Home on the Hill

Using a coal oil lamp to see the keyboard. Now isn't that hi tech. We had a huge snow dump over the last four days. No Hydro, No Telephone, and no plowed driveway. No one around here can remember such a snow storm in October. By the time it was finished, presuming it's finished for now, there was close to four feet of snow on the ground. The fence line around the place only has the top strand showing. The highways were closed down for a couple of days and Savory road, our connector to Highway 16, was just plowed one lane wide. Don't know what would happen if two vehicles had to pass. I guess it's fortunate that not many people are up and about. We have to wait for a snow plow and don't know how long that will be. It could be a week. I put the off road chains on our Toyota and made it the kilometre down our driveway to Savory Road. I was pushing snow all the way. Fortunatly it was down hill. I had to stop every 100 feet or so and cut trees off the road. ...

Found this beauty in the Barn. I think they were all dead but just to make sure I treated them to a taste of chemicals that will ensure I will never get my organic gardening certificate. For like the next hundred years. The hornets have been out in droves this year. My daughter Treena found out the hard way that Hornets have a nasty disposition. That nest is no longer habitable. Today I continued cleaning out the pole barn. Getting my shit together, as it were, and putting it with the pig poop. Another couple of hours Ok five or six and I should have it pretty spicky span, ready for a bunch of lumber and barnwood. And then onto the shop for wiring, lighting and making storm windows for the main house. It was Jo-Ann's day off so I suckered her into helping me. She spent the day removing catches and hinges from a pile of old cabinet doors and storm windows. Some more valuable free stuff!

Actually it was growing in a clod of dirt on top of the Garden. Looks like I beheaded an alien with my new alien head chopper. ( a large skinning knife Jo-Ann brought me.) It has been tentativly identified as a mangalore: Weirdest turnip I have ever seen. Have a large crop of them still to dig up, also some parsnips, beets and brussels sprouts. Alas, the Yukon Gold potatoes are no more. Next year I will have enough to make it through till Spring. Still dunging out one of the pole barns to make a lumber and barnwood storage area. the one was used for horses and had a couple of inches of horse manure mixed with straw over the hand hewn floor. I am packing that all out and mixing it with some well composted piggy poop. The garden will love that stuff. It will be snow soon and I don't want to leave several stacks of rough wood and barnwood out over the winter. One of my projects is to build a solar kiln to dry the wood down to 9 or 10 percent. Basically it's really just a green hou...

I have decided to try out home canning. Ever since I canned a jar of crabapple jelly ( er..crabapple syrup) I decided to learn more about it. Low acid, High acid, my, my, there's a lot of ways to get botulisim. But I am going to try and avoid that. Hence the pressure canner . What a heavy duty, precision ground apparatus. I just love the idea behind canning. Making your own food and keeping it. I was wondering how much of our food just gets stored in the fridge a while and then thrown out. Just seems like a big waste of resources. And besides I get to decide what goes in the cans. Like a lot less salt. Next year: bigger garden, cold storage, and a place to store canning. Somethings happening to me lately. I guess the idea has been lurking around my head for quite a while. About using resources more responsibly. This redneck is a born again Hippie. Jo-Ann actually caught me perusing a web space called tree hugger . I was looking for information on our wood furnace. H...

Well OK, we don't have any pumpkins this year. But we do have frost. Yesterday a huge black cloud moved in from the West. I was watching it, the wind rising, which is a sure sign of a storm and I decided to cut the weeks kindling supply under cover of the veranda. In the nick of time. First came a hailstorm which turned the ground white, then it snowed - which didn't stick. And then out came the sun, for a brilliant but cold,well 4C day. I am in the process of getting in the winters wood. Fortunatly I have lots of wood on the property and my brother's log home business creates lot's of first class, debarked, pine.All of it Bug Killed Great for using in the house - no fuss no muss. But it has to be split. I overdid it yesterday, my zeal increased by Mother's display, and by the end of the day my arms felt like rubber. I have a number of different tools for splitting, axes, splitting axes, and a sledgehammer and splitting wedge. the wedge is the one that gets...