Chop Wood.
No need to carry water. The water line to the animal shed is thawed and flowing freely. It had frozen in the un insulated wall and thawed when I cut the wall open and added heat tape to the plastic piping. And of course the warmer weather is really helping. It's now hovering around zero and that's practically balmy after this winter.
The increased temperatures mean that we are heating the joint solely with the small living room heater. No need to fire up the huge wood furnace and feed it hefty log parts. The upstairs heater takes smaller split wood.
We have a system. As the heaters in the animal shed and green house take the same type of wood. We can go through quite a lot. Right now we don't have to burn wood in the green house or animal shed. They both have small electric heaters. The green house also has insulating curtains and this morning it was a toasty 26c.
When it gets below -20 we often have both living room heater and the big furnace fired up. That takes two kinds of wood. Large rounds for the big furnace:
and 16 inch split stuff for the smaller heaters.
We cut wood from our own wood lot - all dried, beetle killed pine, and store it under the balcony. A door to the basement provides easy access. We use a small electric wood splitter which means we can cut wood in the comfort of the heated basement. Well, sort of heated, depending on the state of the downstairs furnace. It makes the whole process a lot more comfortable. With two of us doing it we can split a week's worth of wood in no time at all. I load the wood, Jo-Ann pushes the buttons. Well pushes the button, and pulls a lever. Kinda looks like this:
Our first movie part we were a bit nervous..
I have been reading Plant Seed, Pull Weed by Geri Larkin a gardener and Buddhist student and teacher. She draws delightful lessons in life from parallels in gardening. Something I have had on my mind lately. I have grown fascinated by gardening over the last several years. Heartbreaking failures and rewarding successes. And as you might expect I think I have learned more from my failures than successes. Simple things. Paying attention. Doing what is right in front of me. One step at a time: Something Geri refers to as "Small Doin's". Small things can have profound Spiritual significance.
I have been putting off working on my aged Skid-steer which has been slumbering in the heated garage. Probably because the whole rebuild effort seems like too much sometimes. My mechanical skill's just not up to the job. Maybe today I will do some "Small Doin's" that will get it closer to the road again. And liberate my garage/shop. With the skid-steer floating on wood blocks off the floor, sans wheels, there isn't a lot of room around it and stuff has been piling up bit by bit until I am stumbling over tools and parts.
I know the simple answer is to put stuff away after use, but for various reasons - usually momentary expediency - that doesn't happen, and eventually, sooner than later, irrevocably I get bogged down in project detritus. Which makes moving on to the next project problematical. And I have a pretty large project list.
Ah it's a sunny day and sometime during it I will take time to smell the tomatoes and ruffle the lettuce.
Hope your's is going well. And you have time to smell your spiritual tomatoes.
The increased temperatures mean that we are heating the joint solely with the small living room heater. No need to fire up the huge wood furnace and feed it hefty log parts. The upstairs heater takes smaller split wood.
We have a system. As the heaters in the animal shed and green house take the same type of wood. We can go through quite a lot. Right now we don't have to burn wood in the green house or animal shed. They both have small electric heaters. The green house also has insulating curtains and this morning it was a toasty 26c.
When it gets below -20 we often have both living room heater and the big furnace fired up. That takes two kinds of wood. Large rounds for the big furnace:
and 16 inch split stuff for the smaller heaters.
We cut wood from our own wood lot - all dried, beetle killed pine, and store it under the balcony. A door to the basement provides easy access. We use a small electric wood splitter which means we can cut wood in the comfort of the heated basement. Well, sort of heated, depending on the state of the downstairs furnace. It makes the whole process a lot more comfortable. With two of us doing it we can split a week's worth of wood in no time at all. I load the wood, Jo-Ann pushes the buttons. Well pushes the button, and pulls a lever. Kinda looks like this:
Our first movie part we were a bit nervous..
I have been reading Plant Seed, Pull Weed by Geri Larkin a gardener and Buddhist student and teacher. She draws delightful lessons in life from parallels in gardening. Something I have had on my mind lately. I have grown fascinated by gardening over the last several years. Heartbreaking failures and rewarding successes. And as you might expect I think I have learned more from my failures than successes. Simple things. Paying attention. Doing what is right in front of me. One step at a time: Something Geri refers to as "Small Doin's". Small things can have profound Spiritual significance.
I have been putting off working on my aged Skid-steer which has been slumbering in the heated garage. Probably because the whole rebuild effort seems like too much sometimes. My mechanical skill's just not up to the job. Maybe today I will do some "Small Doin's" that will get it closer to the road again. And liberate my garage/shop. With the skid-steer floating on wood blocks off the floor, sans wheels, there isn't a lot of room around it and stuff has been piling up bit by bit until I am stumbling over tools and parts.
I know the simple answer is to put stuff away after use, but for various reasons - usually momentary expediency - that doesn't happen, and eventually, sooner than later, irrevocably I get bogged down in project detritus. Which makes moving on to the next project problematical. And I have a pretty large project list.
Ah it's a sunny day and sometime during it I will take time to smell the tomatoes and ruffle the lettuce.
Hope your's is going well. And you have time to smell your spiritual tomatoes.
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