2013: Year in review

Look, a Year in Review post that's only a month and a half late!

First, let's look at what we accomplished:

January
(Posts)

- We discovered how much our roof leaked.  We collected lots of water, and we couldn't even get it all.  And that was pretty much all we did in January, because it was so stressful.

February
(Posts)
- We talked to a tin roof guy, who told us why our roof was leaking.  We also talked to a log home guy who encouraged us to fix this house instead of building a new one.
- I bought a serger!  Yay! {I use it quite frequently, and hope to start some larger projects with it soon!}
- We attended our first Seedy Saturday, where we attended a few workshops and picked up seeds for both us and Tessa and Matt.

March
(Posts)
- I posted our plans for 2013. {We'll review those in just a minute.}

April
(Posts)
- I discovered water leaking between the logs due to the amount of ice on the deck, so we took a day or two to try and fix it.
- I made my first trip down to visit Kim's family. {I've been back a few times since then - they're truly wonderful people!}
- I set up our seed starting station, and the cats only managed to attack a few seedlings.
- Tessa, Ellie and I attended our first farm auction! I am still kicking myself for not bidding on the trailer full of buckets and wooden crates.

May
(Posts)

- We released the forum Jordan and I set up for BC farmers. {We've since terribly neglected it - oops!}
- We put screening in the roof in hopes to exclude the bats.  It kind of worked - they hung out on top of the screens under the peak caps instead of in the roof itself.
- I started building a bat house for our insect-eating friends.
- The tree swallows returned!!
- We hired someone to locate the power and phone lines on the property. As the water lines aren't metal, we couldn't find those without cutting them and sliding a metal thingy (that's the technical term) for the locator to track, so that will wait for another day.
- I planted over 100 raspberry canes from Hal and Cathy, and 20+ strawberry plants from my coworker Flossie.  {All but three of the raspberries died, but the strawberries did awesome! I'm looking forward to this year now that they are established.}
- We cut sod for a new garden!

June
(Posts)
- We tilled and planted the new garden.
- We fostered Diamond, a lovely older lab. {She got adopted by a wonderful family and the last I heard, she was doing great!}
- We bought a new lawn tractor!
- We re-skinned the greenhouse.
- I finished the bat house, and Jordan hung it for me.
- I modified a stall in the barn to make a brooder because...
- Our baby chicks arrived!!!!!!!!
- Kim and I took the boys (Zim and Doodle) to the local Dog Expo, where a great time was had by all.

July
(Posts)
- One of our chicks, Chirpy, got sick and died.
- The rest of the chicks grew big enough to be called chickens!
- I had a minor fail when trying to hook up the water in the longhouse.  {This is still incomplete - Dad glanced at it while he was here, but we had bigger fish to fry.}
- The tree swallow chicks hatched - they are ugly!
- I cleaned up the greenhouse in an effort to hang curtains in the office.

August
(Posts)

- We coop-ified an outbuilding and built a run for it.
- Jordan and I enjoyed a day at the local Exhibition with Kim and David, where we watched the draft horse pulls, a pig race, and an agility trial {which planted a seed which has since sprouted}.
- Jordan bought an old car to restore.
- My family came up for a visit and helped us fix and prep the roof.

September
(Posts)
- The chickens started crowing.
- We harvested the garden.
- We went back to Alberta to visit our families.
- The roofing company put the tiles on the roof.

October
(Posts)
- We installed pot lights in the soffits - they look great!
- I posted a video of a crowing cockerel.
- I picked up 20 small bales of hay for the chickens' winter bedding.

November
(Posting fail - my bad!)
- We harvested 11 chickens in two separate sessions.
- I coop-ified a stall in the barn, and moved the chickens into their winter abode.
- We sold 5 chickens to Tessa and Matt.

December
(Posts)

- The hens started laying!
- I started clicker training Zim.
- We got TONS OF SNOW.
- We bought a newer truck!
- Kim and I made a chicken delivery to her grandparents.

With that in mind, how did we do for our goals for 2013?

