wtf?

Oh, the things we find!

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

My daughters have been diligently working their way around the yard, methodically raking leaves out of the edges of the trees and the many flower beds all over the place, picking up wind blown sticks, and generally cleaning things up.

I was called out to see what they found next to the small people gate.

We’ve walked past this many times, of course, and saw the dried and matted plants at the base of a tree.

20180511.mystery.vine1

Those two sticks on the side were stuck in it.  Just a mess of dead plants to clean up is all.  Right?

Oh…

20180511.mystery.vine2

So… that’s wire fencing, all stuck in there.  We’re guessing the sticks had held the wire up for the … vines? … to climb.

Hold on.  What is that, under there?

20180511.mystery.vine3

A glass bowl, with gold trim.  Hidden under the dead mat and buried under more leaves.

20180511.mystery.vine4

A bowl with no bottom.

Not a broken bottom.  There’s no sign of the broken pieces.  Just… a bowl.  With no bottom.  Half filled with dirt and leaves.

20180511.mystery.vine5

My daughter used on of the sticks to prop the mat up and hold it in place, while they rakes around it.  We’ll have to figure out how to get it, with the wire mesh it’s grown around, out of them.  Most likely, we’ll just have to cut it.

My siblings have been cutting the lawn and whatnot, since the house has been empty.  This does not look like something they would have planted and set up.  It looks like one of my mother’s projects.  Which means, it’s been like this for quite some time.  Maybe 5 years?  Just a guess, on my part.  I have no way to really know.

And what’s with the broken bowl under it?

I wonder if any of my siblings know anything about it?  I doubt I’d be able to get anything from my mother; after all this time, I doubt she would remember.  If it’s been there as long as I think it has, I doubt any of my siblings ever bothered to look.

Or, someone took the time to do this last year, when no one was living here, and that doesn’t make much sense, either.

Hmm.

The Re-Farmer

A Day of Progress

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

A few more steps forward, today – and the girls are still outside, working on cleaning up around the yard, so the progress continues even now.

The most exciting thing for me is, the septic guy came!  Yay!

Oh, the things that excite me in my old age… LOL

Seriously, though… it’s one less worry, and I already talked to him about coming back in the fall, as part of his regular route in the area, as we go back to doing the regular routine cleaning in the fall.

20180511.truck

I can’t help but admire someone who can back up a vehicle like this, through our gate into the yard, between the spruce grove and the flower garden along the East side of the house, and turn into the North side of the house – without hitting the downspout (which was screwed in place, unlike the others) or hitting the low hanging branches.

Dude’s got mad reversing skills.

20180511.tank.hose

While chatting with him, I learned he is not a fan of this type of septic tank.

Typically, a septic tank is a large reservoir with only one chamber.  The solids naturally sink to the bottom and, once it reaches a certain level, the grey water drains out to the septic field.  It’s all gravity based.

This system is much smaller and has two reservoirs.  The one for the solids is smaller and has a smaller opening into it.  The grey water eventually fills the second, larger, reservoir until an ejector pump sends it out to the septic field.

He needed to get that hose into the solids reservoir, which not only has a smaller opening, but the hoses from the pump (which is inside the basement) run over it.

He knew the place had been empty for the last couple of years, since he’s been servicing our tank for quite a long time, and had assured me it wouldn’t be a concern.  Still, he was surprised by how much was in it.  I did explain that, though empty, there were still people using the house.  Add in 4 people and 6 months… I’m really glad we got it done.

20180511.tank.capped

All done!

The straw on the left is what covered the lid for the winter.  I was going to pile it elsewhere, but I couldn’t find a pitch fork anywhere.

I checked the garage, the pump shack, the barn, the garden shed – even the basements.  No pitch fork to be found.

What farm doesn’t have a pitch fork?

Like most of the lawn on the North side of the house, the grass here is pretty much all gone.  Not even just dead, like in other parts of the lawn.  It’s basically just dirt and weeds.

After the tank was done, I went back to working on the wood pile in the garden, but not before getting a picture of something that was a mystery to the girls.  A mystery I actually knew the answer to, for a change!

20180511.tree.extension.cord

It’s one thing to find extension cords all over the house, what with the lack of outlets, but an extension cord up a tree?  The tree itself is probably 60 ft high, or close to it, and the cord runs almost all the way up.

I remember when it was run up there.  My late brother, who was an agile climber, put it there.  He also carried up a star shaped frame with Christmas lights in it, and installed it near the very top of the tree.  The cord is to plug in the star.

I can’t see if the star is still up there, but I can’t imagine anyone climbing up there to take it down.  Nor can I imagine it ever being replaced since it was first put up there, which means that is a very old extension cord.

We have no plans of ever using it again!

Meanwhile, back to the wood pile in the garden!

This is a pile of deadwood and prunings that had been put there before we moved out, and my family had wanted to burn in the winter.  I didn’t want it burned, so we now have the job of cleaning it out of the garden area.  Most of it will be used as fuel for the fire pit, but some I’m keeping for future crafting purposes.  My mother is still adamant that she wants the garden plowed, as soon as the pile is cleared.

I’m glad we put our collective foot down about not burning this.  Earlier, I’d already pulled out a bunch of fibre glass insulation that was buried in it.  There are more bits and pieces we are still finding.

