English Around the House and Farm
The House and Patio
Okay, so now we’re going to open the screen door. I’m opening the screen door. You can see there’s a little latch here that you have to push in and it unlocks the door. And here right here on the bottom part, this is a deadbolt lock. So you can go like this and turn it and it will lock as well. I’m going to close the screen door again. The screen door is to keep bugs outside but let air inside.
Now I’m going to put on my shoes. These shoes are a little bit weird. I would call them sandals because they don’t have the back part of the shoe. Anyways, now I’m putting my shoe on. I’m lifting up this flap here and sliding my foot inside. And I’m doing the same thing on the other shoe. Now my shoes are on. Here in Canada, for this specific brand, we just call them Birks. The brand name is Birkenstock. I think it’s from Germany. So people in Canada just call them Birks.
So we’re on the patio right now. And a patio is just an outdoor area, usually made out of wood or this material. This isn’t wood, it’s some sort of plastic. But a patio area is just an area outside of your house, usually right outside your back door that you could come and sit on or eat on or just relax on.
The Farm
Okay, so here are my dogs. Let’s go for a walk. All three of them. And what are the cows doing here? Well, it’s been a dry summer and we had some grass here. This is normally the chicken area and we didn’t have chickens this year. So they ate the grass down.
And you can see right here, this fence is just a temporary fence because you can pick it up and move it. You can see it just slides in here and also on the ground here. So it’s a temporary fence. It’s not in the ground, it’s just on top of the ground. So you can see right here, it just slides in. So you can lift it out. So it’s just pieces. Here’s one piece. Here is another piece.
I’ll show you a permanent fence right now. Come this way. And this is what a permanent fence is. You can see these posts are pounded into the ground. Right there, right here, they’re pounded into the ground. This post is probably like that far into the ground and there’s also wire here. You could have posts with wood or with wire, but a permanent fence is a fence you can’t move easily.
If you open the gate, they’ll just come and walk out and then we’ll open down there for them. Okay, so this is a gate and it’s just like a pretty small gate. It’s just for people, but I guess these cows can also fit through. So this gate just opens by grabbing this piece of metal and just sliding it upwards. So there’s no latch like that other door. And now the cows are going to come out. You can see the cows are very tame. They’re very tame. They’re not crazy. They’re not jumping around. They’re not trying to fight. They’re just tame and they just want to eat grass.
So it’s nice. Yeah, the gray one. The gray one where Dexter is going in. Okay, so I closed this gate and I opened this gray gate right here. This gate is bigger than that gate and this gate is gray. That gate is kind of burgundy. It’s kind of faded a lot. So you can come here. You can see when it was brand new, it was a lot more vibrant. The color was a lot more vibrant, but now the color is very faded. It’s faded. And there’s also rust. There’s rust. It looks old.
Oh yeah. You see there’s a cow and a calf. She’s a runner, that one. She’s a runner. She’s a track star. Do you want to go and round up that little calf there? There’s still another one. Okay, there’s another calf over here that doesn’t want to come out. We have to go and chase him out.
Okay, I just closed the gate. You go around that way. They know exactly where to go. Okay, perfect. I’m closing the gate with this chain. The cows are drinking water. We’re not milking tomorrow. So they’re going to hang out with their moms today. So we can leave them here. Or if you want, we’ll just push them into the bush. Just leave them. Leave them here. It’s fine.
Okay, so this is a scratch pole. It’s almost like two broom heads and the cattle come and they scratch their heads and their back and their sides on this. Yeah, they love scratching like this. Scratching their backs and stuff with that. Yeah, and we put oil in here so they get oiled. It helps with keeping the flies off them. Yep.
Okay, so we’ll leave these girls here. So what’s the most important rule on a farm? The most important rule is to always close the gates. If you open a gate, always close it right away. You open it, you close it. Perfect.
And this, you can call this a pail. This specifically is a five gallon pail. But you can just call it a pail. And you can put water in it or grain to feed the cows.
Fire Pit and Shop
Okay, so perfect. Let’s go towards the fire pit area. We can go and pull some carrots from my garden as well. Yeah, hopefully it stays nicer for longer. But I don’t think so. It’s been pretty cold. You know how it goes. The weather can change here from one day to the next. Oh yeah, it’s unpredictable. Very unpredictable.
Okay, now we’re at the outdoor fire pit. This right here is a fire pit. And you can see inside the fire pit, there’s a lot of ash. All of that is ash from wood. Once wood burns, it turns into ash. And this is called a poker stick for the fire, to poke the fire. This kind of outdoor building, you can call a gazebo. And there are lights, light bulbs all around the gazebo and a little bit inside. And there’s spider webs, I guess, on the gazebo too.
But let’s go to the shop now. Okay, and this is the shop. I just opened the door. This door has a small window on the top part of the door, so you can see through. But yeah, right now we’re in the shop. It’s like pretty big. The ceiling is very high. You can see the ceiling is very high. And I’m going to turn the lights on now. So you can see all of this. This is a lot of tools and like nuts and bolts and parts.
Yeah, it’s a workbench and it is full of stuff because your dad is working on his project. So he’s always looking for bits and pieces and screws and nuts and bolts and you name it. And these right here, this, this, this, these are all aerosols. So these cans are aerosol cans also. I can see. Safety glasses. Yeah, that’s very important. To protect your eyes.
