winter

Taking advantage of a nice day!

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Today didn’t go above freezing, like yesterday, but it did reach a high of -3C/27F, which is absolutely gorgeous for this time of year . We need to take advantage of it while we can, though. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to have the same high of the day, and then it’s supposed to drop to a high of -23C/-9F the next day! We’re supposed to keep getting colder for a couple more days before things start warming up to above -20C/-4F again.

With that on the horizon, when my mother called yesterday about getting help with her shopping, I was already planning to call her to arrange doing it today. My mother, after telling me her fridge is sooo empty, tried to have it on Friday, because there is a social event in her building on Thursdays. I reminded her, I’m doing her shopping for her. She isn’t coming along, so she can still go visit with her neighbours! I just didn’t want her to be with an empty fridge any longer than necessary.

So that was worked out.

Before I headed out this morning, I had a little extra to do during my morning rounds.

It was time to put some pretty collars on some cats!

Here, from left to right, Colin, Judgement and Stinky are sporting their handsome new necklaces. These are not only brightly colours, but have rows of reflective strands in them. I was also able to get one on Gouda, and Nosey showed up towards the end and got one.

This is Gouda’s old collar, that showed up in the sun room after he lost it, as other cats were dragging it around and playing with it.

This colour also has the rows of reflective strands in, though with the collar being scratched until it frayed like this, I doubt they could be seen! The breakaway collar is still there, but the loop of collar on one end had come undone. This has happened before. These are the collars I’ve been able to find at the local dollar store. I still have one like it left that got buried. I just need to remove the bell and adjust the length before I add it to the others.

These are all the prepared collars. Since the yard cats earn their keep by hunting rodents for us, all the bells get removed, first. The ones on the bottom are the ones I found at the local dollar store. The bells on those ones need a pair of pliers to removed them, as the bells are on a ring that goes around the fabric of the collar. The new reflective ones have D rings for the bells. Plus, the rings the bells were on were the kind with overlapping ends, so they could be slid off like a key ring.

I’m keeping all the bells. Eventually, I plan to crochet a bunch of cat toys and will include the bells inside them.

We have one spay and one neuter booked through the rescue at the end of the month. I plan to bring a couple of collars along for the clinic to put on them while they are still under. Much easier than trying to get a collar on a mostly feral cat.

I really, really, really want to snag this one.

Meaning Brussel, the gorgeous fluffy calico with four boys hanging around.

Yes, she has gone into heat.

In the middle of January.

If we can’t catch her, she would be having kittens at the end of February. Way too early. The chances of survival would be almost nil.

But, how do we catch her? I don’t want to use a trap, yet, as it’s too still too cold, and who knows which cat would actually get caught in the trap. I might be able to get her closed up in the catio – she actually went into there this morning, and I could have closed her in, but she would need a heated water bowl, and there is no power available out there. The catio itself is a mini greenhouse, plus it has two box nests, one insulated, one with insulation between it and the ground, and a food bowl. Once things are warm enough that water won’t freeze, the catio could also be used as an isolation shelter, but not yet!

Brussel is one of the more feral cats but at least she does come closer and sometimes goes into the sun room. Her sister, Sprout, sometimes comes closer to house, but runs away as soon as she sees us. Sprout it one of the most feral in the colony.

Gotta work on that lady! She would be a priority over the other females right now, if we could snag her.

Aside from bedecking cats with snazzy new necklaces (the two littles that got fixed won’t be getting theirs quite yet), the other additional task of the morning was to pour more calcium chloride into the ejector. My brother asked me to pour it into the venturi pipe first, see if that can be filled, before pouring it into the stand pipe around it.

The two jugs were on the old oil drum my brother dragged over to use as a work surface. I started with the one that had only about a quarter jug left. Once that was done, I cracked open the second one.

As my brother expected, showing that the venturi valve is, indeed, no longer frozen, the level of liquid inside the venturi pipe did not seem to increase. The level in the stand pipe did increase, slowly. What would be happening is liquid at the bottom might be draining slowly into the main pipe.

It wasn’t until I was pouring the last of the calcium chloride into the pipe that I realized I was hearing an odd sound from inside the jug.

It was slush.

The liquid ice melter, had started to freeze!

Part of this is because they were sitting on metal, which would have made the bottoms a lot colder. The other part is that, while they were sitting there, the contents separated in the cold, with the water freezing at the bottom.

After closing up the ejector and wrapping it up again, the tarp, I nestled both jugs into the black plastic, on the east side of the set up, so that they would get the most sun and warmth to thaw out.

I hope we get one extra warm day on the weekend, as I expect my brother will want to come out on Saturday to switch the pipes back on the septic pump. I would then trudge out to the ejector for when he’s ready to test it, so I can message him and let him know if it’s working or not.

If it does work, we’ll have to make a point of using lots of water so the septic pump will turn on a few times and wash out the calcium chloride. The fitting at the bottom of the ejector is brass, which might corrode if it’s exposed to it for too long.

Once all that was done, it wasn’t long before I headed out to the truck to set up the OBDII scanner and make sure it is still just the sensor triggering the check engine light. I probably don’t need to do that, but I’m paranoid about having just one vehicle available.

My husband was expecting a prescription delivery today, so I left the gate open when I headed out, and the girls made sure to keep a phone handy and be available to get the delivery.

I timed my departure for when I could pick up our favourite fried chicken and wedges for lunch at the gas station – and top up the gas tank.