- Fix the roof: Yes, more or less.  This was a huge project that made it impossible to complete some other things we had planned.  We are incredibly lucky and extremely thankful that my family came up to help with money, time, and effort - we couldn't have completed this without them!  We are finished most of the soffit, and can start the fascia as soon as the soffit is done.
- Fix the bathroom wall: Nope.  But the new roof has stopped the leak behind the wall, so the logs in the bedroom and the office are drying out.
- Chink the house: Also no.
- Replace the root cellar: Nope.  Though I got some good ideas from Hal about retrofitting it for now.
- Grow food: Well, we did cut and plant a new garden.  And we 'grew' chickens.  So I'll count this as a moderate success.
- Move the greenhouse: Nope, but we got it reskinned.
- Green manure the hay field: Ha! Not a chance.  This is so far down the priority list right now, we'll be lucky to get to it in the next 5 years.
- Harvest rainwater: The roof took waaaaaaay longer than expected, so the soffit isn't done, which means the fascia isn't done, which means the eavestroughs aren't up.  We'll work on this in 2014.
- Get chickens: Yup, more or less!  We had hoped to slaughter them all, but alas, we only did 11.  We sold 9, and we have 6 left for eggs and to hatch a new batch of "Dinners" in the spring.
- Fix the vehicles: Well, sorta.  We fixed the oil leak in the car, but now it has a transmission leak.  And we ended up buying a newer truck, as Gertrude (the diesel truck) is getting quite old and is not really worth fixing.
- Replace the well pump and pressure tank: Nope.  We don't know when the well pump was put in - we suspect it may not be the original pump - so we'll focus on replacing the pressure tank and try to keep some cash on hand if the pump goes.  So far, she's going strong!

I think our goals were WAY too ambitious.  We really had no idea how much money and time everything would take.  I was lucky to get every Friday off last summer, which really helped with completing projects, but the roof still ate the whole summer.

Next up: goals for 2014!

Winter is back

I haven't forgotten about you, lovely blog-readers, and I promise I'll be back Sunday with a proper post.

For now, let me describe my morning.

I woke up when the alarm went off at 5:20, and managed to roll out of bed by 5:37.  I start my normal routine: get dressed, gather my phone, wallet and keys, and amble out to the kitchen.  Let the dogs out (we're fostering a pup, Dash - more on that later), grab the cat dishes, and check the outdoor temperature: -26.  Wowzers, that's cold.  I checked the pumphouse temperature (both are remote thermometers): -0.9.  Uh-oh.  The heat lamp is on in there, but obviously it can't keep up when it gets this cold.  Okay.  I'll run the water for a bit and see what happens.

So, I feed the cats, call in the dogs, get them fed, and refresh the water dish.  I do my bathroom thing - hair, teeth, litterbox, etc. - with the cold tap in the bathroom running just a bit.  By the time I make it back out to the kitchen, we have almost no water pressure.  The pumphouse had warmed up to -0.6, but it's now back down at -0.9 again.  Crap.  This is going to require some intervention.

There is an electric space heater in the barn, along with a troublelight I can use as an extension cord.  While I'm heading out, I may as well bring out some warm oatmeal for the chooks.  So I whip up some oatmeal while I pull on my winter 'town' gear - giant blue fleece pants and my good black jacket.  I add a balaclava under my toque and forego the scarf, and get my big gloves.  I dump the oatmeal into a metal pie plate, stuff my feet into my boots, and head out with the dogs.

In the barn, I call the chickens - "Here, chickchickchick!" - and set the pie plate on the ground.  I do a quick count - 4 hens and Foghorn, the roo.  We have a broody hen right now (in this weather?!!) that I have named Phoebe, so I lift and push and jostle her out of the nest box and out to the oatmeal, giving her a quick visual inspection  as I move her.  The others look alright, and I check the temperature; it's a chilly -18.6 on the ledge just outside the coop stall.  This isn't picking up any heat from the composting bedding, and it will only register a bit of the heat lamp's effects, so I call it good and start unhooking the trouble light.  We set it up in the coop stall a few weeks ago as we shoveled the snow off the barn roof - I was concerned that they wouldn't get enough light if the snow covered the window to the stall (which is a very real possibility) so I set up the timer and got the light ready so all I had to do was plug it in if it was needed.  After untangling the cords, I closed the stall door and grabbed the heater on my way back to the house.

