Home on the Hill

This time it means that the garden shed project is complete to lockup stage. This project just seemed to carry on and on. Still trim to put up, items to move in. The trim and deck will just wait until spring. Moving in can happen anytime I get the inclination and other projects don't increase in priority. The last thing was waiting while the paint dried. Actually it wasn't paint but some new-fangled water born stain. Seems oil based stains are now phased out in our area and only water based stains are available. I put four coats of stain over two coats of primer sealer and it still could use some more. The instructions demand a 12 hour drying time before recoating. It sure doesn't cover like the solid oil based stains I am used to. Reminds me of a Hank Hill episode where he gets his dander up about low flush toilets - that actually took six times as much water to work. Speaking of priorities. I was a long time proponent of classical project management. Prioriti...

We've cleaned out the yard so that I have plenty of room to stockpile snow at the Western edge of the house fence line. That should help the run off come spring. We don't want the water sluicing down the road where the house is, and the new gravel is laid. We cut a berm and ditch all around the North end of the House fence and that should divert all the water from the hill that is North of the house. In order to keep the parking area as un cluttered as possible we moved the Boler between the Shop and Garden shed. Tucked away out of the snow plow line. For those that have never heard of a Boler, they are a '70's era fiberglass travel trailer that were transmogrified from septic tank. We spent months at a time camping in ours. The last two years we were at the coast we spent every weekend in the Boler, rain or shine snow or whatever. We once spent a long weekend on a sandbar near Agassiz with a strong wind and -20 temperatures. The train would honk at us, the eng...

Managed to get the skidsteer up and running ( wire pulled out of coil connector) and got the gravel spread -- just before the Northern version of the Pine Apple express hit. When I went to start up the beast to put chains on and bolt on the snow plow it refused. I guess it worked enough spreading the gravel so it wasn't ready for the next event. Whatever the case - I re fueled and put it on a charger. I will get to try and coax it to life again today. And remind myself that yelling at in-animate objects rarely achieves the desired outcomes. It's just a bafflement to me: Everything is running fine, turn machine off, refuses to start. Of course it could have something to do with the choke, I haven't been able to figure out how to set it up correctly. A well, after talking gently to it and with a modicum a of pleading, and unplugging and plugging all the spark plug connectors it did fire up and I was able to get the joint plowed. The Snow Plow went by on Savory so ...

Well, twenty cubic yards anyway. About two yards or so per load. Hopefully I won't have to spread it by hand. Yesterday I got a phone call and an offer of twenty yards of crushed gravel, a truck and a dumping trailer to haul it. Woo Hoo! It will certainly be nice, come the Spring melt, not to have to slog through mud at our entrance. There should be enough to cover the entire front yard. Great upgrade. The trick is that I have to get the Skid steer running. It crapped out yesterday, just after we changed from the bucket to forks. Just before we got the phone call and offer of free crushed gravel. I think it's an electrical problem so I will need to call in the electrician. Wait, I are one. It looks like it's going to snow again so I have a certain impetus to get it done soon. Hence the short post. On the Garden shed front, progress is being made. Windows are in, wall covering on, some trim has been applied, shelves built and tools put away. The door is still in...

Progress is progressing on the Garden shed front. Some friends of ours from the Coast have arrived and while the "women folk" are involved in a " Stitch and Bitch " vigil we're outside getting the shed covered and ready for some trim that we've painted in the shop. And installing windows. Oh and falling trees and other fun stuff. We are making sure any of the dead pine that is in danger of falling on our driveway is no longer a concern. The white blobs in the picture is some snow that, thankfully, didn't stick. This is someone, who for anonymity purposes-cannot be identified- taking an outside stitching break from the inside stitching sessions. In summer it would be called, " taking a Bubba" Wonderful weather. The snow is scheduled to begin this afternoon - hopefully I can get the door on the shed in the next little while. Hope your life is keeping you in stitches. The fun kind! Not like my friend Carol's Kitty Kat .

