This morning, I walked into the living room and found seven deer outside our window!
That is the most we’ve seen, all at once, since our first spring here. :-)
Then I spotted them on the trail cams!
I never saw all seven on the trail cams at once. They kept streaming across the road from my brother’s place. :-)
I love the action shots! :-D
The Re-Farmer
I found quite a surprise at our gate when I checked the trail cam files!
Four deer, hanging out on the driveway and road! They stayed there long enough that I found about a dozen files (stills and video) of them!
Looking at the time stamps, they came to the driveway after visiting the house.
They weren’t very nice to each other!
One of them stayed in the trees and never came to the feeding station. What I found interesting as I watched it, is that it completely avoided the area closer to the feeding station and went around to the side.
The area I cleaned up recently.
They definitely prefer to go through the cleaned up areas in or under the trees, rather than out in the open.
This next image from the trail cam isn’t very good, but it is dramatic!
I almost didn’t see it at first!
In the next few files, I could see that there were actually two deer out there, just on the edge of the infrared flash.
Very cool!
Also very cool was having Rolando Moon show up yesterday, and still being here this morning when I went out to feed the outside kitties. It almost gives me hope that Nostrildamus and Potato Beetle might still show up again, though I realize the chances of that are very low.
Their food bowls were completely empty again – even the heated water bowl was completely dry – which suggests the skunks came to visit, too.
It gets pretty busy with critters out there! :-)
The Re-Farmer
We got some furry visitors last night. :-)
They tend to show up near the end of the day, when the light makes is hard to get good photos! You can still see, at least a little, the growing antler nubbins on the deer on the right.
If all goes well, this will be the last bag of feed for the deer that we buy until the fall. Looking at the long range forecast, we’re expected to dip below freezing again, with snow on Monday (three days from now). They’re predicting 3-6cm. After a couple more days, the temperatures will be back above freezing during the day, though we’ll have below freezing temperatures overnight for a while longer.
I’m hoping we actually get that snow, and that it slowly melts. The deer should have fresh growing things to eat after that. We were supposed to have rain over the past couple of days, but once again I watched on the weather radar, as the system moved right past us. We didn’t even get a sprinkle.
Yesterday was a very lazy day for me. There is something about it being overcast that leaves me feeling like I’m ready to fall asleep, all day. Plus, with the cooler temperatures and hopes of rain, I didn’t want to be working outside with power tools. ;-) I did make a trip into town, though. Our darling daughter treated us to pizza for our anniversary. My husband and I celebrated 33 years together this month. :-) While driving into town to pick it up, there actually was a bit of rain, but it was nothing but a tease!
Today, I finally made the trip to the smaller city to pick up the last few things I wasn’t able to get during my Costco trip. They were actually sold out of cat litter, of all things! While there, I started chatting with another customer, who is also feeding a lot of cats. Mostly outside cats. He estimates he spends about $3000 a year on cat food – and spent another $5000 to get 40 cats fixed. !! That’s through some sort of program, where getting a female done is only about $80-$100, instead of the $350 we’re paying. I’ve had all sorts of organizations recommended to us, but either we can’t get through to them, or they don’t operate as far out as we are. :-(
(Oh, just got a phone call. The people who are adopting Two Face are on their way to pick her up. :-) )
While talking to the other customer, he mentioned using wood pellets instead of litter. I’ve heard of people using them, and talking about how much better it is, so I asked him more about it. It turns out that these are just the wood pellets sold as fuel for pellet stoves. He told me that when the cats use the pellets, they absorb all the moisture and break apart into sawdust. They also absorb the odor, so the only thing you smell is wood. When cleaning the litter pans, you simply dump out all the pellets in the pan and replace it with fresh – and the old pellets can still be burned. !! I don’t know that I’d want to do that. At least not in the fire pit (or a pellet stove, if we had one!), but we do still have a burn barrel. Or compost them, while burn bans are in effect. That would save us from having to haul those heavy bags to the dump. He told me the pellets are a lot cheaper, too, and they come in 40 pound bags, so they last a long time, too.
I think it’ll be worth trying it out. Maybe start with just a few litter pans, first, and see how the cats like it.