The dogs weren't interested in heading inside, so they followed me across the snow to the pumphouse.  We've shoveled out the door a few times now, but some more snow had blown in so I headed back to the deck to grab a shovel.  Zim had started picking up his feet and stopped to lick one along the way, so I tucked both dogs inside and grabbed the shovel.  I moved enough snow to get in to the pumphouse, then got to work trying to warm it up.

I positioned the toublelight cord so it was out of the way, and plugged in the heater.  It didn't seem to be working - it warmed up for a few seconds, but the fan wouldn't turn and after a few minutes I wasn't getting any more heat.  There is an older heater in there already, so I tried plugging that in, with only slightly better results: I have heat, but no fan.  These things are dangerous when the fan stops - the heat doesn't move and ends up melting the heater and can cause fires.  Okay, I'll take the good heater inside and warm it up.  In the mean time, I decide to lower the heat lamp that is currently hanging from a pipe strap that's been nailed to the ceiling.  I take the lamp down, and as I'm tying a piece of wire to the nail it falls out of the ceiling.  Wow.  Now I'm actually starting to get worried - can I fix this and get the pumphouse warm again??

Back in the house, I grab a drill, some screws, some wire (similar to the stuff I rigged the funnels up with) and the tools to cut and twist it.  I double check our heater - it is now warm enough after a few minutes in front of the fireplace, and when I twist the knob, the elements glow and the fan starts to turn.  Awesome!

Back outside, I start phase two of the fix.  I add a 3" screw on the wall above the heater so I can hang the troublelight and keep the cords out of the way.  I plug in the good heater and it still works!  I screw the hose anchor to the ceiling again, and cut a strand of wire to allow me to lower the heat lamp.  After I get that all sorted, I take a minute to survey my work.  As I reposition the batt of fiberglass insulation on top of the pressure tank and adjust the heater's thermostat, I notice that I can no longer see my breath.  I also notice that the pressure in the tank is at 80 psi.  "That's pretty high," I think to myself, but some fiddling with the pump control doesn't help, and I don't know enough about it to troubleshoot or fix it.  But I figure that it's made it this far, it will probably make it through today too.

I make sure the pumphouse door is closed as tight as possible, and head back to the house.  I dump my tools on the deck by the front door and head around the back to ensure the house's heat tape is still plugged in - yes!  I can see the cord plugged in to the outlet - I have to move that this summer - so I start the car to get ready to head in to work.  I take my tools in and check the bathroom tap - the pressure continues to drop.  I run some hot water in the kitchen to make some tea, but I get only a few drops before the water stops.  STOPS.  WE HAVE NO HOT WATER IN THE KITCHEN.  I turn off the tap in the bathroom and check again - nothing.  PANIC!!!!!  The pumphouse thermometer says +8.6 and rising.  I frantically text Jordan: "Our pipes are freezing" and strip off my town gear to get into my farm gear: blue bib ski pants stained with gear oil and a filthy blue jacket.  I switch my toque - no sense getting my nice knitted one dirty - and grab the hair dryer.  My plan is to grab the big extension cord that we use for the vehicles, and somehow crawl under the deck to get under the house and warm up the frozen pipes before they burst.  Our crawlspace is tiny and it's just sand with some strange mold growing on it (yes, it's lovely).  Just before putting on my farm boots, I turn on the hot water tap in the kitchen to allow the water to move as I thaw the pipes - and water comes out.  Fast.  We are back to full pressure!  I check the cold tap - it works!  I check the bathroom taps - they work too!  I sink on to the coffee table and text Jordan "Ok, it's ok, they're good now," which is quickly followed by "Holy shit this is nuts."  I check the pumphouse temperature again: +9.8 and still rising.  Whew!

