A new chicken coop, made entirely of scraps and leftovers!

Chickens are wonderful animals. They don’t need much in the way of infrastructure or daily care, they give you eggs every day and chicks every so often, and chicken meat when you get around to butchering the roosters. They eat your kitchen scraps, devour grasshoppers and other bugs all summer, and are terrifically entertaining to watch. They’re so much fun, I think everyone should have a few. :)

Now, while chickens don’t need a whole lot in the way of infrastructure (especially when they are able to free-range safely, as they are here, protected by the guardian dogs), they do need a place to be warm and out of the wind, and a spot to lay eggs. We have the chicken tractors, which work quite nicely in the summer, but last winter we had some frozen toes and we wanted to come up with something a bit warmer for the hens in the cold of winter.

Some of the materials for our house construction project were delivered in a big 8x8x4 packing crate / pallet. We had covered it with wood ‘siding’ and a metal roof, and it has served as a wood shed/cat shelter/storage spot for the past four years. However, it’s not particularly attractive, and it wasn’t in a really good spot for a permanent structure so … it got repurposed as a chicken coop.

While the structure was still upright, we added some 2x4 boards for perches (I’ve read that in cold climates, chickens do better with flat perches so that they can tuck their toes under their bodies for warmth), a nesting shelf, and some access hatches. It was very peculiar working ‘sideways’: knowing the finished structure would be tipped over made perspectives a bit weird!

When the interior work was mostly done, the entire structure was  lifted (very carefully) on the bobcat forks and moved next to the garden, where it was tipped over onto a pile of old hay (we are big believers in the deep bedding method). Last but not least, the finishing touches were added: an access door (made of plexiglass, so that it serves as a window as well), sheathing on what used to be the bottom of the structure, and metal roofing on what used to be the back and is now the top.

 

The whole thing is actually big enough for an adult person to squeeze into (without standing up!) – it’s about 4 feet tall. I crawled around inside and spread out the hay bedding, then stuffed gaps with straw. It was nice and warm, out of the wind!

The north wall is insulated with straw, which is stuffed into the gaps in the pallet floor. The south wall is made of brown metal roofing, so hopefully it will warm up a little in the sunshine – we may upgrade it to a proper thermosiphon in a year or two. The bucket feeder hangs just inside the plexiglass door, so it will be easy to check and refill, and the chicken access door is on the west side, away from the prevailing winds.

 

It’s no Taj Mahal, but it is an excellent use of marginal scrap materials that might otherwise have been unusable. Chickens, fortunately, aren’t particularly hard on their housing (unlike sheep and cows, who rub and bang and crash into things fairly regularly), so that meant we could get away with somewhat less sturdy materials: we had some seriously warped and wonky wood that was suitable for the perches and various internal supports, and the egg and chicken doors are made from leftover bits of laminate flooring. The nest box floor is made from a leftover piece of engineered floor trusses. Those wooden I-beams, when laid sideways, have a nice raised edge, front and back, built right in. The roofing is left over from house construction, and we were able to use up some very odd shaped pieces and still cover the whole coop. Even most of the nails and screws are salvaged from other projects.

Once the siding on the house is finished (and it’s almost all done!), we will sheathe this structure with the leftover bits, so that it looks better and is more durable. 

One more addition will be a light: a light encourages egg production, and also provides a bit of extra warmth. We will install a canning jar ‘light fixture’ in the side of the coop and put it on a timer so that the hens get longer days and a bit of extra heat on chilly mornings. We had them in the chicken tractors, so this is something we already know how to do quickly (in fact, we may just move one of the lights from one of the tractors over).

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have eggs in the nest box … and not in the hay at the bottom of the coop!

Progress, frustrations, and knitting

There's always a long list of things to do when you live on a farm, even a small one, and so it's really easy to make some kind of progress. Pick any of the jobs on the lengthy list and voila, you are further ahead than you were yesterday!

Last weekend, everyone in the whole family was away except me, through an odd combination of circumstances. I slept in, ate what I wanted when I felt hungry, and got a whole lot of productive work done without really feeling worn out at the end! I wandered outside Saturday morning to see which job I felt like doing, and I decided to start on the fenceline feeder for the sheep. The Boy has requested a change in feeding strategy, and since he does most of the feeding, it seems reasonable that he should get the infrastructure he wants. So, I took down the boundary fence from the piece of winter pasture that will become the feeder and cut and attached the hog panels to the posts. We'll add sheets of plywood on an angle along the back, and that'll hold the hay for the sheep to eat: they stick their noses through the hog panels, but can't get their whole heads through (we hope). A test run late in the spring looked promising, so here's hoping.

Once I got that done, I realized that the winter pasture desperately needed to be cleared out, so I fired up the bobcat and practiced my digging and shovelling maneouvers. I'm no bobcat artist, but working on flat ground I did have a lot of opportunity to try different things, and managed to improve my skills a little, while making a big pile of compost-to-be.

The next question, obviously, was what to do with the pile I had just made.

I had read the Maple Corners blog that morning, and saw Annie's "Wall of Junk" - the very creatively decorated fence that hides her compost pile. Inspired, I put up some fence posts and cross boards, and made a mental note to be on the lookout for cool 'junk' to decorate it with! A bit more bobcat work and I had the existing compost pile moved into the new bin, and room for another bin. Sunday saw the creation of the second bin, and the compost-to-be from the winter pasture put into it's proper cooking spot. Monday night I actually saw the pile steaming again, which is really encouraging ... and it's shrinking, so it's defintely doing what it oughta do.

The two new compost bins are along the north border of the property, where we really do need a perimiter fence. This weekend, I started extending that fence with more posts and boards - it doesn't have to be absolutely sheep-proof, just sheep-resistant, so that we can turn them out into the area we euphemistically refer to as a 'lawn' on occasion to keep it mowed. Twelve posts later (put in all by myself - The Reluctant Farmer was busy doing other much-needed jobs like sealing the windows so they don't leak in the rain, and working on siding the house), we have a perimiter fence along most of the north border to the yard. The sheep were out there on Saturday and did make a dent in the grass, but since it's not properly fenced off everywhere, we had to chase them back in a few times and now they're safely behind proper fences and gates.

All this work doesn't come without frustrations ... the fence boards aren't level and have to be taken down and put back up ... the sheep get out and have to be chased back ... the sheep knock down one of the fence boards that is only up with temporary nails, until I can check that it is level ... a thunderstorm arrives while the sheep are all wandering around and I have to chase them back into a proper pasture while getting drenches ... I manage to give myself a nasty bruise while deconstructing a shade house to use as a trellis ... but all in all, it was still a productive couple of weekends.

Knitting continues: the vest I am working on is turning out very nicely, if I do say so myself, and I have been working on it diligently. Now I have to figure out what it needs for a collar.

I think I'll go knit some more.

