So much to do, so little time!

Whew, we finally have an excuse to not work until bedtime.  It is dark now by 1700hrs and that is when I get home.  Winter is here, sort of.  We are experience a most wonderful chinook after a few days of -30C.  After many hours we finally got the barn structure set up.  We still need doors and skirting but that can wait until spring our big concern was the getting the barn structure complete before the winter and we achieved that task, just barely.


The deep freeze we found ourselves in for a few days showed us a couple of problems with water lines that were not addressed by the previous owner...hmmm.  Well hopefully we corrected them during the warm period last week but we won't know until the weather freezes again.  The dogs discovered a couple of loose chickens before we did, and then there were 4.  Two of the three hens remaining have started laying wonderful tasting eggs.  We all are quite excited each day to go out and check for eggs.

We now have a serviceable bale spike on the tractor and have given the donkeys a large bale of hay to munch on. They seem to be doing ok and have calmed down so much that Rowyn has had a chance to sit on them for a minute or two.
We have to do something about the dogs, most nights they bark endlessly at passing coyotes.  Perhaps we can train them to be inside at night, we will see.

Saskatoons

I almost forgot about our Saskatoon orchard experience...let's start by saying this; one long time customer of the previous owner was so put off by the state of the orchard she wouldn't even pick them.  To say they were overgrown would be an understatement....sadly when left un-pruned the bushes went wild and grew and grew....unfortunately when something puts that much energy into growing there is not much left for producing fruit and our bushes were terribly sparse with it.....We have a few containers of berries  and they are very tasty in our fruit smoothies..... on the upside we have the winter to plan our strategy for cleaning up the orchard....

30 holes...that's how many

Just so you know, a tractor and 8' auger still take a considerable amount of time and energy to dig thirty 12" X 6' holes in the clay....thanks again Brad.  Of course the wearing out of his little tractor spurred him to create a quick attach system for his bale spike and bucket on the other tractor, and of course, led to us spending some time putting together one half of one tractor with the other half of another tractor...that was cool. So thirty holes...and then they had to be filled with 8' railway ties....those are heavy....  well at least the foundation for the barn is below frost line and solid.
We decided on a 20' X 50' steel arch barn.  once we got the first three panels up with the help of our wonderful niece Rachel and her beau Andrew, Amanda and I are putting it together one arch at a time after work.  It takes us 1-1.5 hours each arch and easily a third of that time is spent together in the bucket of the tractor 10-14 feet in the air!  Tractors make great scaffolding....sort of.  Steel barns are quite simple to put together and I am thankful because I am a simple guy.

How many holes!

One every five feet!  Jumpin Jimminies!!  I get ahead of myself.  Wow so much has happened since we got the chickens.  Our sweet puppies discovered the chickens....hmmmm and almost a trip off the farm.  Well to be fair only claire and not maria was doing the killing, but maria was more than happy to munch away on the fresh kills.  All in all they only got 3 of the chickens and only roosters, whew.  Good thing we were home at the time and heard the excited barking the duo of death were emitting.  From dogs to people, we had a fantastic time when a whole bunch of family and friends got together for a day of turning chickens into food and BBQ over a nice fire.  It is a wonderfully rich life when one can be surrounded, at least on occasion, by good people.  Kari now has a freezer full of farm fresh chickens.  A couple of weeks from now we hope to duplicate the experience when our chickens are ready.  So we tore down the only leaning barn.  It went down slicker than snot.  It was leaning so much that all it took was the removal of a laaaarge dog house than was holding it partially up and pushing it past a fence post holding a corner of the barn up....and down she came.  Thanks so much to Manny and Brad whom helped immensely with the demolition...we will have a huge bonfire this holiday season....hopefully with all the wonderful people we had at our last gathering...

Pets

Well the donkeys have arrived and boy are they in rough shape.  Story goes they were left in a field over a year ago and not looked on since.  It must have been tough for them to dig through snow to get at the grass this past winter.  They sure are a hardy beast.  Well they have lush pasture, shelter, salt and water.  Now we need to get a farrier out to take care of their massively overgrown hoofs.  So let's see, we have chickens, donkeys and just yesterday we acquired two lab puppies, man are they cute.  I think the number of non producing animals is outnumbering the producing animals...hmmm around here the old farmers do not think much of that ratio.  If it doesn't produce a return it is not kept.  Amanda argues donkeys and dogs do produce, they produce love.  Gotta love her.  One farmer replied, try to eat the love of your donkey when your hungry.  Yes he is old enough to have lived through the depression out here.  Did you know donkey live for 30-50 years?  We will still have these donkeys as I am leaving for the old folks home. 

Ranch Hand

Wow what an experience.  I spent the last two weeks helping out a cattle rancher.  I started out fencing and learned what it takes to build a right proper cattle fence.  I have participated in two cattle drives, no three cattle drives and two roundups.  It really gets your adrenaline and heart pumping overdrive when a 1000 pound cow decides to go through the space your standing in instead of around, to watch as the massive animals bend steel gates simply by moving.    Did you know that it is a requirement of the Cattle Coop out here to brand all cattle involved?  Beastly you say?  I would agree and having now participated in the activity I am quite qualified to make the opinion.  I was stuck branding, but truthfully the other tasks being performed simultaneously are worse.  If someone could develop a method of permanently tracking cattle without branding I would be the first to rally the cause but until then disease and crime must be kept in check and branding works. 
We rounded up a young moose that was trapped inside the large sheep pasture.  I have fixed waterers, run an antique post pounder and cut hay. If only I could work at the job all year round and get benefits, especially health benefits as most of a ranch hands day is spent in hazardous pursuits.  I suppose I could get work but most places want you to live onsite and that would defeat our purpose for being here.