I also found this.

20180511.broken.birdhouse

Apparently, no one had a problem with burning this, then plowing the remaining metal and glass bits, into the garden.

Nor with this…

20180511.woodpile.finds

I’d already pulled out a margarine container.  Today, I found the two lids and some mystery plastic, along with the bits of insulation.

Lovely.

As I was writing this, my daughters called me out to see a discovery they made while cleaning around the yard.

That one is getting its own post.  After I make supper.

Oh, the strange things we are finding!

The Re-Farmer

Shaggy friends, a new bird ID and… a mystery!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Early this morning, I spotted some movement at the edge of our spruce grove.  It turned out to be a bird, enthusiastically digging and pecking at the ground.  A surprisingly large bird; not as big as a grouse, but certainly bigger than a blue jay or crow.  Not something I recall seeing before.  Unfortunately, it was too far to identify by eye, so I got some pictures zoomed in as far as our lens can go.  They’re not good pictures, but enough to identify it.

From what I can find, it appears to be a Northern Flicker, though there are different kinds that can look quite different.

The most distinctive thing about it was the splash of red at the back of the neck.  The other distinguishing feature is the black bib.

A number of the photos of Northern Flickers I saw also had a splash of red on the cheek, but this one did not have that.

As it later flew away, I was able to see the underside of its wings, which appeared to be a bright yellow.

The Norther Flicker is a member of the woodpecker family, so it’s interesting that this one was pecking, not at wood, but at the ground.

Later on, my younger daughter and I got some progress done on the sorted wood piles in the garden.  We’ve now removed all the wood we’d already sorted, except for the pile I set aside to keep for potential projects.  More will be added to it as we finish going through the original pile.  When we got to the larger pieces, we had to saw most of them in half so they would fit in the wheel barrows.  We could really tell when we were cutting apple wood!  The wood is so much harder, and the patterns in the rings are so distinctive and lovely.  Even the ones I didn’t choose to keep, I set them to one side in the piles we’re making near the fire pit, for use when we’re cooking or, if all goes well, able to do some smoking.

My poor daughter.  By the time we were done for the day, she was just wasted.  She was really too sick to be doing this sort of work, but she did it anyways, and I really appreciate it!

After that, I went to the post office and, along the way, I found our shaggy neighbours were closer to the road, so I pulled over to get some photos.

Zooming in with a cell phone doesn’t get very good pictures, unfortunately, but still.  Bison!

20180504.bison1

20180504.bison2

We got some unexpected people visitors today.  First, my brother and his Lady Fair, who live nearby, came over to pick up the last of some stuff he’s got in our root cellar.  I was all excited because his beautiful dog finally allows me to pet him!  Then my older brother came by, just as they we leaving.  My mother’s car has been stored here for the winter, and she wants to register it again soon, so he came to put the battery back in.  It turned out to need charging, so he started doing some stuff at the barn.  When I went out to join him, I stopped to take a look at a pile of wood that is sitting in the barn yard.

Only to discover, it’s not a pile of wood.  It’s a pile of something else, covered in wood.

What on earth was I seeing under there?

20180504.hidden.mystery

Whatever the wood is covering has moss growing on it, and there’s a layer of plastic.  Something is showing through holes that I at first thought was ashes?

So I asked my brother.

It’s insulation.  My youngest brother had put it there.

My youngest brother died in 2010.

Why is it there?  My brother didn’t know.

The wood on top showed up more recently.

What on earth are we going to do with a plastic covered, moss covered, wood covered, pile of insulation, sitting in the barn yard?

The Re-Farmer

Walkabout – the East yard

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had done a walkabout yesterday, through our East yard, some of the areas just outside the fenced yard, and explored around the old gravel pit and pond.  I had my phone with me and took plenty of pictures, but then had technical difficulties uploading them to my desktop.  My husband was able to see them fine on his laptop via the USB cable, so the problem had to be with my desktop.  This morning, I tried one thing.  Usually, I have my USB cable attached to one of the front ports of the tower, but my husband had moved it to one of the back ports, so he could access the front ones for something he was doing.  Could that have made the difference?

Turns out, yeah.  That seems to have been the problem.  I was able to upload the pictures without getting the weird error messages I was getting before.

Unfortunately, in my attempts to access and transfer the photos yesterday, some were lost, while others were corrupted or damaged.

So today, I did the walkabout again, this time using the DSLR (Nikon D80) and an 18-55mm lens.

I ended up taking 308 pictures! :-D  And I didn’t even go into the other house in the yard, this time!

Basically, I am documenting the way things are right now, that we will have to deal with as time goes by.  Anything outside the house and immediate yard are lower on the priority list, but they will still need to be dealt with, eventually, so I want to maintain a photographic record of it all.

For now, I will just talk about the East side of our yard – and not even all of that.

DSC_3810-30%

When I first came out, Nasty Crime Boy was there to greet me, but he did NOT like the noise the DSLR made when I took pictures! :-D

The first area I went to was around the other house in the yard.  This house used to be a church rectory, and my dad bought it and moved it when they wanted to build a new one.  It was put into our yard temporarily.  The plan was that it would be moved to one of the other quarter sections of the farm and be a home for whichever of the boys inherited it that section.

