Home on the Hill

Almost.  Still have to move a camper and truck out of a snow lane.  But close.  I have been re-wiring a house for brother Tom so a bit off schedule.  Not that I am ever "on schedule".  But it progresses.  This was the view from the green house a couple of days ago: Yes, that white stuff is the cold white stuff!  Past experience and a couple of light snow falls, coupled with predictions of a long cold snowy, el Nino, driven winter has added some impetus to the chores.  All the tools are put away.  Hoses coiled and stored in a heated basement - just in case of winter emergencies.  Fuel stocked up.  Chains checked and ready for mounting on the skid steer.  The gardens cleared and tilled.  Missing planting some Garlic. I went to a local Art Knapps, a plant store, a week ago to buy some garlic and a few cold hardy seeds and walked into this:   A whole two months before Christmas.  I just about freaked! ...

There was no trumpeting, just a low rumble.  About a cord of wood or more came spilling out of the space under the veranda.  We were counting on a row of wood placed two years ago to keep a pile of wooden roller bearings in place.  Bad counting.  First one side came down. We moved the errant wood out of the way and added a large pallet to act as a wall.  Moved the wood back.  Everything hunky dory.  Then the second bay came down. Enough.  Trying to do things the short cut way just leads to more work.  Next year we are building an extension to house the winters 16 cords of wood.  This year, with a hard frost on the morning ground, and snow possible at any time,  we will just make do with a bearing wall we can pile the wood up against and then every four feet or so use a cross brace piller to give the pile some strength. The lesson for me is to be aware of the voice that says: "hmmm - that doesn't look right.."  To stic...

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...