Home on the Hill

Two of them anyway. What a surprise. The weather was looking a little dark in the West so we spent the day cleaning out the garden, digging up the last of the yard turnips, cabbages, and getting the tires covered for winter. The lettuce, spinach and Chard still holding up in their tire cold frames. Last season the mice got to the parsnips before we did and devoured every one, leaving just the tops - just like that rascally wabit in the cartoons. This year we had plenty of yard patrol with the cats and dogs and that definatly put a damper on the mice's vegetable smorgasbord. We found one little turnip that had been someones lunch but that was the only damage. The moment we brought the last of the produce into the house the skies let loose. The warmth from the fireplace was especially nice that night. We are the most prepared for winter that we have ever been. Garden hoses all brought in. Yard tidied up. Snow dump paths cleared. Chicken runs and tractor all insulated. Even the...

We spent a couple of days with our friends RT & Rhoda, Tommy and Molly in Prince Rupert . Prince Rupert ( called Rupert by the Ruperites) is a seven hour drive along highway 16 to the Pacific ocean to the West. We went from +2500 feet and -7c late fall conditions to sea level where the trees were hardly changing colour. And no bug kill. The coniferous forests are all Spruce, Hemlock, and Ceder and delightfully vibrantly green. We had a clear sunny day until we passed through Terrace when we made a change to grey overcast and rainy coastal weather. 'Rupert is a very funky town. Smaller houses from the War years and earlier. When a family of four lived in under a thousand square feet. Many of them lovingly restored. Some melting away in moss covered disrepair. We want to spend some time doing a photo shoot of the place. RT, Molly and the indifatigable Tommy showed us all the great trails. Some spectacular runs through West Coast rain forest, Ghosts of the old giant cede...

When we got up this morning it was -7c. Time to start scraping the windsheilds. I also decided it was time to "winterize" the chicken "A" frame and run. This year I just covered the A frame with Tyvek. It's tougher than plastic but not as transparent. I may tuc tape some clear windows in. The north side has canvas on it and I will add a couple of inches of insulation before the temperatures drop too far. One more "before it snows" job.

Late last evening, just as we were lugging in the bounty from the re-tired garden, we heard the septic sucker truck crawling up the driveway. Excellent timing as: (a) The tank was full to over flowing and (b) Today it's raining cats and dogs. A couple of phrases you don't want to hear from your friendly sucking service: (1) "This is the worst one I have ever seen." and (2) " We'll see if I can get it out- I just don't know.."Fortunatly, with the help of our rather high water pressure, and a couple of dozen flushes, to say nothing of a giant vacuum on a Kenworth truck--it all came out. Right down to bare fiberglass tank. Whew! what a releif. I didn't fancy digging up a full septic tank. Just a shitty situation. One more "before snow" job complete. Earlier, well practically all day, we spent in the garden. Harvesting Spuds, Beets, Kohlrabi, 'Nips and some carrots. We put some lids on tires of Spinach and Chard, which are st...

Yesterday (Saturday Oct, 4) I was in a meeting from 8:AM until about 1PM. A friend of mine and his strapping sons gave me a hand, well actually lots of them, to move a huge commercial type fridge from the Endako hall to our place. It doesn’t work very well as a fridge. The compressor is probably shot but I don’t care about that. I am going to mount it on some pallets outside downstairs under the balcony, and put a light bulb attached to a thermostat in it to keep the temperature around 10C. Then we can use it as a stand up cold storage. It’s about six feet high and a couple of feet deep. I may glue some styrofoam to the sides and top and doors to increase the thermal efficiency, and a pan of water inside should keep the humidity fairly high. I do have warning bells going off about the door seals freezing shut if it gets to -30C but we’ll see. It is a heavy beast, far more than me and Jo-Ann could of handled. I want to get the garden cleared out except for some test patches th...