The conversation got me thinking about just how much we spend on critters. With the cats, it’s about $350-$400 a month in wet and dry cat food, plus litter. So, about $4,800 a year, on the high end. Plus the deer, which we do only for about 6 months, which works out to about $300 a year. Then there’s the bird seed, which we do all year, and works out to about $1000 a year.
Which we’re doing my husband’s disability payments.
Thank God for private health insurance!!
There are a lot of things we are doing without, to keep the critters fed. We include it all in our grocery budget. If, however, we were just setting that money aside, we’d have been able to save enough to replace the roof in only 2 years.
Now, we’re not going to stop feeding the animals, but we really need to find a way to address that expense. This is not sustainable. The problem goes back to my not simply being able to go out and get a job, since any income I would make would get deducted from my husband’s disability payments. If I ever made enough to bring that replace my husband’s disability payments, he would lose his insurance entirely (since he would no longer “need” it) – and he’d no longer have coverage for his prescriptions. So it’s a lose-lose situation. That’s why we had to be so careful when fund raising for Ginger’s vet care. We can accept gifts. We can’t have additional income.
*sigh*
Reducing the costs will help, which is why I want to try the wood pellets instead of cat litter. Cat food isn’t going to get any cheaper, though. It’s another reason why we want to grow and preserve as much food for ourselves, as well.
Slight interruption in writing this, as the people adopting Two Face arrived. As a thank you for Two Face, we were gifted with a bag full of brand new, still in their wrappers, Tupperware! Looks like the lady is a distributor. :-)
I hope Two Face is happy in her new home. We’re going to miss her!
Well, with the weather getting colder again for the next while, we’ll be slowing things down as well. At least, outside. Not so much, inside. The tray of bulb onions are now in the sun room. It’s warmer in there, but with the cooler temperatures coming, we’ve got them heated from below. By the time things warm up again, we should be ready to move more seedlings from the aquarium greenhouses to the sun room, then use the aquariums to start the summer and winter squash.
If all goes to plan, we should be ready to start direct sowing some things near the end of May, then do the final direct sowing and transplanting after our last frost date of June 2.
We’ll have a lot of work to do in between!
The Re-Farmer
The deer are out in full force!
We’re actually seeing a lot more than usual, for this time of year. Particularly at our main gate. With how dry this winter had been, I suspect they are hunting for water sources.
These ones were caught on the trail cam a couple of evenings ago.
Can you spot all six of them?
There was a seventh one, but it jumped the fence on the far side of the gate before the last three reached the road. They won’t jump the gate, though they are clearly curious about it. They much prefer going through, or over, the barbed wire fence.
This next image was captured just this morning.
The arrow points out the second deer going through the ditch. In the video file, taken after this still shot, a third deer is seen in the trees in the background, jumping the fence from inside the old hay yard. Not far from there is where there is an old dugout that would normally have water in it, this time of year. Which is why I think we’re seeing more deer because they’re searching for water. There isn’t even mud there right now. :-( There is an old dugout on my brother’s property, across the road, not far from his gate. I suspect there isn’t much water there, either.
An interesting thing I’m noticing about the new trail camera. The camera’s internal temperature readings can be very different from the ambient temperature. For example, in the second photo, it reads -8C/18F Our overnight temperatures did not get that low last night.
The Re-Farmer
Found in this morning’s trail cam images.
There were three deer in the group. The first two slipped through the fence, in between the wires. The third one decided to take a flying leap!
Plans for today have changed a few times! :-D
But before I get into that, we had some activity in the feeding station yesterday evening!
Two pairs of deer came by – but they were NOT together! They kept fighting each other and chasing each other away from the feed. I do try to spread it out, but by the end of the day, there isn’t much left.
I managed to get some video, since I had to use my phone to take the pictures anyhow, and put them together. I’m trying to move away from YouTube, so I’ve uploaded to Rumble. Please let me know how this works for you.
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They were really cool to watch!
Anyhow…
I had considered going to my mother’s church this morning, to have our Easter basket blessed, but the church was needing to have people register and so on, in advance, so we decided to skip it this year. At least they had it this year. Last year, it wasn’t allowed.
So we were to assemble our basket today and just bless it ourselves. I did want to take advantage of things being open to make a run into town. I was going to do it in the afternoon, but I got a phone call from my brother. He and his wife had found a new recliner chair small enough for my mother and wanted to bring it over. I agreed to meet him and help assemble it, in the afternoon.