So I’m just waiting for the clips for that. Okay, so Volka, do you remember how to ride your unicycle? Just straighten the seat out slightly. It’s slightly… Do I remember how to ride it? Let’s see if you can still do it. The tire is inflated. It is actually, I’m surprised.
So now the seat was not straight. The seat was a little bit to the side on an angle. So now I’m just putting the seat straight in line with the tire. Right there. So this is a pedal. Every bicycle needs to have a pedal because that’s how you pedal. So a pedal is the noun and to pedal is the verb. So I’m pedaling means I’m putting my feet on the pedals and I’m moving and I’m going forward. But I learned how to do this many, many, many, many years ago. Many years. I think I was like how many years ago? Probably like 10. 10, at least 10. 10 years ago. And I haven’t done it since. So the last time I did this 10 years ago. Wow.
You have to have good balance for that. So like my mom just said, you have to have good balance. You have to have good balance. If you don’t have good balance, you’re going to fall because it’s just one wheel. That’s why it’s called a unicycle for one uni. Where was this? It’s got a stand to the right hand side there. This is the unicycle stand. And if you come here, I already showed you guys this, the lawn mower, the riding lawn mower. But this right here is a dirt bike. And this part of the dirt bike, so these are pegs. But yeah, this is a dirt bike.
The Garden
Okay, I think, let’s go to the garden. Let’s do that. Let’s go to the garden now. What do we need at the garden? Some carrots. I am going to make some Thai green curry with chicken tonight.
Anyways, before we go there, let’s pick some cherries. You want to pick some cherries? Just some for the road, not really too much. I’ve picked the majority of them. They’re so good this year. I know the cherries are really good. Sometimes they can be a bit sour, but oh, they’re really delicious this year. They’re good. So, we just picked some cherries. We picked cherries past tense. We’re picking cherries present tense. Future, we will pick cherries. We’re going to pick cherries.
But right now we’re in the garden. Okay, so these, what are these, Mom? These are raised beds. They are waist-high, so that they are easy on my back. Because normal gardens are like this on the ground, and you have to go like this, or go like this. And it can be hard on your knees and on your back, but with this type of garden with a raised bed, you could just reach over like this, standing up straight. So you can garden while standing up straight. And it’s easier on your back.
So now you’re pulling carrots. You want me to pull some too? Yep, try to find the ones that look bigger. Some of these are out of the ground. I’ll shove them back in. They’re not going to grow. Your best just to pull them out. Here, we can pull here on the edge. Those two were out already. How do you know if they’re big or not though? You see the stems, sometimes when I pull them, the stems at the bottom are thicker. And we have lots, so it doesn’t matter if there’s a few that come out or not. They are so good. I picked one or two good ones there. I accidentally pulled one small one though. It’s okay, we can eat it. Give it a rinse and we’ll eat it. They’re very good fresh. How many do you want? Oh, there you go. You have a whole bunch. That looks really good.
So this whole area here used to be a garden. In the past, this was all a garden, but my dad built these raised beds. So we planted grass here and now you can see just grass is growing.
Are you getting potatoes? Is the one potato there? So are these potato leaves poisonous? Yes. You can eat it? No, you can’t eat potato leaves. Okay, so these potatoes are different. Can you give me three differences between these two potatoes? So the difference between these two potatoes, the first is the color. This is a red potato and this is a white potato. The second difference is this one is round. This one is longer and more oval shape. And the final difference between these two potatoes, can you guess what it is? It’s the taste. These potatoes taste different.
So we have another one here. What else do you need? So what are you grabbing now? I’m going to grab some of this basil. Oh yeah, this basil smells strong. The basil smells strong. But it smells good. It smells very good. You put basil on food. I didn’t bring a container. Well, we can wash the carrots and stuff outside as well.
Okay, and the final thing we’re getting from the garden, we are getting cucumbers. And you can see, I don’t know if you can see close up, but there’s a lot of these like prickly hairs on them.
Washing and Leaving
So now I’m going to open up the well water. This is a garden hose, or you can just call it a hose. And now water is starting to flow out of the hose. Water is flowing out of the hose. And now I’m going to wash all of these with some water. And the reason I call it well water is because it comes from a well underground. So it comes from underground. There’s a well of water and this comes directly from there. So it’s cold. It’s very cold. Now I’m washing these carrots. Ooh, that water is cold. Okay, now I’m closing the water.
My leg kind of fell asleep. So we have the pail, the silver pail, filled with vegetables like carrots, cucumbers, potatoes. And now I’m going to pick the pail up from the handle. So this is the handle and I’m picking the pail up. Well, I already picked it up.
Where are we going? I think we leave that at the front door and then we go and lock the gate and then we can go in and make supper. Where’s the keys? It should be in the bowl there. Got it. So these are keys. This is a car key, but this is a gate key. We’re going to walk up the driveway to close the gate.
They’ll be flying south now. And you can see that that’s a flock of geese and they fly in a V shape. So the geese are flying down south towards the United States, even further south to Mexico because right now it’s almost fall in Canada. And that’s when it gets very cold. So the geese and other birds fly south where it’s warmer.
And now we’re closing the gate. This gate is black and it pretty much just stops vehicles from driving in through the driveway to our house. So if you really wanted, you could walk, but you can’t drive. And that’s just for safety. We just locked the gate there. You can see this row of trees right here. How many years ago did we plant this row of trees? Oh, that is a good question. A lot, eh? I think maybe 14 years ago.