I have the pipe and conduit installed for the green house and we took a break from that project to get some of the winter wood in. That's what we did yesterday. And a special place in Hell is awarded to people who put nails in trees. This necessitates a lot of this. By the end of the day there was some groaning, and when I got back from a meeting in town it sounded like some one had started a chain saw in the living room. It might have been Jo-Ann flaked out on the couch. Xena doesn't snore that loud. I did manage to catch her in a very restful pose: " When I slick my ears back does it make my butt look skinnier?" It has been unbelievably warm weather here. It got up to 20C (68F) yesterday with a warm wind blowing. Threatening rain, but so far it hasn't come. The wind picked up last night and knocked a bunch of poplar leaves down on the road, and today the temperature plumeted to 5c(41F) with a forecast of rain for the next couple of days. A 15 degree drop ...

Yesterday we started to underground the electrcal and water lines out to the garden close to where the green house is going. Tiny's excavator made short work of that. And then I had to scramble to town to get some more pipe so that I can extend the run. Seeing we were digging the day we day lighted the septic tank. It's true, the grass is always greener over the septic tank. I have been nervous about the tank since we replaced the one at Grandma's as it was newer than the main house. As it turns out tho the tank at the house was fiberglass and looks to be in good shape. However it was full to the brim with grim. We have a call into the local septic sucking service ( you gotta love how that sounds..) That last thing I want in January, when it's -30C, is a plugged up septic system. Of course it took Xena but a few minutes to find the wonderfully odoriferous contents of the septic access clean out and roll all over in it. Gotta love that perfume. " And look ...

My friend, Ken "the Faller Feller", and his wife, Charlene dropped by today to fall a pile of the dead bug wood trees near the upper pond. Nice to see a pro a work. He made it look easy. The wood is very dry and cracked, and some of it is dangerous. Not a great place to be when the high winds are blowing. In a couple of hours we had a great start to the winters wood. Of course the cows had to come rushing over to see what the fuss was. But they ambled away when they noticed we didn't bring any cow treats with us. Xena was with us but got so spooked by the trees crashing down she took off and high tailed it back to the house. You can see the blue stain left behind by the action of the Mountain Pine Beetle . It is actually very nice looking. Some entrepreneurs were making furniture out of it, calling it Denim Pine . Unfortunately this wood is too cracked to make lumber out of but it will burn just fine. A couple more days work and we should be warm all winter. An...

Of course as we approached "Pour Day" the weather got bad. And the road slippery. My concrete anxiety heightened, apparently a common phenomenon to anyone who plays with the stuff . The day before the pour it cleared up a bit and we had a strong West wind which dried everything up greatly. It's only the top couple of hundred feet of driveway, thin on gravel, that poses a problem. It jollied me right up to see the cement truck chunder up the driveway with no apparent problem. My brother Tiny, and his son Conrad, who is a contractor in 'Rupert were on hand and made the job look easy. I had a young, local friend helping - and Jo-Ann say's it looked like he did most of the heavy lifting. Thanks Joal. Boose checking it out no doubt. I keep telling her she is going to have a pretty neat house when its all done. Here's a picture for the relatives: Me, Conrad and Tiny. The grinning means the pour was done. The pour itself only took about an hour. Finishing, ...

We had a hard frost last night and the tops of the Roma tomato plants were looking a little sad so we decided to do a bit of harvesting. Look at the size of this turnip. Jo-Ann's big discovery today was that fresh from the dirt turnips, cut into french fry size, are a delicious snack food. Who need Jicama. We still have about four tires of turnips left to do so should be pretty well setup for a while. We also have a couple of tires of beets and eight tires of spuds. If I can squeeze some time in after the garage pour I am going to build a cold storage room in the basement. That of course, will entail moving about a thousand boxes of vitally important stuff. That if some one were to steal away with it all, I would not have a clue what the heck was missing. Some kinda lesson there. Were getting excited about the pour Friday. The concrete people phoned and confirmed a date. I ordered way to much cement but tomorrow I might make some molds for concrete patio slabs. Always handy...

As usual my estimating skills need a lot of improvement. It took me all day to get the ground leveled and the rebar and wire mesh in place. I sprinkled water on the gravel and then packed it for about an hour. Then the plastic went down. Of course the side walk superintendents were in attendance. Xena:( to Boose) " Your sure your going to like to sleep on this plasticy stuff? I get to sleep on the big bed.." Jo took pity on my groaning and decided to give me a hand bending iron and cutting tie wires, and answering the question" what did I do with the sledge hammer?" Finally we got to sit back and admire the handiwork. We are a couple of pieces of rebar short and will pick some up today to complete tieing the mesh to the rebar and finish the apron at the door way.