Why is the animal called a chicken?

Because it is!  It was a new beginning for our chickens yesterday.  They have finally grown enough to allow them outside.  We opened the hatch and waited....and waited....and waited.  The birds were too chicken to go outside.  Finally a brave one dared the jungle of high grass that waits for them outside and by today they were all making little paths through the high grass.  Where we lived on Vancouver Island were no predators of chickens.  Where we live now has more predators than I can list easily.  Some are owls, weasels, and hawks.  Now I am not talking about the odd hawk you might see, our fence posts around here are dotted with them.  Anyway, because of all the predators the chickens need to be enclosed to be safe, if you want them outside they must be netted in.  Well the area around the brood/laying coop is netted only 3 feet off the ground and has no human entrance.  This is why the grass is so long.  We have a couple of other bird areas and next year we hope to have turkeys and ???  Anyone have any suggestions?

lightening

Holy doodle have we been entertained lately!  This part of Alberta seems to have an abundance of weather.  The lightening and thunder concert the other night was so powerful you could smell the air burning.  Our clothesline was melted  everywhere it contacted metal.  Fortunately nothing critical was damaged.  On another note, donkeys have been on our minds lately.  No real practical reason for us to have donkeys and not being a "pet" person I don't understand the need, however, suffice to say donkeys have been located and are being transplanted from a place no longer able to care for them and brought to our place next week.  Hmmm this means I have to scramble to put together tractor modifications for large round bale movement, complete the manufacture of a trailer for said round bales, locate a source of suitable round bales for donkey digestion.  Turns out donkeys don't like high protein food which is of course what I have easy access to!  And they say you have to join the military to have "no life like it".  At least the waterer is working, now if I can just solve the occasional sediment problem in the well water.

Chickens

Well we finally got some chickens, they are not what we wanted, they are not even what we ordered but hey we now have chickens.  We have made great contacts in the Alberta chicken world and we will be ready next year to get the kind we want.  Of course Amanda has totally gone into "mom" mode and is checking on the chicks every half hour to make sure everything is ok, bless her she is an amazing person.  We found out we have a rare gopher living on the property.  It looks like a chipmunk (for those of you who know what they are).  So far I have found no use for any of the civilization (did you know civilized by definition just means skilled at the art of living in cities?) skills I have picked up living in cities for the last 20 years but working with farmer ben for the last two weeks has taught me a whole plethora of useful skills for living on a farm.  Ben is great person to know and always has patience to teach an old greenhorn like myself.  He didn't even bat an eyelash when I got the tractor stuck yesterday and when the PTO shaft broke he just said "it happens".

Weather

Today's was spectacular.  From sunny and blue, through hail, rain, thunder and lightening and back to sunny and blue...all in half an hour.  Seeing fork lightening is a joy i forgot about while living on the rock.  Today was simple pleasures, finish readying the chicken coop, visit with family and generally remind ourselves of why we are choosing to live as we do.

First day of rest

Well we finally can say the house is liveable. We even rested and watched movies with the girls today.  The weather has been less than clement and the rain and wind have curtailed any productive outside work today anyway.  It was a lot easier to get a load of coal in than I thought and only took 4.5 hours from start to finish including the two hour drive round trip to get the coal.  One more load to go before winter. There is still a summers worth of work fixing various buildings and organizing things around the farm but we finally got a small garden dug in yesterday.  We have two amazing garden spaces totalling about an acre.  We haven't got the time to spare to plant them this year but they have amazing soil, the like I have never seen.  The previous owner gardened for 20 years and obviously paid attention to revitalizing the soil.  The fact that it sat fallow for the last four years I am sure contributed to the top notch quality of the soil.  We had the time yesterday to put the scythe to work on some of the exceptionally long grass around the property, what a treat to use such a custom tool it worked brilliantly.  It is a different life homesteading, the biggest challenge is water conservation.  We only have a small cistern and breaking some water waste habits is proving to be rather difficult.  Anyway today felt like it is all coming together finally.

Holy Doodle

Take a wild guess at how much a plumber charges out here, go on....you're too low, $275/hour from the time he leaves his office.  So we did not hire a plumber.  So what did we do when the septic line backed up for the second time in as many days?  Of course, exactly what you would do, fortunately there is no one out here to hear you scream.  Then Brad showed up with welder in hand to fix aforementioned stairs and of course he had a possible solution and, well, lets keep our fingers crossed while we wait for our composting toilet.  If you ever need to clean out a septic line try flexible plumbing pipe connected end to end with small screws.  At the end of the contraption screw in several long screws to form a ball of spikes and scrape out the pipe.  We found what we think will be an amazing alternative to using fresh water to wash away effluent.  It is called Natures Head, even the name is neat.  Funny how I can leave the navy but it still follows me in small ways.  We talked about living a simple life true to our beliefs and values for so long, to finally be here is a true "turn of a friendly card" to quote Alan Parsons.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Friedrich Nietzsche

Wow the back steps collapsed while Amanda and the girls where on them!  That isn't even the beginning.  Where to begin? We arrived beginning of June, the place was unfit to live in.  We rolled up our sleeves pushed aside the west coast sloth and relied heavily on my family, Kari, Brad and company have been invaluable.  Did you know they modeled Macgyver after Brad?  So we have daily surprises and so far most of them have been, holy doodle, what do we do now!!  Did I mention the septic backed up into the bathroom and mudroom!  Amanda has been amazingly Zen about everything so far, I personally believe she is still in a state of shock.