I found them!

May 26, 2018May 26, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

With this wonderful rain we’ve been having, there has been so much new growth.

When I had the chance to go around the house with the weed trimmer, I found a lovely surprise.

The horseradish has emerged.

In two places!

I found the first one in the end of the flower garden, where we’ve been putting feed out for the birds and deer. I had just moved the bird feeder stand into that area, shifting about to find the most steady spot for it, and it was most certainly not there, just a few days ago.

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In fact, it’s growing out in one of the first spots I’d set the stand. If it had been a bit more level around there, the base of the stand would have been right on top of it!

The other greenery, my mom tells me are weeds.

I now know which spruce tree by the house my mom meant, when she told me where she transplanted the horseradish intentionally.

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It’s partly hidden by saplings and other growth.

Both areas have been cleared up a bit with the weed trimmer; some of it, I’ll have to come back with the pruning shears I found.

Using one of the 100 ft extension cords my older brother gifted to us, so we could have electricity to plug in our van in the winter, was enough for me to go around much of the house, as well as most of the south end of the yard. There were just a couple of places I couldn’t reach.

While working around one area by the fence, I saw a frog hopping in the grass. A wood frog, which is very common around here. I wasn’t able to get a picture, though. Ah, well. We may not see them much, but we sure hear them a lot, in the evenings!

I was glad to get the trimming done, but it was so muggy, my face was just dripping, even though I wasn’t exerting myself at all. It wasn’t even particularly hot – only about 18C.

There had been predictions of more rain this afternoon, but that seems to have changed. After that, there’s no rain predicted until more storms are supposed to arrive on Wednesday, so we should have time to mow the lawn and build that gate. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Getting Things Done

May 16, 2018May 16, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today turned out to be a perfect day for working outside. A bit on the cool side, and not too sunny. It would have been nice of those clouds brought some rain, but it did mean we got a lot done outside. Best of all, my husband was actually up to going outside with his walker, and walk up and down the driveway a few times, then just sit outside and enjoy the day. There used to be a bench under the kitchen window that my late brother had built for my dad to sit and enjoy some time outside, but it is among those things that disappeared after my dad died. At some point, we’ll replace it with another bench. It’s a perfect spot to sit and relax.

The biggest accomplishment in the yardwork today is YAY! we finally got that pile of wood in the garden cleaned up. It is DONE.

While taking loads of broken down wood to the fire pit area with the wheelbarrow, I paused to get some photos of the blooming plum trees.

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On the one hand, it was really cool to see them starting to bloom.

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On the other, it was a bit disheartening to see how few blossoms there were. Just a few sparse branches spread over several trees.

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After we finished with the wood pile in the garden, we went back to clearing up around the yard. Soon, I hope to start going into these trees, and the maple grove behind them, clearing up the fallen branches, cutting away the dead wood that hasn’t fallen yet, and taking down some dead trees.

The girls worked their way around to the three big maple trees by the fire pit. These are the ones where I finally wrested away an old awning that had been left under them for some 20 years. Plus the remains of a chair. As they raked around the bases of the trees, they found three old license plates (one of them had stickers for 1981 and 1982 on it!) and a flat plastic thing that looked a bit like the bases in baseball, except for the hole and part of a pipe still attached, and the big MAC logo. They were buried under several inches of soil; composted leaves, really.

I finally got around to working on the flower garden by the old kitchen. The girls had started to rake around the outside of the fence line, and I took the opportunity to start cutting away some of the things that have started to grow on the outside of the fence. I got the dead asparagus foliage cleared away, but there is no sign of new asparagus growing under it.

I forgot to get a picture of my find under the leaves inside the flower garden. A wooden toy rocking horse, completely buried. I’m guessing it was on the bench on the platform for the clothes line and fell, and no one noticed. I ended up having to prune quite a few low hanging branches on the big cherry tree, just to be able to get under it. I could see that it had been pruned back to where I was cutting already, but not recently.

Cleaning that garden up is going to be a huge job. It hasn’t been tending in so many years, making it hard to rake. Plus, there’s some sort of vine that seems to be spreading, and I’m finding it as the rake gets caught on it. The ground is rock hard. Getting out that invasive plant my mom asked me to get rid of is not going to be easy.

It was good to get so much work done today, but my goodness, there is so much more to do.

Well, that’s what my mom asked us to live her to take care of for her! :-)

Now to go pick the burrs out of my clothes before putting them in the laundry… :-D

The Re-Farmer

Yard Tires

May 13, 2018May 13, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I was talking to a friend who brought up something that has shown up in some of the photos of our yard that I’ve shared.

The tires.

