Like a tractor on an icy road, February somehow slipped past us. Ahhh, sorry Rob - I couldn't resist ....
The icy roads I mentioned in last month's blog, didn't improve much in early February. Often a good snowfall will stick to the ice and change the conditions in our favour, but not this time. Rob was out plowing and hit a particularly icy spot, and found himself sliding off over the edge of our road. We tried using a shovel to remove all the surrounding snow from the tires, but the tractor just kept going in deeper. Rob tried to use the tractor's front bucket for leverage but that just made the tires spin, and pushed the tractor further into the bush. For a while it looked like we were going to have to call someone and get pulled out, but Rob decided to give it one more go, and he lucked out, and somehow got enough leverage to push the tractor out backwards and back onto the road.
On the plus side, that was the last time we saw a snowstorm! There have been quite a few to the south of us, but so far the Valley has missed them all, and we haven’t plowed since. Not that winter is quite over. Certainly the cold weather is still with us, with wind chill and frost bite warnings continuing, even now that it is mid-March. I don’t know how many times we’ve thought “this must be the last really cold night”, but then we see more in the forecast. Hopefully not too many more, as we have are now burning up the last of our firewood.
Rob has managed to spend a couple of days in his makeshift shelter on the porch, working on timber braces, but nowhere near as much time as he hoped he would. It's just been too cold.
He has however, been able to spend a huge amount of time on the house designs, which will prove to be a good thing when the weather turns, as he can then dedicate his time to the actual building. He finished all the final window designs, and we got our last quote back and have sent in our order!
We just need to let them know what colour we want the window exteriors to be. In order to do that, we have to figure out the exterior cedar colour, and roof colour, so that we can get the window colour right. Every time I drive anywhere, I find myself looking for metal roofs, and checking out people's window colours (most of the windows are white and we know we don't want white so it hasn't been very helpful!) Rob and I both agreed we like the rusty barn roofs the best, and discovered you can actually order a rusting roof. The web sites advertise "new steel that looks 100 years old" ! It's kind of tempting, but we think there may be some issues, so we will go with a coloured roof instead. We spent a day driving around to some of the stores to see what roofing is available, and Rob got busy figuring out how much we'll need. This is the roof design, although it has probably changed since I took a photo of Rob's screen.
We just received our exterior stain samples, and have little pieces of cedar all coated with the various colours that we think we might like. At the same time, we also ordered and received some interior white "wash" samples for the pine ceilings. Hopefully this week we will sort all these colours out, and make some final decisions.
Rob has worked his way through all of the drawings, in an attempt to visualize how he is going to assemble all the timbers once they are ready. In one breath he is talking to me about renting a crane, vs. building his own assembly, and in the next he is back to talking about double walls, vapour barriers, and sources for the insulation.
Most days he spends hours and hours on the PC, and if I find it hard to keep up with his conversational topic switches, it's nothing compared to what I see him doing on his PC screen. Watching how-to videos one moment, calculating costs and budgets the next, installing software for room designs to try to figure out wood stove placement, following numerous building forums, researching woodworking tools.... and that's just a small part of it!
Fortunately Jet requires daily play times, and some good long walks, so Rob has lots of opportunities to get up from that chair and get some fresh air and exercise. Jet's always happy to go the building site, where he can check for the scent of deer, while Rob can think a bit about the house.
Jet is a bit too keen on checking for deer though, so is back to being walked on a long line again, after running off one evening and putting both Rob and I into a panic when he didn't return. He came back eventually, tired and (perhaps) a touch contrite, so Rob has doubled his efforts now on recalls, heeling, and general off leash behaviour. They have an intricate series of game playing, interspersed with training that Jet seems to enjoy. It's good to get his brain working too! (Jet's - not Rob's. Rob's brain is busy enough!)
We didn't think that the river surface froze over completely last year, so checked on some of our photos and sure enough, it was open in the center, and there were very few signs of animals crossing the river. But this year it actually did freeze over, and the deer have been crossing it constantly. We didn't really know if this was normal, but then we read that the Great Lakes have frozen over more than they have in decades, and even a small part of Niagara Falls froze ! So this really is an unusual year.
