Home on the Hill

We've had a week of construction type activity around the place. The "Blue" Shed consisted( Fortunately ) of two buildings that looked like they were one unit but were actually two separate buildings. The front part has evolved into the Chicken Spa and soon to be Pig roost. The back of the building had a collapsed roof and only the walls were holding the sagging roof up. We decided to remove the roof to prevent a total collapse at the next snow load, but leave the walls up to provide some shelter to the pen. Tom's excavator has a thumb on it that made crunching up the roof and burying it in a hole for burning when the first snows come. We don't want to set the pastures on fire! The wide scraping bucket also makes a reasonable aerial platform for the inevitable chainsaw work. The Chicken spa got some nice ceder trim we were gifted from my contractor Nephew. The "Red" shed is gong to transmogrify into a one wall green house. It made the march over to ...

Well Garden shed actually. And fortunatly, so far, just parts of it. Something smelly passed under the garden shed and the "Gurls" won't leave it alone. Despite me moving everything so they could have a look underneath and inside, Cleo chomped right through the 1 by six trim work and started shredding the asphalt siding. I told her enough was enough when she asked to borrow the sawzall. "I don't care how many kisses you give me you girls are not borrowing the power tools.." They are totally obsessed with it. It was like the weasel they smelled in the chicken house. Must be some good smelling stuff." Ladies, attract the man of your dreams with Au de Weasel.." The good news is that the trim was't all finished as I have been waiting for warmer weather. ❖ We've added some more asphalt siding to the chicken spa (formerly the blue shed) We didn't have enough of one colour to do the entire side nor enough forsight to balance it out. Bu...

Our truck died. Completely lost compression in a cylinder. Our truck was a 1993 Toyota Four Wheel Drive Truck - that's what it was called, with a 3.0 litre EFI V6 engine. It was replaced once by Toyota because of a well documented problem with a defective head gasket. Several years later it developed the same problem we have now and we replaced the engine. $6000. Four years later we have the same problem. Vehicles. Like boats- just throw money at them. I am adverse to buying anything new - well I can't afford that anyway, but just don't know how much to put into keeping a 17 year old vehicle running. The problem is as a mechanic I make a better electrician. Well it's only 21 klicks to town. Maybe it's time for a mountain bike. Seriously. In the mean time while I am trying to figure out what to do we're trying to get an old Astro Van running that was dropped off here. It's got AWD and two sets of tires, one studded winter and one summer on rims. K...

Yesterday we put down chain link fencing around the bottom of the permanent run. The idea is that it will keep any burrowing criters like foxes and even coyotes from digging under the fencing. Jo-Ann humped a ton or so of rock and placed it against the bottom rail and then I used the skidsteer to cover it with soil from the horse corral. Between the run and the barns was a wooden railed fence area that has long ago returned to Mother Earth. I was told that horses were kept inside with access to the stalled barn. Now it's a major source of rich brown soil that is making it's way to the retired garden and yard planters sprouting up around the place. Looks like a great spot for some truck tires filled with that nutritious soil and flowers that are amenable to East and some South light.. The next part of the project is to install an L.E.D. door light made from a salvaged light fixture at the West door so we can find the place in the dark without using a flashlight I am an inve...

Our friends Mike & Bubba were up for a visit and helped with the next stage of the "get the chikin spa ready and prepare for the Green house" project. There was a pole lean too shed attached to the high side of the red shed. The red shed is destined for the head of the re-tired garden to form a South facing, single walled green house. The trick was to cut the lean two away from the shed shorten it by four feet and transport it a hundred yards or so to form the basis of the outside runs for the Chikin Spa. The part of the Red Shed were looking at here will all be salvaged glass. The other surfaces will be super insulated. More on that later.. It was a neat feeling seeing the shed moving on down the road.. Jo-Ann and Bubba said it was too cold to don skimpy outfits and spread grease over the rollers, ala, the pyramid builders.. I thought they just weren't into the spirit of the thing.. The hardest part was inching it up to the side of the Blue Shed, which contains ...