Fences for sheep

It has taken us a very long time – four summers, basically – to get the hang of making sheep-resistant fences. I dare not say sheep-proof fences, as I doubt there actually is any such thing, but we have learned quite a lot of things through trial and error and the new fences seem to be holding up reasonably well.

I think all the instructions for building fences must’ve been written by people in Saskatchewan, as nothing I’ve read tells you how to deal with the dips and swells in the land. The slightest dip or bump leaves a gap which a determined sheep or guardian dog will manage to wriggle under, loosening the fence, and leaving a larger gap for the next escape attempt.

So, here’s what we have learned so far:

First of all, you need wooden posts. You need to use *all* wooden posts. T-posts are great inventions, but they just don’t work well enough to qualify as permanent design elements in a sheep-fence.

Corners need to be braced (you will find instructions for that in any set of fence directions). We make H-shaped braces: basically, two fence posts pounded in about 2 feet apart with a brace screwed between the two about a foot down from the top of the posts. If you’re already making a braced corner, you can add a couple of extra cross bars and build a stile, for the humans to climb over. Stiles are an especially good idea on longer runs of fence where you’re not going to want to go all the way around to the gate every single time. We also build some stiles without wire across them, specifically so that the dogs (who will jump up and over and through a small square) can get from one place to another. The sheep don’t seem to go through those little square openings – although we do use them only on cross-fences, not perimeter fences, just to be on the safe side.

You also need page wire, or woven wire (four feet is good, five is better) and you need barbed wire. Oh, and you need a post pounder, a lot of staples, a hammer, a fence tightener, and something mobile and heavy to pull against (we use the bobcat, or a truck, but a quad would work well if you had one). If you haven’t got a ratcheting fence tightener you can use a comealong, but the fence tightener is really useful when it comes to the barbed wire, so it’s worth getting one.

Now that you have all the gear, how do you build the fence? Well, start off by putting in your posts. Wooden posts only, about 8-10 feet apart, always putting a post in the bottom of a dip and at the top of any rise or hillock that is in the path of your fence. You can get a straighter fence line if you put the corner posts in first then run a string from one to the other, using the string as a guide for where to place the posts. Eyeballing the alignment is rarely successful, trust me on this.

Posts can be very hard to pound into the ground: we pound in a sharp iron stake first (t-posts work for this too), then wiggle it to open the hole a bit, pull the stake out, and fill the hole with water. The wooden posts is then pounded into the dampened pre-started hole, and goes in much more smoothly than it does into unprepared ground. 

Get your H braces built at each corner and at the side of each gate opening. It’s really hard to have too many gates, and you need more stiles than you think you do. If you use a bobcat or tractor or quad, make sure each pasture has a gate wide enough to get through with your equipment, and consider building some smaller ‘people gates’ for the places you’ll routinely pass. People-sized gates are easier to open and close, and much easier to get through without letting all the sheep out.

Once the posts are in place, you can pull the page wire across. Unroll the fencing all along the row of posts (it’s easiest to unroll it on the ground then stand it up afterwards) and staple it to the far end of one of the H corners. Position your bobcat/truck/quad at the other end of the fence line (or as far down as you can reasonably go in one pass) so that you are able to hook your fence tightener onto some part of the vehicle and have it be in line with the fence. The idea is to pull the fencing against the immoveable vehicle, rather than against the corner fence posts – we’ve learned through much unhappy experience that even well-braced corners just can’t sustain the pressure of having the fence ratcheted tight against them, although for some reason (which I probably learned in high school physics and have subsequently forgotten), the posts can withstand the pressure of a tightened fence being stapled to them.

Now, tightening the fence involves a bit of a trick: take a long post (a t-post will work, or a piece of heavy pipe) and thread it through the holes in the woven wire, in and out, top to bottom. Hook one end of your fence tightener to this post, the other end to your vehicle, and ratchet the fence until it is nice and tight. This vertical post ensures that you get tension on the whole fence, rather than just on the one wire that you grabbed with the fence tightener.

Once the wire is pulled tight, go back along the fence and staple the wire to the posts. You don’t need to do every single wire on every single post, but the sheep will pressure the fence most at the bottom, so staple the bottom several wires for sure, and then about every other wire the rest of the way up.

Technically, according to the books, anyway, if you pull the wire tight enough, the sheep won’t be able to push their way under it. I suppose on flat ground with wooden posts no more than 5 feet apart this might work, but we’ve not been able to accomplish this feat ourselves. What we do is put the bottom of the page wire about an inch or two off the ground. We’ll deal with that gap shortly.

Staple your fence to the posts all the way along, and then take off the tension (be careful when you release the fence tightener, sometimes things spring back and you can get whacked in the head). Move your vehicle down the line, unroll some more fence, and keep going.

Once the page wire is in place, you need to put the barbed wire on the bottom. This is the key to a sheep-resistant fence. The barbed wire is a lot easier to tighten, and it will fill in that gap between the bottom of the page wire and the ground. Wrap a strand of barbed wire around your corner post, staple it in place, and then stretch the wire along the line of fence posts. This time you can use the last post as a brace for your fence tightener – you are pulling right against the base of the post, so it will not lean over from the strain. Pull the wire tight, staple it in place, then cut, wrap, and staple the end in place. Now go along the fence line and look for any spots where the page wire seems to wiggle at the bottom. In those spots, take a short piece of wire and tie the page wire to the barbed wire: the taut barbed wire lends it's stability to the page wire, and attaching the two together leaves the sheep less wiggle room.

With the wire all in place, all that remains are gates. Gates you go through every day need to be hinged people-sized gates, but gates that keep one pasture separated from the next can be tied in place. We are now using hog panels cut to size for a lot of our gates: they are sturdy, easy to cut with bolt cutters, and can be ‘hinged’ with rope. We had built a lot of wooden panels to use for gates, but the hog panels are lighter, much faster to build, and tidier-looking. Getting a pile of them delivered along with the fence posts was a good idea.

If you will be going in and out of a particular spot during the winter, keep in mind that you’ll need snow clearance. A rope-hinged gate can float upwards as the snow piles up, whereas a gate with proper hinges has a fixed height and must be shoveled out all winter.

We are still working on infrastructure improvements, and redoing the fences is one of the biggest tasks. Taking loose fences down just so you can put them back up again later in the day is a lot of work, as is chasing escaped sheep! If you can get your fences right the first time, you’ll be glad of it.

A lot of people use electric fencing when dealing with sheep, and have had good success. With our small size, though, it’s not quite cost effective, and there are technical issues to be dealt with as well so for us, the payoff just isn’t there. It’s worth considering though, especially if you have a lot of determined escapees or if you already use electric fencing for other livestock.

Of course, now that I’ve written this, the sheep are probably all going to be out wandering the neighbourhood, just to put me in my place. I’d better go check. :)

Planted: 125 trees

On Saturday, my parents came and helped The Boy and I plant 125 trees. The Reluctant Farmer had commimtents already - it was Princess Girl's birthday party, and he couldn't miss that! Somehow, he doesn't seem all that disappointed that he didn't get to help with the treeplanting.