One thing my mother needs to get done that I cannot do for her is get cash from the bank, and she is no longer physically up to going to the bank in person. She doesn’t have a bank card (she did get one and my brother has it for safe keeping), as she wouldn’t know how to use it, nor would she trust it, so it’s cash only. My brother, as her Power of Attorney, is the only person who can do it for her. I brought it up with my brother, at her request, to see if there was some way to include me in the PoA (I do NOT want to be PoA at all!). He will have to take a day off work and make an appointment with our mother at the bank to work things out, and has no idea when he’ll be able to do that. Hopefully, some workaround be found.

We’ll figure it out.

After my mother and I had our lunch together, we went over her list and then I went to the pharmacy and the grocery store for her. I got back just in time for the social worker from the senior’s centre to arrive and start setting up their weekly event. I was able to get everything unloaded and put away, before starting time, so that worked out quite well.

My daughters, meanwhile, were also taking advantage of the warm day and have set up the laundry. No one has had a chance to climb onto the roof and check the vent yet (they climb through a window upstairs, rather than use a ladder, as it’s safer that way), so we’ve got the hose running out the door again. Since it’s going to be set up, anyhow, I’ll also take advantage of it and find things to wash. It may be warmer right now, but we still need to make sure to bring the hose in as soon as possible, before any remaining water starts to freeze, or the plastic starts to get brittle and crack.

One of these days, we’ll be able to do laundry like normal people again. 😄😄

Getting all this stuff done during the few warm days we have right now is a lot like “making hay while the sun shines” in the summer! We’re going to be hit with the bitter cold again, soon enough.

I can’t complain, though. For all that we are getting these cold spells, it’s really been a fairly mild winter. Not as mild as last year’s El Nińo winter, but still much nicer than the first few winters we had after moving here!

What the heck???

I just checked my computer’s weather app.

We are now under a blizzard warning.

We were expecting a couple of hours with snow this evening, then more in the wee hours of the morning, but this is the first blizzard warning I’m seeing! With winds up to 70km/h (43mph), they’re now saying. Looking at the weather radar, it seems that most of the system will pass to the north of us.

Mind you, the same weather app is saying the snow has already started where we are, and I see no snow falling at all, outside my window. So maybe our weird climate bubble is doing its thing again.

As I write this, our temperature is still a balmy -4C/25F, though the windchill is at -15C/5C. Still not too bad right now. We shall see!

At least the yard babies have plenty of food, water and shelter.

The Re-Farmer

Temperature whiplash – just in time?

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As I write this, we are at -23C/-9F with a wind chill of -29C/-20F. That wind chill has actually improved a bit but tonight we’re expected to get wind chills of -34C/-29F.

When I headed out this morning, it felt even colder. I did manage to check on the ejector, just enough to make sure the heat tape is still powered and doing its thing. I didn’t uncover it or check on how the melt is going, as I did not want to risk shattering the plastic taking off the cap and elbow in what was -35C/-31F wind chills at the time.

In a couple of days, though, I’ll probably unwrap it completely, to help it warm up! We are in for some temperature whiplash over the next while.

Yeah. We’re expected to go from -18C/0F to 2C/36F overnight. We’ll have a couple of mild days after that, then drop right back down again.

Looking at the monthly forecast, the next cold snap is supposed to last about a week, then we’ll be warming up at the end of January.

I hope it does warm up at the end of the month, because we now have two cats booked through the Cat Lady, one male one female (whichever ones we can catch). Which means we’ll have to close up the isolation shelter for 2 weeks again, keeping the other cats out.

A lot of them basically live in the cat shelter right now and hardly leave. Between the heat lamp and their body heat, it must be pretty warm in there!

Meanwhile, I’m waiting until Wednesday, when it’s supposed to go above freezing, to do any driving around and some errands.

I am getting really tired of this cold – and this is far from the coldest winter we’ve had since moving here! I’ve spent most of today drinking tea and eating hot soup, because this house just doesn’t really warm up in the winter.

I’m turning into a suck in my old age. 😄

The Re-Farmer

Thank God!

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That my brother made it out yesterday to work on the ejector, and not today.

I headed out to do my morning rounds and ended up doing short rounds, because of this.

That is -23C/-9F with a wind chill of -35C/-31F. I took this screen shot after I came inside, and it was actually colder than when I first headed out! In fact, even as I was about to take the screen shot, I saw the wind chill drop another degree.

Brutal.

I did manage to do a bit of shoveling and going around to make sure various solar panels were clear of snow. The ones for the lights in the kibble and water shelters were completely buried.

When I got to the gate to brush snow off the trail cam solar panel there, I had to get these pictures.

The photos do not do it justice. Those are the largest sundogs – rainbow or otherwise – I’ve ever seen. You can just see a hint of a complete halo.

Sundogs and halos around the sun or moon happen only in extremely cold temperatures. The stronger and brighter the sundogs, the colder the temperatures.

Needless to say, I did NOT check the ejector. I wasn’t going to uncover it and expose it to this cold. With the bright sunshine, the black tarp should absorb some heat, while protecting the heat tape around the ejector from the cold. The heat tape has all sorts of safety features to keep it from overheating, and is just warm enough to keep pipes from freezing. It wouldn’t take much for temperatures and wind chills like this to basically negate anything it’s accomplishing. I’ll see what the conditions are like this afternoon and decide if it is worth slogging out there to uncover it and check things. We’re only supposed to warm up another degree for the high of the day, but if the wind chill drops, that will make the difference.

On a completely different note, today the girls tested out the Instant Pot with rice for the first time. All the recipes and instructions are for Jasmine or Basmati rice. The rice they prefer is a sushi type rice that usually needs to soak in cold water for half an hour before cooking. I got them an Instant Pot cookbook and they looked at various rice recipes, but the chart that came with the Instant Pot said for 4 minutes for all plain white rice (longer for brown rice). They went with 4 minutes, and it seems to have worked fine.

