Saturday 28 September 2013

Just a quick update!

Just a super-quick, text-only update, as it's been over a month (oops!!  Sorry everyone!!!!!).  It's been a busy month (when was our last NON-busy month......???) but we're enjoying our last few days of a 12-day vacation, so I am puttering, and jumping from task to task, and spending more time relaxing than has become the sad norm lately.

So, what has happened in the past month?

Chickens

Our birds are doing well.  Their last weigh-in was almost three weeks ago, and they averaged just over two pounds.  Two weeks ago, one of the cockerels started attempting to crow, which was quite amusing.  I tried to get a video but of course, he got a little camera shy and kept quiet as I peered out the pop-hole (chicken door) of the coop willing him to try again.  They continue to grow well, and are friendly and really enjoying the scraps from the garden harvest.

Garden

We've only got one thing left in the veggie garden: a shallot from Kim that I hope will give us some seeds before dying.  We got our first frost on Sept 16th, and what I believe was our first freeze on the night of the 25th (which was the night we got back from our travelling... more on that later).  Before we left, I harvested the potatoes and the turnips.  The potatoes were great (except the Cariboos) but the turnips should have been harvested much earlier, and were thus very large and wormy.  We had already eaten the few carrots that came up, and two harvests of peas (with lots left for seed).  On the 18th, I built a frame for the corn and draped a frost cover over top.  I covered the last of the peas (for seed), the three cabbages, and the lone, tall shallot (which involved pounding a long piece of steel into the ground to hold up the covering, providing the perfect opportunity to use the post-pounder my brother built for me - it works great!  If ever you need a post pounder welded up, Bob's your guy!).  When we got home, the corn was still half covered and the post and the tallest shallot spear had poked through their covering, but the peas and the cabbages were still snug under their frost cloth.  I harvested everything but the shallot: the peas were picked and laid on a pie plate to finish drying; the cabbages were chopped, blanched, and frozen for later; and the tiny ears of corn are in the fridge waiting for me to try to "make" baby corn out of them.

Roof

Our huge, ginormous project this summer was the roof.  I won't get in to too much detail, but we ended up doing more work than we anticipated (as we had hoped that the roofing company would do whatever work needed to be done).  However, this encouraged my whole immediate family to come up for a visit, so we had 6 of us here some nights, which was absolutely great, especially because I finally got to meet my brother's girlfriend, and I adore her.  Dad, Jordan and Bob did most of the work, with Mom, Larysa and I passing supplies, running to town, and doing odd jobs from the comfort and relative safety of the ground.  This roof has been a huge source of stress since it started leaking in January, and it is still not 100% done (as we still have soffits and fascia to install).  But the structure has been checked out (by three men congregating on the "falling" corner of the roof, and it didn't move an inch!), the insulation redone (and we are already noticing a huge difference!!!), the strapping and sheeting completed and the new roof tiles were installed on Thursday.  Yay!!!!  Once the last bit of work is completed, there will be many sighs of relief all around, and we anticipate not having to worry about it again while we live here (as the roofing tiles come with a lifetime warranty).

Vacation

As I mentioned, we are just back from a vacation to Ye Olde Stomping Grounds to visit with our families and take a break from the stress of the house.  The main focus of the trip was to attend Jordan's Dad's wedding, and it wasn't a dissapointment: the wedding was intimate and beautiful, and the reception was lively.  It was absolutely wonderful to visit everyone, as it had been over a year since our last visit.  And we got to visit Ikea!!!  We came home with an island for the kitchen (which we had been planning since our last trip), an entertainment unit (which we started planning two days before buying it), and an under-cupboard light for above the sink (which I have wanted since we moved in).  I also planned a dinner to get together with my friends, and it was a success, with friends from high school and one of my previous jobs coming to say hello and catch up.

I'd also like to send out a huge THANK YOU! to Tessa, Matt, Ellie and Caleb, who kept an eye on the chickens while we were away - they have chickens as well, so I didn't worry one bit about our birds while we were gone.  Sure enough, they did a fabulous job!

That's the majority of our news.  I'm sure I will discover more when I start sorting through the pictures, so watch for another post in the near future (hopefully not a month from now!).