Anyway, the trees are your tax dollars at work: the Prairie Shelterbelt Tree Program is a Government of Canada Agroforestry project that provides seedlings free of charge (well, we paid $7 for shipping, but that's it) to individuals who hold more than 5 acres of rural land.

The seedlings provided are an incentive to producers adopting beneficial management practices and environmental stewardship. The aim of the Prairie Shelterbelt Program is to improve the performance and sustainability of the agricultural sector by helping to achieve the social, economic and environmental benefits of agroforestry.

Agroforestry systems such as shelterbelts conserve soil and water, manage snow and wind, improve air quality, protect yards and livestock, provide income for landowners, stabilize crops and enhance habitat for wildlife.

This year, we applied for and received 125 trees and shrubs to create a shelterbelt along the west border of our property. The winds howl through here from the west, and having a windbreak at that point should ease the force somewhat, as well as providing shade and shelter to the sheep in those pastures come summer. This is just the first step to properly protecting our little farm yard, but it's important to only order as many trees as you can plant and care for in a given year and one side seemed like more than enough work for starters. :)

The mix of trees we received is really quite interesting. Most of the shrubs have edible fruit, which provides food for birds and deer as well as fruit for our use. The tallest trees we received are green ash, which grow to 50 feet (15 metres). Of course, right now they are about twelve inches, but in time, they will provide a nice solid line of shelter along the west border. The ash trees are spaced out along the row with hedge plants in between: choke cherries (which make a lovely jelly), sea buckthorn (which is very thorny and has a strong tendency to sucker, so it should thicken up quickly), silver buffaloberry (also very thorny), and hawthorn (which has medicinal properties, apparently, it is used for high blood pressure and other cardiac ailments).

Many of the trees were planted with my sister's tree-planting shovel, a tool which walked with her through three summers of intensive silviculture work ... I'm still in absolute awe of my sister for taking this on as a summer job. She survived months of fascinating things like bears attacking her tent, daily mosquito and black fly barrages, trench foot (yes, the infections that soldiers got when their boots stayed wet too long), and nerve damage to her feet from slamming steel toed boots into shovels and dirt hundreds of times per day for months on end. She also managed to get a degree without any student loans. I am in awe.

So, of course, when planting my little Government of Canada seedlings, I used my sister's shovel. :) Dad used a spade, as there is only one Tree Planting Shovel, and some of the trees needed a fair bit of space so that their roots would not be squished.

Each tree was planted, watered, and mulched with almost-finished compost. They'll need to have water hauled out to them in the next day or two if we don't get a good soaking of rain (which we need very badly, and don't seem likely to receive), and we'll keep an eye on them and hope they grow up nice and strong.

Next year, we'll tackle the north fenceline!

We are wired for wind

The wind tower went up today!

Our neighbours came by to help with the installation, and the whole process went quite smoothly. We had perfect weather: no wind to push the tower around while we were putting it up, the sun was out and it was a beautifully warm day.

The tower is a telescoping style device: it starts off at about 12 feet high, and has two more pieces nested inside the base. You turn a winch to extend it upwards, and fully extended it's about 40 feet tall. The turbine is mounted on the top and a long wire extends from it's generator down the inside of the tower, through a piece of rubber conduit to the power centre used by the solar panels. At the power centre it is connected to one of the many wires in the heavy duty cable that runs from the solar panels to the house, and at the house, it is connected directly to the batteries. As Solar Neighbour explained it to me, the power from the wind generator goes directly to the batteries, and the power from the solar panels goes to the charge controller which feeds the batteries until they are full, and will shunt any excess power elsewhere if it becomes necessary. Since the wind generator will never produce enough power to overload the batteries, it can 'go first in line', and the solar panels can be managed to fill up the rest of the power capacity.

We have three guy wires attached to hold the tower steady, and there are three more backup lines to go up as well. If the tower ever collapsed, it would most likely take the solar panels with it so we are putting in some extra backup lines just to be sure.

So far the blades are still, as the wind is pretty much non-existent today... but it won't be long! It'll be really exciting to know that when the wind howls around the house in the middle of the night we're making power.

Solar Neighbour has more pictures ... check back for updates later!

How to save on your heating bill this winter, without spending a fortune

We have a lot of glass in this house. We like having all those south facing windows as they give us light and warmth, however, once the sun goes down, all that glass is a rapid heat-transfer system, swapping the heat from indoors with the bone chilling cold of an Alberta winter night.

Last year, when we had the really long, really awful cold snap I did make some window quilts and they made a huge difference. The trouble is, hanging them is a real hassle, and on cold days, although we'd like the sunshine, the window panes are still very cold to the touch ... meaning if we uncover them, we're losing precious indoor heat through the glass.

We did purchase some Energy Film at Home Depot last year and tried it on one of the windows: the stuff actually works really well! There is a bit of distortion when you look out the window, but it's not significant, we can still see the sheep and chickens and cats and cows, and the odd little warble in the view is of no consequence. A very simple test proved the effectiveness of the plastic film: just touch the uncoated glass with one finger, and the coated glass with another. The difference in temperature is dramatic.

The downside, of course, is that this stuff is expensive. It's around $30 (perhaps a bit more, I can't quite recall) for a 24"x48" piece. Now, we do need to see out of some of the windows, so it's worth it to pay the extra so we have 'viewports' that are not covered by heavy drapes or other cold blocking techniques, but we certainly can't afford to cover every window with this stuff.

This is where the bubblewrap comes in. You've probably seen this suggested somewhere or other and thought it was too weird to be true ... but it really does work, and it really is both cheap and easy.

We picked up three 20'x24" rolls of bubble wrap at Staples for about $12 per roll (yes, that is twenty feet of bubble wrap), and covered almost all of the remaining windows in the house. We'll need another few rolls (and a ladder) to finish the high front windows, but this morning's chill temperatures gave me the opportunity to try the 'finger test' on the bubblewrap as well: yup, it works.

There's still a chilly space between the curtains and the window, and we use fairly heavy draperies that go all the way to the floor wherever we can. This provides a space for that 'cool air pocket' to sit, further slowing the transfer of heat to outside and cold to inside.