Tom brought his fancy, self leveling, laser up and we used it to level the grade of the garage before we install re bar and wire mesh. I am putting in nails to mark the level line produced by the laser. Bit of a trick trying to get the base uniformly flat. Fortunatly Tom had his skidsteer which is a lot more powerful than our old Case. I have use of a tamper to flatten it out and it sure makes a solid base. Today I will play with getting it a bit deeper and add plastic and pressure treated 2 X 6's around the perimeter. Then bend some rebar and install the wire mesh. We are going to pour next Friday. The side door is ready to go in but it will have to wait for framing which will happen after the floor is poured. If I manage to get all that done today I will be thinking about making some cold storage to house the crop of root-a-veggies. Or maybe build the door for the ceiling storage area..

But it really works better putting it around the inside of tires to maximize the growing season. Here is how I do it. The first step is to spray the inside of a clean cut truck tire with 3M super 77 contact spray. Then I line the inside with heavy duty tin foil and smooth it out as best I can. I also do the tire lid. It will help reflect light back down onto the plants. The white fabric covering the centre of the tire is agricultural fabric. It lets the light and rain in. I can also use plastic but if you do you have to be very careful not to let the plants burn. Its glued on with acoustic sealant, a messy black stuff that doesn't harden. The reflector " riser " tire gets put over the ones with soil in it and the reflective lid goes on top. I have drip irrigation that waters the plants. The temperature in the tires was close to 33C yesterday. Maybe a little to hot but the average temperature is rapidly falling despite the fall heat wave. I am doing an experiment h...

The frost has been here for a couple of days, not in a row, but twice in the last week and yesterday I took the day off from construction to work in the re-tired garden. We started to harvest some of the Yukon Gold spuds and some Chantenay carrots. As you can see from the pricture below the Cows are back. These belong to our neighbor who is pasturing them here. The Read's never bothered pasturing their herd here this year so the grass is pretty high. I was up in the upper feild behind the pond and the grass was over my head when I was sitting on an ATV. Great harvest of spuds. Now to get the cold storage happening. We are putting aluminized tires( next post) over some of the crops in order to extract the last of the seasons sunshine. As we harvest the spuds we are getting the tire garden ready for a fall planting of fall rye, a cover crop that we will dig under come gardening season again in the spring. Well, with the set up we have a little earlier - Say late April. I am addi...

A friend who is a heavy duty mechanic showed up yesterday to do an oil change in the Drott Skid shovel. It froze up a winter ago because it had water in the transmission oil. We drained it and flushed it out several times before filling it with new oil. We also changed the oil in the final drives, one of them practically empty. Just bad maintenance. Up and running trying to get that oil circulating. This machine can move a lot of snow. Or gravel. Or the clay mountains at the ends of the tire garden. Not that we put it out to pasture, like it looks in this pic, but really it didn't have to be right next to the house. It's not like some one is going to steal it away in the dead of night. I think we are starting to realize that we have enough land that we don't have to keep everything within fifty feet of the house. The nearest neighbor is a couple of kilometers away and were not exactly crowding the fence line. I want to get the area clear of heavy equipment and put a...

Xena: " C'mon Dad, leave that mouse alone and let's go play outside.." Ewe: " Mouse? Where's the mouse?.." Dad: " Guess I will go and smooth the driveway, we have company coming..."

As part of this dream of mine to grow a lot of, or all of our food, we planted a couple of apple trees and a cherry. Amazing to me the apple trees actually bore fruit. I am going to have to get them off pretty soon before they start attracting bears. They are busy now frantically stuffing as much calories in them as they can before the winter hibernate. On another completely different note, I recently got a shock when I heard about the practice of Gold Farming . Nothing to do with growing anything you can eat. It's a huge industry that provides virtual items to online gamers. The "Gold Farmers" were mostly Chinese but have now farmed out work to the Vietnamese. Lower costs. Hard to wrap my head around this one. Wait, it all would be in my head. I sometimes get the feeling that online gaming, virtual reality, is the coming of the "Hollodeck". The down side to that is: if it becomes a "reality" the imaginary would subsume reality. We can buy imagi...