There’s a kitten in the closet

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I know you had a cat post yesterday, but this is our final week with the kittens before they head off to their forever homes, so this reluctant cat person is feeling a bit sentimental. For other not cat people out there, please bear with me as I share a few stories of our farm felines over the next several days.

Ralph’s favourite hangout is the flowerbed by the front door of the house.

Once the kittens worked up the courage to discover there was more to the world than just the barn and the ramp outside the barn door, they liked hanging out by the house too.

Ralph won’t come in the house. I can leave the door open, run in and out, and she’ll completely get in my way, but she won’t put more than her front paws over the threshold.

The other night heading out to the barn with Matt, I opened the front door to find Ralph and the kittens all right there. Immediately, one of the kittens scooted in the front door. I stood there for a minute, completely surprised. In my world, cats don’t come in the house. What was this one doing? Did she not know the rules?

I pulled myself together and turned around to pursue the kitten–who was darting this way and that, sniffing shoes and investigating her new territory. Apparently, this kitten has no problem with courage. When I made a grab for her, she ran into the closet.

It was at this point that I went outside, careful to close the door behind me, and called to Matt that I was going to be a minute, because “There’s a kitten in the closet.”

Back to the chase I went. It took a couple of tries, but eventually Marco Polo was captured. She received a lecture on Julia’s Rules for Proper Cat Conduct and was returned to mom and her siblings outside.

A conversation outside the bedroom window

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

What’s big and fluffy and black and white and takes midnight walks past our bedroom window? If your guess starts with an ‘S’ and ends with a ‘K’ and rhymes with ‘stunk,’ you’d be right.

The other night, Matt heard a rustling outside, and when he looked out the window he added a new animal to our official list of wildlife sightings.

The next night when we heard a meowing and a rustling outside of the bedroom window, he decided to go outside and join the party.

Through the open window from my cozy spot under the covers, it sounded a bit like this:

“Ralph!”

“Meow.”

“Ralph, where are you?”

“Meeee-oooor-owwww.” (She has quite a vocabulary).

“If I meet a skunk, I’m going to be really ticked off.”

My response: “If you meet a skunk, I’m closing the windows and locking the door. You can sleep with Ralph in the barn.”

Fortunately, the skunk did not reappear, and man and cat went to their respective beds no more smelly than usual.

In skunk-free daylight, Matt and Ralph head for the barn

Is there anyone out there who’s had a close encounter with a skunk?

Joyride

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s a long walk from the house to the back field. So the other night when Matt and I went to check on the trails, we took the tractor. Why walk when you can ride?

However, Wylie’s a one seater, so my seat is in the bucket.

The view from the front seat

You know the look a little boy gets on his face just before he pinches his sister or pulls her hair?

Look familiar?

Matt gets the same look when he raises the bucket.

The bucket is not the most comfortable perch. At six feet up in the air, it feels extremely unstable.

I should be clear that Kioti in no way endorses or condones my efforts to turn Wiley into a two-seater. In fact, the manual is quite clear.

Only one person at a time!

As evil as he may look in the photo above, Matt is very careful with me, and eventually, he brought me back down to earth and we continued on our way.

With the help of a handy fencepost, we even managed to get a family portrait of the three of us.

Ahhh, farm fashion of rubber boots always.

This was my first joyride on a tractor. Overall, it’s a pretty good way to get around.

Fruits of the farm

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

We had our first harvest at the farm of actual edible food.

This black raspberry bush is growing beside the barn

There are clusters of raspberry canes in a few spots around the property. I thought that they were all just regular berries until the ones on this bush started turning black.

From tiny green berries to red and then to black.

I’ve been snacking on them every time I went up to the barn, and finally the other night enough were ripe to get a bowlful.

It’s a small bowl, but a bowlful nonetheless

They were an excellent dessert to have with dinner–and exceptionally tasty with ice cream.

Yum!

We’ve had strawberry season and now we’re in raspberry season. What summer fruit are you most looking forward to eating?

We have walls!

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s been more than a month since I posted the first pictures of new drywall in the basement. Things definitely don’t move quickly when you’re DIYing–or at least Matt and I don’t move quickly!

I am pleased to announce that thanks to a big push this weekend as of Sunday afternoon all of the drywall is installed. Yay!

The new view in the long room

The total tally was 59 sheets. The entire bathroom, all of the exterior walls, and the ceilings in the main room and long room all got new drywall (click here for a refresher on the floorplan for the basement).

And taping is already underway. The bathroom has its third (and final) coat, the office has its second, the main room has its first. Matt has taken the lead on this part of the project, and my Dad has come up several times to help out. Between the two of them, they are motoring.

My Dad and Matt put the second coat of paste on the office

With three coats of paste plus sanding between each coat, this will be a big part of the basement renovation. Hopefully the next update is less than a month away.

Garbage day

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

In our relationship, Matt and I have worked out a certain division of labour. I do the laundry, and he does the grocery shopping. I clean the bathroom, and he takes out the garbage.