Once they were done with it, I tried it out myself for the first time, to make a beef stew. I found a basic recipe, though I had to substitute a couple of things – carrots for rutabaga, for example.

The cookbook then said to set the pot to manual for 18 minutes.

Our model of Instant Pot doesn’t have a “manual” setting. It does have a rice setting, which put the time at 12 minutes. It has a meat/stew setting that put it at 35 minutes.

We both used the “pressure cook” setting, which seems to be the equivalent for “manual” on our machine, as it allowed us to select heat levels and time ourselves. The stew is cooking as I write this – oh! it just started beeping! – so we shall see how it turns out.

It smells amazing, that’s for sure!

Time to see if I can have myself a nice hot bowl of stew on this cold, cold day!

The Re-Farmer

Still no change, but lots of changes!

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First, that extreme cold warning is still on, and has been extended into tomorrow.

You can see the times I took the above three screencaps, showing this morning’s temperatures. It’s coming up to 1pm as I write this, and we have not only finally warmed up to -20C/-4C, but it’s such a sunny day that the “windchill” is -15C/5F. The last screencap I took, at 9am, was just before I headed outside to feed the cats (I skipped the rest of my morning rounds), and the south facing part of the house was feeling much warmer. The wind direction just managed to be blocked by the trees to the south, which made a huge difference.

Unfortunately, we still have no septic, and the tank was not pumped yesterday, so we can’t use our plumbing. The septic truck broke down and never made it.

This morning, I tried calling one of the plumbers back – they are supposed to be available 24 hrs, according to their website. I left a message, but no one has called back.

So, we’re still using the honey pot in the bathroom. No showers and using as little water as possible to wash our hands. To do dishes, we’ve got basins on the dining room table, then we dump the dirty water outside when we’re done. We’ve even changed how we’re cooking, to try and dirty as few dishes as possible, and nothing that involves washing things, or dumping cooking water down the sink. I made a “use whatcha got” soup this morning out up leftovers – even the last bits of charcuteries meat and vegetable sticks we’d prepared extra of for New Year’s – for a hearty one pot meal.

—— pause for phone calls and messages and more calls and …. everything has changed! ——

Okay, I feel like I’m going through mental whiplash right now!

I will get to that in a moment.

Where was I?

Ah, yes. Doing dishes!

Basically, we’re being careful to have as little water going into the septic tank as possible. It can handle being at least a bit overfull – we’ve certainly gone more than a little over full just this past summer! – but we really want to avoid that.

I’m actually getting used to using the honeypot, because we can’t flush the toilet.

Yeesh.

Anyhow…

The plumber I left a message with got back to me while I was writing this. The first thing he let me know is that they are booked solid and cannot come out.

He also sounded rather upset for me. I’d mentioned the ejector was replaced about a month, month and a half ago. Ejectors are made to work in the winter. He used to install them himself. He has one himself that was installed in the 90’s, and it’s working fine. It shouldn’t be frozen. He suggested I call the company that installed it and get them to fix it. I told him I’d already talked to them, and he asked what they said when I told them it was frozen. I told the plumber that, at the time I called, we were thinking the problem was somewhere else at the time, and he was the one who suggested the ejector might be frozen. I didn’t confirm that until after. I also mentioned he’d asked me to call him back today, which I was planning to do. He told me that, when I did, to tell them they needed to come put and fix the ejector.

*sigh*

I did call the owner of the company back and basically told him what the plumber said. He was quite frustrated by that; apparently plumbers pretty regularly do stuff like that, when they don’t actually know what’s going on.

The problem is not the ejector.

The system we have works like this. The plumbing in the house all drains into one side of our septic tank. The solids sink to the bottom and, once it fills, the greywater drains into the other side of the tank. That side has a float with a pill switch in it. When it fills, the float triggers the pump inside the house. The pump pulls the greywater from the second half of the tank – this inflow pipe is where we have the filter installed, to catch any bits and pieces that might be in the water that could damage the pump – then pumps it out to the ejector. The outflow pipe runs most of the length of the basement and out the wall. The pipe, along with water pipes that supplies the heated water fountains for cattle, and a tap in the barn, runs about 300 or more feet to the barn, then turns away from the barn towards a low spot. From there, the venturi pipe creates enough pressure to draw the water up the pipe and out.

With ours, we’ve got a sheet of metal roofing to reduce erosion and divert the greywater towards a low area, further away from the barn.

That elbow at the top is part of the venturi pipe.

When the septic pump shuts off, any water in the venturi pipe drops down below the frost line and collects at the bottom of the 4″ pipe. The next time the septic pump turns on, the venturi pipe drains what’s at the bottom of the 4″ pipe first.

Here’s the problem.

There has to be enough pressure for this to happen, and that requires a certain gallons per minute rate of flow (he couldn’t remember exactly what that was). If there isn’t enough pressure, the venturi pipe can’t drain the bottom of the 4″ pipe completely. Then the pump shuts off, the water drains to the bottom, but now there’s more than there was before.

Eventually, the water level in the 4″ pipe gets above the frost line.

The septic pump, he told me, should take only about 2-3 minutes to drain the tank.

Ours takes about 5 minutes.

Except, recently, we’ve been having issues with flow.

First, the pump would empty the filter, but there wasn’t more water coming in from the tank. I would have to stop the pump, prime the filter, turn it on again, and it would work. The inflow, however, wasn’t as powerful as it had been, before.