So, I figured I would explain, because there are so many of them!

Tree tire is tired and broken.

This is from one of the pictures I posted yesterday. The pair of trees on either side of the sidewalk at the gate are in tires like this, as is the tree by the kitchen window, and others I’ve been finding, buried under leaves, in unexpected places.

At some point, many years ago, it became a popular thing to re-purpose old tires in yards. With trees, the saplings were planted inside the tire, and the tire served to protect the planting from damage. Like getting accidentally hit by a lawn mower, or backed into by a car or something. As time went by, of course, there was no way to remove the tire once the tree grew. In this case, the trunk outgrew the tire itself, which was old enough to split under the pressure of the growing tree.

Which gives you an idea of how many years this has been there!

As you can see, an attempt was made to pretty up the tire by painting it.

Then there are the tractor tires.

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I find myself perplexed as I see something like this. Obviously, someone cared enough to create and protect a little flower garden at Mary’s feet, and even paint the tractor tire to pretty it up. But they didn’t care enough to remove the tree that started growing at it which, if it were left to continue growing, will eventually push aside the tire and destroy the garden inside it. I can understand the leaves in the garden still being there; there was no one here to tend to such things while the place was empty, but you’d think someone would have removed the tree, long before it got this big!

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The garden gnome is now back where it was found. This was also a flower garden planted under the bird bath, though there is nothing but grass and weeds inside it now.

Slowly but surely, we are working our way around the yard and cleaning this stuff up. It will be nice to clean out the bird bath and start using it for its intended purpose again.

Then there are these contraptions.

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This is a car tire that was cut in half, decoratively, then flipped inside out. The other half, without the decorative edge, was left right side out and is underneath.

It cannot have been easy to cut the tire, never mind flipping it inside out!

I’m more at a loss over what it planted inside it. They appear to be little trees or bushes. Perhaps they are self seeded?

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This second one has even more of them. There is nothing to show that anything else was ever planted in there. If these were deliberately planted, why were they planted off to the sides like that, where the soil is shallowest, instead of in the middle?

I have questions. Many questions.

This planter is in a particularly bad location. It’s right up against the platform for the clothes line, which is on a pulley system. There used to be three lines, but now there is just one. The clothes can be hung on the line from the platform, moving the line on the pulleys from one spot, rather than having to walk along the line and reaching high up to hang things. This allows the line itself to be much higher, too, and less in the way. I tried hanging the king size mattress protector on the line from the platform and quickly discovered that the bushes planted in the tire planter are right under the line, and taller than the hand rail, which means anything hung on the line gets dragged through the bushes.

The planter and its contents is going to have to go. We don’t plan to use the clothes line often, but we do want to have the option!

While walking around and taking these photos, I found something very amusing. Remember this, from winter?

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This is a path the cats made through the snow, from whatever shed they’ve been using out back. There is also a small hole under the fence between the pump shack and the other house, near where there used to be a gate, many years ago. It had been buried by the snow, so the cats made this new path to the gate to get into the yard.

Cat paths in the snow are an easy thing to understand.

Then there’s this.

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A cat path worn into the grass is a whole different thing! :-D You can see Butterscotch, sitting at the hole in the fence.

Many, many cat feet have created this path. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Oh, the things we find!

May 11, 2018 / 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.

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

Oh…

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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?

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

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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.

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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

Oh. That’s how that happened

May 9, 2018May 9, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

While out with my mother yesterday, I ended up finding out something I had been wondering about.

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Why this is here.

This little patch of bushes seemed so random. The size of it, the location – even the odd angle of it – just didn’t make sense to me.

Then my mother mentioned some lilies in the yard and asked me if they were coming up yet. Where did she mean? It turned out to be in this area, along with the bushes. Which reminded me to ask her, how did she end up planting things here?

The answer?

Because of a van.

You see, for many years, the younger of my brothers had a van parked there. I even remember it being there, as do my daughters. It was there for a very long time.

I do believe I’ve spotted it in the old hay yard by the barn, among the many other vehicles sitting there.

After the van was moved out of the yard, there was a patch under it, where the grass had died.

So my mom planted things in it. She tells me there’s a lilac bush, as well as a white rose, there, along with the lilies.

Well… I guess that’s one way to fix a damaged piece of lawn. It certainly explains the size, shape and location!

The Re-Farmer

What is this? The Answer is…

May 8, 2018May 8, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Here is the answer to yesterday’s guessing game.

The mystery equipment sitting in our maple grove is…

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… A garden row marker.

In the above picture, you see the handle. One would step inside it, and hold the bar in front while dragging the rest behind.

