winter

Just a bit of snow…

/ Re-Farmer / 10 Comments

Our first blizzard of the season has passed us by. The weather system is still going, though. On the weather radar, I can see that a swath of the US, Ontario and Quebec are being hit as the storm makes its way to the East coast.

As I write this, we are at -22C/-7.6F, with a wind chill of -36C/-32.8F (I usually round the Fahrenheit down, but decided to include the decimals today. :-D ) Our high of the day is supposed to reach -19C/-2.2F with a wind chill of -30C/-22F Tomorrow is supposed to be a couple of degrees colder.

Then on Christmas day, we’re supposed to reach a high of -9C/15.8F with a wind chill of -14C/6.8F We’ll have these mild temperatures for a couple of days, then it’s supposed to drop around the -20C’s for a couple of days, before going back to mild temperatures in time for the new year.

It’s going to feel like spring.

The girls did some shoveling yesterday, so things wouldn’t accumulate too much as it continued to snow.

I was seeing this on the live feed from the security camera last night.

The storm came in from the west, but it was swirling so much, the winds in the image are actually coming from the east!

When one of my daughters had to take the bag of cat litter they cleaned out last night to the bin we have for it outside, she had to push the door open through a snow drift.

You can see signs of that, below.

This is how it was this morning.

You can almost see the path the girls shoveled down the sidewalk! :-D

They also shoveled in front of the cat shelters.

Do you see those icicles hanging from the cat house roof? You know what that means?

It’s warm in there! Warm enough to melt the snow from underneath.

I’m so glad that aquarium bulb is working out as a heater! It’s not enough to warm it up too much, either; too warm, and it will affect their ability to acclimatize to the winter and put them more at risk from the cold.

Some snow did get into the kibble house, unfortunately. We’ll have to clean that out later, when we’re doing more shoveling. This morning, I just did the minimum I needed to do to feed the critters.

The other water bowls were completely buried, but the heated water bowl was doing just fine!

You can see tracks in the background, between the two shelters. Those led to the storage house, so we know that some cats are still sheltering under there, too.

Once I cleared enough snow to give the cats fresh food and water, I continued clearing a path to the feeding station, where the smaller bird feeder is hanging. That will do for now. Eventually, we will need to dig paths to the compost pile, down the sidewalk and to the electricity meter, and to the garage. The girls had cleared all three doors of the garage, including where the snow blower is stored. I can see on the security camera that it isn’t completely filled it again. :-D

I was going to take pictures of the shoveling I did this morning, but I just wanted to get back inside! Plus, my glasses were frosted over and I couldn’t see. :-D

Aside from the paths, we will need to clear the driveway to the road, of course, but we will also need to clear into the yard, for when we need to drive up to the house. That has to include space for a turning radius. Plus, we will need to make paths around the house, so we can reach the septic tank, if needed, and it would be good to have a path to the fire pit, too. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take the big snow blower in to see why it won’t start and get it fixed. So all we’ve got is the little electric one. We do also have an “electric shovel” that my dad used to use. We used it our first winter here. So we won’t have to do all of it by hand, at least!

All that clearing does not have to be done right away. We are well stocked and don’t have to go anywhere, so it can wait until it warms up a bit.

The last couple of winters, our first blizzards were in October, so this one was very late in the season. It may be a lot more snow than we’ve had so far, but it’s actually not too bad. We still only got hit by the edges of the storm. The more severe parts of the storm moved across the Canada/US border, so the south of the provinces all got hit a lot harder. We are doing pretty good where we are. I’m also happy to have more snow in general. Having this stored water will be essential in the spring, for gardens and fields. Lots of snow with a nice, gradual spring melt, would be ideal conditions for planting in the spring, whether it’s farmers’ crops or garden beds. Our first two summers here were drought conditions. Last year, we had a wet spring, followed by a hot, dry summer, and that wet spring was enough to keep crops going through the heat later on.

We shall see what the rest of the season brings us. I’ve seen predictions for both severe cold and mild temperatures for this winter. So far, it’s looking like the mild prediction is the one that’s panning out.

Until then, we’ll enjoy our Christmas while snowed in, all warm and cozy!

Including the outside kitties. :-) Relatively speaking!

I hope anyone reading this that got hit by this storm, too, is also safe, warm and well!

The Re-Farmer

Stormy day

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

If all had gone to plan for today, I would be just arriving at my mother’s right now, to help her with her grocery shopping.

This morning, things were looking just fine out.

