Home on the Hill

We've come out of  two week stretch of -20.  Today it's sun and just below freezing.  A good day for unthawing the skid steer.  I have some drive problems with it and want to get it into the heated garage to work on it.  When I tried to move it the left hand side was frozen solid.  Time to bundle it up, stick on a magnet block heater, plug in a circulating block heater, battery charger and ceramic heater. Today it's very warm.  If I can't move it I will have to resort to an old cold weather trick.  Placing a stove pipe under the oil pan and using  a tiger torch to help thaw it out.  A tiger torch for those who don't know is basically a propane blow torch.  If that doesn't work it will sit until spring - which will make plowing out the driveway dependent on Brother Tom's skid-steer availability. We've been enjoying tomatoes and cucumbers from the green house.  What a delicious thrill!  On a  sad note o...

 The green house makes a nice hang out in the winter storms.  Looks down right cozy at times.  We're harvesting cucumbers and tomatoes now.  Complete with herbs, like Savory and Basil. Winter brings some wonderful sunrises. Hope your having a fun, warm week.

It's winter.  It takes some adjusting.  Time to get the long johns out, find all the missing mittens, snow boots and scarfs.  Get the equipment up to winter requirements.  Oh wait, isn't that last part supposed to happen before winter really sets in. Last night I did something so stupid I can't believe I did it.  Denial being my first form of defense.  Our Trusty 4X4 Toyota is down for an engine replacement.  We had to pick up some freezer stock from a butcher yesterday.  Of course it was -20C and over a foot of snow.  He warned us that he wasn't plowed out yet so we had better bring a 4 wheel drive.  Our 16 year old Ford Aero Star van is AWD and has great studded snow tires - but it only has a summer thermostat.  Useless in this cold.  Of course the first thing was to charge the batteries, and then we were off to Pick up the meat - the sun was out so it wasn't too bad.  But we were running late so we turned ar...

It was -17℃ this morning.  We're in a white out snow storm and it's starting to build.  Of course I don't have the skid-steer running or plow attached.  I've put that off a day or so too long.  Ah Winter! I am busy right now painting a friends house in the valley and refinishing the kitchen cabinets, so that they can move in.  Brother Tom is drywalling and mudding part of the place so I have to paint around that which tends to slow the process up a bit. Hopefully I will finish that up in a couple of three days and get back to doing some work around here.  Like get the skid-steer in the garage. Time to update the blog pics.  There's nothing green around here anymore.  I do enjoy the winter as much as I like to complain about it.  Even this snowstorm is peaceful, quiet. It gives me some time for reflection.  Remind me of that come February when I've had enough will you.  My secret weapon for this winter is ha...

I got home yesterday from a quick visit down to the Coast to hold my new granddaughter.  One of the jobs on the before it snows list was  ☑ Change to Winter Tires.  Seems like there's always one job at least I didn't get done. As we were doubtful about the reliability of any of our vehicles my Sister in Law lent me her newer snow studded tire equipped front wheel drive car for the trip.  I had swapped her mine while I was away.  The one with out the snow tires.. Today I dropped her car off and picked up mine.  Having to travel through six inches of snow on Savory road to get it to her should have got me thinking... but no.  Nary a thought as we swapped vehicles. With Jo-Ann in the car being very quiet we managed to negotiate the place where the sun doesn't shine on Savory road up our driveway - until the right angled bend.  After a few attempts including trying to back up I had to admit defeat and we ended up wa...