New Forum! And a general catch-up :)

Let's get the big news out of the way:

The forum is up!!!!!  Yaaaaaaay!!!!!!  A huge thanks to everyone that provided feedback and support, namely Cam, Tessa and Matt, Jillian, Lesley and Nicole.

You can access the new forum here:  http://bcfarmers.proboards.com/  I'll be putting a permanent link to it somewhere on the blog.

In other news:

Last Saturday Zim and I went for a wander through the bush along the back of the property.  He had come back to the house soaked from the pond, so I figured that if he's already wet, we may as well go check out the stream.  It's up, as expected (and so is the pond), but there doesn't seem to be any danger to the banks or the beaver dam.  I found another fenceline, so we spent a leisurely 45 minutes walking it, and we didn't even reach the other corner of the property!  What we did find, though, were a lot of moose tracks and pellets.  Some looked fairly fresh, so I kept Zim nearby and called out every few minutes "Hellooooooooooooooooo bears and moose!"  I'll be heading back in there sometime in the next few weeks to continue the trek.  After I ventured out, I decided to check the little brush stand to see what was in there now that the grass was still down.  I found half a round bale feeder, some fencing, and other miscellaneous metal, and a sink!  I've wanted to build a mobile washing station for a while so we can wash veggies outside - now that we have a sink (some enamel paint and she'll be good as new!) I can get started.  I also found a few makeshift tables (the kind with the fold-down metal legs) leaning up against the back of the trailer's woodshed, so I'll dig those out and see if I can get some use out of them.

We spent Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings excluding the bats.  This was accomplished by removing the ridge caps on the roof (it's tin), laying down screen and tucking it well under the tops of the tin panels, stapling the overlaps tight, and bolting the caps back on.  And good thing: we had our first mosquitos drift lazily up from the pond on Saturday, and the bats came back at 4 am Tuesday morning when we were 80% done.  I heard the first few scrabbling on the screen, and any that landed after them didn't even bother, so I presume the early landers went out and directed traffic to somewhere else.  Either way, there's been nary a peep or a squeak from the roof, so our exclusion attempt was a success!!!

That being said, I really like the bats and I hope they hang around.  In fact, I like them so much, that I decided they deserved their own house.  So I've been working on that - so far, I have the pieces cut and stained.  Tomorrow I'll attach landscaping wire or chicken wire to the pieces and screw them all together so we can (hopefully) hang it before Jordan goes to work.  I really, really hope the bats move in.  I'll do another post once it's been put together and installed.

We've been discussing what we're going to do with the roof - we had someone come out during the winter who suggested we use high-nitrogen fertilizer to melt the ice dams.  Well, not only did this remove any hope of getting our organic certification directly around the house, it rusted the tin in the places where it sat for a long time.  Between the leaking, the bats, and the rust, we're ready for a new roof.  We had someone come out yesterday and take measurements for a quote, and we have another person coming on Wednesday.  Hopefully it's not too expensive - we want to insulate too, and some of the roof structure is not that great (remember this?) so anything could happen once we pull the tin off and start removing insulation and get our first good look at the structure.  We definitely can't afford a total roof rebuild right now.

Kim introduced me to dehydrated strawberries two days before they went on sale at the grocery store, so I've been dehydrating strawberries like crazy.  They're delicious!

Our seedlings are looking great:

The huge ones are corn.  The centre tray has tomatoes and onions, and the little tray is pumpkins.

And the birds have returned!  When we were doing inspections in June, I noticed this shiny blue-tinged bird raising her young in the birdhouse/feeder right outside the window.  By the time we got possession in July, they had flown the coop (pun intended).  I've been nervously waiting to see if they'd come back, and... they arrived May 2nd!  I quickly got out my bird guides and I was able to identify them as tree swallows.  Fabulous!!  We have about 6 or 8 couples hanging around.  And the pretty little lady (or one of her offspring) is looking to move back in to the feeder:

I was sitting about 7 feet away, with the zoom lens on the camera, when she swooped down to say hello

And we have someone coming out today to locate lines for us.  He can definitely find the underground electrical lines, but the water lines may be more of a challenge if they're plastic pipe instead of copper.  If they are plastic, the only way he can find them is to cut the lines in the well house, thread a metal  line down them, and follow them that way.  We'll see what he says when he gets here....  And once he's done, I'm going to try and repressurize our pressure tank.  It totally didn't work last year, but I spoke with a well company in town and they gave me a few ideas to try.  It would be wonderful to have real water pressure, and it will lessen the burden on the well pump as well (as all of our pressure right now comes directly from the pump - we can tell exactly when the tank is getting low and the pump kicks in).

It's been a very summery week and a half, and we're glad to see the snow piles melting finally!