Some of the cats still didn’t want to go out in the relatively warm temperatures! :-D

Switching out the memory card on the new camera was a problem this morning. I had my little bowl under it and pushed the micro SD card in to unlatch it, but it didn’t pop out. I tried several times, eventually getting it looser, but I still couldn’t get the card out. It has a little ridge at the end for taking it out of card reader adapter, but even pulling on that with a fingernail was not getting it loose. It did eventually come out, dropped into the waiting bowl I was holding under it…

Then bounced out, and fell into the snow.

*sigh*

I put the replacement card in, then went hunting. Thankfully, the snow was really soft under the camera, and I could see a little slot in the snow were the memory card sliced through. I scooped a handful around where it fell, but still couldn’t find it. The snow was so soft, it fell even deeper! So I had to very carefully dig around in the snow, and I did find it.

I then had to make sure it got good and dry before using it!

I also have to come up with something better to catch the memory card, that I can also fit in my pocket. Ideally, I’d have a little tray attached to the post, under the camera. Figuring out how to rig one of those up would probably be better.

It’s a good thing we’re not actually trying to hide the camera or anything like that! LOL

There has got to be a better way to do this, though. :-/

When I finally tried to upload the files, however, I realized I’d forgotten something important.

I hadn’t formatted the second card. There was nothing on it.

When setting up the camera with the first card, I was able to format it right in the trail cam. When I switched cards yesterday, I wasn’t able to get the screen working (likely due to the cold), and I forgot completely about it needing to be formatted before use.

So there’s a day or recordings, lost! I even saw our vandal going by on his quad, in files on the other camera, turning around near our driveway. It did look like he was just turning around, not stopping or doing anything nefarious, but I really would have liked to have had the different view of him.

We shall see how things work tomorrow.

That’s if I switch out the cards tomorrow. I might skip a day, with the weather we’re having right now.

On seeing that it looked like the storm was actually going to hit us, and fairly soon, I called my mother to see if she was up to doing her shopping earlier. She was, thankfully. She had other places she wanted to go to as well, so we picked up the groceries last. Unfortunately, there was a line up outside the store, which she had never seen before! With the restrictions on how many people can be in the store, they had someone outside (poor kid was NOT dressed for the weather!), counting people. He was a sweetheart and got a cart for me that I could bring to my mother so she could use it as a walker. Thankfully, the line was moving fast, so my 89 yr old mother with her damaged knee didn’t have to stand outside in the cold for very long!

I’m rather incensed about that. Not only have there been no cases of Covid traced to retail outlets in our province, there are none at all in her town.

The storm reached her town while we were in the grocery store. I was able to bring her groceries to her apartment, at least (her building is locked down, but it turns out they do allow deliveries). I wasn’t able to stay and put her groceries away for her, like I usually do. I didn’t want to get her in trouble with the abusive caretakers. Things didn’t look too bad in town, but once I reached the highway, I could see the storm had reached town. I actually drove out of it on the way home, but in the last couple of miles to the farm, I could actually see the storm coming in from the west. Not longer after I got home, my mother phoned to say how glad she was that we did her shopping earlier, because it was really blowing hard around her building! By then, we were getting fairly heavy snow, but not the winds. As I write this, the snow has actually let up a bit. The south of the province is getting the blizzard warnings. It’s a large system, but we may be far enough north to get just the edges of it.

The good thing is, we are well stocked and, now that my mother is also well stocked, we don’t have to go anywhere for some time. We could probably hunker down until after New Year’s, if we needed to. Not that I expect to need to. The storm should pass by tomorrow, and we’re supposed to get a couple of cold days, and then its supposed to get mild again. And by “mild”, I mean around the -10C/14F range.

About the only thing that is going to be an issue is our internet connection. Which we just lost, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to publish this post! Oh, it’s back again!

Better publish this while I can! My apologies for any typos I’ve missed. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Wicked!

/ Re-Farmer / 13 Comments

My goodness, it’s wicked out there this morning!

That -12C (10F) isn’t too bad. It’s the -21C (-5F) wind chill!

Actually, I’m pretty sure that in our yard, the wind chill is more severe than that!

The amazing thing is that we are supposed to reach 0C (32F) by this evening.

The winds are driving into our yard from the south/southeast. One thing we have noticed since moving here is that it’s those south winds that are the worst! When it comes time to plant more shelter belt trees, that is where we will need to focus on.