The night before it stopped working entirely, the pump hadn’t gone off at all. The only reason it would was if we were using enough water for the second side of the tank to fill and the pill switch triggered the pump to turn on. That just didn’t happen.

So not only was the flow of water from the pump low, but there was no flow at all during one of the coldest nights we’ve had this year. Flowing water would have helped keep it from freezing entirely – at least for a while longer.

Which means that, ultimately, the problem is the pump and the flow of greywater.

Now, the pump *is* wearing out and needs to be replaced, but that may not be the problem. There may also be an air leak somewhere, affecting the vacuum. Which may have been what I was seeing, with a leak from the filter and the O ring not sealing. Or, there could be an air leak somewhere else.

Now, we could install the diverter and an emergency measure, but we still need to get the ejector thawed out, and we probably still need to replace the pump. I’ve been checking the filter regularly, and even turning the pump on for a few moments. It’s not draining, and the filter is not leaking, which – in theory, at least – means there is no longer an air leak.

Other issues could be that the pipe leading to the ejector is also getting coated with gunk on the inside and getting narrower. This is something we have been aware of and have been taking steps to try and improve. One of those was to use the Septo Bac every two days for two weeks, and we really did see a difference in how things flowed after that. Currently, we’re using Free Flow pipe maintenance twice a week; that is more to clear the pipes inside the house, but it would be beneficial for the tank and the pipe to the ejector, too.

—– Must pause for exciting news. —–

The septic guy just arrived! Our tank is being emptied right now!

We’ll be able to flush our toilet again!

I did get a peek into the tank when he popped the lid off. The level had not reached the pipe that the pill switch cable runs through yet, which was quite a relief.

That guy deserves one helluva tip.

Okay, where was I…

Right.

So there are a number of possible reasons why the ejector wasn’t able to drain properly, which resulted in the freeze.

I then got instructions on how to thaw out the ejector (that doesn’t involve ice fishing tents and heaters, as one plumber suggested trying).

I wasn’t able to pull the venturi pipe out because it’s frozen, but could rotate the cap. I couldn’t take the cap off, because of the elbow.

Well, that elbow has a screw, and it comes off.

We could take off the elbow and remove the cap.

We could then start pouring boiling water into the 4″ pipe, around the venturi pipe. However, he said to put some copper pipe down, first. The pipe itself will heat up and help thaw things out faster, but it would also help get water down more directly and further through the ice on the bottom.

Once it seems like enough ice was melted, someone could turn on the septic pump and, hopefully, it would drain the water at the bottom, and empty the septic tank.

That would take a long time, and it’s still colder than -20C/-4F out there.

—- pause for more calls —-

Oh, my goodness. More changes! This time, for tomorrow, too. I’ll get caught up to that, later.

With all this, I’ve been keeping my brother and his wife up to date, pretty constantly.

Given our concerns with the truck, another thing I had to deal with last night was how to get my mother to her medical appointment on Monday. Plus, I was supposed to come early enough to do her laundry for her. She called last night to tell me she was able to get her laundry done herself and that I didn’t need to come early. I told her a bit about what was going on (I didn’t want to overwhelm her!) and that I wasn’t sure if I could get her to her appointment. She tried calling my sister to drive her (which she didn’t want, as I’m the one who normally accompanies my mother, so I’m on top of what’s going on), but my sister starts her shift at work less than an hour after my mother’s appointment.

I passed that on to my brother as well. Today, I was supposed to run the engine a few times, so see if the problem continued, then decide Monday morning, if I’d be rescheduling my mother’s appointment. Possibly mine and my daughter’s on Wednesday, too.

I got a call from my SIL. They were going to be coming home on Sunday (today), and she offered to drive us. She would pick me up first, then we’d pick up my mother, drive her to her appointment, then she’d drive us both home again, then head home herself.

I was stunned by the offer – that’s a LOT of driving for her! Once I was sure this would not be too much of a problem for her, I gratefully accepted the offer.

Today, I’ve been messaging them the whole time, while they are on the way home. My SIL was driving, so my brother was able to respond to my messages.

When I told him about thawing the ejector and needing to look for a long enough copper pipe (I know I’ve seen some, somewhere!), he called me. I was just bundling up to go outside and check the barn.

Which is jam packed with their stuff.

I’m sure there is one long enough in one corner of the old bull’s stall, but it’s full of my brother’s gardening supplies now. I wasn’t sure if it was there, and I wasn’t sure if I could reach it! I’m pretty sure there are lengths of copper pipe in the rafters, too, but again, I’m not sure I could reach them. The centre aisle of the barn is full of tractors and snow blowers and rotary mowers, and I’m… well… short.

My brother called to tell me not to bother trying to thaw out the ejector. They would go home, then come here with both their cars. My SIL would follow later. He would take a look at the ejector, see what he could do, then she would drive him home.

They would leave one of their cars with us. It’s already parked outside, so they know it can handle the cold.

My truck should, too – it certainly did last winter! – but that’s another story….

The thing is, they were still about 3-4 hours away from home! Add in the time to come here, and he won’t get here until after dark!

But he felt he had no choice. No one is coming out to install the diverter, and no one was going to come out to thaw out the ejector. The one company would have, but they are so far away, it would be a lot more expensive, and they didn’t want to ding us with a huge bill. It’s not like they’d be coming out to fix an actual problem with the ejector they installed, that would be covered by any kind of warranty.

Plus, by leaving us with their car, my SIL won’t have to do all that driving.

Then my brother told me to sit down with a cup of tea and relax for a while. He knows me well enough to know how all this has been stressing me out.

Which is about when my husband called out, saying “are you expecting someone with a big truck?”