If you want to try this, here's what to do:

• Get your hands on some bubblewrap. The stuff with the tiny bubbles worked better for me than the stuff with the medium sized bubbles, and I didn't even want to attempt using the stuff with the great big bubbles, but use whatever you can find.
• Get a spray bottle and a pair of scissors.
• Go to the window you want to cover, and unroll the bubblewrap. Hold one edge against the bottom of the window, stretch up to the top, and mark the place where you need to cut. It's really easy to cut straight lines on bubble wrap: the bubbles act as built in guidelines.
• Cut the bubblewrap to fit inside the window, without much overlap onto the frame, and ideally, without much open glass. Lots of our window panes are just a bit over 24", so we just leave the edges uncovered, or, if we need to see out some of the time, snug the bubblewrap right up against one edge and leave an open space where you can peer out at the world.
• Get your spray bottle (filled with water or vinegar and water, or whatever you clean windows with) and spray the entire window, generously.
• Push the bubble wrap against the wet window and squish it into place, smoothing from the middle out so that the whole thing is smushed into the water and against the glass. I tried some with the bubble-side-in and some with the smooth-side-in, and I think I've settled on bubble-side-in as being a better stick. Some of your bubble wrap may flop over and peel itself off after a day or two, don't lose heart: just respray and restick. Eventually it'll decide to stay put. I think some of it needs a bit of time to adjust to an unrolled position.
• Voila: you have now started on the road to saving a bunch of money on your heating bill, you have improved the comfort level of humans who must sit near these windows, and you are still getting sunshine into the room!

If you want to try the Energy Film, you might want to consider what we did on the patio door as a cost-saving measure: we have a large, three-pane door. We do need to see out of this door, as it looks out over one of the pastures. We hung one piece of Energy Film on the centre panel, and all the rest of the glass (including the bottom portion of the center panel which the Energy Film didn't cover) is coated in bubble wrap. Lots of light, some restriction of the view, but we can still see outside. Also, it turns out that the bubble wrap with tiny bubbles will fit behind the patio door when it is slid open, so you can even put bubble wrap on the 'underneath' panel of your door, and still get the door open.

Here's to keeping warm and using less fuel to do it!

For more energy saving ideas, check out Solar Gary's excellent site: here's his article on bubble wrap insulation, it includes a calculation of the payback period, too ... which is very short!

The barn has a door!

The barn now has a door!

With the cold weather coming, we decided that a door for the barn would be very welcome. It's not really necessary for the cows and sheep, they would be warm enough inside with straw bedding and walls to keep out the wind, but when it's time to get milk in the mornings or assist with lambing, we humans would definitely appreciate four solid walls!

The Reluctant Farmer stopped at UFA and picked up the necessary hardware to hang a sliding door. There's a long tube with a slot on the bottom, special hangers to suspend it from the barn wall, and two rollers that move smoothly along the tracks to slide the door back and forth. if you look really closely, you can see a small metal piece at the bottom left of the door opening: that's a catch to hold the door when it slides shut, so that it doesn't bang in the wind but is held tight against the building.

The door will be painted in the next few days (the weather is looking reasonable for this sort of thing) and then we'll be all ready for winter!

I suppose saying something like that pretty much guarantees an early snowfall, doesn't it? Maybe I'd better be quiet.

More infrastructure

Some days it seems like we spend way too much money trying to do this whole farm thing. Actually, most days it seems like that. Well, I suppose we're in good company with every other farmer ... like the old joke goes: When the farmer won the lottery, and was asked what he'd do now, he shrugged and said "Keep on farmin' till the money runs out!"

The latest acquisition/investment is a little two-horse trailer. While we do have a little landscape trailer that has been modified with raised sides and a gate at the back, and it does indeed work for hauling up to 5-6 sheep at a time, it isn't very sturdy, and has shown signs that it is unlikely to survive sheep hauling for more than another couple of years without need for repair. It's going to be reallocated to trash and lumber hauling, which is what it was meant for in the first place.

The Reluctant Farmer is the King of Kijiji Shopping - and he has been watching for a good deal on a trailer for some time now. This one came up recently, and was newer than most he'd seen in our price range ... and was cheaper as well! With some logistical headaches, he managed to pick it up this weekend, and it'll do exactly what we need.

See, with a cow/calf pair in addition to the sheep, we have to think about getting the calf to butcher next fall, and although we could probably prevail upon someone we know who has a trailer, that's not a favour I really want to call in every year. If the cow ever needs the vet, being able to take her there would be cheaper than having the vet come here. Also, when taking sheep to the butcher or the auction, there are some real advantages to being able to take more than just 5 at a go. And then there's Cherub, who always tries to jump out of the little sheep trailer and has to be tied when she's in there for fear of losing her overboard!

Last but not least, The Reluctant Farmer has been working on a plan to take the sheep on school visits. He and Dinosaur Boy's teachers are working out the details, but the trailer would be a really nice feature for this project: the kids can come outside and go into the trailer to visit the sheep, rather than taking the sheep into the school. This reminds me of something I saw when I was very little ... Elsie the Borden Cow was at the local grocery store, outside in her trailer in the parking lot. I vividly remember going into the trailer and seeing this lovely placid cow sitting there chewing her cud ... and I couldn't have been more than five at the time. The little girl I was then would never have guessed that she'd grow up into someone with a real cow of her own!

Deciding where to spend and where to save is always a tough call ... we very much want to get the debts under control and that means not spending on things that can wait, but then again, we are trying to build up our very little farm into something that at least supplements our income somewhat, or something that has the capacity to be expanded so that it could supplement our income, and to do that means getting the infrastructure in place.

It's a hard decision. We know that our jobs are fragile - if the economy goes south, the kind of work we do could evaporate, leaving one or both of us with limited options for standard employment. We love working on the farm, and so we are trying to ensure that if the time ever comes that we want to make this an actual revenue builder, we have the necessary infrastructure to allow us to expand without needing huge infusions of startup cash.

What we are aiming for is that things as they are become easier to manage, and that if we want to expand in the future, we have what we need for a bit more livestock. In the short term, if things are easier to manage, we are freed up to do our paid jobs, because the 'farm stuff' takes less time. Sure we have to fix fences in the spring, but when the cross-fencing is in place and the gates are all where they need to be, moving sheep from one pasture to another is a matter of a few minutes for one person, rather than two or three of us chasing sheep around a huge pasture trying to get them where we want them. As for expansion, if we leased some nearby land we could carry a few more animals without needing more significant infrastructure than what we already have. The heritage breeds that we prefer don't need big barns or huge grain bins or anything like that, but they do need what we already have (or are working on) - fencing, feeders, water troughs, and a barn with room for a few at a time, rather than everyone all at once.

We'll see where it all leads - maybe we'll never be more than 'hobby farmers' who have a few sheep, some chickens, and a dairy cow. Then again, maybe we'll find our way into the local grass-fed meat market, be supplying local handspinners with premium wool and enjoying the food we grow in our own garden.

It's nice to have a dream, anyway. And who knows? If the little girl who was so awed by Elsie the Borden Cow could grow up to have a dairy cow of her very own ... maybe some day this woman with the little acreage will find that she's grown up and become a real farmer, too.

Finished floors!

We finally have finished floors!

Okay, the stairs aren't done, but the rest of the house is laid, stained, sealed and topcoated.

Do you realize what this means?