While we always remain cautious and stick close to the edge, it was lovely to be able to walk along and look up and down the river. But one day as I stood at the edge I realized I could hear the river running under the ice, and although the surface still appeared to be frozen, there were fewer fresh deer tracks, so I followed their cue, and decided it was time to stop walking the edge. Sure enough we had a short mild spell, and the slush began to form on the surface.
But then it got cold and everything froze again! These are Jets big paw prints.
And so begins the pre-spring tease. A little breath of warm air followed by another deep freeze. Slowly though things are beginning to emerge.
We didn't manage to go snowshoeing yet with our friend Bob, but we did go out for a good long walk along the road near to where he lives.
In his area there is a lot more hardwood, whereas we have a lot more cedar, balsam and spruce. We don't have a single beech tree here, yet there, they were everywhere we looked. We think we may try planting some beech nuts here and see if we can get some growing. We had some beautiful big beech trees around the dome and always loved them. The birds and squirrels loved the beech nuts as well, although here they certainly seem to enjoy the feast of cedar seeds so they aren't lacking for food!
We live in logging country, so I shouldn't have been surprised to see logging equipment on our walk, but I was.
This is the biggest saw I've ever seen, and it was interesting to see the equipment they use. In another couple of weeks this area will be a sea of mud, so I guess it's easier to do the cutting now.
On the way home we pass a lot of planted forests, all perfectly lined up, with the forest floor bare. Even from the car you can see through a long way!
Both Rob and I say we are reluctantly saying goodbye to winter in a way – it’s been nice to be cozied up near the wood stove, and we know we have a pile of work coming our way! These lovely early evening winter walks are about to end.
There is a quiet beauty to our winter surroundings, a stillness and pristine whiteness. But this morning the air was filling with sounds, the lovely sounds of small birds, blue jays, crows and ravens, and red squirrels chattering, but also the sounds of the trucks on the other side of the river in the gravel pits, chain saws in the distance…. We are slowly emerging into the sunshine and warmer weather, getting ready to build our nests.... and in our case our new timber frame house!
The icy roads I mentioned in last month's blog, didn't improve much in early February. Often a good snowfall will stick to the ice and change the conditions in our favour, but not this time. Rob was out plowing and hit a particularly icy spot, and found himself sliding off over the edge of our road. We tried using a shovel to remove all the surrounding snow from the tires, but the tractor just kept going in deeper. Rob tried to use the tractor's front bucket for leverage but that just made the tires spin, and pushed the tractor further into the bush. For a while it looked like we were going to have to call someone and get pulled out, but Rob decided to give it one more go, and he lucked out, and somehow got enough leverage to push the tractor out backwards and back onto the road.
On the plus side, that was the last time we saw a snowstorm! There have been quite a few to the south of us, but so far the Valley has missed them all, and we haven’t plowed since. Not that winter is quite over. Certainly the cold weather is still with us, with wind chill and frost bite warnings continuing, even now that it is mid-March. I don’t know how many times we’ve thought “this must be the last really cold night”, but then we see more in the forecast. Hopefully not too many more, as we have are now burning up the last of our firewood.
Rob has managed to spend a couple of days in his makeshift shelter on the porch, working on timber braces, but nowhere near as much time as he hoped he would. It's just been too cold.
He has however, been able to spend a huge amount of time on the house designs, which will prove to be a good thing when the weather turns, as he can then dedicate his time to the actual building. He finished all the final window designs, and we got our last quote back and have sent in our order!
We just need to let them know what colour we want the window exteriors to be. In order to do that, we have to figure out the exterior cedar colour, and roof colour, so that we can get the window colour right. Every time I drive anywhere, I find myself looking for metal roofs, and checking out people's window colours (most of the windows are white and we know we don't want white so it hasn't been very helpful!) Rob and I both agreed we like the rusty barn roofs the best, and discovered you can actually order a rusting roof. The web sites advertise "new steel that looks 100 years old" ! It's kind of tempting, but we think there may be some issues, so we will go with a coloured roof instead. We spent a day driving around to some of the stores to see what roofing is available, and Rob got busy figuring out how much we'll need. This is the roof design, although it has probably changed since I took a photo of Rob's screen.
