February... March.... bring on Spring!

February is known for it's unsettled weather, with extreme lows, and occasional thaws. We certainly had the lows, but there was no sign of any thawing for the entire month! We had several "extreme cold warnings", wicked wind chills of minus 35 to minus 40, and bitterly cold nights.  But, as we watched the snowy weather patterns on the east coast of Canada and the US, we decided that we were feeling pretty lucky overall! We did get a bit of snow, but nothing major for the entire month.

For us, February is also "the month of love". We celebrate the anniversary of our first date, Valentine's Day, and the anniversary of our moving in together.  (Don't do the math  - we did indeed move in together after knowing each other for a pretty short time.) We met 37 years ago - so far it seems to have worked out pretty well....

So while some people say February is their least favourite month of the year - we are rather fond of it.  We spent most of it cozied up next to the wood stove, or heavily bundled up and walking with Jet outside. Rob kindly made sure the truck would start every morning that I had to go to work, and I would fill the passenger seat with extra mitts, hat, and scarves, in case of any problems with the truck during my commute. I discovered that the beautiful Alpaca wool wrap that was a gift from my friend Elizabeth was perfect for wrapping around my knees, or draping over my shoulders, keeping me warm each day until the truck really warmed up.

I experienced some of the most stunningly beautiful views on my ride into work; cold winter sun barely glowing through the early morning ice crystals, drifts of snow blowing over the farm fields, and shaggy, frosty cattle grazing on their morning bundles of hay.  One morning I passed one of the Mennonite men, in an open buggy, well bundled but still looking awfully cold, and the horse pulling the buggy all covered in ice. One evening I looked in my rear view mirror and caught the sight of a lovely big grey horse pulling a buggy up a dark and snow covered lane way - the horse perfectly lit by the lights that were mounted on the wagon. Of course I have no photos of these moments, but the images are firmly in my memory!

In fact, I have few photos from this month at all.  And many are ones I took from inside the warmth of the cabin!

Each time there is a fresh snowfall, I like to go out and look for new animal tracks. There are snowshoe hare tracks all over the property, but I rarely see the actual rabbit. One day as I sat inside at my computer though, I caught some movement outside the window, and there was a lovely hare, browsing on some cedar. Thanks to the German Shepherd who seems to have put nose prints on the inside window - possibly not my clearest shot - but it was lovely to sit and watch the hare eat for a while.

The number of animal tracks crossing the river increased in February as well. The river appeared to be frozen, but when we stood at the edge of the river there were sections where we could still hear the river flowing beneath the ice. In an area one afternoon, it sounded exactly like lovely steel drums.  We always walk cautiously along the edge, and don't venture out too far.  The coyotes, deer and fox seem to have so such qualms. One thing I haven't seen this year, is the tracks of the wild turkeys. They usually show up along the river edge, and all around the cabin but this year there have been none.

We like to follow the deer tracks, as they seem to have a bit of a highway running in front of the cabin, along the edge of the river, and over to the new house where they cross in front of the living room windows.

It was also nice to be able to walk along the frozen river edge and look to see how much of the house is visible from the river. (Not much!)  I couldn't do it in the fall when the house first went up, as the river was too high, too cold and running too fast!  Funny to think that was just a few short months ago.

With the cold wind chills we didn't manage to get out for any snow shoe hikes this year. We did don some snowshoes briefly one afternoon when we went to help our friend Bob take down a dead tamarack tree.  We needed the snow shoes to get through the snow and down to where the tree was. It's a bit of a slope down to the lake where Bob lives, and Rob took a few minutes to show us some excellent techniques for getting up when you fall over! Here he demonstrated the roll method, and the use of a pole.

Later on he demonstrated the tree hugging method.  I am sorry I laughed - but I did manage to ask if he was all right...!  We still wonder if Bob didn't wax those snowshoes!

In terms of the house building, obviously not much has been going on in the house. But Rob has been extremely busy working on the plans, and sourcing items. He twice had to cancel travel plans for picking up the off grid system due to the weather and poor road conditions.  But he was pleased to be able to finally pick up the panels, inverters, and controllers, one cold bright sunny day.  I think I pictured some sort of major celebration when he arrived home with them, but it was cold and dark when he arrived home, and we simply carried in what we could, admired the boxes, and decided to celebrate when they system is actually installed!

The reality of going off grid did however, become a bit more "real" with the arrival of the panels. Rob has been working on the lighting plans for the house, and had to think carefully about putting in multiple switches to ensure that we could turn on a light when we entered a room, but also turn it off as we exited into the next room.  We've been practising here to turn unnecessary lights off more often, but I think we will find ourselves improving on that! I picked up a good indoor drying rack for drying clothes and have been using it for the last couple of weeks to see how it does. (It's great!) Although the clothes dryer would have to be on propane, we are seriously considering not bothering with one at all.