Which meant I headed into town earlier today, then went straight to my mother’s town to meet my brother before we headed to her place together.
The main thing I wanted to do today was get a second battery for the baby chainsaw. I also brought in the little corded chainsaw we found a while back. It should hopefully just need to have the chain sharpened. Otherwise, it should just need a new chain.
After starting a work order for the chainsaw, the lady tried to find a battery for me. After confirming they had none in stock, she went to the Stihl site to check their inventory.
They had none.
Zero.
Anywhere.
Which I suppose makes sense. Most people buying a battery operated tool will order a second battery so they can set one battery to charge and continue working with the second battery. This little thing has a matching little battery, so a lot of people buying these would not have a matching battery already and be getting a second one at the same time. Since this thing is so popular, they can’t even manufacture them fast enough to keep up with the demand, they would probably be going through more of that type of battery than the cordless pruner itself.
She did place an order for one for me, but has no idea when it could be fulfilled. They will call me when it comes in, though. Until then, I’ll just have to make do with one battery.
Since I was there anyhow, I picked up an extra bottle of oil for the bar, plus an extra chain. These fall into the category of “better to have them and not need them, then need them and not have them!”
Once the little electric chainsaw is in cutting shape again, it will be enough to meet most of our needs. We won’t be taking down any big dead trees with it, but it will go a long way in helping cut up the already fallen ones to make them easier to clear away.
That was taken care of rather quickly, and I had time to visit the beach for a little while.
The ice fishing shacks are long gone, but the ice is still thick enough for people to walk on it, and do a bit of ice fishing without a shack.
Then it was off to my mother’s town. I made a stop at the grocery store there, because I remembered seeing them carry the same type of deer feed and bird seed we usually get.
Not today, it turns out. All sold out! We at least still have some deer feed left, and the birds like that, too, so it can wait a bit. :-D
It did give me a chance to pick up a few things for my mother that I noticed she runs out of very quickly.
Then my brother and I met up, heading to my mother’s and surprised her with a new non-electric reclining chair to replace her old arm chair that she’d been complaining about. Of course, she had nothing nice to say about it, complaining that it was too big (it was the smallest they could find!), or that she didn’t need it, etc. The complaining was less than usual, however, which tells me she was actually very happy with it! :-D I am hoping she will be able to use it to sleep on, every now and then, as she still has breathing issues when she sleeps, and being slightly upright should help her with that.
So that worked out well, and we even stayed for a short visit. Then we loaded all the packing materials, and my mother’s old chair, into my brother’s truck, so my mother had nothing to worry about. Since the chair needs to be further forward, to have room to recline, than her other chair, things needed to be shifted around, and she now actually has slightly more space to walk around than with the smaller chair. :-)
On the way home, my route took me past where the recent fire was.
I am happy to say that the house tucked in the trees I was concerned about untouched by flames. There’s a drainage ditch that cuts through that quarter section, and it acted as a bit of a fire break that kept it from spreading to another house in the same quarter. The only thing that burned was open field. It was “just” a grass fire.
Driving around that quarter, however, showed that a LOT of that field was burned! When controlled burns are done, they tend to focus on specific problem areas, not entire fields. I could see where it had burned out of control, and the tire tracks from the emergency vehicles going in.
It was after I’d turned onto our road that I saw just how far it went. Plus, oddly, there was a burned out car in the middle of the field. ?!? Yes, farms tend to collect old cars, but they don’t leave them in the middle of fields they grow crops in!
As I got closer to the quarter we are on, I saw where the fire had actually jumped the road to our neighbour’s field. It didn’t go much beyond the ditch, thankfully. Another thing to be thankful for; the renter plowed the field he’d grown corn on. It would have acted as a fire break, since there wasn’t enough fuel available.
What I also saw was that the fire had actually burned past the fence, into the quarter section belonging to the younger of my brothers. Not far, thankfully. His quarter is mostly hay, so there was plenty of fuel available for a grass fire!
Which means the fire reached less than half a mile from our place, and my brother’s.
So thankful that no homes were lost!
Meanwhile, while I was away, the girls took care of assembling our Easter basket. Well. Except for the stuff that needs to be kept refrigerated. :-)
Looking forward to celebrating Easter tomorrow!
I hope you are, too. May your Easter be a blessed say of peace and great joy.
