Home on the Hill

We've been working in between snow storms. The last one had me deciding to raise the priority on getting the studded snow tires on the Toyota, and the chains in the trunk. Also time to get the chains on the skidsteer. I went to town after about a foot of it had come down, prior to the snow plows making it down Savory road and it was touch and go with the all seasons on. Even tho they were relativly new, lots of tread, and I was in four by four mode. We managed to dig out the last of the carrots which are now safely ensconced in sand filled rubber made containers in the cold storage fridge. We also dug out the parsnips, nothing to write home about there, but enough to sweeten up some winter time stews. Sweet potatoes were a bust - we simply planted them too late and left them in the ground too long. They like heat, and they weren't getting enough. We had some small ones but the cold had turned them to mush. Back to Rutabagas next year. The tires are ready for next spring,...

Nice to have a heated dry place to do some painting. This time of year painting outside is impossible. Well except for some very specialized paints that go for big bucks. The kind you can paint an ice cube with.. This is the four foot door and frame going into the shop for refurbishing. Some sanding, wood fill, glue, primer and paint and it will be a thing of beauty. And weather tight too. Warning - Geek Speak ahead.. Spent yesterday working on computers. Getting Fedora 11 to run on Jo's lap top, as we were having trouble with a Beta version of Ubuntu 9.10 and integrated Intel drivers. We also tried out Mepis 8.0 - very impressive, but we aren't used to the KDE interface. Will try Ubi again after it's released to the wild this Thursday. It's speed is very impressive. Also spent an hour killing off a Smitfraud variant on a paniced friends computer. For the third time. There must be a special place in hell for virus creators. Really it boggles the mind. ...

I've spent about four days sitting and writhing in pain with an infection. The first two days I was trying my first form of defense which is denial. The next two days I was trying all the homeopathic remedies I came across Aspirin and Robax to no avail. I couldn't get to a Dr. readily because there isn't one available on the weekends. Finally got to the Dr. on Monday. Full of trepidation of course: hadn't been to one here since I arrived four years ago, probably have to wait for days for an appointment. My Brain is decidedly not my friend. Twenty minutes of waiting I was introduced to a Dr. that came highly recommended by my friends. He was very interested in my health program and plans for the winter. He's a runner and cross country skiing enthusiast. He recommended it as part of a winter cardio program as running outdoors gets rather difficult and the treadmill is just an approximation. I asked about training and he said he didn't know of any but t...

As were now looking at the next half year of winter conditions we decided to get a treadmill to help when we don't feel like putting snow shoes on to get some cardio. We did a bunch of research, but stumbled on this one at Crappy Tire for a 1000$ off. Once again we found that it is impossible to follow directions - because they don't match the reality of what's in the box. Fortunately it wasn't brain surgery and we had help from Xena and the Katz. What wasn't in the instructions was how to change the display from Miles to Kilometres, which was strange when you think that Canada is a metric country. A call to customer support who provided some decidedly non-intuitive instructions, something like: Stand on one leg, turn the speed button up while simultaneously pressing the mode button, while whistling "whisky disky doo", change to engineering mode ( thank God I used to work for an engineering department!) and change to mode 93, and voila, it now speaks...

This morning we woke up to -14℃(6.8℉) and a dusting of snow. Time to get a few more loads of wood for the sweat lodge and get the yard in shape for the serious snows to follow. And the chickens bedded down. And the equipment storage shed started. It must be getting to that time, Jo-Ann fired up the big furnace downstairs yesterday, and this morning both the upstairs heater and furnace are going. I guess were just not used to it yet. No panic. No pressure. Still right now I could use about three of me around here. What to wear on today's walk? Time to drag out the snow boots.

This is the finish of the Endako 5K run. Right at the 550 kilometre mark on Highway 16. I couldn't get a victory picture because I was first to cross the finish line and had to get the camera out of the car to capture the other contestants victory lunge. It turns out that the race was so rigorous there was only two contestants, Jo-Ann and myself. So it is a small victory that I placed first in the 59 year old overweight male category with a time of 31:39:11. I have done 5k's faster but they were on a track. I trimmed down 37 pounds for this race and plan on losing another 40 lbs for the 10k event. Who wants to run with an extra 80 lbs on their butt. Not me. Just too lazy. I am really proud of Jo-Ann who placed first in the ladies event, even tho this was her first 5k run this decade. Speaking of Shedding, work progresses on the garden shed. I have O.S.B. up on all the walls and the front is roughed in for the four foot door from the salvage pile. That's not a ...

Yard clean up progresses. We need a place to store all our garden tools, hoses, pots and bags of peat. We were using the "storage shed" but its on the other side of the yard. Last year we lugged an odd shaped eight by eight foot barn roof shed up and it languished in a field. I really was at a loss about what to do with it. The winds had torn the sheet metal on the roof, the Luan siding was being shredded by the wind, everything was put on with one inch shingle nails. Not very pretty. And then it struck me during our morning walk up the driveway. I wonder if the skidsteer could inch it over to an eight by eight foot pad I had built for a tire composter. It would be a great foundation. Indeed it would. The move went wonderfully easy as the shed had six by six inch skids on it. I screwed the roofing tin down with a couple of hundred proper rubber washered roofing screws. It isn't pretty but it is sure secure. The Winter winds won't move it. I had a skid of O.S...

The winter wood is in. Always a fall milestone. There is a certain sense of ease and comfort that come with knowing the woodlot is full. Our freezers, too, are jammed with local beef and the bounty from the garden is filling my external stand up cold storage unit. It's a salvaged commercial stand-up cooler that sits just outside our basement, that I super insulated with foam and use a thermostatically controlled bathroom fan to pump warm air from our basement into the unit when it gets below freezing. Right now it is -3℃(26.6℉). Were putting the garden to bed. All the vegies are in except for Carrots, Parsnips, and Sweet Potatoes. We've added double plastic covers to them to squeeze the last out of the growing season. We're still getting 21 degrees in those tires. We got a pretty good load of Roma Tomatoes. We've been eating fried green tomatoes and I will attempt my first canning adventure to try and put away some Green Tomato Relish. This week we are getting the ...

We've been waiting for our first snow warning. It came this morning, across the valley and a few hundred meters higher. Probably a week or so before we get it. Adds a bit of urgency to the W.O.O.D. gathering and B.U.R.N. cycle. It's a sunny day and a logger friend dropped by yesterday and gave me a lesson or two. Valuable stuff. He felled one tree that was leaning at least twenty degrees over the pond right back 180 degrees the other way. We have enough felled wood now for the winter and quite a few loads for my friend, Chief Joseph's, sweats. Just have to cut it up and pack it out. Maybe all done today. We've been burning wood in the small living room heater as its been getting to zero℃(32℉) at night and sometimes only 5℃(32℉) during the day. I have been feeling a bit of a twinge in the back. Mostly because I was falling trees the hard way. But I have seen the light: use the back of the blade for the undercuts, as the weight of the chain saw is down. There i...