I’d opened the gate for the septic truck last night, and never closed it. He was able to drive right in!

He’d backed into the yard, so I threw on my parka and headed out. We went over to where I’d cleared things to make room for the truck and the hoses, and got the insulated tarp freed from the frozen ground. He then went to back the truck up the rest of the way. I confirmed how much we owed him, and told him it might be a couple of days before I can get the cash to him. He was fine with that. We’ve done this before, and he knows he can trust us.

With that, I went back inside and let my brother know the septic truck was here. It didn’t take him long at all to empty the truck, so when my brother said he wanted to call, I delayed it long enough for me to go back out, put the weights back down on the tarp, which the septic guy had put back, and put everything away.

Not before using the toilet and actually being able to flush it!!!

Ooooo… Very exciting! 😂🤣😂

While it was great that the tank was emptied, it does make thawing the ejector a bit more complicated. It will take probably a few days before both sides of the tank filles enough to trigger the pump again. Which means that, if we thaw the ejector, there’s not way to test it.

My brother thinks he should be able to use his heat gun and the copper pipe to thaw the ejector.

We’ll see how it works out, though. We won’t really know what we’re dealing with until we get that cap off and can actually see how high the ice it – or use the copper pipe to find how far it goes.

When they reach their place, he’ll grab a few tools, but we really only need a screwdriver to remove the single screw to get that elbow off.

Of course, things never turn out as expected, so who knows.

They don’t have a lot of tools at their place right now. They brought most of them here, to the farm. However, they’re scattered all over. They didn’t have time to be organized about it, but just jammed things wherever they could. My brother won’t be able to start organizing things until spring, at the earliest.

Well, we’ll do what we can with where we are at.

Meanwhile, they will be leaving a car here, and it will need to be plugged in. So I headed out to the garage to get a 100′ extension cord and set that up through the back door of the garage, so the car can be parked in the more sheltered yard.

While I was at it, I finally got to the truck and got the engine running. Then, after puttering with the extension cord, I set up my OBDII scanner.

The first thing I noticed was that the oil pressure gauge was still sitting at 0 and not moving. The check engine light was on again, too.

I did a full module scan. What I’m getting is “Engine Oil Pressure Sensor/Switch “A” High. Five times.

Looking into more detail, the scanner tells me this code frequency is “very common”. The recommended fix is to replace the engine oil pressure sensor.

Which got replaced not that long ago. Unless “switch A” is a different sensor.

I took screen captures of the results. When I’m somewhere with enough data signal to send images through text, I’ll send them to the garage.

Otherwise, the truck sounded just fine. In fact, now that the MAF sensor has been replaced, I do hear an improvement in how it starts, when using the remote car starter. Definitely smoother. I’d checked the oil yesterday, and it was fine, too.

Phew.

This post took a lot longer – and became a lot longer – than I expected!

As of right now, I’m basically just waiting for my brother to arrive and will accompany him to the ejector.

My brother is the best. So is his wife! I am so glad my mother transferred ownership of the property over to them. I don’t know what we’d do without them!

The Re-Farmer

Enjoying a quiet day

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Of course, all the usual stuff that needed to be done got done, like the morning rounds.

What a gorgeous sunrise, this morning!

I’m not a morning person, but I can still appreciate how beautiful in can be!

The kitties were quite enjoying the isolation shelter.

I counted 11 while I was taking the photo. It’s hard to tell, with all the reflections. Altogether, I think I counted 32 cats this morning. They were running around so much, it was hard to keep track of which ones I’d already counted.

Last night, my husband glanced out the bathroom window and saw the heat lamp was out. I went to check and found the cats have managed to knock the plug loose out of the power bar.

While there, I realized there was a cat using the heated water bowl as a butt warmer.

Even though I’d given them an early feeding so I could park the truck, they were out of both food and water! Even the broken heated water bowl we replaced, which had been full of ice and slowly melting, was down to just dregs. So I gave them another feeding, then rinsed out and filled the water bowls.

This morning, the water bowls were all empty again! Well. Except we have two outside that aren’t heated, so they were just solid ice. Both are in shade, so they never melted with the warmer temperatures. The cats were more interested in the water than the food!

I just got back from doing the evening rounds. We’re still at our predicted high of -3C/27F, but it’s so lovely and sunny out there, any ice and snow still on the sidewalk blocks are melting. The cats are just loving it. I think I counted 29. They needed their water bowls topped up again, too, though at least they weren’t completely out, this time.

With the warmer weather, I’ve actually seen a couple of visitors in the sun room on the critter cam. Once, a skunk, and another time, a single massive racoon. Hopefully, they won’t be visiting more often, and will stay in their hiding places when the temperatures drop again!

Overall, though, it’s been a home day for me, and I’m quite happy to not have to go anywhere. I might make a quick trip into town tomorrow, though, to get the last couple of things I wasn’t able to get on the stock up trip, and check the mail. The strikers might be back at work, but we’re still missing mail. At least my husband got his bloodwork requisition, even though we can’t do anything about it until after the holidays.

In other things, I got to see the first files from the new solar powered trail cam. I am quite happy with it. I won’t need to move the stand it’s one, for starters. I will probably need to reduce the resolution and motion sensitivity, though. I have it set to take a photo, then a short video, just like the camera it replaced. I was amazed by how well it picked up audio! With the other camera, it would have a recording of me right next to it, talking to a cat or something, and barely pick up sound. This thing’s microphone is so sensitive, I could hear the sounds made by the chain and sliding bar when unlocking and opening the gate, some 30 feet away!