The Re-Farmer
Every now and then, when I’m checking the files from the trail cameras, I see some interesting things. Like this.
I actually recognize both the truck and the trap, having seen them at the dump a while ago. That’s a bear trap.
At the dump, I can understand, but I do wonder why one would be needed here! Yes, I’ve seen black bears around (not this year, yet), but it’s unusual for them to become a problem outside of places like landfills.
I like this image better.
It’s uncommon to actually catch the deer in the trail cams, where they are now. They usually jump the fences on the other side of the cameras. They don’t like to jump the gate at all. This deer went through the fence, slipping through the two bottom stands of barbed wire on the left, where it gets dark. There’s a low area there to drain run off to the ditch.
In the next few files, I could see another deer, crossing the driveway on the far side of the gate, to join this one. It was barely visible in the infrared flash, though.
Our plans include putting a little person gate where the wheel is, and replacing the barbed wire with boards or poles. I’ve unplugged the lights, because so many of the bulbs are out, and entire strings are dead. When we have the barbed wire replaced, I want to mount new strings of lights underneath, where they will be better protected from the elements, and last longer. Yes, they are outdoor lights, but I can see rust on them, next to burnt out bulbs. :-/
If the deer won’t jump the gate and prefer to slip through the barbed wire, I wonder how they will handle it when we get around to replacing the barbed wire?
The Re-Farmer
With the temperatures staying warmer, and the days getting longer, I’ve been starting to bring back my evening rounds. I was all ready to head out the door yesterday evening, when I saw three deer, running and jumping through the outer yard, from the direction of the barn!
Then they stopped and seemed hesitant.
I had a suspicion as to why.
I was right.
There were other deer!
These two were already hanging out at the feeding station.
I was able to open the inner door without startling them, so I could see them better. I could tell they saw me and were watching me, but they didn’t run off. So awesome!
The three made their way into the inner yard, but eventually left rather than joining the two at the feeding station.
There they go, all in a row! :-D
I was losing light fast, so I took the chance and went outside. They actually watched me for a bit, before running off.
As I was checking things out in the outer yard, and making my way to the back gate, I had to pause to take these photos.
I was in the path I mow to the back gate, half way between the fences for the inner and outer yards. The line of snow is what was hard packed from so many hooves, it left their mark in snow that’s taking longer to melt away.
Last winter, they seemed to prefer to jump the gate by the old garden area, where it is more open, but this winter, they definitely seemed to prefer going through the maple grove, then jumping the fence near the massive old willow.
Every time I see them making their way through the trees, or along the spruce grove, it makes me glad we were able to clear the trees out so much. It’s not only much easier and more pleasant for us to be able to go through the trees, but the deer prefer it, too!
While doing my rounds this morning, my daughter joined me as I took a closer look into the spruce grove, where we have SO much clearing to do. I had earlier identified 6 dead spruce trees that we’d like to cut down, on top of the 3 that are closer to buildings that we plan to hire someone to take down. We were able to go further into the grove and look more closely.
It’s not 9 dead trees. It’s a full dozen.
And that doesn’t include any others further into the grove, but just along the Western edge, where we need to work on cleaning things out first. It also doesn’t count the dead trees that have already fallen, and are either on the ground, or leaning on other trees, that need to be cleared away.
Looking in the area behind the garlic beds, it’s almost all little poplars, and those cherry trees that aren’t right for our climate. They bloom beautifully, but produce almost no cherries. They’re all relatively small, so I will be taking them right out. The little bendy poplars will be used to build trellises and arches, among other things. The cherries… they don’t look all that good. They have been killed off by late frosts, then regrowing, so often, none of them are particularly big, and are growing in clumps around whatever parent plant had died off in the middle. They might just end up being really nice wood to cook over.
The size of this area that has no large trees in it is pretty significant. Any spruces that used to be there have died off long ago – I expect to uncover more stumps as we clear back there. It also gets quite a bit of sunlight, so this will be a good area to plant some of the food trees and bushes we are planning on.
Once it’s all cleaned up and cleared away, I expect to see a lot more deer cutting through the spruce grove, rather than skirting around it!
