Home on the Hill

It turns out the answer to that is 17 1/2 cords. Probably enough to see four fires through the winter.  Some of them don't take much wood.  Loading it and delivering it to the house is fast. It's the stacking that takes time. All the wood isn't going to fit under cover so some will just get stacked and covered with a tarp.  Next years Project list includes extending a shed roof under the veranda so it's all under cover.  A few brisk days with overnight temps approaching freezing  have added some impetus to the effort.  We have had snow on the mountains across the valley by this time.  It is not far away.  There is a certain sense of ease and comfort in knowing this winter's wood project is coming to an end.  Just in time because the electric furnace has been running, on and off, for quite some weeks now to take the morning chill off or warm up the evenings watch infront of the idiot box. Here's the result of trying ...

The sunshine holds, barring several hours lost for trips to Burns Lake for chain saw parts, the Winter Wood project continues. After a new bar and a couple of back up chains we were back up at the pond. Using the skidsteer to drag the logs out to a flat spot for limbing and then "chomping" the logs, moving them to a cutting area where they are held up at an easy cutting height has certainly increased the productivity of the process. One problem we didn't realize we would have is the cows, and their insatiable curiosity. We have to be extremely cautious when falling.  Some of the younger calves follow the logs as they are skidded out.  Jo-Ann is not only in charge of the skidding operation but shooing the cows away. Another couple of days or so and Winter warmth is ours.

Yesterday we started the Winter Wood Project.  Gathering the 14 or 15 cords of wood we will need to get us through the winter.  Last winter like others around here we ended up logging in the snow.  Not the most efficient way to get fire wood.  We have about 30 acres or more of dry, bug killed pine at the North end of the property.  Perfect firewood.  This year we have mechanized the process.  I whack down a pile of trees and Jo-Ann skids them and me out to a landing where she uses the skid-steer's 4 in 1 bucket to grab the trees and lift them up to a comfortable height for a guy with a recovering back to whack them up into blocks.  Way easier than bending over to cut.  The chain lasts a lot longer as it is less likely to touch the ground.  Then she pushes the blocks up into a pile awaiting loading, again via skid-steer, into a dumping trailer for the trip back to the house. The weather is very cool....

Spent the last couple of days, slithering in the mud, inhaling fiberglass particles, getting covered with rusty leaking water, and trying not to catch a house on fire.  Yep, you guessed it.  I'm plumbing.  Nasty job. We think Grandmas has been sitting cold for at least Six or Seven years. Not properly drained, the occasional -30 weather split copper pipes and wrecked a lot of the plumbing. It doesn't look like it was ever done to proper standards in the first place.  Hugyballed.  Poly pipe clamped to copper.  The soldered joints all look like this: And these are some of the better ones.  The elbows seem to split.  And of course the risers.  The 1/2 inch copper lines entering the wall ( which is actually the floor) have all split inside the walls. Thank God for the guy who invented PEX conduit.   Replacing copper and lead solder is pretty easy.  Except for where the connections have to be made where my long handled PEX plier...

We just got our connection to the WWW back.  Our wireless modem had bit the dust and we just replaced it.  Nice to be able to get to the google plex via the kitchen table.  Connecting from the office via cable and radio to a mountain 17 kilometers away just seems like, well, working.  From the kitchen table it's more like the before breakfast or during lunch break. Like most projects putting up the acre of pig pasture fence took a lot longer than I originally anticipated. The Forman was constantly in my face:  Some of my co-workers spent a lot of time napping on company time.  Fortunately company showed up and was immediately pressed into service. This fellow doesn't live very far away, but right now seems more interested in gleaning the remnants of a poor Saskatoon berry crop in preparation for the Winter nap. A lot of wire, but so far no bears have made it in or pigs out.. Some dogs and a cat or two have had a rude s...

What every Porcine enthusiast needs.  Compliments of my Son in Law.. New posts are indeed going in.  About enough for an acre.  With the advent of more pigs we want to get them out to pasture.  To frolic in the sunshine ( as if..) wallow in the pig wallow, eat the lusious grasses.  Root the Rooties.  We are also thinking of using the unused horse barn to shelter an increased herd as we are hoping our Yorkshire gilt and one of the Berkshire / wild boar crosses can work their magic.  A nice addition to the barn will be water and power & light and perhaps heat.  A later project. But first things first, I need to keep the pigs inside the one acre lot and the bears outside.  Not to mention the occasional cougar.  So we're surrounding the place with a five wire barb wire and five wire electric fence.  Yup, that's ten strands in all.  Two electric strands on the inside, three on the outside with the  five barbwire st...

I know, I've heard it before, bet you have too.  Water runs downhill.  So last year when we cleaned out the yard cattle guard and put in a draining culvert I could have been a bit more particular about the grades of the pipes.  Alas.  The ditch under the cattle guard was four feet deep and by this spring had filled up with sand it had stolen from the driveways.  That gave the grass something to grow on and the cattle illusion of falling into a deep dark hole was no longer evident as a few of the more acrobatic Cows and calves made their way across to the obviously green grass of the yard.  Usually at four in the morning, and of course they noisily want to bellow their great achievement and encourage their more timid com-padres. Fortunately with an excavator nearby, and brother Tom as operator, we managed to dig it all out, put in a new sixty foot drainage culvert, properly sloped. I was working in a stupor as a result of picking up a nasty bug on a Das...

If I could only remember what it was!  The Rhode Island Reds are coming along wonderfully.  Just about all feathered out.  Hopefully they will be able to go outside soon.  On a warm day we've opened the door but they only venture out about a foot and then back into the hen house. I changed the plumbing around so they can use the automatic font and added a line so we can get water outside for a chicken bath, drip irrigation to the spinach patch and a future water line to the horse barn.  Which will soon hold pigs.  Well at least the back portion of it.  We are constructing a fence line so the pigs can get out to pasture. It will be  about an Acre in size all told, minus the Barn the back of which is in the picture.   It will be a permanent fence, five barbed wires and three electric lines.  On both sides of the fence.  We have to keep bears and coyotes out as well as pigs in.  Brother Tom's skid-steer has a...

We managed to get most of the garden planted yesterday before the rain started.  Hopefully it will clear up today as I have an unending list of outside projects to do. The bugs are back.  While we were fiddling in the garden they descended in hoards.  Jo-Ann finally had to resort to the protection of a bug suit.  She went buggy. Facebook Sucks Warning:  Rant Ahead Mind you I've gone buggy.  Facebook has finally broken the last straw.  Applications that I cannot stop popping up.  Just Rude.  Makes me wonder what the whole purpose is.  An illusion of being in contact with "friends".  I really don't find Farmville or any of the apps anything more than time wasters.  Diversions?  Diversions from what? I tried to get rid of my Facebook account by using some online applications to do it.  Of course FB has a cease and desist order against them... That's enough.  How is it we've managed to se...