So, since I've already emailed in late to work, I make my bagel and my tea, gather the rest of my work stuff, and change back into my town gear.  As I head out the door for the final time this morning, the pumphouse is at +11.0 and continues to get warmer.

Now I'm just hoping that it's not a pile of cinders when I get home.


---
As mentioned, there is a proper post coming soon - I have a few great post ideas, but I have a hard time finding the time to actually write and compile them.   This Sunday I'll get to it, I promise!

We're still here, I promise!!!

Wow, two months since the last update - apologies, apologies!!  Yes, we are still busy, keeping up with the changing seasons.  Here's what we've done in the last two months:

Chickens
On November 3rd, we harvested 6 of the cockerels.  We worked through the first one together, and it took us about 45 minutes.  Then we split into an assembly-line - Jordan got stage one (kill and pluck) and I got stage two (gut and clean).  We worked very well together, and I'd definitely call the day a success.  on the 10th, I started prepping a stall in the barn for them to move inside for the winter - first I blocked it off from the brooder stall, then I built a roost, followed by the Cadillac of nest boxes.  The wall on the aisle-side of the stall was only 4' high, with 3' of open space above it, so I put up some chain-link fence to keep the chickens in and the larger predators out (although it would be difficult for anything bigger than a small cat or an ermine to get in that side of the barn anyway).  The chickens moved in around November 17th, and we harvested 5 hens on the 23rd.  We sold another 5 live hens to Matt and Tessa to keep their new Buff Orpington rooster company, so that left us with 2 roosters and 8 hens, and they started laying on December 5th.  We are currently averaging 4 eggs a day, which is pretty darn good considering they are getting waaaaay less than their preferred 14 hours of light a day.  1 roo (YO) and 3 hens will be off on a road trip soon, and we'll keep the remaining rooster (YR, now named Foghorn) and 5 hens to keep us in eggs and hopefully hatch some chicks in the spring.

Clockwise from top left: The new roost; the new awesome nest boxes;the first egg; and, one of the delicious cockerels (Dad named him Crispy).

House
As I mentioned forever ago, we got a new roof this summer.  So far it has been holding up very well.  My only complaint is that the snow keeps sliding off the roof, partly due to our wacky weather (more on that later), and it keeps bending the flashing around the chimney.  It has already been fixed once, and we had more snow slide yesterday, so it may be due to be fixed again after New Year's.  However, that should get sorted out in January, as we just need to get a few snow stoppers installed.  So far, there has not been any water in the house (except for a tiny, tiny bit coming down the outside of the chimney, which is likely related to the aforementioned bent flashing).  Aside from the chimney issue, the sliding snow has been both a blessing and a curse: the weight doesn't stay up on the roof (yay!) but we have to be super diligent about shovelling off the deck, to avoid the leaky logs issue we had last year (boo!).  Plus it's a very noisy process, and it shakes the whole house and wakes me up when it slides at 4 am.

Clockwise again: Jordan and Dad working on the roof; the whole crew out, with Dad and Bob on the roof, Jordan rocking the barbeque, Larysa weatherproofing plywood, and Mom had run to town for supplies; closeup of the new roof; and, the back of the house.

Weather
The snow has been sliding because we got a HUGE amount of snow over the course of 8 days (we had two snowfall warnings, the first dumping 47 cm, and the second depositing just over 15cm.  These values, however, are what the airport got - I'm 100% positive we received waaaaaay more - the first snow left enough that it was over my knees!) and we then got rain.  Then we got more snow, and it has rained for the last two days.  UGH!!!!  The driveway is a mess, the snowbanks are gigantic, and the deck is soaked from the rain.  It will turn to ice when it freezes again, which should be sometime in the next two days, if the Weather Office is correct.  I've heard from multiple people that we've already received 75-80% of our annual snowfall.  Nicola at the Rescue gauges snowfall by the distance from the snowbank to the bottom of the barn's eaves.  Last year, we had a lot of snow by that standard, because the snowbank was touching the eaves and the snow couldn't slide off the roof any more.  This was last March.  When I was there Monday, the snow was already touching the eaves in one spot.  So yes, we've had a lot of snow.