As for the additional trees we identified as being dead and in need of removal, I noticed a couple of groups of three. Depending on the condition of the stumps, they might work well to use as the supports, to make a table with a bend on each side. We are wanting to create pleasant little seating areas throughout, where we can sit and enjoy the wild roses and red barked dogwood that we plan to leave as undergrowth, along with the Saskatoons we are finding (we’ll be taking out the chokecherries, though), and the other trees and bushes we intend to slowly plant in the area.
Like the mulberry tree that will be shipped late in the spring, so we’re going to need to get those dead trees out sooner, rather than later!
Plus, in other areas of the grove, we intend to transplant more spruce trees, into the spruce grove!
This whole area is going to be completely transformed over the next few years.
If all goes well, it will be a haven for both humans and deer. :-)
The Re-Farmer
Today has been one of those days of getting things done that were also enjoyable. Like a morning spent converting feed bags into grow bags while watching/listening to videos about crossbow safety. More listening than watching, since I was, after all, hand stitching the bag bottoms into shape. :-D
I also got to enjoy watching deer through my window, making their way to the feeding station.
I saw a couple, earlier, but that early in the day, our East facing living room window is so full of reflections, I can’t get any good shots, but I could get some shots with my phone through the North window. At one point, I was seeing 4 deer, and I think there was a fifth hidden away in the maple grove.
I made a quick trip into town to refill a couple of our 18.9L water bottles, then pick up prescription refills. I timed it so that I could hit the post office on the way home. My husband had been expecting a parcel all week, and today we found out why it hadn’t come in earlier. The padded envelope it came in was sealed in a plastic bag with “apologies from Canada Post” on it. I had no idea what my husband had ordered, so seeing oil stains on the package was a bit alarming.
It turned out he’d ordered honing oil, and the bottle leaked! No harm done, thankfully. :-)
I was excited to see a catalogue I’d ordered had arrived. This is from a company I had included in my list of cold climate seeds sources, which also included nurseries. Whiffletree Farm and Nursery. They specialize in “Cold hardy, disease resistant, fruit trees, shrubs, vines and canes.”. I love how the back page includes phone numbers, a physical address (in Ontario), a map, plus their latitude and longitude!
How very… rural Canadian. :-D
I actually went through the Irrigation Instructions insert, first. They’ve got add on kits designed for new plantings, mature plantings and tree plantings. I found it a lot more informative, both textually and visually, that most of the kit sources I’ve been looking at. Though we don’t plan to plant our fruit and nut trees for a while, yet, where we are extending the garden to this year is well away from the house, and an irrigation system would be well worth the investment, even if we have to McGyver something cheap for the first couple of years.
As for the catalogue itself, I was very impressed.
First off, it’s just plain beautiful. It is printed on the heaviest paper of any catalogue I’ve seen. More than sturdy enough to withstand cats clambering all over it, demanding my undivided attention! Even how the photographs are lined up with the write ups is the best I’ve seen. There is a also LOT of extra information included.
The range of products they have available is amazing. After just a few pages, I started over again with a highlight marker, marking off everything that was Zone 2, Zone 3 or Zones 2/3. I didn’t bother marking Zones 3/4 or higher, because there were SO MANY Zone 2 and 3 choices, it wasn’t necessary. The only exception I made was for a mulberry tree that was Zone 3/4.
Did I mention how informative it is?
I learned something new that really caught my attention. There is a section on Buffaloberries, Peashrubs and Autumn Olives.
I was curious about what Peashrubs were, but it turns out that we already have some! They are caraganas! In our clean up, I’ve had to cut away and cut back a lot of caraganas that were either dying or overtaking other trees and shrubs. It’s been a balancing act between clearing them away and keeping them.
Though I am familiar with the shrub, I discovered that the seed pods are actually edible! At least the Siberian Peashrub (caragana arborescens) are. They have two other varieties. The Siberian variety is “A multi-stemmed upright growing shrub covered with delicate yellow flowers in spring, followed by small edible seedpods which can be eaten as a vegetable. By late summer the dried seedpods snap open, dropping the seeds which are 36% protein and make good chicken feed. So it is sometimes planted in poultry yards.”
Who knew?
I also learned that they are good nitrogen fixers, and wind breaks. We should see if we can figure out what variety we have here!
The catalogue also displays an excellent sense of humour. As an example, in the section on edible lilies and high bush cranberries, there is this write up for the Common Snowball.