We shall see how it holds up when the temperatures drop, though. That’s always the litmus test for the cameras!

So far, so good, though.

The Re-Farmer

Getting better out there!

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Well, almost.

It’s almost 1pm as I start this. Outside, we’re at -17C/1F, which is a huge improvement from the last couple of days. Our predicted high for today is -15C/5F

The wind chill right now, however, is -30C/-22F

Tomorrow, however, we’re expected to reach a high of -6C/21F, then -2C/28F over the next couple of days! It’s going to feel downright tropical out there! 😄

My daughter did the outside rounds this morning. The short rounds, since it was -27C/-17F out there, before wind chill, at the time. When I did the evening cat feeding last night, I saw that the wet cat food in the isolation shelter bowl was frozen. It’s right next to the sliding window, so that corner is pretty cold. I reached in to tilt the clamp lamp so the heat bulb faced the back of the shelter, instead of the hammock below.

I was actually able to handle the metal shield around the heat bulb with my bare hands. It was just warm. Normally, I would have burned my fingers if I’d touched it. Another sign of how cold the ambient temperature in there got, even with the heat bulb!

The kitties are okay, though. Kohl had frost on her face fur again, but her fluffy partner did not. My daughter says there was a bit of frost around the top of the heated water bowl.

The kitties have now been in there for a full week. Kohl is handling her surgery just fine. No sign of infection, and neither of them seem interested in licking their surgical sites at all. They’ll be in there for one more week of observation.

They have company, though.

After talking about it with my daughter last night, we decided to add another kitten. There’s one white and grey that has leaky eyes, a stuffy nose, and has been sneezing and snuffling a lot. My daughter thinks it’s Eye Baby, but I’ll have to look closer to be sure. This morning, she was able to snag the kitten and take him into the isolation shelter. She said, he really didn’t like being carried outside in the wind, so he was very quick to jump into the isolation shelter all on his own!

With the temperatures improving over the next week, he will be better off in there than in the sun room, and will get to share the wet cat food as well. A week not having to fight so many adult cats for food, water and warmth will help him recover faster, as well.

At least, that’s the hope.

Today is a bright and sunny day, so they should have some passive solar heat in there, too.

My daughter doesn’t stop to take any pictures when she does the morning routine, though, so I’ll give you this, instead…

Here’s Toni, enjoying the indoor life!

I wish I could give all of them the indoor life!

It may be warming up out there, but today will be another home day. I think, tomorrow, I’ll make the trip to a feed store. I’m looking to get the 40 pound bags of cat food, but also want to see what they have for heated water bowls. I’d like to get another smaller one. They seem to last longer. When I took the one my SIL gave us outside to chop the ice out, and flipped it upside down to spill out the shards, I found there was a melted spot in the plastic in the middle of the bowl’s bottom! I had intended to go to the town north of us for that, but we are almost out of lysine, and the feed store in the town my mother lives in was able to order some for us. Since I’m also thinking of another smaller shopping trip in preparation for Christmas and New Years, in the nearer city, it would be along the way.

Until then, I’ve got another day to enjoy my hibernation.

The Re-Farmer

Power is back… for now?

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Okay, let’s see how long this will last!

The power is back on again, and stayed on long enough that I turned my computer back on and will try posting this.

We’ve got another brutally cold morning. While doing the morning routine, after feeding the cats, I took the litter buckets out to their compost pile behind the outhouse. They had been in the old kitchen, which is not heated. I couldn’t empty them completely, because of the damp sawdust frozen to the sides of the buckets! Normally, I’d knock the buckets against a tree, but I didn’t want to shatter the plastic.

By the time I got back inside, it had warmed up to -25C/-13F, with a wind chill of -34C/-29F. I just checked again now, and I have three different weather apps telling me three different temperatures! I’ve got one saying it’s -24C/-11F, another saying we’re still at -25C/-13F, and another saying we are at -26C/-15F. Only two of them give me wind chills, with one saying -30C/-22F, and another saying -33C/-27F

I was supposed to pick up our beef share today, but I had already tried to reschedule last night, on seeing the temperatures expected for today. We haven’t replaced the cord on our block heater yet, so I don’t want to try driving the truck. It’s not cold enough to crack the engine block (yes, we’ve had that happen before), but I still would rather not take any chances.

With there being power issues today as well, that’s even more reason to stay home.

In the second photo of the above slide show, you can see the ice and frost accumulated on the inner door of our main entry. There’s frost on the bottom, too.

The next photo shows Caramel in the bigger cat bed inside the shelf shelter, with frost on her face. She could go into the sun room (the thermometer on the wall was reading -15C/5F), or the heated cat house, but she chose the shelf shelter.

In the next photo, you can see that even Kohl has frost on her face! The other fluffball didn’t have any frost on him at all. The insides of the windows were frosted, though. Even the heated water bowl was starting to show ice freezing near the top. After giving them their wet cat food, I scooped out most of their water bowl (the power cord is wrapped around the support on the top, so I can’t take it very far out of the shelter to spill it out) and replace it with warm water.

I noticed a corner of the plastic wrapped around the bottom was coming loose. When I checked it, I found that cats had pulled the plastic down, all along the back of the isolation shelter. So I got a cardboard box and opened one corner, to make one long, flat piece. Three sections were just long enough to cover the entire back, with one section was enough to cover the side of the shelter. I quickly tacked the cardboard in place, but after taking the picture, which is the last one in the slide show, I secured it a bit better and bent the flap, so it wasn’t overlapping the sliding door.