That never happened.

I’ll post about the house itself, another time.

This is next to it.

DSC_3814-30%

When my parents’ freezer died, they gave one of my siblings the money to buy a new one, which we are currently using.  The old one, for some reason, got dumped in the yard.  They took the door off, so nothing could get trapped in it, but that’s it.

I hadn’t realized that even the baskets were in there until I came over to take pictures.

I could do posts of nothing but large household appliances, abandoned in strange places, and have no shortage of material.  Especially washers and driers.  It’s amazing.

Then I went around the back of the building.

DSC_3815-30%

That largish black pipe you see?  It’s placed through a hole in a partially boarded up window.  That means it was deliberately placed there.  I find myself wondering if there is something under the house that is being propped up.

This house had had a full basement in it.  Now, the areas with the bricks are what used to be the top of the basement walls, and there is basically a crawl space underneath.

Then there’s this.

DSC_3816-30%

A toilet.  Just sitting there.

Another rain barrel.  I don’t know what the 6 sided plastic thing is.  A wire shelf.

Just.  There.

Why?

DSC_3817-30%

This is some sort of mini garden, near the fire pit.  I can see no rhyme or reason to it being there, and can’t figure out what’s in it – that will have to wait until things start to grow.  It needs to go.  Seeing what’s there will help me decide whether it’ll just be torn up, or if there’s anything in it worth transplanting.

DSC_3818-30%

The above picture is of what is directly North of the mystery planting.  There used to be a playhouse here, built by my oldest brother.  It was basically a shell of a building, with a door and windows in the front.  I was too young to remember it being built, but as a child, I helped my late brother, who was just a few years older than me, frame out bunk beds inside it, and we used old couch cushions as the mattresses.  In the summer, I would sometimes sleep in there, with a tiny kerosene lamp for light.  It was glorious.

I don’t know what happened to the playhouse.  For a while, one of my brothers had some bee hives here.  Now, there’s nothing.  I am thinking this is where we will start a wood pile from what we’re clearing out of the garden now, and what we’ll be clearing out of the trees around the yard.  I am looking forward to when we can have the fire pit going in the summer, and have some wiener roasts!

This is the fire pit that’s there now.

DSC_3819-30%

Yeah.

Believe it or not, there is a metal ring in there.

It’s not where the fire pit was originally.  That was about where I was standing to take the picture.  It was made of loosely stacked bricks, on top of an old tree stump that had been cut to ground level.  I only discovered the tree stump when I took it upon myself to “rebuild” the fire pit, because the walls were being knocked out of place.

One thing I noticed that you can see in some of the photos, is that this area now seems to be mostly moss!  As I was the one who took on the chore of lawn mowing, I know there was no moss at all in there when I was living here.  I don’t know when the moss started taking over, but this is not a sign of a healthy lawn!

I am thinking we should move the fire pit back to where it was, and farther away from those trees in the background.

We will first have to trim away the a dead branch overhanging it, from one of the maples in the area.  There are a lot of dead branches that will need to be dealt with.

Eventually, I want to build a cinder block cooking pit in the area, but that’s a few years into the future.

DSC_3820-30%

This old log cabin is near the fire pit area.  (note the amount moss in the foreground!  That used to be all grass) From what I’ve been told, the family that owned this area before my family bought it – the ones who built the original log portion of the house we’re living in now – had built this and lived in it.

I am hoping we can salvage it.  The one side wall has logs that are sagging in the middle, which may be a problem, but the rest of the walls seem sound.  The roof is almost completely collapsed, and it’s filled with junk – including large household appliances, of course.  At some point, I want to hire someone to empty it, including the remains of the roof, and haul it all away.  Then we can see what can be done with the remains.

There is one thing about it that has me wondering.

DSC_3824-30%

See that tree at the corner?

When I was growing up here, there was a gooseberry bush growing there.  I used to love picking and eating the berries right off the bush.  I don’t know that anything else was ever done with the berries.  Which might have something to do with why, years after I moved away, I came back to discover it was gone. In its place were a couple of spruce trees.

Now, the spruces are gone, and there is this tree.

I don’t know if it was planted, or if it seeded itself, but it’s going to have to go, along with the other trees that are growing too close to the building.

I am seeing this all over the place; trees were allowed to grow right next to buildings.  No one bothered to cut them away.  Did no one consider how much damage they can do to buildings?  Did they not think of it?  Or did they just not care?

So much of what I’m finding around here smacks of “no one cared.”  I’m not talking about things that were left as they were, as my parents aged and weren’t able to take care of things themselves, either.  It’s really quite disheartening.

Well, that’s part of our East yard.  I’m expecting that, this year, we’ll be able to do some clean up and improvements in this area.  At least the smaller stuff.  The big stuff will have to wait, as they will require hiring people, and fixing up the main house is the financial priority.  Still, we should be able to get the East yard to the point that we can use it and enjoy evenings around the fire.

Well.  Maybe.  That will depend on how bad the mosquitoes are this year!

The Re-Farmer

Un. Be. Lievable. Part 4

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Oh, what a day!