A beautiful sunset from last weekend; heading to work the morning of Dec 24th - it's quite beautiful with fresh snow and no one about; you know it's cold when the kittens are cuddling on top of the fireplace; and, Zim providing a reference for how much snow slid off the roof after the first huge snowstorm - this was after I had tunnelled through to the deck.

Christmas
Merry Christmas, everyone!!!!  I hope you are all healthy and happy, and that you have created some fabulous memories over the last few days.  A few days before Christmas, we bought a new truck - Happy HoHo to us!!!  Our old truck has become increasingly unreliable - Jordan was on his way to work one morning (the morning of the huge snowstorm, actually) when a brake line blew.  He was able to pull into a gas station and call me for a ride, but it set off a chain of horrible events that included the car being temporarily out of commission (popped the belt, again...) and ultimately required me spending the entire day sitting on the bench at the mechanics' and missing work entirely.  The dash lights come on when they feel like it, the steering is loose (in my opinion), and it's a good day when she starts.  Couple this with the fact that the car has almost 300,000 km on her, and we knew we needed a reliable vehicle to get us through the next few years.  Jordan found this truck online, and he'd been drooling over it for a month when we decided "well, let's go see if this is even in the realm of possibility..." and we walked out with a set of keys to a 2011 Ford F-350 gas-fueled 1 ton, crew cab, long box, gigantic truck.  I am happy to report that I drove it and both my nerves and the truck came out unscathed, and that involved backing it out of a driveway in a cul-de-sac, and backing it in to our driveway, missing the concrete lion, the carport, AND the car.  Win!!!  I'm a pretty good driver (one non-fault accident in over 10 years of driving - and the other driver had a suspended license) but I will admit that knowing where my corners are has always been a weak point, so I was tremendously proud of myself to get it in and out of both driveways without touching anything else.

Zim and I had Christmas dinner with David, Kim and her family (and Pongo and Doodle, of course), and it was great food, great people, and a great time all around!  Jordan and I had a fancy dinner last night consisting of homemade vegetable-stuffed cannelloni with After 8s for dessert (which I think is our only Christmas tradition).

NEW TRUCK!!!! :D

Other Odds-n-Ends
I've been crocheting dishcloths like a madwoman - it keeps my mind off the snow.  Today I pulled out the sewing machine and the serger and fixed up some items for Kim, and I'm going to try making a pair of slippers out of an old sweater as soon as I'm done here.  With winter now truly here (we didn't get snow until late November) all I want to do is create cozy things (via crochet and sewing) and bake.  I've managed some baking, making my famous oatmeal cookies for the cookie swap at work and contributing mini eggnog cheesecakes to Christmas dinner.  I'm confident that there's still at least 2 or 3 months of winter, so I have lots of time yet.  A coworker picked me up a pair of snowshoes, but I've barely had time to use them as I've spent some time every day clearing snow (I'm so, so, so sick of snow).  I had hoped to get out last weekend and cut a few boughs to make a wreath like I was taught last year, but the snow clearing got in the way of that plan.  Zim loves it, of course, and continues to jump and "catch" the snow as we shovel.  I've started clicker training Zim in anticipation of an obedience/agility class in January (thanks Kim!!!!!) and for the first few days Zim was terrified of the clicker.  I would click, and he'd get all sad and run away.  I tried to balance introducing him to a new situation without scaring the wits out of him constantly by clicking once, handing him a piece of food, and letting him eat the rest of his meal once he had that first piece.  It's been successful, and in the course of a week we've gone from cowering and running away, to looking at the clicker with interest and responding to requests with minimal nervousness.  Gentle persistence has won :)  I had previously clicker trained Molly, which worked great until she decided she wasn't food motivated any more.  Mander, of course, is incredibly motivated by food, so I started training him this morning.  Luckily, I have two different styles of clicker and they make a slightly different sound, so I can train Zim and Mander independently without getting the other confused.

