Monday 10 February 2014

Goals for 2014

So now that we've made it through our first summer on the farm, and we're working our way through our second winter, we have a better idea of our resources (ex. money, time, know-how and ideas, physical capabilities, PITA tolerance, etc.) and how quickly plans can get sidetracked.  With that in mind, we sat down a few weeks ago and decided on our 2014 goals:
- Organize the garden better, and keep up with maintenance
- Finish the soffits and fascia, and possibly put up eaves troughs
- Chink the house
- Start composting for real, instead of just throwing random stuff in a pile and forgetting about it

These might actually be attainable! Yay!

I have two personal goals as well:
- Fix my physical issues and keep up with exercising
- Knit a pair of socks

Everything else is a bonus!

Let's try this interaction thing: What is one of your goals for 2014?

Sunday 9 February 2014

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!

Thursday 6 February 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.


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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!