We just received our exterior stain samples, and have little pieces of cedar all coated with the various colours that we think we might like. At the same time, we also ordered and received some interior white "wash" samples for the pine ceilings. Hopefully this week we will sort all these colours out, and make some final decisions.
Rob has worked his way through all of the drawings, in an attempt to visualize how he is going to assemble all the timbers once they are ready. In one breath he is talking to me about renting a crane, vs. building his own assembly, and in the next he is back to talking about double walls, vapour barriers, and sources for the insulation.
Most days he spends hours and hours on the PC, and if I find it hard to keep up with his conversational topic switches, it's nothing compared to what I see him doing on his PC screen. Watching how-to videos one moment, calculating costs and budgets the next, installing software for room designs to try to figure out wood stove placement, following numerous building forums, researching woodworking tools.... and that's just a small part of it!
Fortunately Jet requires daily play times, and some good long walks, so Rob has lots of opportunities to get up from that chair and get some fresh air and exercise. Jet's always happy to go the building site, where he can check for the scent of deer, while Rob can think a bit about the house.
Jet is a bit too keen on checking for deer though, so is back to being walked on a long line again, after running off one evening and putting both Rob and I into a panic when he didn't return. He came back eventually, tired and (perhaps) a touch contrite, so Rob has doubled his efforts now on recalls, heeling, and general off leash behaviour. They have an intricate series of game playing, interspersed with training that Jet seems to enjoy. It's good to get his brain working too! (Jet's - not Rob's. Rob's brain is busy enough!)
We didn't think that the river surface froze over completely last year, so checked on some of our photos and sure enough, it was open in the center, and there were very few signs of animals crossing the river. But this year it actually did freeze over, and the deer have been crossing it constantly. We didn't really know if this was normal, but then we read that the Great Lakes have frozen over more than they have in decades, and even a small part of Niagara Falls froze ! So this really is an unusual year.
While we always remain cautious and stick close to the edge, it was lovely to be able to walk along and look up and down the river. But one day as I stood at the edge I realized I could hear the river running under the ice, and although the surface still appeared to be frozen, there were fewer fresh deer tracks, so I followed their cue, and decided it was time to stop walking the edge. Sure enough we had a short mild spell, and the slush began to form on the surface.
But then it got cold and everything froze again! These are Jets big paw prints.
And so begins the pre-spring tease. A little breath of warm air followed by another deep freeze. Slowly though things are beginning to emerge.
We didn't manage to go snowshoeing yet with our friend Bob, but we did go out for a good long walk along the road near to where he lives.
In his area there is a lot more hardwood, whereas we have a lot more cedar, balsam and spruce. We don't have a single beech tree here, yet there, they were everywhere we looked. We think we may try planting some beech nuts here and see if we can get some growing. We had some beautiful big beech trees around the dome and always loved them. The birds and squirrels loved the beech nuts as well, although here they certainly seem to enjoy the feast of cedar seeds so they aren't lacking for food!
We live in logging country, so I shouldn't have been surprised to see logging equipment on our walk, but I was.
This is the biggest saw I've ever seen, and it was interesting to see the equipment they use. In another couple of weeks this area will be a sea of mud, so I guess it's easier to do the cutting now.
On the way home we pass a lot of planted forests, all perfectly lined up, with the forest floor bare. Even from the car you can see through a long way!
Both Rob and I say we are reluctantly saying goodbye to winter in a way – it’s been nice to be cozied up near the wood stove, and we know we have a pile of work coming our way! These lovely early evening winter walks are about to end.
There is a quiet beauty to our winter surroundings, a stillness and pristine whiteness. But this morning the air was filling with sounds, the lovely sounds of small birds, blue jays, crows and ravens, and red squirrels chattering, but also the sounds of the trucks on the other side of the river in the gravel pits, chain saws in the distance…. We are slowly emerging into the sunshine and warmer weather, getting ready to build our nests.... and in our case our new timber frame house!