This morning, my husband and I went into town so that he could transfer his driver’s license, which was required in order to transfer our vehicle’s insurance and registration, to this province.

To recap some of the issues we’ve had so far;

I could not transfer my driver’s license because my married name did not match my birth certificate.  I also had to prove I actually lived where I lived with a street address, instead of just a box number or the service location that is on our utility bills, when we live in an area that has no streets.  Everyone now has drive way markers so the police, fire or ambulance can find people who live in the sticks like we do, but isn’t on any of our utility bills, because we don’t get mail delivery.   I got the physical location address by basically going to the bank and saying “hey, this is where we live, can you give me something with that on it?”  And the bank did, which was accepted.  For my name, I had to pay to get my marriage certificate.  I had to get it to get my health care card, too.

So I finally got my temporary paper license, with my new license soon to come.  However, in order to transfer our vehicle, I needed to get it safetied, which I couldn’t do until the end of April, which then required some costly work done (which is why I waited until pay came in).  Safety in hand, I went to transfer the vehicle, but my husband is co-owner with me, so he had to be there.  So that had to wait until after Easter.

My husband hasn’t transferred his driver’s license yet, simply because he’s been in too much pain to make the trip into town for something he doesn’t really use.

He was still in a lot of pain, but this morning, we went into town, anyways, making sure he had his birth certificate, his new health care card (with our box number on it) and a utility bill with our physical address on it (our internet bill, which we could put the physical address on, ourselves, then print out).

He couldn’t get his license.

His ID doesn’t match his birth certificate.

His birth certificate has his full name – his given name, two middle names, and his surname.  In Acadian tradition, he has gone by his second name all his life.  This became a slight issue when he was in the military, where they ended up simply reversing his first and second names on their documentation.

Everything has been with this second name.

Except, it turns out, the license he used to have in this province, when we lived here up until 2004.  That one had only his first name; no initials.

Meanwhile, his current driver’s license has his second name, with the initial of his first name, like it was when he was in the military.

But his health care card?

After they required he resend a copy of his birth certificate in a more legible form, they chose to simply drop his first name.  It has his second name and the middle initial.  So even the ID he does have, doesn’t match his current driver’s license.

The woman at the counter phoned the public insurance company about it.

According to them, he can’t get a license with his first name, as was on his old license, because none of his documentation has that name.  But he can’t use the name he actually uses, even though that name is also on his birth certificate, because it’s his second name, not his first name.

They say he has to get a legal name change.

Un. Be. Lievable!

Just to get his driver’s license.  Which would also be the only photo ID he would have.  Even if he let his driver’s license lapse and just wanted a photo ID, it has the same requirements.  He wouldn’t be able to get that, either, because they won’t accept the name he has been using HIS ENTIRE LIFE.

This is even worse than my having to prove I’m married to get my driver’s license transferred!!

Unbelievable!

In the end, he had to sign a gifting form (using the name he always uses), which allowed them to use only my name in transferring the vehicle insurance and registration (the insurance just has the name he uses and his surname, no initials, while the registration has his name with the initial of his first name, as it is on his license).

So I was able to get that done, at least, and the new license plates.

But my husband can’t even prove he is who he is, to the satisfaction of the public insurance company.

It took so long to the the van transferred that my husband had to leave and sit at a coffee shop, because the chairs were too uncomfortable for his back.

This is getting beyond ridiculous.

Oh, and we couldn’t even get a new disabled parking permit.  In our previous province, he only needed a prescription from the doctor, and it was done at the same place we registered our vehicle at.  Not here.  The woman who helped us went online, found and printed off an application form for us, which we’ll have to mail in to a completely different organization.

The woman behind the counter was so apologetic, but there is nothing she could do.

In conversation, she had mentioned that it’s been like this since 9/11, but also there is the problem of identity theft.  Which I can understand, but in trying to improve security and combat identify theft, there is no room for common sense.  And it’s the front line staff like her that has to deal with frustrated customers like us.

But… when it comes to the van, it was finally done!  At least at their end.

Once at home, I called our insurance company to cancel our vehicle insurance tomorrow, giving us a bit of time to get the new plates on.  I could have had it cancelled beginning today, but I couldn’t put the plates on yet.  Because our previous province only required one plate in the back, there were no screws to attach the front plate – or even holes to screw into.  So I would need to go back into town and try and find the right kind of screws for this.  Odd that, with all the stuff around this place, including a wide range of screws, I’d have to do that.  I suppose I could have gone to one of the cars lying around and see if any of them had screws, but I really didn’t feel up to tromping through the snow to do it, or hunting through sheds.

Interestingly, since ending this insurance meant I no longer have the car/home insurance bundle, my monthly content insurance payments will be going down, instead of up, as I expected it to – as did the agent I spoke to.  Also, there was no cancellation fee.

Not that I’m complaining!

The next call was to the company we registered the van with.

Turns out, that one requires a letter that explains why we were cancelling it, among other details, including what we planned to do with our plate.  It’s a veteran’s plate, so we’ll be keeping that for posterity.

That done, it was time to go back into town.  Aside from hoping the hardware store would have the right screws, I needed to stop at the pharmacy.  My younger daughter came along, so we could play some Pokemon Go.