WE CAN HAVE FURNITURE!


Yes, we'll have to move things around to do the baseboards, yes, we still need a second coat of topcoat in the kitchen, yes, we still have to do the ceiling and things will be in the way a little but still...

My socks came out of a dresser drawer this morning instead of a Rubbermaid bin - first time in more than a year. The Boy has bookshelves for his Lego and his books and his treasures, many of which elicited happy exclamations when they were brought out of the boxes they've been hiding in. I am, at present, sitting in a very ancient and very comfortable old chair with an actual floor lamp beside me. There is a table by the window holding several plants. My rocking chair is beside it. This weekend, we should be able to bring the couch home! Soon we'll be able to empty out the storage unit and get that bill off the monthly accounts ... and use the money to buy baseboards and window trim instead!

These things probably seem remarkably mundane and ordinary, but when you live out of bins and wade through sawdust and wear steel toed boots in the house for a year, it really is a big deal.

Aaaah. Home.

More progress on the floor!

The flooring is now down in the kitchen, under both the stove and the fridge. I put foil bubble insulation between the subfloor and the hardwood underneath the fridge, to block the in floor heating in that area (no point making the fridge work any harder than it has to).

I stained the boards under fridge and stove, just so that when it comes time to sand and stain I don't have to move those appliances (I'll still have to move them when it's time to put the sealant on, but one less move is a good thing).

This is what the floor/walls/countertop/cabinet colour combo looks like! You'll get a better view if you click the picture to expand it.

Flooring Step by Step

I thought it might be neat to show how the flooring is installed, step by step. For those just tuning in, this is wide plank flooring from Whiskey Flats Lumber.

The very first step is to cover the floor with roofing felt. This provides a vapor barrier to help keep the wood from expanding and contracting too much.

Next you lay down the boards: each board is labelled with a room and row letter combination, and these codes match up with a floor plan map which Whiskey Flats provides with the flooring. This map tells you which width of boards you are using for the next row and ensures that you don't run out of wide boards partway across the living room. The hardest part of the job is sometimes finding the board you need in the pile!

When you are ready to put a row down, you leave a gap between the first and last boards and the wall to allow for expansion. When you are partway down the row, you butt each board right up against the previous one. The ends are all cut perfectly straight at the factory (well, I hit one board today out of the whole batch that wasn't, and I just used it as a row starter instead). The last board in a row will have to be trimmed to fit.

Using a carpenter's square you mark the places you'll put the screws in, evenly spaced across the board. On narrow boards you only need 2 screws, wider ones need 3, and the very wide boards (like this one) need four. You work your way down the board, marking at evenly spaced intervals (about 12-18" apart). Doing the math to figure out the spacing of the screws is the most time consuming aspect of this job!

Once you have it all marked, you predrill the holes using a drill bit with a countersink attachment. This makes small craters where the screw heads will go. I use two drills: one with the drill bit and one with a screwdriver head. It's easier to switch drills than to constantly be changing bits.

Once the holes are in place, you push the board up tight against it's neighbour and put black drywall screws in each hole - the black screw heads look a lot like nails when you are done, so it adds to the 'heritage' look.

Once it is all laid, you rent a big floor sander and sand it mostly smooth (not totally smooth, or it'll look boring - we want to preserve those small grooves between the boards, but we need to remove any surface dings that may have been inflicted).

Clean it up, stain it, seal it.

Voila, a floor!

Here's an image of the work in progress:

Just another reason to love Union Guy

Union Guy found an antenna for the cell phones, and brought it out today. It significantly improves the reception on the phone, which is a good thing.

After seeing the picture, he suggested this post be titled "Who's the goof on the roof?"

The siding is all done now, and looks really good. The siding guys found a wasp or bee nest up in the peak of the house and had to go on a field trip to buy insectiside spray so they could finish! They're all done now, and we have eavestroughing, soffit, and all the siding. It will be wonderful not to hear they Tyvek flapping in the wind anymore.

My task for today was installing flooring in the loft. It is actually much easier to install than I expected it to be: there are several steps to the process, but none of them are actually difficult. For those of you just tuning in, I'm using wide planks from Whiskey Flats Lumber rather than the more common varieties of hardwood flooring. I love the old fashioned look of the variable width boards and the visible screws (which look like nails unless you check closely). The floor is one of my designated luxuries, although in reality it won't cost me very much more than prefinished hardwood from the local Home Depot (this stuff is costing me about $6.50 a square foot).

To install this kind of flooring, you have to measure and mark the places to put the screws, then drill the holes over the marks, get the board into position and put the screws in. A carpenter's square, a pencil, two drills and a bag of screws and you're good to go. The worst part is digging through the pile of lumber in the living room to find the boards I need! I think I moved every board today in search of the ones I needed. However, I am very happy with the end (well, interim) result - check out the picture in full size.

Once the floor is down and sanded, it'll be stained with black walnut stain. This picture shows three of the four wood finishes that are in use in the house: the light walnut on the walls, the golden pine on the doors, and the black walnut on the floors. (Those are just a couple of pieces of scrap flooring, stained with two coats of Watco Black Walnut and pushed up against a wall so I could see what it looked like). It is actually a bit darker than what you see in the picture, the flash washed it out a little. I like the contrast: I purposely wanted a very dark floor, medium walls, and a light ceiling. I think having the colours move from dark to light makes the room feel more 'grounded' somehow.

Money

One of the reasons I moved to the country was because I could reduce my operating expenses. The up front investment is significant, but the day to day operating costs are less: property taxes are half of what they are in the city, I have no power bill, no water or sewage charges, and my only utility bill is for natural gas. My fuel costs for the commute have gone up substantially, but it is a fair trade for daycare costs and downtown parking. I'm also talking to my coworkers about being able to work remotely one or two days a week, which will save significantly on fuel.

For further savings, I've decided not to install a land line for the telephone. It will cost about $1500 just to get the line run to the house - and then I'd have a bill of about $40 a month on an ongoing basis, which I don't particularly need. I've found a better cell phone plan, so my monthly phone bill is substantially less than it was: these days, the cell phone is a requirement and the land line is optional. Strange how things change with advances in technology.

Someday I'll have a garden, which will help bring the grocery bill down, and I do get as many eggs as I can eat (and more!) from the chickens. I calculated the cost to be about 5 cents an egg (excluding infrastructure costs). Eventually we may be able to make a little money from the sheep, although probably not much more than what will cover feed and vet bills. Ah, the dreams of being able to supplement my income with old fashioned skills ... it may still happen, but I'm not banking on it.

Speaking of banks: the tricky part to all of this, of course, is the up front investment. While I did manage to get approved for an owner-build mortgage (through the nice folks at ATB Financial, who are the only ones willing to finance such a venture), it still takes a lot of money to get things going. You don't get your mortgage funds until after you complete the work and an inspector agrees that it is done. Well, that's not entirely accurate: you do get startup funds, but not enough to pay for everything as you go.

