, kale and kohlrabi have now been treated with a hot spices, and when I ran out of that, I started scattering black pepper, including the perimeter of the corn and sunflower blocks. I checked everything carefully, and there were no new nibbles among the corn and sunflowers, that I could see.
Before heading back inside, I was able to gather some summer squash.
It’s been a while since our first harvest of 2 green zucchini and a Magda squash. This morning, we’ve got 5 green zucchini (3 of them from one plant!), 1 Magda squash, and our very first Sunburst squash!
Later, I was able to grab a few garlic scapes, too. We still have a few left to grow more before we gather them.
These will be on today’s menu, for sure! :-D
Once settled inside, I checked the trail cam files and saw this on the garden cam.
I was not expecting the deer to cross through from that side! And there’s no way we can rope things off on that side, without it causing access issue to other beds.
At least he didn’t stop for a snack along the way.
I did put black pepper across the open side of the garden beds, and down some of the bigger paths between blocks. I hope this will convince the deer to go around the garden, instead of through it!
Thinking ahead with the girls, I remembered that the Whiffletree catalog has a wildlife tree package. We’ve been talking about planting things away from the house to feed the deer, so they’ll have less reason to go for our gardens. We don’t want to get rid of the critters. We just want them to stay out of our gardens! I went looking through the catalog and found an item I’d highlighted but forgot about. They also have a Wildlife Plot seed package. There are enough seeds to cover 2000 sq ft with things like turnips, forage kale and other tasty plants. If we get a package like that and plant it in the outer yard, that could do a fine job of keeping the deer – and the groundhogs – out of our garden beds.
I hope to order the seed package this fall, so we can use it next spring. :-)
Part of my morning rounds has been to check the garden beds for deer (or other critter) damage. Since we lost several Mongolian Giant sunflower transplants, there has not appeared to be any more damage in that area. In the main garden beds, there has been little more than a few spinach that the row covers aren’t long enough to cover, showing signs of nibbling. That’s it.
As for the garden cam, it’s been getting video of cats going by lately, and that’s it.
This morning, I saw no new damage to the garden, though one of the support poles holding the rope and twine in one of the sunflower transplant rows was fallen down. It had broken and is a bit shorter than the others. I’d tied a plastic grocery bag to it and the rope at the top, but with the winds we’ve been having, it was no surprise to find it fallen. Those bags sometimes act like sails! When my daughters first set this up, the middle support poles were simply slipped through the divided strands of the rope, rather than tied, so for the shorter pole, it would have easily just slide off.
Other than that nothing else was amiss in the garden beds.
Then I checked the garden cam.
I’d say we are very fortunate that there was no damage this morning!
Yes, that is a deer and her fawn off in the distance!
I saw in earlier files that the support pole was already down before they came by, so it was not them that knocked it over. That grocery bag hovering near the mama is hanging off the rope the fallen support pole had been holding up.
In the next file, I watched as the mama casually ducked under the rope, which is what it’s in the middle of doing in this image.
Clearly, the ropes, poles, and flappy noise makers are no longer acting as a deterrent!
There was one last file, and then they moved on. You can just see the spots on the baby in this image!
Watching the files was interesting. While they did snuffle about, they did not try to eat anything in the rows. There are so many miscellaneous plants coming up here that, other than the sunflower transplants, they’d have to seek out individual seedlings in between the weeds. So… the weeds are basically protecting our seedlings right now!
They also very gingerly stepped OVER the rows. Which makes sense. The soil in between the rows is harder, so their hooves won’t sink.
Another thing I noticed is that this pair came from a direction I did not expect. We will need to keep that in mind as we increase our deer deterrents.
There was one more night time file after this; Nicky the Nose making his way between the rows!
The girls and I will move the trail cam again, later today. I want to try it at the opposite end of where it is now, and further away from the beds, so it will cover more ground. Since this camera is not a wide angle camera, it missed a lot where it is sitting right now.
Though it did a great job of capturing these deer!
Setting the trail cam on the saw horse did work; several files were captured.
First, the good news.
Nothing was eating the tulips last night.
The camera did catch a few critters, though. I took some screen caps from the videos.
There was only one night time file, and it looks like the first definitive sign of raccoons. The critter passed too close to the camera to be fully captured, and it just walked by. All I can say for sure is that the tail looks too fluffy to be one of our cats. It did not go any closer to the tulips.
We did get a couple of deer passing by. They showed no interest in the tulips, and both ended up running off towards the gate by the fire pit.
The final capture was this cheeky little robin hopping around.
Whatever critter has been eating our tulips didn’t show up! I’m okay with that. Hopefully, it will stay away and the remaining tulips will have a chance to bloom, and the chewed up ones will be able to at least grow new leaves.
The Re-Farmer 