“Okay, we admit it – this plant is neither edible nor medicinal to the best of our knowledge. In fact, it produces no fruit at all, not even for the birds. Our only excuse for offering it is for the nostalgic memories is evokes for many folks. Every year in early summer, these old-fashioned, carefree bushes become covered with fleecy, white pompoms. The ‘snowball’ name is visually very fitting, but that’s not all. Perhaps we should market it as a weather prognostic – according to a local, time-honoured adage, there is always a brief, unseasonably cool spell when the snowball bush begins to bloom. Like many weather maxims, you can count on it, it always holds true – except when it doesn’t!”
Ya gotta love it! :-D
While we are not in a position to start ordering food trees for this year, we are shooting to do so as soon as possible, given how long it can take for trees to mature enough to start producing fruit. And let’s face it; at my age, pretty much any fruit or nut tree we plant is for our daughters and future generations, because my husband and I will probably be long gone by the time some of them reach maturity!
There is so much information in this catalogue, we can use it for planning purposes. Especially when it comes to their orchard growing equipment and supplies.
With that in mind, these are some of the things that interest us, that also grow in Zones 2 or 3.
Apples: there are many varieties suitable for our zone, including larger eating apples, edible crab apples and cider apples. They have columnar varieties, dwarf varieties and varieties that are good for espalier training. When it comes to apples, they are not something we tend to eat a lot of, on their own, but we would be using them for things like apple cider vinegar, hard apple cider, or freezing them to use for baking later on. We will have to take into consideration that we need to cut down a lot of our crab apple trees due to fungal disease. It may be worthwhile to get rid of the diseased trees, then wait several years before planting new varieties, or planting new varieties in locations well away from where the diseased trees are.
Plums: This is one of those things that we almost never eat, but if we had them, we would eat them. We do have plum trees, but they are not an edible variety – more stone than fruit – that my late father used to make wine, but having larger, fleshier plums that can be eaten fresh would be really nice.
Pears: I remember we had a pear tree when I was a child. It was a variety that produced small, hard fruit that needed to be exposed to frost before they could be eaten. They are another type of fruit we rarely buy, mostly for budgetary reasons, but would eat more of if we had our own trees, so having cold hardy varieties that can be eaten fresh would be enjoyed, and this catalogue has several such varieties that can grow in our zone.
Cherries: the variety of cherry are from a tree from Poland, which has a warmer climate than we do. They bloom wonderfully, but in the time we’ve been here, produce almost no fruit. Their bloom time doesn’t match when the pollinators come out. So getting a variety or two that is good for our zone is something I would like. They do tend to spread through their roots, though, and can become invasive, so we would have to carefully plan where they would go. Some varieties make good hedge trees, wind breaks and privacy screens, so that’s an option, too.
Nuts: there are only two types of nuts suitable for our zone; several varieties of hazelnuts, and butternuts. We are still looking into planting other varieties. They may not have a long enough season to produce edible nuts, but the trees themselves are an investment.
Rugosa Roses: we already have wild roses growing in the spruce grove that we will be encouraging, as other types of underbrush will be cleared away, but these varieties are specially noted for their large hips, and high nutrient contents. These are for the “apothacary” plants we will also be adding, over time.
Kiwis, grapes, gooseberries and currants, saskatoons, haskaps, raspberries and blueberries: we already have some of these, but will be adding more over time. Some are poorly situation and need to either be taken out, starting over with new, or transplanted.
Companion plants and wildlife packages: they’ve got a number of different plants that are beneficial to plant near trees, for various reasons. Some because they attract pollinators, or attract predator insects that will eat nuisance insects. Others because they are good to plant in paths instead of grass, can handle foot traffic, but don’t need to be mowed. There are even seed mixes to provide grazing for deer and other wildlife, and even have wildlife tree packages, made up of a mix of excess trees, or trees that didn’t make the grade for orchard/yard use, which may not even be labelled. They would be useful for a food forest or permaculture set up to feed both humans and wildlife. These are all things that fit in with our long term goals.
All in all, I am very excited by this catalogue, and look forward to being able to order from this truly unique company as soon as possible!
The Re-Farmer
First, I wanted to share with you a photo of some visitors out our living room window last night.
There were actually five in total, but they were chasing each other around. The mama of the two in front chased the one you can see behind the cross, who chased another deer out of that spot before I got the picture. The fifth one that I saw making its way long the edge of the spruce grove disappeared before reaching the feeding station, and I missed what happened with that one.