With the cat house and kibble house, the winds are driving right into the active areas. There isn’t much we can do about it. Even shifting the kibble house to more of a 90 degree angle with the cat house, wouldn’t do much with these winds. The good thing is, when my brother built the shelter for his dogs, he added on that “porch”, and the entry has two layers of carpet strips. Without those strips, the wind would be blowing straight into the opening, even with the kibble house sheltering it more. Any wind that does get in is going into the “porch” area, and not affecting the main part of the shelter very much, so the kitties are still cozy inside.

The kibble house is working out very well, though. The inside is sheltered from the wind almost completely, so the cats can eat in peace. Even the gap under the kibble house is quite sheltered. The sheet of insulation I put under there (the photo is from when that was done; it was too cold to take photos this morning!) actually blocks spaces where the wind would be getting in from the south, since it fits under the support pieces.

The water bowls are not sheltered, though. The heated bowl near the entrance – which had ice forming across the top, again! – has some shelter, but the others along the side of the cat house are getting the full brunt of the wind.

I think, next year, we should build another small shelter for the non-heated water bowls. Depending on how it’s positioned, it can act as a wind break, while still allowing sunlight to reach the one window of the cat house they love to sit in so much! :-)

Amazingly, I still had cats following me around while I was switching out the memory cards on the trail cams. Poor Potato Beetle was shivering when I picked him up and carried him back to the house. The silly boy had been up on the roof, earlier. No shelter up there!

I am so glad we don’t need to go anywhere today.

Doing bread baking and laundry sounds really good right now! :-D

The Re-Farmer

You know it’s cold when…

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

… the heated water bowl is starting to freeze over.

A few of the outside cats were out, but I didn’t get that morning rush that I usually do, that’s for sure! They were far more interested in the fresh, relatively warm, water than the kibble. No kitties followed me while I switched out the memory cards on the trail cams!

We have been spoiled by a very mild winter, so far. (Yes, I know: winter doesn’t officially start for another week.) We had been hovering around freezing temperatures. Some days, the weather didn’t know if it was raining, snowing or fogging.

Last night, the temperatures dropped significantly. When doing my rounds this morning, we were at -27C/-16F with a humidex of -32C/-25F. That’s about a 15 – 20 degree C drop within half a day!

We’re supposed to warm up to -12C/10F (man, Fahrenheit is weird….) by this afternoon, but I made sure to plug in my mother’s car this morning. We’re supposed to have this one cold day, and then it’ll warm back up to above -10C/14F range again so I didn’t bother plugging in our van as well.

Of course, the one cold day we get is the day I’m taking my mother in for a medical appointment, and to do some much needed grocery shopping. Much needed for her, I mean. She keeps telling me the social workers can pick things up for her, and get paid while doing it, but she doesn’t seem to be taking advantage of this at all. She also has to pick up her prescriptions and hit the post office as well (she told me just last night, that the mail box outside the post office got stolen! I think she meant the incoming package drop off box, not the outgoing mail box). It’s going to be a long day for her. I’ll have to make sure to bring along our folding wagon again, to make bringing her stuff in easier, since her building is still locked down. She even asked me to be sure to meet her at the side door, instead of the main doors by the lobby, because of all the nosy people that might give her grief.

She had talked about moving to another building in town. I do hope she can get into there (or at least get on the waiting list). She really needs to get out of this place. It’s actually ideal for her in many ways, but the people are just toxic!

Oh, look! It’s warmed up to -24C/-11F and the humidex is -28C/-18F. At least that’s what the weather on my desktop says. My phone app says it’s warmed up to -23C/-9F, humidex -21C/-5F.

Either way, it’s trending up. By the time I’m up and about with my mother, it should be a few degrees warmer. That will make things easier on her.

The Re-Farmer

It’s warmed up a bit…

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Of course, that’s a relative statement.

When I got up this morning, it was -33C/-27F with a “feels like” of -42C/-44F.

I’m happy to say that the van handled the temperatures quite well. Yes, we’ve been diligent in maintenance and improvements as much as we can, but it’s still a 15 yr old vehicle with almost 430,000 km on it, so I’m always going to be paranoid about that thing. :-/

Motivated by the temperatures, I stayed up last night to finish a shrug I was crocheting for myself. When my upper back gets cold, it triggers my chronic cough, so I just wanted a little something to throw on while around the house. I am wearing it right now, and feeling nice and toasty!

I think this is the first time I’ve deliberately made something, just for myself. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Life goes on

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I want to thank those who reached out to me after my post about the various situations we’re having to deal with on the property. Your kind words and encouragement are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

The night I wrote about all that, one more thing got added to the list.

My husband broke a tooth!

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