That's about it.  It's safe to assume that the Year in Review and Goals for Next Year posts will both be slightly late, but I promise to have them up by the end of January.

"Good morning!"

One of our cockerels recently started crowing.  Then another decided to give it a try.  It's been an amusing few weeks of strangled squawks in the morning as I walk to the coop, but they would be very shy as soon as I pulled out my phone to get a video.  However, last week, I was victorious!

And this morning, he finally emitted a complete crow, with both notes at the end!  Good job, chicken!  I'll try to get that on video this weekend.

Of course, that also means that we have to hurry up and harvest the cockerels that we won't be keeping.  They're getting progressively aggressive with each other, and once they reach full maturity their meat gets tough and takes on a different flavour.  We'll give it a try this weekend, once we assemble all the supplies.

And sadly, this fellow is destined for the freezer.  However, I'm confident that YR and YO (the two we will be keeping; one for us, and one for Hal and Cathy) will soon pick up this morning greeting.  They are named based on the legbands they were assigned; I weighed each cockerel a few weeks ago and gave them all a yellow band as I went.  There were three over 5 lbs, who each got an extra band: YB (Yellow Blue) just squeaked over the 5 lb mark by less than an ounce, and YR (Yellow Red) and YO (Yellow Orange) were both over 5 lbs 3 oz.  Going back to my "large chickens make more large chickens" theory, those are the keepers.

This past weekend I also picked up a load of hay for chicken bedding over the winter.  I had hoped to get straw, but as there aren't many grains grown around here, I couldn't find any.  Luckily, Nicola (from the Rescue) has some hay that has too much clover for horses, so she's selling it at the low, low price of $1 per square bale.  There's two reasons this is awesome: 1. That's the cheapest price I've found; and 2. The money goes to the Rescue!  So I took the truck down to where they're being stored, and managed to stack 20 bales in the truck.  I've never stacked hay before, so I studied some stacking schematics the night before.  However, as I loaded the first bale, I noticed a problem: the diagrams were for long-box pickups, and ours is a standard box.  Hmmmm.......  Some quick refiguring and I was picking, tossing, and stacking again.  In the end, 20 bales is a fairly respectable number (I could have fit two more bales if I'd had longer straps!) and I made it home without any of my load shifting, loosening, or falling.  SUCCESS!!!!  To anyone who does this regularly, I'm sure you're thinking "Look, it's an ignorant city girl trying to hack it, how cute!" but I'm mighty proud of myself.

And Zim enjoyed the opportunity to jump and climb and sniff all the bales:

And of course, he had to inspect my work when it was done:

Apologies for the terrible lighting in our barn!

Now, for a bit of back-story:  Two years ago, we lived just down the road from the Rescue.  One fall day I got a text from Nicola, asking if I was able to come help stack bales.  At the time, I was having problems with my wrists (an old work-related injury) so I knew I wouldn't be any help.  However, it gave me a goal: get enough strength so I could help with haying.  This year, I have been thrice successful in meeting that goal: we helped Matt and Tessa get their hay in, then I spent an evening helping Nicola, and now I've loaded and unloaded a stack of bales for us.  So while it seems like such a trivial thing ("So you stacked some bales, so what?  I stacked 3000 this year.") it's a milestone for me, and one of the reasons I'm so darn proud of myself.

In other news: still working on the soffits/fascia, but we installed some pot lights (did I tell you this already...?) and they look amazing.  We noticed that our front window is no longer sealed, so we bought some thermal curtains to get us through the winter, with plans to replace it next summer.  We still haven't tilled in the garden, and we are supposed to be reaching lows around -8 this week, with snow at some point (I've stopped paying attention to the forecast - it's always wrong anyway).  I've plugged in the light in the pumphouse on a timer, as we woke up one morning to discover that it was +0.5 degrees in there.  Yikes!  The last thing we need right now it to have something go sideways with our water.  This morning it was a toasty +18 in there - about as warm as the house.  Awesome :)

Now, in order to encourage you to make this a two-way conversation (instead of just me, rambling into the wind): What is on your to-do list to get ready for winter (or summer, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere)?