Did I mention it was a chilly day today?

As we were driving in, I noticed the van wasn’t heating up.  I’d sort of noticed that earlier, but hadn’t actually needed to turn up the heat, so I didn’t think much of it.

Odd.

We parked at the pharmacy and took advantage of the location to walk a block and do a raid and get some achievements in the game.  This close to the lake, the breeze was freezing, so we were glad it was an easy fight, and we could rush back to the pharmacy and take care of things there.

Then it was back to the van, and we were going to do a bit more game playing before hitting the hardware store.

As we drove to our usual park, I tried to turn the heat on.

It was blowing cold air.

What’s going on?

We parked the van, and I decided to leave it running as we played the game.

I also fiddled with the heat settings.  It was still blowing cold, so I shut the fan off completely.

Then I watched as the temperature gauge began surging up.  And up.  And… the engine is overheating?  How?  It hasn’t been on long enough to overheat!

I shut it off.

We caught a few Pokemon, then I started the engine to move to the other end of the parking lot, where more Pokemon would be.

Before I even got to the other end, the temperature gauge screamed up to overheat, warning lights started turning on, and my onboard computer started telling me the engine was overheating, and it was shutting off the A/C to protect the engine.

The A/C wasn’t on.

I shut off the engine and popped the hood.

The engine was cold.  There was no sign of anything untoward.

Crud.

I started the engine.

It did it again.

I shut it off and called the garage, describing what happened.

Sounds like the thermostat.  They could look at it for me, but they did have two appointments coming in.  I told him I could be there within 10 minutes.

I started the engine.

The gauge was fine.  In the middle, where it should be.

I start driving.

It goes up to about 3/4s, then drops down to below half.  Then it settled.

Also, we had heat again.

What the heck?

I get to the garage and discuss it for a bit.  Sounds like the thermostat got stuck, then unstuck.  It might not happen again.  They wouldn’t be able to do anything about it until tomorrow, anyhow.  We’re driving to the city tomorrow.  Should I be worried?  Keep and eye on it; if it starts to go up, pull over and give it time to cool again.  We talk some more, then my daughter and I start to head out.  Before we do, I remember to ask about screws for the license plate.  Would they have any?

Yes, they did.  And the mechanic was even willing to put them on for me, but I didn’t have them with me.  So they just have me the screws.  :-)  I asked, and it turns out a hardware store likely would not have had them.  So there’s one positive, at least!

As we are leaving their parking lot, the temperature gauge starts going up.  We have no heat again.

By the time I drove the quarter mile to the highway, it was high enough for a warning light, so I pulled over and shut off the engine.

I called the garage again and told him what was happening.  We talked for a bit, but he was with a customer, so he asked if he could call back.

So my daughter and I wait.  I start the engine.  Still doing it.  I shut it off.

I then figure, since I’m already so close, I’ll just drive over and talk to the guy in person.

Of course, once I was driving, the phone rang.  My daughter answered.  He told her that they could fit me in after an oil change they were doing.  She told him we were already pulling into their parking lot!

So we go in and I talked to him again.  They have a thermostat in stock and they’ll fit me in.  We talk about what it might be if changing the thermostat isn’t enough.  Then my daughter and I wait.  And wait.

At one point, a mechanic comes by on his break and he comments on our need for a thermostat.  We talk for a bit, and I tell him what the vehicle was doing.  After his break, he comes for the keys and takes the van in.

It ends up taking an hour to replace the thermostat – a job I later learn is listed as a 2.4 hour task.  After it’s changed, they start it up and rev the engine for a few minutes to test it out.

While this was happening, I started chatting with one of the mechanics behind the counter.  He started asking how things were doing for us, and so on.  I suddenly realize.

I recognize him.  He grew up on the farm bordering ours.  In fact, we’re distantly related.  The other mechanic I’d seen before the weekend that recognized me is also a distant cousin.  That’s two relatives, in one garage!

After that, the mechanic that worked on the van comes to me.  It’s done and working, but there’s a leak.

I tell him I’m aware of the leak.  Start talking about the power steering.

No, it turns out.  Not that one; he’d noted that one in the safety papers.  He brought me over to show me.

There’s a pipe where coolant is leaking, right at the join.

I knew there was a leak in that location; there was a stain on the underside of the hood above it, but I had never seen the leak itself.  There were never any puddles or signs when I looked at it.  I just assumed it was from the power steering leak.  However, as he’d had to rev the engine for as long as he did, the engine was warm and the pressure was high, and now we could see the leak.

I had also been low on coolant, which he’d topped up for me.  This leak would be why I was low on coolant.

The possible solution; replace the pipe.  They’ve have to order one in, unless they could find a used one that was in good shape.  Or he could try a couple of other things that we discussed.

How worried should I be about it?

I got instructions on keeping an eye on the coolant levels in the overflow reservoir.  What to watch out for.  What to do, until I could get it fixed.

I bought a gallon of coolant to keep in the van.

Final cost?

Almost $240.

The thermostat itself was really cheap.  The gallon of coolant cost way more.  The highest cost was the labour, of course.