Matt may want to renegotiate our agreement since moving to the farm.

Wrangling a big green bin, at least one recycling box and a garbage bag down a 150 metre driveway takes a bit more effort than it did in the city.

The other night he roped Wylie into helping.

Wylie was happy to oblige.

Matt usually uses a little pull cart that perfectly fits our recycling boxes. He can fit two blue boxes and balance a garbage bag on top. It can be a little hazardous to the heels, though, because the cart has a tendency to pick up speed going down the hill on the driveway. And towing the green bin with one hand and the cart with the other takes a decent level of coordination.

I think the tractor is the way to go.

What’s the division of labour in your house? Does anyone actually like taking out the garbage?

Tool time

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Another Friday, another quiz. However today you don’t have to wait until next week for the answer.

It’s very simple. Only one question.

Name this tool.

We used this a lot when we were demolishing the basement.

If you said crowbar, I’m sorry, but you are very, very wrong.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrecking bar. My Dad trained us all very early. If we were working with him and we asked, “Can you pass me the crowbar?” or “Where’s the crowbar?” the response would be something along the lines of “What are you looking for?” or “What is it you need?” If he was feeling a little more generous, he would perhaps just say, “What did you call it?”

Don’t get me wrong, we used crowbars as well, but a crowbar is a straight bar in our family. A wrecking bar is recognizable by its distinctive hooked end.

The curved end of the wrecking bar can be used for prying, and the fork is also useful for pulling nails.

The other end of the wrecking bar is a chisel.

Like the hook, the chisel end is also used for prying, although you have slightly less leverage.

Wikipedia confirms my Dad’s label and offers an explanation of why this tool is so often called a crowbar.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, “crowbar” may occasionally be used loosely for this tool, but may also be used to mean a larger straighter tool.

Ahhh, so my Dad is calling on his previously unknown Australian heritage when he insists that we use the label “wrecking bar.”

How’d you do on the quiz? If my brother and sisters didn’t get this right, I’m sorry to tell you that Dad has now disowned you. Anyone else out there have a term that’s unique to your family?

Snapshot

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Papa, mama and baby toadstools in the west meadow

And yes, that is old horse manure they’re growing in.

Wild kingdom

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I love seeing the wild animals at the farm.

Last week, I added a few new ones to my list:

Bunny–surprisingly, I’ve not seen a rabbit up until now, and last week I had two sightings, including one directly across from the front door when I came out in the morning.
Hummingbird–at a distance from the kitchen window. There were a lot of hummingbird feeders in the gardens around the house when we bought the farm, and I’ve just been stacking them on one of the wood piles. Maybe we should fill some of them instead.
A wild turkey family, complete with chicks–not actually on the farm, but on the drive to work on two separate mornings.
Turkey vulture–on the drive home from work. I’ve seen them before, but never up close. The nicest thing I can say is… ummm… her head was really red.

And in other wildlife news, my quest to photograph a deer continues.

The best I’ve done so far.

We see deer fairly frequently at the farm. Their tracks and trails are everywhere. One showed up in the flesh (fur?) walking along the row of pines right beside the house. She was within a dozen metres of us. Of course, as soon as she realized she’d been spotted, she bounded away rather than posing for a picture.

I do think the deer that we see are getting more accustomed to us. I can walk out into the fields trying to get closer to them and they don’t spook immediately anymore. However, documenting them is a different story. Maybe they’re just camera shy.

Mystery marble

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on what they thought was the answer to Friday’s mystery photo. Most people recognized pretty quickly that it was stone of some kind and guessed they were looking at tile or a countertop maybe. Close, but not quite.

Dave got it right: this is in fact marble for Matt’s bathroom shower. More specifically, it’s the slab that will go on the top of the bench in the shower.

It’s a beautiful piece of white and grey marble.

This was my first time buying marble, and finding the perfect piece was not as easy as I expected. We needed one solid surface for the top of the bench. No seams or joints minimizes our risk of leaks. However, none of the tile or home improvement stores that we visited dealt in large (but smaller than counter-size) pieces of marble. The top of the bench had to be 18″ x 32 1/4″, and the best I found was 18″ square tile. That would have meant a seam, so that was a no-go.

As well, I was picky about the colour and veining on the marble. I wanted something mostly white with smooth grey veining (not too speckled). Granite suppliers are common in our area, but in my experience they tended to have a very limited selection of marble. Plus, understandably none of them wanted to cut into a countertop-size slab and end up with a leftover that was too small to use on another project.

Finally, we found a granite supplier that had a larger selection of marble and a good collection of remnants. They let us go through their warehouse and pulled out many pieces for me to examine. In the end, we found a piece that was just the right size and just the right colour. They gave us a good deal on the price and cut and polished it to my exact specifications.

Here’s a sneak peak of how it looks with the marble mosaic we’re going to be using for the shower floor.