The good news is that you don't have to pay your regular mortgage payment until your house is done or until one year has passed, whichever comes first. That means that a portion of your paycheque can be used to buy deck screws and light fixtures and tools instead of paying a mortgage, which helps. Still, the cash to pay for the solar panels and the fireplace and the kitchen cabinets all has to come from somewhere, and my paycheques are not quite that generous. To accomplish the necessary financial sleight of hand, I have a number of creative financing options in place ... all of which are racking up interest at startling rates, unfortunately. I took advantage of all the offers I could find: my kitchen cupboards were bought on a no-payments-for-a-year promotion at Ikea, and I've put other major purchases on one credit card then switched the balance to another card that offered a low interest for six months on transferred balances.

Unfortunately, all these tricks are still not enough to keep things going indefinitely, my one year is up, and the house is not finished. The bank has another 30K or thereabouts to give me ... but the ceiling is still just vapor barrier and fibreglass, the flooring has just started to be installed, and there's no trim installed yet. No mortgage payments for a year is a nice thing, but 30K would pay off a lot of high interest debts!

The other day I had a call from the bank saying that it was time to start paying the mortgage, as my one year was up. "But," I said, "the house isn't done yet and you still have money to give me!" They told me they'd send out an inspector and the last draw could be forwarded to my lawyer who would hold onto it until things are really and truly finished. This had me a bit worried: now I'd have a mortgage payment in addition to all the debt servicing I'm doing to keep the various credit cards and such under control. I started crunching numbers and looking for even more creative financing options.

Today when I came home, there was a pink note stuck in my door ... the bank inspector had been here and approved the final draw with only an 8K holdback! This means that I will have enough cash available to pay off the higher interest loans just as they come due. Whew! That was close.

To add the icing to the cake, a truck came today and picked up the roofing that we were not able to use (see the posts from last January if you missed that part of the adventure). Once it is returned to AllPro, I will get a credit for those materials. More money, more bills paid off, more good news!

Whew.

For some reason I am reminded of something I saw in an email awhile back: Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving there safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, a glass of wine in one hand and chocolate in the other, all worn out and hollering "wooohoo what a ride!"

A couple more pictures

Hey, picture uploads are working tonight!

In the loft, you can see The Boy in his bed, showing off his room - the back wall is about one third done, and the loft railing is finished all the way around. The Boy also tidied everything up and got some space cleared for his grandparents, who arrive on Sunday.


This is the hallway between the loft and the main floor - The Boy stained these walls and did a marvellous job. The boards don't go all the way up the dividing wall, nor all the way up the back wall, but it is a start.



Not much additional work happening tonight - it's been a long week for me at work, and I will be here sawing and nailing and staining all of Friday and Saturday, so I think I can swing a night or two without construction. The Boy and The Dog are outside running around - they've gone down by the creek to play a bit, and were followed by the cats. My goodness they look adorable.

Yup, this is why we moved out here.

Finally, pictures!

Finally, pictures! This is The Boy on his birthday (and me, The Mom).
Union Guy and his kids made The Boy a cake ... we had three cakes in the space of two days, that's a lot of partying! The kids even decorated it themselves - there were a lot of sprinkles!

Here is a picture of one of the cakes: Union Guy baked, and I decorated ... I decided on a 'rural theme' to celebrate our first birthday at Apple Jack Creek.
We couldn't have a big birthday party, with our house under construction, but we did invite our Neighbours (The Cousins) to come for dinner. The Boy's new favourite meat is deer meat (which I can't just pick up at the grocery store ... and I've not yet taken up hunting). The neighbours were kind enough to donate some from their freezer, knowing it's his favourite - I have to say, it sure smells good (even as a vegetarian, I could tell!). In addition to the deer, we had ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, raw veggies and salad. It was quite the party! The Cousins were all invited to play piano in a music festival that evening, so they couldn't stay very long. We ate, the kids played, and then the musical ones got changed into their recital clothes (and we had some interesting hair adventures - lots of static electricity and not too many choices in terms of hair products!). They headed off to their adventures, and The Boy played with his presents. After it got dark, Union Guy and The Boy and I lit some firecrackers - there are some fun things you can do much more easily (and legally) in the country. :)

And here we have a picture of the loo, now with walls. Well, partial walls. The upper walls are still made of cardboard (Union Guy finally got tired of the lack of privacy and grabbed a stapler and some packing cardboard to make "walls"...). If you look closely, you'll see that the book on the back of the toilet is the Farmers Almanac. You have arrived in the country when there's a Farmer's Almanac provided for bathroom reading!

Connected to the world

We are now connected to the world! We have satellite internet installed at home and, thanks to Union Guy's research, the cost was half of what I expected. The connection speed is noticeably slower than what I'm used to on cable, but it's way faster than dial up. The Boy will now be able to talk to me on MSN when he gets home from school, and I'll be able to update the blog from home rather than waiting until I am at Union Guy's place or making time for it on my lunch hour at work. Ahh, the luxuries of modern civilization.

In other news, I started working with the pine that I got from Kodiak Forest Products. Wow, is this stuff wonderful! It is sturdy and solid and handles like a dream. I've got 3000 lbs of 1x6 tongue and grooved pine sitting on Contractor Man's trailer outside under a tarp. The installation test is the bathroom: that's the next 'small space' in which I can test out stain colours and finishes and so on and decide if I'm happy with everything ... best to figure that out in a smaller space before I start on the main living area, I figure. Besides, it'll be really nice to have walls around the loo.

I got a new air nailer that handles 2" nails (Princess Auto, $30, works great). When the boards are up on the wall you don't see any of the nail heads, as the wood is thick enough that I can nail through the tongue, unlike that thin stuff I used in my bedroom. There's just no comparison with the 5/16th pine ... this fits together easily and has way fewer 'unusable' bits. I'd highly recommend it!

People ask me all the time why I went with wood instead of drywall. The primary reason is that I love the look and feel of the wood - it is warm and somehow grounding, good for the spirit. The installation does require more cutting and fitting than with drywall, but I think that in the end it requires about the same amount of effort to do either. Besides, I'd rather have sawdust than plaster dust, and once I stain and seal it, I'm done! No need to repaint in a few years. One of the other nice things about the wood is that I can actually handle the 1x6 boards myself ... a sheet of drywall is much too heavy for me to manage on my own.

The Boy helped out yesterday by putting stain on boards - we are using Watco Light Walnut, which is easy to apply with a cloth (a significant advantage for The Boy who finds brushes a bit awkward sometimes). We set up a couple of sawhorses, lift the 12' long boards up there and he wipes the stain on. He looks like a real construction guy in his Carhartt overalls and amazingly dirty white Sorels ... although the bright blue heavy duty rubber gloves do detract from the look to some extent. :)

The stain we are using is very light, but it warms up the pine a little and brings out the grain without making it seem dark. Oil stains are a bit of a hassle for cleanup, but nothing makes wood look as nice. I don't find it awkward to work with, either: you wipe it on with a cloth dipped in stain, let it dry (which doesn't take long), and then start using the boards. Once they are on the walls they'll get a topcoat of Verathane to seal the wood, and voila, we are done.