The water bowl in the sun room was frozen solid. It was also completely full. Normally, it just top it off with the warm water, which melts through the layer of ice to reach liquid water below, but that was not going to happen. I ended up taking it outside and chopped the ice out with a hatchet, being careful not to hit the bowl itself. The heated water bowl in the water shelter is still working fine, so they at least had that.

There was still quite a lot of kibble in the outside food trays. No surprise there, really. They would have had to be incredibly hungry to go out there in last night’s cold for food! I know for sure we hit -29C/-20C before I’d gone to bed last night.

With the power going out, we needed to keep tabs on how long it was out. With the heat lamp in the isolation shelter off, it would get dangerously cold in a very short time, and it would be hard for two small cats to keep each other warm, even with the cat bed in the most insulated corner. The cardboard would have helped some, but not enough. We would have had to take them out to join the other cats in their cuddle puddles to stay warm, as there is no way we can bring them inside the house.

Thankfully, the power seems to be staying on, now.

It did get me thinking of alternatives.

If we really needed to, we could use the fire bricks we’ve bee slowly accumulating for our future outdoor kitchen to create a radiant heater in the isolation shelter. A brick or two on the second level floor, more bricks to form a wall around, tea lights inside, and bricks on top to make sure no kitty could touch the flames. The bricks themselves would absorb heat and continue to radiate heat out, even after the candles burned out. For a small space like that, it could work.

We have the ability to do things like cook if the power goes out, but that’s all outside. With temperatures like today, it just wouldn’t be feasible.

Another reason to put a priority on building the outdoor kitchen. Even if we just had the structure up, it would give us a sheltered space for a fire pit to cook over. I’d love to find a way to have it closer to the house, but there just isn’t a good space in the inner yard for that. Too many trees and other structures. As it is, we’ve changed our minds on the outer yard location a few times before settling on the space between the pump shack and the old chicken coop.

Things to think about!

In other things…

I was so happy to get that call from the new pain clinic. They have just opened recently, and my husband’s new doctor had referred him to it already. They needed to send him a questionnaire, which they normally would have mailed, but the postal strike is still going. So they wanted an email address to send it to, instead.

This is why having a corded phone on a land line is still important. We don’t get enough signal to get phone calls on our cell phones – I’m amazed I was able to make my earlier post, with how poor our signal was at the time. Far less signal strength is needed to send things in text, thankfully. At least there was a signal. Usually, there’s nothing.

Hmmm… I’m going to try something here. My current computer with the current OS has features my old one didn’t. One of those is the ability to do a video screen capture. Check this out…

This is the animated weather on my desktop app. From the colours, you can see that large swaths of Canada and the US are as cold as, or almost as cold as, the Greenland glaciers!

Thankfully, days like this will apparently be few and far between, this winter. We’ll have some cold days in the week before Christmas, but the long range forecast is now saying to expect 3C/37F on Christmas Eve, 1C/34F on Christmas Day, and 5C/41F on Boxing Day! Then stay with highs above freezing, through to New Year’s Eve!

Of course, I expect those forecasts to change, but so far, we’re not going to be getting weather like today very often. Quite the change from our first couple of winters here, when we saw entire months much like what we’re getting right now.

Funny. As I get older, I’m finding I can handle the cold a lot better than I used to, physically – but mentally, it’s the other way around!

Ah, well. It is what it is!

The Re-Farmer

That wind chill!

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I’m supposed to be sleeping in right now.  My daughter will be doing the morning rounds today, but…

Yikes!!!

That’s -28C/-18F with a windchill of -38C/-37F, in case the image isn’t showing up.

Brutal!

The wind is coming from the northwest, though, and we are pretty well sheltered from those.

Our high for today isn’t supposed to be much warmer, either.  We’ve got one more day like this, then things are supposed to warm up dramatically for a while.

Checking the critter cam, the cats in the sun room are active and prowling around, waiting for food and warm water.  There must be something wrong with the wall thermometer, though.   The needle is just below freezing.  I didn’t have my glasses while looking out the bathroom window, but it looks like it’s reading around -5C/-23F and there’s no way it’s that warm in there.

I’m supposed to be going back to bed right now….

The Re-Farmer

Brrr!!!

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Just checking the temperatures before heading to bed.

The first screencap image is Celsius, the second in Fahrenheit.   Instagram wouldn’t let me show the whole image, even though that’s what I set it for.  Underneath, it gave the expected overnight windchill of -36C/-32F

I keep telling myself, the isolation babies are okay.  They like to curl up together on the cat bed in the upper level.  It is under the lounging shelf, so there is a low ceiling, the back wall is insulated, the side wall in that corner is insulated, and the box nest next to the cat bed forms another insulated wall.  In front of the cat bed is the heated water bowl.  All this, plus the insulation forming a ceiling, plus the heat lamp.  They should be just fine.

But still, I worry!

The Re-Farmer

A quick change in plans

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Today, I’d hoped to stay home for a few days (I really, really didn’t want to go to the dump today!) but when my husband needed something from the pharmacy, I figured I’d do that right away, since it was supposed to be milder. The next couple of days are supposed to get much colder.

A high of -9C/16F is milder, right?

It seemed all right when I headed out to feed the outside cats.

We had a light dusting of snow, but it wasn’t bad.

The full belly kitties were content to stay in the sun room. Not all of them, but enough to make nice, warm cuddle puddles!

The isolation kittens are doing fine, too.

It was a different story, once I started heading to town!

The first thing I realized was that the driveway needed to be cleared. Best to do it while the snow is still light and fluffy, too. Much easier on little Spewie. After closing the gate behind me, I made sure to message the family about that, because I knew I would forget once I got going again.

Driving conditions really sucked!