I also got a quote for the other work.  If they use a new part, it’ll cost another $200 +

*sigh*

In just the past 7 days, we’ve dropped over $1000 on the van.  Money from the moving company to replace the power pole they broke, once the ground thaws.  Money we’ll have to replace as soon as we can.

*sigh*

When we got the van home, I parked close to the house and got the license plates on – the front bumper didn’t have holes, but it did have marks for them.  After moving the van to the garage, I popped the hood.

No sign of the coolant leak; any liquid had already dried, but the level in the overflow reservoir was down.  The question is; is it down because of the leak, or down because the engine was now cold?  Or both?

I topped it up, anyways, just a bit.

Tomorrow, we go to the city for our monthly bulk shopping.  This is going to be the real test for the leak.

*sigh*

What a day.

The Re-Farmer

Okay… this is the worst find yet

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I thought, after the horror tunnel, desiccated mouse carcasses, and other strange things we’ve found while packing up and cleaning away 4 decades of my parents’ stuff in our new home, I would have been beyond getting surprised by things we find.

I was wrong.

I must admit, it’s not so much the contents, but the circumstances of it.

Though we really don’t have the room for it in the growing pile in the dining room intended for the shed, I am just really not happy with having the litter box in the dining room, even if it is in an out of the way corner.  Having cleared everything else away, I decided to move the dresser and the stuff on the wall out of the little nook they’re in, so the litter box can be moved away from where we eat.

After removing the drawers, the first thing I discovered was a scale under the dresser.

Why is there a scale under the dresser?  It’s not like it was accidentally pushed under it.  It was way in the back corner.

Okay.  Fine.

I start moving the now drawerless dresser.

*clatterclatter*

A broken broom handle, with masking tape on the broken end, falls to the floor.

It had been between the dresser and the bit of wall on the bathroom side.  I had noticed that something was there, but forgot about it before moving the dresser.

Okay.  Fine.

I carefully pull the dresser out, hearing all sorts of crunching, grinding noises from the floor.  Oh, dear.  I called for a daughter to help carry it, since it sounded like pulling it along the floor would cause damage.  However, as I maneuvered it out a bit more so a daughter could grab it from the other end, I found it was really, really light, and not making the noise anymore.  So I just moved it myself, down the hall, up the two stairs to the new part of the house, and into the space I’d prepared for it in the dining room.  Then I put the drawers back and went to continue cleaning.

This is what I found.

20180313underthedresser1

What on earth?

This is a flash picture; there is no light in this corner, so I really couldn’t see very well, but that plastic container on the floor?  My first guess was that the dregs on the bottom was mouse poison.  And what was all that on the floor?

I moved the scale and that plaque beside it to the pile of stuff for storage.  The plaque?

It was a prayer.

20180313underthedresser2

Okay.  Fine.  I can see something like that falling between the dresser and the wall and being forgotten about.  That black piece of plastic?  Probably put there to get it out of the way and forgotten about as well.

I very carefully moved the mirror next.  It was just leaning on the wall, on top of that piece of wood.  The far side of it is a broken edge.

Then I come back to clean up the rest.

20180313underthedresser3

That plastic bowl?  Is a glass bowl.  The crud on the floor is ancient cat litter, complete with several desiccated turds.

And a piece of bread.

So, it looks like this area was used for both a cat litter box, and for… cat food? before.  I threw the bowl out, but I’m guessing it’s the remains of some sort of cat food on the bottom.

All of this means that someone took out the litter box, but left the mess behind.  Left the bowl and the bread and added a bathroom scale.

Then put the dresser on top of it all.

Then used the dresser to store extra towels on the bottom drawers.  Above the cat poop and drying food.

Oh, and as I was going back and forth to move things, I found a pile of something that had fallen out from under the dresser as I’d moved it up the two steps.  As I swept it up, I took a closer look.

I’m pretty sure it was a very old mouse nest.

Once clear, I mopped the area with disinfectant cleaner, including the walls, then used a scrub brush in the area (including on the other side, where I got the girls to take the stuff leaning there upstairs), then mopped it again.  The only thing in that corner that still needs to be moved is one last large mirror, which will require a screwdriver to remove.

I don’t have the energy for that anymore.

I also found a shoe tray that I scrubbed; it will go under our litter box when it gets moved.  For now, the entire area is being left to dry.  We will move our litter box in tomorrow.

This just blows me away.  It’s one thing to be in the practice of keeping things that might be useful, and just shoving them somewhere for storage, as is likely the case for most of the things we’ve found.  It’s quite another to deliberately put a dresser on top of cat litter, cat turds and cat food.

And a scale.

I just don’t understand.  Who did this?  I don’t know how long that dresser has been there, but I don’t think either of my parents were strong enough to move it.  Well; maybe my mother, depending no how long ago it was done, but she usually got other people to do that sort of manual labour for her.   So I have no idea.  And why?  Why was it done like this?  I can’t imagine any of my siblings doing this.

I’m at a complete loss.

I think I’m going to take a shower now.

The Re-Farmer

Horror Movie Set!

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Oh, my poor, brave, brave daughter!

I got a response from my brother, after I told him about the drip in the bathroom ceiling.  Among the things he told me was to check in the crawl space above the bathroom.

20171121_1806321467489707.jpg

This picture is from when the girls had started cleaning the upstairs in preparation for painting.  Look at the top left.