Rob has been researching bath tubs - (acrylic vs. cast iron vs steel - I think marble is out!) and here's the problem.  I LOVE the bath tub here - there is something about it that is just really comfortable. But I don't know what it is!  I'm told the best thing to do is to go to the store and get into the tub you want - and check it out for fit. Well - most stores have them on display stacked above each other on a rack, way up high. I don't think you can ask them to please just bring it down so you can get into it!  I guess we will have to look into it a bit more.

Other items on the list - low flush toilets, bathroom fans, wiring, (Rob is reading the entire newest version of the Electrical Code book!) wood stove installation, interior wall designs. Final design for the kitchen (the peninsula is now an island!) Rob's been trying to simplify the workshop design. The solar panels will be mounted on the roof of the workshop, so the sooner they are on the better. The workshop is not yet built however!

February was a great month to spend time planning and researching. But I think our brains are getting full, and both of us just want to get on with the actual building. I know though, that when Rob is in the thick of it - he'll be glad that he took the time to think things out first.

Unfortunately March arrived with a forecast for below normal temperatures, and we woke up one morning to a thermometer reading of minus 33 ! Rob had expected that he would be able to get back to building by the beginning of March, but has been frustrated by the continuing cold. Suddenly though, in mid-March, we were teased with a brief spell of above normal temperatures, blue skies, and glorious warm sunshine.

The concrete pad inside the house began to warm up a bit, and Rob even opened some windows in the house during the day to allow the warmer air from outside to come into the house.

The river began to show some signs of thawing, and we were hoping that the warm trend would continue.

Rob decided it was time to remove some of the snow from around the house, in hopes that he would soon have some bare ground, and access to the east and south sides of the house at least.

Of course, March being March, another storm blew in, and the promised rain arrived as snow instead.  On the plus side, it was very beautiful!

We will get building soon. This week the jays and the chickadees moved into a different song, the song of spring. The deer have been more active in the woods and on our roads.

There was a bit more warmth in the sun, and it is beginning to set a little later in the day. We've been able to go for a walk most evenings when I get home from work.

 Despite the cold, spring is surely on it's way.

And with the imminent arrival of spring, our "winter hibernation" period is about to end. We are enjoying our last few days of relaxation before the work on the house begins again.

Still waiting for Spring

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!

Looking in, Looking out

If I had to sum up January in just one word this year, I guess it would be "cold". We've been keeping close to the wood stove, and burning up a rather alarming amount of firewood. There have been days when we thought there was something wrong with our lovely little stove, thinking it wasn't putting out much heat. It took a while, but we finally realized that it does just fine when the temperature doesn't go much below minus 20 degrees Celsius. We had lots of nights that were well below minus 30, and days that hung in around minus 25, and that's before the wind chill factor. We do have electric baseboards, and did have to leave a couple of them on in the downstairs rooms overnight. We found that if we let the house get too cold, we spend all day fighting to warm it up again.

Jet doesn't seem to even notice the cold, so he had us out everyday for the usual play times, and walks.

 

 

But there were a few times when we just had to cut the walks short a bit. As wrapped up as we were, with just our eyes, nose and cheeks bare, we could feel the biting wind on our skin, and worried about Jet's ears and paws getting too cold.

In between the cold spells, we did have our usual January thaw, which lowered the snow bank levels, brought rain, and freezing rain, and left our roadway rather an icy mess. Wood stove ashes do a marvellous job of providing traction on ice though, so after spreading them on one of the hills, I was able to get the truck out after only one or two mishaps of getting stuck!

There has been some carnage on the river - one night something took a deer down - either a coyote or a wolf I suppose, leaving the remains of the deer on the other side of the river. It's "Nature's way" as they say, and there is no doubt it provided crows, ravens and bald eagles with a bit of a feast for more than a few days. In the spirit of photography, I placed a deck chair in the snow along our shoreline, and waited for a while to see if there would be any opportunities to photograph a bald eagle. I must say that I did have a few anxious moments, sitting all alone in the woods, when I started to think about what it was exactly that took a deer down....but decided I wouldn't worry.

There were no signs of the bald eagle while I sat there so I left, and no sooner did I leave than all the birds returned. They seemed to know I was in the area and must have been hanging around nearby.

January is always a good time to try out some new recipes, so I spent some time in the kitchen, trying my hand at making my own pizza crust, hummus, and a big pot of posole with pork. I still have rather a lot of dried chiles stored away, as well as an enormous bag of dried blue corn, so decided it was time to use some supplies up.  Next on the list will be hand made corn tortillas.  Rob thinks we should figure out how to make wood oven bagels, but I haven't got that adventurous yet! I am once again able to pick up my monthly order from the local food co-op due to a change in pick up location, so I was happy to get some organic Highland beef for chili too. Turning the oven on seems to warm up the kitchen a bit more, so it was nice to spend some time close to the stove, and we now have a good supply of meals in our freezer again.