I see that photo uploads aren't working at the moment, I will try again later so you can see what we've been up to.

More like home

Today really felt like a "day at home": I woke up early, but I knew I'd not go back to sleep so I just got out of bed and made myself a pot of coffee in the ancient percolator. I really like the blurping sound of the percolator pots ... it is the sound of the mornings of my childhood, in the days before drip pots and Starbucks. With the coffee on, I decided I was in the mood to try out the oven, so I mixed up a batch of peanut butter cookies, doing the best I could without a cookbook handy. They turned out all right - not as peanut buttery as they usually are, nor quite as sweet, but they tasted pretty good. I had one with my coffee for breakfast.
The Boy was still sleeping, so I got down to business and started on the plate rack. I got that built and mounted to the wall before he surfaced, and then spent the rest of the morning staining the pine plywood sheets for the ceiling while he did his chores. He helped me lift them on and off of the sawhorses in between his own jobs, and his help made working with the 4x8 sheets much easier. I wanted to get those out of the way so that I could begin the task of clearing up and reorganizing the main floor. I did get to that, and the house feels much more like a house than a construction zone. Well, it's still quite definitely a construction zone, but a more house-like one.


I did take a lot of pictures today, so that I could share the progress at Apple Jack Creek.

First of all, here are the kittens ... they are getting much bigger but still chase each other around and act adorable. I am hoping they will earn their keep in mice, but perhaps they intend to leverage their entertainment value in lieu of dead mice. We shall see.
The Boy was out today playing with the neighbour kids (the cousins). They made snow angels and had raced around, climbing and chasing. Here he is with the neighbour's dog, headed up the hill. I told you the snow looked pretty! This is what I see out my living room and kitchen windows ... I think it's lovely.
Today's big job was the kitchen. The plate rack is something I've wanted for a long time - I like the look of them, and I like having the plates so easily accessible. It's a bit of a luxury, I suppose - I mean, I could store more 'stuff' in the equivalent wall space of cabinetry, but this was something I really wanted. I've already asked for a new set of dishes for my birthday ... Ikea has a lovely set in blue that would look great on the wall. To make even more space, I lifted the microwave up onto the counter. It won't stay there, of course, it mounts over the stove as it has the exhaust fan built into it. At least now we have a bit more room to move around.
We finally brought the table down from upstairs, and now we can eat in the kitchen! This is a huge step forward: no more carrying plates and food from the kitchen to the loft, and The Boy can have his room to himself!

I also cleared up a bunch of the construction mess from the other end of the house (the living room). I moved the saw and sawhorses to the wall outside the bathroom (where the ceiling boards had been sitting), and then shuffled all the remaining bits and pieces of hardware and construction debris into a more efficient layout. If nothing else, I now have a better feel for the space, and what it will feel like to live in it.




This is me having lunch ... in my own kitchen. I made an omelette made with eggs from the neighbours' chickens, and sat at the kitchen table to enjoy it. Why does stuff taste better when you're at your own table?

Cupboards

This week, I started putting together the kitchen cabinets. They are from Ikea, and since whatever furniture I didn't inherit I seem to have purchased from Ikea, at least I have some experience in this particular area. Anyway, I got all the base cabinets put together and the upper corner cabinet as well.

Oh, the other intriguing news for the week is the refrigeration plan: originally, I had hoped to purchase a Sunfrost refrigerator, but they are about 3K and towards the end of a construction project the money tends to run low and 3K is harder to find than one might have expected (or about as hard to find as you might expect, depending on how much experience you have with construction projects). Anyway, Union Guy did some research, and has come up with a clever plan to solve the problem for a reasonable cost. A standard chest freezer (7 cubic foot) is fitted with an exterior thermostat that means it runs only a minute or two out of every hour, just enough to keep the interior at fridge temperature. Because you open the lid, the cold doesn't fall out like it does if you open a fridge door, although it's a bit weird digging for stuff inside. Apparently the wise use of baskets for organizing contents is very important. Anyway, the thermostat thing is on order and this weekend I'll go look at some freezers and see what I can find. The whole solution will cost about $400 instead of $3500, so right there, it's a done deal. And it uses less power.

Today I got one single board hung up in the bedroom ... not a lot done on the house today, but I was busy with The Boy's 4H stuff - we went to the SPCA and a pet store to tour and look at various animals and what it means to be a responsible pet owner. Walls can wait, I suppose, kids matter more. :)

More progress

Today the whole crew was out working - Contractor Man's Assistant is injured and unable to do heavy labour anymore, so Union Guy has been going out to help most of this week (wonderful man that he is). This is Contractor Man's last week, as he heads to Arizona on Tuesday ... so everyone's working hard to get things done before he leaves.

Today vapor barrier work continued: only a few spots remain to be coated in plastic. I have heard a lot of complaints about the tar used to seal the gaps in the vapor barrier: "This is the worst stuff in the world to work with!" according to Contractor Man (rumor has it he said this several times today, like when his stapler got stuck in the stuff). Union Guy has black gunk all over his arms tonight, having forgotten to rinse with varsol before leaving the house. I have to agree, this stuff really is sticky and gross. Oh well, it serves it's purpose.

Plumber Man was working again today: apparently my shower is well underway. I heard that Plumber Man was putting extra glue in the seam in the shower enclosure where the shelves go because "you know how those women are, they need all kinds of shampoo and stuff". With all my long curly hair, well ... that's pretty much true!

The house is really starting to feel like a house now, it's very exciting. I am so happy that it feels the way I thought it would - it is the size I had imagined, and the 'shape' I had envisioned. It's so hard to know for sure what a house will be like from drawings and floor plans alone, but I am very happy with this one. I was putting stain/sealant on my interior doors last night (Minwax Honey Pine all-in-one stain and sealant) - they look beautiful even with just one coat, and it's so nice to finally feel like I am part of the construction crew. Up until now there's not been a lot that I could really do, as so much of it required more strength and/or skill than I have, but the interior finishing will fall almost entirely on my shoulders. I know it's going to be a lot of work, but in an odd way, I'm looking forward to it.

I'm quite sure that someone is going to remind me I said that, when it starts feeling like the house is never gonna be "done" and I'm tired of staining boards and putting cupboards together and laying tile...

A bit of a crazy day

The construction crew had a bit of a crazy day today ... the generator was being irritable and didn't want to run (seems the gas line had frozen up a bit), the batteries were nearly dead, and Contractor Man's diesel truck didn't want to start in the cold either.