According to my Dr. After a recent physical he proclaimed that I had the blood pressure of a 17 year old. That's a big difference from five years ago when I was warned to lower my blood pressure or go on medicine that would do it for me. I'm a big fan of doing what I can to get healthy without the use of drugs. I've lost a lot of weight, exercise regularly and we are eating as well as we can with our own veggies and local beef. Soon local chicken. Nice to see that it pays off. I have been making some progress on the Garden shed project. Hopefully, tomorrow, I can get all the siding on and the tarpaper and siding. One thing I know about my carpentry skills: My cutting is way better than my measuring.. I have been cutting sheets of plywood to fit the top part of the shed which has a barn style roof and several beams that stick out. And of course nothing is ever truly square, plumb or level. And somehow my perfectionism raises its non-useful head and tells me it ha...

We've been working in between snow storms. The last one had me deciding to raise the priority on getting the studded snow tires on the Toyota, and the chains in the trunk. Also time to get the chains on the skidsteer. I went to town after about a foot of it had come down, prior to the snow plows making it down Savory road and it was touch and go with the all seasons on. Even tho they were relativly new, lots of tread, and I was in four by four mode. We managed to dig out the last of the carrots which are now safely ensconced in sand filled rubber made containers in the cold storage fridge. We also dug out the parsnips, nothing to write home about there, but enough to sweeten up some winter time stews. Sweet potatoes were a bust - we simply planted them too late and left them in the ground too long. They like heat, and they weren't getting enough. We had some small ones but the cold had turned them to mush. Back to Rutabagas next year. The tires are ready for next spring,...

Nice to have a heated dry place to do some painting. This time of year painting outside is impossible. Well except for some very specialized paints that go for big bucks. The kind you can paint an ice cube with.. This is the four foot door and frame going into the shop for refurbishing. Some sanding, wood fill, glue, primer and paint and it will be a thing of beauty. And weather tight too. Warning - Geek Speak ahead.. Spent yesterday working on computers. Getting Fedora 11 to run on Jo's lap top, as we were having trouble with a Beta version of Ubuntu 9.10 and integrated Intel drivers. We also tried out Mepis 8.0 - very impressive, but we aren't used to the KDE interface. Will try Ubi again after it's released to the wild this Thursday. It's speed is very impressive. Also spent an hour killing off a Smitfraud variant on a paniced friends computer. For the third time. There must be a special place in hell for virus creators. Really it boggles the mind. ...

I've spent about four days sitting and writhing in pain with an infection. The first two days I was trying my first form of defense which is denial. The next two days I was trying all the homeopathic remedies I came across Aspirin and Robax to no avail. I couldn't get to a Dr. readily because there isn't one available on the weekends. Finally got to the Dr. on Monday. Full of trepidation of course: hadn't been to one here since I arrived four years ago, probably have to wait for days for an appointment. My Brain is decidedly not my friend. Twenty minutes of waiting I was introduced to a Dr. that came highly recommended by my friends. He was very interested in my health program and plans for the winter. He's a runner and cross country skiing enthusiast. He recommended it as part of a winter cardio program as running outdoors gets rather difficult and the treadmill is just an approximation. I asked about training and he said he didn't know of any but t...

As were now looking at the next half year of winter conditions we decided to get a treadmill to help when we don't feel like putting snow shoes on to get some cardio. We did a bunch of research, but stumbled on this one at Crappy Tire for a 1000$ off. Once again we found that it is impossible to follow directions - because they don't match the reality of what's in the box. Fortunately it wasn't brain surgery and we had help from Xena and the Katz. What wasn't in the instructions was how to change the display from Miles to Kilometres, which was strange when you think that Canada is a metric country. A call to customer support who provided some decidedly non-intuitive instructions, something like: Stand on one leg, turn the speed button up while simultaneously pressing the mode button, while whistling "whisky disky doo", change to engineering mode ( thank God I used to work for an engineering department!) and change to mode 93, and voila, it now speaks...