See that triangular bit that’s brown?

That’s where the access panel is.

The wall is at an angle under the roof, and there’s a section about 2-3 feet high that’s walled off to hide the ducts and pipes and wires.

I honestly thought it was closed off, but it turns out that panel just pops right off.

That’s where the pipes and ducts for the bathroom are.

My younger daughter is the only one who could possibly fit in there, and still be able to move around.

At least, in theory.

Because it was painted, the panel needed to be pried off.

There’s stuff in there.

Not right at the front.  No.  Further in, and all the way to the back, past the pipes and ducting.

Also, lots of old mouse droppings.

I had grabbed a hook I’d found when cleaning my mother’s old bedroom, made from a straightened wire hanger, and my daughter poked around a bit.

Which is when she found a live spider.

She is arachnophobic.

That was it.  She was willing to crawl into the horror movie death hole with dusty books and jars, cobwebs and mouse droppings, right up until live spiders came into play.

The poor thing managed to hold it together, but she just couldn’t do it.

So I figured I’d give it a try.

20180224horror.tunnel

Why is that stuff there?  How is that stuff there?

My knees are shot, so I borrowed my other daughter’s knee pads (she has a bum knee, too), and set up the vacuum cleaner.   I vacuumed the mouse droppings and dust from the front, used the hook to drag some stuff out, vacuumed again, hooked out some more stuff, vacuumed again, hooked out some more stuff, vacuumed again…

And that was as far as I could reach.

The photo is from after I’d vacuumed and taken out the stuff closest to the opening.  You can see all the crud that got dragged with it, that I needed to vacuum again.  I’m not sure if you can tell, but there is what appears to be fabric – an old coat? sweater? – way in the back, past the duct and pipes.

After clearing things out as much as I could, it was time to try and crawl in.

I couldn’t even get into the opening.

To get in, you have to bend around a corner.  My shoulders got jammed between the slanted portion of the wall and the edge of the opening.

Theoretically, I could have squirmed down on my belly and squirmed my way forward.  Maybe.  Not likely.  But even if i could, once I reached the stuff I couldn’t clear out, that would have been it.

At this point, my brave, brave daughter was willing to try again.

She donned the knee pads, gloves and mask, grabbed the flashlight, and started to squirm her way in.

She couldn’t get all the way in the opening.

Because of the angle, the only way she could have fit would have been to combat crawl her way along the bottom.  And while she does not share my generous proportions, it was still too tight to move much as at all.  Then she would have reached the stuff I couldn’t put out, which would have blocked her way, and would have had to somehow pass it back to me, then continue on.  Because of where the drip was happening, she would have had to go at least as far as those pipes.

It wasn’t going to happen.

She could, however, see more from her vantage point.

There are obvious signs of old moisture damage, but nothing looks recent.

Wherever the water was getting in from, it doesn’t look like it was coming through this space.

But without going all the way in, we really can’t say that for sure.

I’d responded to my brother, mentioning that I hadn’t thought the crawl space was accessible, and he’d written back.  Oh, yes, he tells me.  It’s quite accessible.  Then he described having to go in there to put in the wiring for the new electric furnace, dragging himself along a few inches as a time, while pulling the wire.

Now, my brother is a thin man, but he’s not tiny.  With the angle of the roof on one side, it would have been like a giant sausage casing.

This is like a scene straight out of a horror movie.

Speaking of which…

20180224stuff.from.horror.tunnel

This is the stuff I was able to get out of the horror tunnel.

First aid books.  An old Polish prayer book.  A jug from pickling vinegar.  An empty binder.  A book on car repair.  Maps.  And… other things.

I didn’t want to look too closely.

Why did the stuff get put in there?  HOW did the stuff get put in there?  When?  I mean, if my brother crawled around in there, was it already there and he just crawled over it all?  If it got put in after, how did stuff get so far to the back?  Or has it been there since the area got walled off, after we got running water and the bathroom was installed?

I’m just… amazed.

Just think.  If we hadn’t had that drip, we wouldn’t have had a reason to open the space up and wouldn’t have known there was stuff in there.

I could have lived without that knowledge.

The Re-Farmer

The Things We Find – outside

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

As I trudged through the snow around our yard, there were a number of times I found myself pausing and just wondering…

Why?

Why is this here?  How did it get here?  What purpose did this serve?

And I have no answers.

Like a post turtle.  You know it didn’t get there by itself, you don’t know who put it there and you know it doesn’t belong there.

Here are some of the things I found.

things.we.find.wheels

Take these wheels, for example.

These are in our spruce grove.

Not along the edge of it.  IN it.  I had to make my way past various things at our old wood pile spot and through some underbrush to get to it.

Look at those.

Meditate on them for a moment.

Someone took those wheels from… somewhere.  Then brought them to this tree.  Leaned them against the trunk.  Then left them there.

To rot.

Clearly, they have been there for many, many years.

Why?  Why are they there, and why has no one, in all these years, taken the time to just… throw them out.  Or something.

things.we.find.harrower

As I walked along the edge of the spruce grove, I found this, half hidden under the branches.

It appears to be a harrower.