Rob has been working hard the last few weeks on window designs, sending out requests for quotes, and getting ideas from my brother Mike who, because of his job, knows a whole lot about windows! Which is lucky for us...

It's been a bit of a struggle and the program Rob uses to do the drawings crashes an awful lot, which doesn't help. But there is also (as always!) a lot to think about. How the windows will look from both the inside and outside. What size they should be and what shape. How many there should be. Which ones should open. How they should open. (Open in, open out, open vertically, open horizontally, or even tilt!) Double glazed vs. triple glazed. Heat transfer, U factor, Solar gain... Wood vs. fibreglass vs vinyl.. Inside colour, outside colour .... I don't think I will ever think of windows in the same way again.

When we first moved into the cabin I was thrilled to just have windows that opened easily, and in fact I'm still amazed that I can just crank them open whenever I need to.

Rob made them all by hand, and would love to do that again, but it would take way too long, and really isn't practical this time if we ever want get this house built! In the dome the windows he built were a bit more interesting and I loved them, but they were difficult to open and close and I couldn't reach most of them to ever clean them.

Every decision we make about windows, also seems to affect the cost. Rob did manage to get the cost down for most of them, although in the end he actually added windows and increased the size of some so that cost went up! But I think he's done a good job, and we'll be happy with them. The views are stunning on the building site, and we want to be able to enjoy those views through the windows as much as possible.  This will be my view from the kitchen!

We didn't venture out much in January, but did go to an open house at a local farm, complete with a wagon ride - and picked up delicious rainbow carrots, and potatoes, and Feta and Tomme cheese made from sheep's milk.  The farm is off grid and we had an enjoyable time learning about their unique cold cellar, and looking around a bit.

Next time we should bring our snow shoes as there were trails available, and it is in a beautiful spot. They also have a yurt!

We hadn't been in one since visiting our friends Ross and Hanne in New Mexico for sound healing and shamanic healing sessions.  Sadly our dear friend Ross passed away after a brief and unexpected illness in January.  He was an amazing man; healer, teacher, artist, friend, and so much more....His passing has made both of us spend some time looking in, and looking out....missing him, yet ever aware of our joy and gratitude for knowing him.

Being outdoors is always healing, so we took some time out for a bit of a snowshoe hike, and for some gentle walks around.  There is a lovely spot on the edge of the river with a perfect log for sitting on.  Under the shelter of the trees, on a sunny day I can sit comfortably for quite a while, listening to the silence. The river is almost frozen over, so I can no longer hear it. But if I sit for a while, I will hear the drum of the pileated woodpecker, the scolding of a red squirrel, and the sound of the raven. So it isn't all that silent after all.

We are cautious and stay close to the edge of the river, but it really does seem to be quite frozen this year. Here there is a lovely natural clearing next to the river's edge. The previous owners of the property used to clear the snow, and their kids would skate here in the winter!

On the other side of the tree line (above Rob's head)  is our new house site.

On the day we were out there were a few animal tracks across the river, but not many. Two days later it looked like the deer were dancing all over the river. 

When we were snowshoeing we discovered deep deer trails through the woods too.

 

And circling high above us one day, some ravens and that bald eagle!

 

Back at the cabin we load up our porch with a bit more firewood, settle in next to the wood stove, and Rob gets back to the house plans. Next on our list is to decide on the metal roof colour and exterior house colour, as we need to know what colour to order for the exterior of the windows.  In the spirit of our times in New Mexico, I would love to have a turquoise roof.  But in looking through some photos online, we are surprised to see that we both like a photo of a house with a rough grey wood siding, and grey window exteriors.  Perched on rock and surrounded by the trees, the setting is similar to ours, and the house has a peaceful sort of feeling to it. Both of us like the way it blends in naturally with the surroundings. Of course, we would have to add some colour in somehow here and there! Maybe some kind of funky accent colour. But I am no longer sure that the turquoise roof is right.  More decisions....! I know though that Rob is anxious to get the windows ordered, and to get back to working in his little closed-in area on the porch. He's been trying to work on some braces but comes back to work inside when it gets too chilly out there.

On a cold winter day Leon reminds us that sometimes the best thing to do is curl up in a cozy spot of sunshine. He's 18 years old, and failing a bit, but still purrs as loud as ever, especially when he's comfy and warm!

 

As much as Jet loves the outdoors, he seems to take a cue from Leon.