This morning we woke up to -14℃(6.8℉) and a dusting of snow. Time to get a few more loads of wood for the sweat lodge and get the yard in shape for the serious snows to follow. And the chickens bedded down. And the equipment storage shed started. It must be getting to that time, Jo-Ann fired up the big furnace downstairs yesterday, and this morning both the upstairs heater and furnace are going. I guess were just not used to it yet. No panic. No pressure. Still right now I could use about three of me around here. What to wear on today's walk? Time to drag out the snow boots.

This is the finish of the Endako 5K run. Right at the 550 kilometre mark on Highway 16. I couldn't get a victory picture because I was first to cross the finish line and had to get the camera out of the car to capture the other contestants victory lunge. It turns out that the race was so rigorous there was only two contestants, Jo-Ann and myself. So it is a small victory that I placed first in the 59 year old overweight male category with a time of 31:39:11. I have done 5k's faster but they were on a track. I trimmed down 37 pounds for this race and plan on losing another 40 lbs for the 10k event. Who wants to run with an extra 80 lbs on their butt. Not me. Just too lazy. I am really proud of Jo-Ann who placed first in the ladies event, even tho this was her first 5k run this decade. Speaking of Shedding, work progresses on the garden shed. I have O.S.B. up on all the walls and the front is roughed in for the four foot door from the salvage pile. That's not a ...

Yard clean up progresses. We need a place to store all our garden tools, hoses, pots and bags of peat. We were using the "storage shed" but its on the other side of the yard. Last year we lugged an odd shaped eight by eight foot barn roof shed up and it languished in a field. I really was at a loss about what to do with it. The winds had torn the sheet metal on the roof, the Luan siding was being shredded by the wind, everything was put on with one inch shingle nails. Not very pretty. And then it struck me during our morning walk up the driveway. I wonder if the skidsteer could inch it over to an eight by eight foot pad I had built for a tire composter. It would be a great foundation. Indeed it would. The move went wonderfully easy as the shed had six by six inch skids on it. I screwed the roofing tin down with a couple of hundred proper rubber washered roofing screws. It isn't pretty but it is sure secure. The Winter winds won't move it. I had a skid of O.S...

The winter wood is in. Always a fall milestone. There is a certain sense of ease and comfort that come with knowing the woodlot is full. Our freezers, too, are jammed with local beef and the bounty from the garden is filling my external stand up cold storage unit. It's a salvaged commercial stand-up cooler that sits just outside our basement, that I super insulated with foam and use a thermostatically controlled bathroom fan to pump warm air from our basement into the unit when it gets below freezing. Right now it is -3℃(26.6℉). Were putting the garden to bed. All the vegies are in except for Carrots, Parsnips, and Sweet Potatoes. We've added double plastic covers to them to squeeze the last out of the growing season. We're still getting 21 degrees in those tires. We got a pretty good load of Roma Tomatoes. We've been eating fried green tomatoes and I will attempt my first canning adventure to try and put away some Green Tomato Relish. This week we are getting the ...

We've been waiting for our first snow warning. It came this morning, across the valley and a few hundred meters higher. Probably a week or so before we get it. Adds a bit of urgency to the W.O.O.D. gathering and B.U.R.N. cycle. It's a sunny day and a logger friend dropped by yesterday and gave me a lesson or two. Valuable stuff. He felled one tree that was leaning at least twenty degrees over the pond right back 180 degrees the other way. We have enough felled wood now for the winter and quite a few loads for my friend, Chief Joseph's, sweats. Just have to cut it up and pack it out. Maybe all done today. We've been burning wood in the small living room heater as its been getting to zero℃(32℉) at night and sometimes only 5℃(32℉) during the day. I have been feeling a bit of a twinge in the back. Mostly because I was falling trees the hard way. But I have seen the light: use the back of the blade for the undercuts, as the weight of the chain saw is down. There i...