The deer are definitely getting feistier as the weather warms!
It’s not quite warm enough, though!
I hadn’t received a call about the garden soil over the weekend, so I called them back this morning. The woman who answered seemed at a bit of a loss with how to help me, and ended up giving me the cell phone number for a particular person (since I want someone to come here in advance to see where the loads will be dumped), but there was no point in trying to call them until after 7pm, because they were in a cell phone dead zone. It ended up not being necessary. She called me back not long after.
Their pile of garden soil is too frozen.
She suggested I call back in about a month. Hopefully, it’ll be thawed enough for the equipment to be able load the truck! It would have been nice to get the soil well before we actually need it, but as long as we get it before we need to actually start planting, it should be fine.
I also called the garage to follow up on the van, and we’re now booked to bring it back tomorrow morning, so he can clean out that new EGR valve.
My husband got a requisition for blood work some time ago, but between the polar vortex, van issues (my mother’s little car is far too painful for him to ride in, and his walker wouldn’t fit in it, even folded up, anyhow) and pain levels, we just never made it in. I called the clinic to make sure the form was still at the reception, and that was confirmed. We had planned to go in today to get that done, but my husband’s pain levels were too high. We’ll try again on Wednesday.
On the positive side, my husband’s tax return came in. We had plans for part of it that I tried to take care of last night, only to discover we couldn’t use our debit Visa.
With no trip to the clinic today, I was open for making a trip to the city.
This is what we picked up.
Yup. We got a crossbow kit.
More specifically, we got a Killer Instinct Boss 405.
It’s an early 33rd anniversary gift. :-D
Now, what we really wanted to get was a rifle, but we have not been able to get our PALs yet, and with certain political activities going on right now, we were seeing our window of opportunity closing fast. However, having a gun on the farm is needed, if only to ward off the coyotes and other predators. Plus, I want to be able to hunt.
My husband and I both know guns (me from growing up on the farm, him from his time in the military), and bows. I used to shoot recurve, and my husband shot compound. We were both rather good at both guns and bows, too. However, with age and injuries, anything with a draw weight suitable for hunting is getting beyond our levels of mobility.
We decided that a crossbow would best meet our needs, while still being something we can actually get. Plus, the archery hunting season is much longer than rifle hunting season. As a bonus, a crossbow is quiet. I like quiet!
With that in mind, we did our research and decided on a crossbow at Cabela’s. It’s not high end, by any means, but it’s hardly bottom of the barrel, either. It will meet our needs.
Then, since I had to drive well over an hour to get to the store, I took advantage of the situation, asked questions, and picked up a few other things. (Happily, they accept medical mask exemptions, too!)
One of the things I’d tried to buy on the website was a crossbow rated target. I called ahead, and the crossbow and target were both waiting for me when I got there. After seeing it in person, I decided to get a larger target. I didn’t take pictures, but I ended up getting a Morrell Yellow Jacket YJ-425.
I also got these.
The crossbow kit comes with 3 bolts with field points. Bolts will get lost or damaged, so I picked up a 6 pack of extras. The spares do not come with points, so I picked up a 12 pack of field points. They are slightly heavier than the ones in the kit, so we won’t be using the kit points at all. I also picked up hunting points that need to be assembled, but they are the same weight as the field points. I also got a de-cocking bolt, which can be safely shot into the ground.
After taking this picture, I had to hide everything in a closet, because the cats were ALL OVER everything.
Susan tried to chew on the fletching of the de-cocking bolt.
Tomorrow, the bow will be assembled, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to test it out and start practicing. Not only is it very wet and messy right now, but we’ve got rain in the forecast tomorrow, and snow in the forecast a couple of days later!
And for those who are wondering, no, we don’t plan to hunt the deer that come to our yard.
Over the next while, I’ll be searching out local crossbow groups and hopefully be able to find a hunting mentor. I will still need to take the hunter’s safety course to get a hunting license, and while it would be nice to have a freezer full of venison next winter, I don’t expect to be ready to hunt this year. While all of us can practice shooting with this, it is likely that I will be the only one that will take the course and get a license to hunt.
At least, that’s the plan for now. Plans have a terrible habit of changing at the last minute, but it’s a goal we are shooting for.
No pun intended.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 