Once on the main gravel road, visibility was low with blowing snow, made all the more interesting when I had to cross paths with oncoming trucks bringing in bales. The trucks alone are wide loads, but their trailers were loaded 3 round bales wide. To fit them, about a third of a bale sticks out on each side of the trailers, adding about 3 feet to the total width. The main gravel road is wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other well enough, with room to spare, but it’s a very different story with these trucks! They did try to go to the side as far as they could, but with how slippery things can be under the snow, it wouldn’t take much to hit some ice on the shoulder and slide right into the ditches… and these ditches are narrow, steep and deep!

Even on the highway, it wasn’t much better. I found myself doing 70-80 kph (43-50mph) in a 100 (62mph) zone – and no one was trying to pass me!

I’m glad the roads were plowed yesterday, or it would have been so much worse!

Once in town, I did my errands, with my last stop at the grocery store. My husband had called in a prescription delivery for Thursday that I was able to pick up today, instead. At the grocery store, after refilling a couple of our 18.9L/5 gallon water jugs, I ended up taking advantage of some sales and picked up a few extra things besides what was on my list, and my older daughter’s list that she send funds for, once she found out I was going into town. Poor thing is not feeling well at all, today. PCOS sucks.

The drive home was not any better than the drive out, so it was slow going. I’ve driven in far worse. I just didn’t want to be driving at all today! Ah, well.

With the water jugs on top of everything else, I drove up to the house to unload, but had some troubles backing up to the main doors. The truck had to go over the sidewalk from the house to the gate, which was shoveled, and it was just too slippery!

I was quite happy to be parking the truck back in the garage!

My younger daughter was a sweetheart and took care of clearing the driveway after everything was put away, and the outside cats got a light feeding to keep them distracted. The isolation kitties seem very content in their shelter. I was even able to pet the fluffball! He started to run away, but once I started petting his back, he stopped and let me!

I’m going to be worrying about them over the next while, though. As I was writing this, I could see the temperature on my task bar dropping. We’re down to -14C/7F right now, but the wind chill is -30C/-22F!

The isolation kittens are protected from the wind, so that shouldn’t affect the heat lamps ability to keep them warm, but we’re supposed to drop to -25C/-13F tonight, and the high tomorrow is supposed to only reach -23C/-9F, with an overnight low of -26C/-15F, before wind chill. The next day is supposed to be slightly warmer, before our highs are supposed to get back into the single digits below freezing (Celsius).

Those would be good days to stay home, but I’m expecting to pick up our 1/8 beef share on one of those days. I’m just waiting on an email to confirm the date.

I hadn’t been home for long, when I got a phone call from my mother.

Guess who had just showed up at her place?

*sigh*

Yup. Our vandal. My surprising him by being there yesterday didn’t scare him off for long.

My mother was in the common room, though, and our neighbour was with him again, so he was on his best behaviour. Apparently, he was in the nearer city for “treatment” (chemotherapy?) so they stopped by on the way home.

I’m glad my mother called me as soon as she got back into her apartment after they left. In the past, she wouldn’t tell us if he showed up, even when he was alone and his behaviour was verbally abusive.

Then she told me that the doctor that was supposed to call her at 2pm, did finally call! It was past 4pm by the time he did. Thankfully, my mother still remembered our conversation, and on telling him how things went, his recommendation was exactly what I said was most likely. He wanted to increase the dose of the medication.

Then my mother, being the way she is, asked him if she could just stop taking them. What would happen? His response was, probably nothing would change. She could stop taking them, if she wanted, but to call him again if things got worse.

*sigh*

I just had to express my frustrations with her, as carefully as I could. She keeps complaining about all sorts of health problems, but when people try to help her, she won’t do the things that she is supposed to do to make things better. When we first moved out here, she mostly complained about her knees, but refused to wear the braces my brother got for her (as recommended by her doctor at the time), for her knee that’s bent sideways. I forget it he got two or three different braces, trying to find one she was willing to wear, but she wouldn’t. Instead, she would wear sport knee pads. They kept her knees warm, therefore, in her mind, they were helping her knees more than the brace.

It’s the same thing with this new medication. I tried to explain again, it takes time to see if a specific medication would work, and at what dose. As an example, I told her how my husband it still trying to get the dose right on the new pain medication he’s on (the previous one is no longer available), and it’s been about a year. Her response was to start talking about how much she pities us for him having health problems, but I had to cut that off. I told her, this was just an example of something that is common. Everyone is different, so they have to take the time to figure out exactly what will work for each person.

Her bubble packs are due for new ones, and the doctor would be faxing the increased dosage to her pharmacy, so I told her that when she gets her new bubble packs, they should have the new dosage, and nothing would change. Just keep taking her prescriptions as always, and give it time to work.

I don’t know if I got through to her. I might have, at least for a little while.

I’m so glad she has homecare doing med assists, now. Even with the bubble packs, she was messing with her prescriptions. Which is more of a problem because she forgets what some of them are for, and gets them mixed up.

I need to remember to call the home care office and see where her application for assisted living or a nursing home is at! There’s only so much my siblings and I can do to help her. Especially when she isn’t willing to help herself at times!

So today didn’t turn out the way it was intended to, but things got done and, more importantly, my mom is okay after our vandal showing up at her place again.

I really, really wish she would just tell him to not come around anymore, but she still holds out home that things will get better.

Another reason to get her into some sort of long term care! She can move to a better living situation, and no one needs to tell him where she is. As long as she doesn’t tell him herself, of course. 🫤🙄

Ah, well. It is what it is! All we can do is deal with the cards we’ve got.

The Re-Farmer