That's the latest buzz word around here. Seems some forward thinkers have been pondering what to do with the Bug Killed Pine which covers 80% of the provinces mature pine forests. Why not grind it all up and turn it into BioFuel. I am not sure how I feel about that. I think it just lets us prop up the Auto industry which needs to be put out of its misery. In this day and age we can only use so many buggy whips. On the other hand that just may be a poor analogy. Maybe we need more. I love the techno-babble and politics that go with the crisis. Government propaganda at selected road side sites proclaim how the bug kill is a "natural occurring phenomenon", that couldn't have been prevented. Of course planting huge tracts of the same species, because that's what industry wanted, and not burning the outbreak when it first occurred in Tweedsmuir park - because we didn't want to upset the tree huggers. Let's not talk about that. We don't even burn wo...

A comment popped out of my brain this morning and bounced around the kitchen table. One of those things that after they are said my brain goes: "DOH..did that come out of my mouth." What I said was: " You know it dawned on me that advertising is only talking to my ego." Well duh. Jo-Ann pointed out that's why it doesn't have to be real or even make any logical sense. It can be blatantly false, totally unrealistic but wholly effective. If that's the kind of food my ego eats I think I had better get on a different diet. We've put off the wood gathering venture for today as its pouring rain. This mornings walk down to Savory road will be using 'brollies. And then a cat door in the shop, and the installation of two six volt, deep cycle, gel cells in the Boler. Yesterday we paused the wood gathering to take a refreshing "Barb". Sounds vaguely Australian. But it isn't. We named the practice after a friend of ours who enjoyed li...

Ah, I just couldn't resist. My Auntie gave me four Gem Squash and we just had to try them. We had some winter squash with yesterday's supper. Sweet and flavorful. It got me to thinking about pumpkins. Why is it that we always serve pumpkins with sugar and allspice? It's a squash isn't it. Haven't done any research on the topic but if you have a favorite, vegetable rendering recipe that doesn't include sugar or allspice, for pumpkin I would like to hear it. I was thinking of the thousands of pumpkins that lay rotting in the fields in the lush lower mainland right after Halloween. Today we are continuing with getting in the winter's wood. I have a new chain saw filing jig I want to try out before I start falling more of the Beetle killed pine. I want to get the rest of the fir piled near the basement split up so the dogs can rest easy knowing the resident Pack Rat has one less place to hide. You would think it would get the hint.. God I am so gratef...

Well not quite. Still have my Sweetie Pie, six cats, two dogs, eight chickens and a stray pack rat which is driving the dogs to distraction. Yet it feels wonderfully alone. I just spent 5000 kilometers on a road trip with a couple of 80 year olds. A very interesting experience. Got to learn a little more about my family's history. I find it fascinating to listen to people who have lived through the depression and dirty thirty's. An Economic down turn wasn't not being able to afford a big screen T.V. but not being able to afford food. Downsizing wasn't moving to a condo but a granary. Not that I wish that experience on anybody-- but I think it placed them in good stead for today's "economic down turn". They grow veggies and flowers, make nourishing soups and live a self sufficient life that they share with others. I think they should put a college course on. My generation, and our thirty-somethings who are back living at Mom and Dad's could lea...

Well in our case, about six cords. My friend Barb (Bubba) Started to stack the outside wall that will keep the snow off of the pile that will go inside. We're starting to get the winters wood in before the snow flies. Which usually is the end of October. With the help of the skid steer loader and all the dried standing bug killed pine it should only take us a couple of days. We have been building running/snowshoeing trails around the perimeter fence lines. This run is on the West fence line. We've chainsawed all the bigger saplings, followed up with several runs with pruners, and the next job will be to take a swing saw down and clear all the brambles and saskatoon bushes for a couple of feet on either side of the trail. This part of the trail is called "Butt Cruncher Hill", a name coined by R.T. in Prince Rupert for a great hill just in front of his ocean view. What looks like the top isn't. It's still about a half a click away. The Aspen is starting ...