It's that time again...

Keeping a roof over our heads and our bellies full

Last weekend, Jordan and I took some extra time off from our town jobs to work on the house.  We got a ton of work done!  As we were finishing the sanding, Jordan noticed this sawdust-covered bat between the logs.

It seems like we haven't quite evicted the bats like we thought we had!

After we finished sanding, we used the air compressor to blow off the majority of the sand and sawdust, then we had to wash the house.  As the house is down to bare wood, this seemed to go against our gut instinct to protect the house; we had to mist the logs with the hose, spray on the Log Wash solution, wait five minutes, then spray the house with the hose again.  Just after we had gotten the sandblasting done, I had sprayed the back corner of the house with the hose, and it took four days to dry - we thought washing it would lead to the same results, but luckily the logs dried within 36 hours with no discolouration.

The male half of Team House Washing, with the backpack sprayer

Once the logs were dry, we started filling the checks and then we took the leap and started chinking as well.  It's easier than we thought it would be, and it actually looks pretty good!

It turns out that the chinking is pretty much a one-person job, so Jordan has taken over these last few days and has gotten quite a bit done.  The weather has done a complete reversal on us: after two months of almost no rain, it has now rained every day since Monday.  We've tarped the back deck and are almost done the two walls along that portion of the deck, and the weather was decent the other day so Jordan did the wall with the big window, as that would be difficult to tarp. We'll likely keep that pattern, and work on the exposed walls on nice days while saving the deck-facing walls for rainy days.

While Jordan was working on the house, I took turns either helping him or working in the kitchen.  Over the weekend, I made:

1 dozen pumpkin muffins;

7 250mL (small) jars of pickled beets, and 2 jars of "cloves carrots" (sliced carrots in the brine I had left over from the beets);

5 small and 4 extra-small (125mL) jars of saskatoon jam; 12 small and 5 pint jars of pickled carrots;

and, half a large freezer bag of peas.

The beet recipe is Mom's top-secret recipe from when we were kids; the saskatoon jam recipe is here; and the pickled carrot recipe came from a book titled Put 'em up! by Sherri Brooks Vinton.  The peas were simply blanched, dried, then packed into a bag (I used a straw to suck out as much air as I could) then popped into the freezer. The beets, carrots, peas and saskatoons all came from our property; the fresh dill and fresh garlic were purchased from a local farm at the farmer's market. Jordan helped with the canning too: he pulled and cleaned the beets, shelled the peas, and provided moral support as I laboured in the kitchen.

Our canning equipment consists of an enamel steamer pot (one where the insert is as tall as the pot, so we can't use that pot alone to can anything bigger than the tiny 125mL jars), a large stock pot, and a circular cooling rack. I discovered two different configurations I can use while canning: putting the cake rack in the enamel pot, and the enamel insert in the stock pot, allows me to have two canners on the go; and by using the stock pot and insert, I could can 5 small jars, put the cake rack on top, and put 4 extra small jars on top, which allowed me to can the whole batch of saskatoon jam in one pot.

I have enough saskatoon berries left that I can make another batch of jam.

And, completely off-topic, I found the following book at the library:

Chickens are the closest living relative to Tyrannosaurus Rex, as evidenced by a study analyzing collagen from soft tissues in a T. Rex skeleton.  This study proved that the T. Rex is closer related to chickens and jungle fowl than it is to alligators and crocodiles. That's awesome :D  (That study is behind a paywall for the majority of you, dear readers, unless you click the link using a computer at a public library (you might get access) or a university (you will likely get access).  Here are some links with more info: "Evolutionary history of the chicken," "T. Rex is cousin to modern-day chickens.")

We have more company this weekend, and there's no telling what trouble we'll get in to...

Can you help?

After yesterday's post about some 'unfriendly' visitors, I happened to be outside last night when they started up a chorus.  Can you help me identify these critters?

I think the yipping is a coyote, but I'm not sure about the deeper howl - is that also a coyote?

On a different note, Zim recently had a swollen ear and face, and started vomiting.  We figured that it was an allergic reaction of some kind, but we weren't sure of the cause.  But last night, on the way to visit the chickens, we walked past two trees that had a slight humming around them, and Zim started to dance.  He stomped his feet, jumped around, rolled in the grass, and frantically scratched himself.  Based on this evidence, I suspect he was stung by something, and is allergic to whatever that was.

He's now back to eating small amount of rice, and we'll manage his food quite closely over the next few days.  The swelling has also gone down to the point that it is barely perceptible, and requires much ear and face rubbing to detect.  Luckily, his breathing and bloodflow weren't affected, and he's still just as energetic as always, even though at the time I took this video he'd only eaten 1/4c of rice in over 36 hours.  All in all, he's on the mend.

Visitors

Work continues on the house - Jordan is mostly done sanding, and we should be washing the house by the end of the week.  I've not been much help, unfortunately, as we've had a few visitors lately, which means a few weekends off for me!  (Jordan has some time off coming up, so he'll get his chance to relax as well!)

My friend Steph came up from Ye Olde Stomping Grounds for a weekend in July.  We hit a few of the local parks, played a round of mini golf, made kale chips, and lazed about.  It was a wonderful time, and the timing was great too - we'd had a busy few months, but work on the house was on hold as we waited for the sandblaster, so a weekend off was both needed and permissible.

Waterfalls!!!

This past weekend, some of my extended family came up for a visit - my grandfather, aunt, and a cousin from my mother's side of the family.  We spent Saturday at the farm, generally taking it easy with a game of "guess that tree" (we couldn't identify it, other than that it's a kind of pine), a wander to the berry picking spots (we found some highbush cranberries, discovered that the birds have eaten the rest of the saskatoons, and braved the wild roses to pick some thimbleberries), some lounging on the deck, and finishing with a fabulous dinner outside as the sun set and a fire.  Sunday we ate breakfast at my favourite restaurant, enjoyed a round of mini golf and a few laps around the go-kart track, and had another delicious supper outside.

My Aunt raiding our peas

Dinner!!!

Foghorn behaved very well for my cousin

Giant tires after mini golf and go-karts

Why be 28 when you can be 6?!!

We've also had some not-so-friendly visitors.  We've got a pack of coyotes hanging around, and they're brave enough that they've been out during the day to pick a fight with a neighbouring dog.  As such, the chickens haven't been outside in weeks, as we don't want to risk any getting snatched while our back is turned.  We suspect that the coyotes have one den in the field behind the barn, and another den in the adjacent field to the north.  They start howling around sundown, and we've seen a few wandering between the suspected dens; all of this activity drives Zim crazy so we've been keeping a very close eye on him as well.  Coyotes spend their whole lives scrapping, and I don't think Zim's ever been in an earnest fight in his life, so we don't want to rake any chances.

Also, something took a wander through the garden this past week and ate the tops off the beets.  So it looks like I'm canning this weekend - I'll borrow Kim's pressure canner and hopefully do all the canning inside.  If that doesn't work out, I can move out to the longhouse; it has no running water, but we can plug in the old stove and bring water in buckets from the house.

We also went on a visit last week!  We popped over to see the neighbours and the four of us had a wonderful chat.  They were able to provide us with more history of our farm and our neighbourhood, and send us a few aerial shots of the farm from 2009.  They are pretty fabulous people, and we are so lucky to have such friendly and helpful neighbours!

(c) belongs to our neighbour.  Wish the photo was bigger?  Give it a click!