Now, I know why there would be a harrower.  The garden is still big enough that my brother would come in with a tractor to plow it, then disc it, then harrow it.

But this is just a little piece of harrower.  There might be more hidden by the snow, but it’s still not of a size I am used to seeing around the farm, dragged by tractors.  In fact, there is a rope on it suggesting it might have been pulled manually.

Why is it hidden under the branches?  Why is it left here to rust away?

Someone had to deliberately drag it under the low hanging branches to leave it there.

To rust.

things.we.find.cardboard.box.in.apple.tree

Here we have a cardboard box.

Stuffed into the trunks of a crab apple tree.

Okay, I can see someone having the box handy to pick apples.  Tuck it in there, so it doesn’t blow away.  Perhaps.

But why is it still there?

things.we.find.wagon.remains

One last odd find.  The remains of an old wagon.

I don’t recall we ever had this type of wagon.  At least not in working order.

This is in a corner of the yard, near the fire pit and an old, collapsing log building.

Under tree branches.  I had to reach around the branches to get this photo.

Someone had to go out of their way to drag this there.

Okay, so judging from the condition of the remains, it may well have been dragged here before the trees were big enough to have branches hanging over it.

Which brings me back to…

Why?  Why put it there?  Why leave it there?

At least the brightly coloured thing in the background, I think I can figure out.  It’s a giant wooden spool used for electric wires.  You know, the kind or heavy wite that goes on the poles and to buildings.  A lot of local people get these to put on their ends and use as patio tables.  As this is next to the fire pit, I can picture it being brought to use as a table, then rolled under the tree to make way for cutting the lawn.

And left there.

To rot.

I suspect we will be finding many, many things like this as we work on the place that will leave us wondering…

Why?

The Re-Farmer

Un. Be. Lievable. Part Two

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Drove out to get the mail today.

First, the good news.

Our daughters now both have their new medical care cards.  Yay!

The bad news.

My husband and I got our forms and photo copy of our birth certificates back.

Two problems.  They want a more legible copy of my husband’s birth certificate.  His had gone through a wash in a back pocket many decades ago, so it’s in rough shape, but still readable in its plastic holder.  Apparently, the photo copy wasn’t good enough.  I was able to read it, but whatever.

I’m thinking I’ll take a very well lit photograph of it, use software to bring out the text even more, then print that out and see if it will be good enough.

Then there was me.

Guess what they want from me?

Yup.

My marriage certificate.

Keep in mind that until 2004, I had a medical card in this province, using my married name.  I still have the darn thing.  But if I want my card to have my married name on it, they want a copy of my marriage certificate.

So not only can I not get my driver’s license transferred because my birth certificate doesn’t match my hyphenated married name, I can’t get my medical card, either.

And the 3 month limit is up.  They’re still billing our previous province, but how much longer can they do that?

And how much longer can we drive our van with out of province plates?

I was thinking I need to call my insurance company again and let them know what’s going on.  Turns out, I got mail from them, too, with a letter saying my file is incomplete.

No kidding.

So that’s on the to-do list for tomorrow.

I can’t believe that after using my married name for almost 30 years, this is now suddenly a problem.

I’m starting to wonder if I should just stop using my hyphenated name and go back to using my birth name.  But then, that name won’t match my current driver’s license or vehicle registration.  Even our content insurance, which I was able to update to our new location, has my hyphenated married name on it.

Un. Be. Lievable.

How is anyone supposed to be able to wade through all this in only 3 months?

The Re-Farmer

Today’s pictures

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I happened to be around when the deer came to visit this morning.

Hungry Girl and Barbecue showed up first.

20180212.whitetail.two

Then Mama and the twins came by.

20180212.whitetail.mom.twins

I do miss our DSLR.  Zooming in with my phone’s camera just isn’t anywhere near as good!

It’s great for indoor shots that don’t need zoom, though!

20180212DaBoy

He is such a silly boy!

I love how his little front paws are tucked into his chest.

While in town earlier, my daughter and I took advantage of the trip to swing by the grocery store.  In a parking lot full of “winter parking” (where no one even tries to park in the lines, because you can’t see them!), I actually managed to park in a legitimate parking spot.  I could see just enough of the lines though the snow.  It was farther from the store, and there was plenty of room around me.

Or so I thought.

We came out to find this.

20180212tight.park

That’s our van to the right.

Now, being a woman of generous proportions, it’s still rare for me to not even be able to get to my door.

I also wonder how the driver of the white truck got out of their vehicle, because there is no way that door opened even half way.  My mirror would have blocked it.

My daughter had to squeeze between the vehicles, open our door, and jam herself in.

So she ended up driving home.  An opportunity to practice for her road test.

The sad thing is, the only reason the vehicle was so tightly parked was because they pulled forward from the other side.  Which means they drove through an empty parking spot, and placed themselves right next to my door.

With our previous vehicle, a Grand Caravan, we’ve had this happen a couple of times.  I was able to just go through the other door and clamber across to the driver’s seat.

With this van, the only keyhole is in the driver’s door.  We don’t have one of those keys that locks/unlocks the vehicle remotely.  The ONLY way into the van when it’s locked is through the door that got blocked.

Why do people do that?

Has this happened to you, too?

The Re-Farmer