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Do you see the points? There are three of them that would drag on the ground, creating three lines in the soil. When the next pass was made, one of the outer markers would be dragged along in one of the previously marked lines, so that the other two new rows marked would be evenly spaced.

Seeds would be planted in the resulting lines in the soil.

When I was a kid, I remember one of these my dad had made out of wood. I don’t know who made this metal version, though I would guess it was my late brother, using bits and pieces from other equipment and whatever else was handy.

How close was your guess?

The Re-Farmer

Walkabout – the East yard

April 25, 2018April 25, 2018 / 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Slowly but surely…

April 7, 2018April 7, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

… spring is working its way here.

Which means the Asian lady beetles were out in full force again. Ew. One of my tasks of the day, after vacuuming my office window again, was to take the screen out so I could clean it in the bathtub, as well as clean the glass in the window.

Unfortunately, pulling the screen out meant all sorts of things fell on the window ledge. More of the lady beetles – some still alive – dead flies, seeds from the Chinese elm in front of the kitchen.

Ew.

After using the shower on the screen, I returned to find even more lady beetles had come back. At least I could just open the window and toss them outside.

Then, as I sat at my computer, some movement in the window caught my eye. What could it be? It showed up again. A quick flash of something, at the very bottom of the window.

I took a look, and it was Squishum! Directly under my window is the window to the basement, where we used to throw in the wood for the winter. It’s sunken a bit below ground level, so there is now a makeshift “roof” over it to keep moisture from collecting and draining into the basement. Squishum had gone on top of this. It’s not high enough for a cat to see into our window, but when she tried, I was seeing the tips of her ears!

As I was looking out the window, I spotted the new cat, back at the food bowls! The other cats didn’t seem to mind it being there. Not like when the Mothman comes, and they get all freaked out.

When I mentioned the new cat was there, the girls decided to head outside to hopefully see it (it took off behind the other house in the yard), and to say hello to the kitties.

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Beep Beep decided to get vicious and attach my daughter’s leg. :-D

I took advantage of the slightly warmer weather to walk around the house and check how things were – with several cats following me. With more of the snow gone, there were a few more “why is this there?” moments!

There was a squirrel under the picnic table, and Butterscotch decided to try and hunt it. Which is funny, because she’s so small, the squirrel is almost half her size! She just ended up chasing it up the maple tree in the photo below.

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I do wonder about those seats along the shed. They look like they’re from old cars, and they’re sitting on top of logs and pieces of wood. I am guessing they were put there so that my parents could sit down when they were working in the garden. Neither of them is straight, so it would not have been comfortable sitting in them, even if they weren’t all covered with leaves and dirt.

I went and checked out the pile of stuff under the tarp near where we put the deer feed. It is, indeed, a pile of old pallets. Quite old. Whoever put them there took the time to cover them with a tarp, then threw old branches and other things on top, to keep the tarp from blowing away. And there is sits, with a dead tree fallen at it, as well as branches that look like they’ve fallen from the trees above.

Not sure why the tire is there. It’s not holding down the tarp.

Just one of the things to clean up, once things warm up. We’re going to need someone with a pick up truck to haul some of this stuff away for us. :-/

Stuff like…

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… this table. It’s behind an area where we used to cut and stack wood, then store it until we needed to take more into the basement. The area now has a makeshift wall, part of which is covered with landscaping cloth, and the old doghouse that is now used by the cats.

It’s odd enough for the table to be there, but it’s been there long enough that a tree died and fell over it, held up by the brush that has grown up around it.

Considering the location, I just can’t figure out why it’s there.

I can now see what’s under the dog house. It’s sitting on a pallet, which has started to rot and collapse in the middle.

Another thing for the list.

Along with this.

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At first, I thought it was a broken handle and tried to lift it. The rake part was buried in the grass and is frozen to the ground.

It also look like it’s partly under that old scrap carpet. Carpet that has been there long enough for moss to be growing on it.

So if the rake is under the carpet, then it has been there at least as long as the carpet.

Why are either of them there at all?

So strange.

There were a couple of other curious things around the house. Some curious cats!

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Coming back to the house, I found Beep Beep and Butterscotch, checking out the inside cats! :-D

My younger daughter and I headed out into town to stock up on some things for the freezer, since we’re not making our Costco trip this month. This reminder is now completely uncovered by the melt.

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This is where the movers got stuck in our driveway. There are several others in the ice along the driveway, heading to the gate. Those ones, at least, didn’t go all the way into the ground, like these.

I’m hoping we can get more gravel for our driveway soon. Maybe not this year, though. We’ll have enough to deal with just with the house and yard!

The Re-Farmer