Eventually all of these problems were sorted out, but it took up a bunch of time that they would much rather have been doing other things. They did get the vapor barrier finished in the loft, though, which is good cause that means less fibreglass fuzzies and dust in my nose at night. :)

Plumber Man called with the news that the specs we understood from the Well Guys don't make sense, so our well controller isn't ready yet ... I recommended he just call the Well Guys himself tomorrow since they will presumably speak the same language and have less chance of things being lost in translation.

Union Guy is working at my place again tomorrow, so we are in town again tonight (might as well save on fuel, with the cost of diesel being what it is). He'll take The Boy to school in the morning on his way to "the job site" and I'll have a shorter drive to the office.

Tomorrow night, though, we should have the opportunity to test out this new toilet. I realize this is probably not as exciting to anyone else as it is to me ... but believe me, I'm very much looking forward to this!

Power! Real power!

I was out at the acreage today to feed and water the cats, and Solar Dude was there just finishing up some work. The batteries are in their battery box now, and they are being charged from the solar panels! There is one outlet on the super duper power central thingie (inverter and all other controlling devices), and today I actually saw it power a drill for a moment. How exciting! How cool!

Everything else is still the same mess that construction sites tend to be, but we are making progress and that is very exciting.

Power! Yippee!

Last Load

The last load of material arrived yesterday, so we now have roofing, rafters, siding, insulation (yay, warmth!) and windows.

Today was spent squaring the house - Contractor Man had to climb up on the ridge beam on Tuesday and use a chainsaw to trim that long centre beam, as it was a bit too long ... that had to have been interesting! No pictures of that, sadly. Anyway, with comealongs, tow straps and chains and lots of checking with the level, they got everything squared back up again and started putting up roof rafters. Photos of that tomorrow!

The loft is finished and looks really neat. I had thought it had an open front with railings, but apparently the pony wall goes all the way across. That'll work out fine. It's nice and spacious ... The Boy continues to be impressed. We'll see if he's still impressed when the roof rafters are in place and he sees that his ceiling doesn't go all the way up except in the centre ... but then again, he hasn't had his big growth spurt yet so for a few years it'll still seem big.

Contractor Man has taken to calling That Really Nice Guy (who has taken time off his software development job to help with construction) "Union Guy", after hearing him comment one day (when lunch break was called at 2 pm) that he was going to have to speak with the union rep. Since then, lunch tends to be called a little earlier, and Contractor Man just asks me "Is that Union Guy available to work on Friday?" So, I think from now on we'll call him Union Guy. I think he likes the change of pace from building stuff nobody can see to actually hammering a building into place. Works for me, we can use the extra hands!

So our other really good news is that we have a roofing contractor. The metal roof needs to be installed by professionals, as it can be a bit dicey. Of course, I didn't discover this until last week ... so I sent out a few emails, and actually got a reply from someone who is - get this - available next week to do the work! Yay! That is exactly when we need them. They happen to be between two larger jobs, and I should get the contract faxed to me tomorrow. Yay! A roof!

More pictures of construction

This is how the pieces are lifted. Some of them had to have holes drilled in them so we could put the straps through to lift them.
It was tricky to align everything. We had to lift it up, align it just so, and then sort of slide it down, and then hammer it into place. The guy with the hard hat is the son of the picker operator, and he had a test that he should have been studying for ... but he came to work on this job. I promised to pray for him on Tuesday when he wrote his test and I remembered to do so. Hope he did okay. :)


That's Contractor Man with the sledge hammer, or as Dad calls it, the "friendly persuader": he's persuading the pieces to go together. We did a lot of that on Sunday night. The guy on the other side is That Really Nice Guy who is so good to me (and to The Boy). :)
Below you can see the pieces sliding into place, just like they should be. There were only two pieces that had to be trimmed, by about a quarter of an inch, so that everything would go together: this one, and the one below it.

And last but not least, here's the front of the house, with the chimney pillars in place. We spent a lot of time aligning these and making sure they were level ... and then when we put the ridge pole in place everything went "CREAK!" and "KACHUNK" and things kinda shifted. But hey, it started off level!

Walls!

Last night, as I crested the hill just before my corner, I saw ... my house!

The walls went up yesterday. Tomorrow the interior walls will be put up, and then the big picker truck will come and assist with placing the higher pieces where they belong. Apparently the walls are very heavy - I was told that my construction crew would all like gift certificates for massage therapy after yesterday's adventures!

It's really neat to be able to stand inside (well, sort of) and see the shape of the house. It is like I thought it would be, and the views out the windows are exactly what I'd hoped for. I *can* see the lake out my kitchen window! I *can* see the corner from the living room window! Yay!

Contractor housing

Mom and Dad volunteered to help on the project for two weeks. Excellent, free labour! Next problem: a place to stay. Our little 10x14 cabin isn't really big enough for more than two of us, and has no shower - and ya know, I'm just not all that excited about sleeping in a small room with people who've been doing heavy construction labour all day and didn't have access to a shower!

So we started hunting - they didn't want to have to drive very far, but that meant finding accommodations close by ... which is not as easy as it sounds, as I do live rather far out in the country. Anyway, we did locate a cabin that was rented for $700 a week ... pretty steep, but it had two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a shower, and was 10 minutes away. I checked it out quickly the day I signed the agreement and all seemed well.

Yeah, until we moved in. Nothing was clean (despite the promise that it'd be all cleaned up for us ... I know people have differing definitions of "clean" but really, you should be able to expect that you could eat off the dishes without seeing grime around the edges, eww). Mom scrubbed the stuff we'd need to use and we figured we'd make do. I was violently allergic to something in that house, so I slept at my little cabin, and Mom (surprisingly) was okay. Apparently whatever mold was in the cabin was different than the stuff she's allergic to, so she was doing all right.

By the second night, it had been revealed that the shower was pretty disgusting - water backed up out of the drain up to your ankles and that's just nasty. The day that we poured concrete into the foundation, the shower stopped working. No water came out of the taps. We had people who'd worked all day in concrete, with no shower. NOT GOOD.

Phone calls to the man who rented it (now known as Cabin Idiot) were not particularly helpful. "Oh, you musta turned somethin' off ... go check this ... okay, try that ... ah, don' worry 'bout it, there'll be water in the morning I guarantee it". Yeah, well, there wasn't. We packed up and moved everyone to the Ramada Hotel where we had a kitchenette, a hot tub, a swimming pool, and maid service, for under $80 a night. Okay, so there was a 40 minute commute, but you know, for a hot tub and maid service it's worth it.

Especially since Mom broke her foot a couple of days later.

She was burning junk in the firepit, it flared up a bit and she backed up ... and stepped on a twig, rolled her foot, and broke a bone in it. Take home message here: drink your milk when you are young, and wear work boots if you have fragile bones! Anyway, she was much happier spending her remaining week in the hotel with internet access and full cable than she would've been in that crummy little place.