And now - we wait

January has offered us a see-saw of temperatures; some pleasantly mild days hovering around zero degrees Celsius, and some bone chilling nights that dipped below minus 30 degrees (and that was without the wind chill factor!). What we didn't get, was much snow, so for this month at least, driving conditions were fairly decent, and Rob has only had to plow our roads a couple of times.

On the milder days, Rob feels like he should be working on the new house, but that just isn't reasonable. As he wasn't able to install the exterior insulation and metal roof before winter arrived, there is little that he can actually do right now! It's too cold and too dangerous to try to work on the exterior, and he can't finish the interior walls until the exterior insulation is on. About the only thing that could be done on the inside right now is to build some of the interior dividing walls. As much as we like to think that the house is reasonably warm when we step into it, it really isn't. We arrive at the house, wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing, but as soon as we remove our gloves, even just for a few minutes, it's obvious that it's colder inside than we think.

The inside house temperature fluctuates quite a bit with the weather, and on the sunny days we do notice a bit of extra warmth, which is good news as we did hope for a bit of passive solar effect!  We go over to the new house several times a day, marking the amount of sunlight that comes in, and generally just checking things out, and talking about what we need to do there this coming year.

Jet loves to come over, we turn him loose in the house and he has fun trotting around and looking out of all the windows. On a sunny day he prefers to stay outside, and chew on ice and lie in the snow soaking up some of the sun's rays.

Sometimes we just like to sit inside - stare out of the windows at the lovely view, and enjoy the bright light. We love the log cabin, but it's rather dark inside the cabin during the winter, and the new house feels so much brighter - even with the unfinished interior!

Rob has been busy this month getting items off of the "to-do" list.  We had agreed on a style of wood stove, and after much research, were ready to purchase one locally this spring. Before Christmas though, while visiting family, Rob passed by a wood stove store, and dropped in on a whim. There he saw the stove we wanted, and they offered him a deal on their floor model! So Rob came home and researched things a bit more (o.k. actually - a LOT more) and got some pricing on the chimney and various bits and pieces. In the end, even with driving there and back, he calculated that it would save us quite a bit. This month he went and picked it up.  So - Check ! One item is now off of the list.

Of course, we both wish that we could just get it hooked up, warm up the new house, and get Rob building, but that isn't possible. And there is no point lamenting that the weather last year did not co-operate and allow us to get more done so that we could be finishing the inside of the house now as planned.  So we just have to remind ourselves - we did the best we could, and now one more item is off of the list ....

Next item - the off grid system!  We don't have it yet, but we've settled on a system, and have ordered it. Giant gulp here, and breathe, breathe, breathe...it's one thing to say we are going off-grid, but quite another to actually commit to it, and the cost!  But, it's something we both want to do so we are actually pretty excited about it.

As Rob is planning on doing his own install of the system he spends a lot of time now reading and researching and watching "how-to" videos.  Sometimes it's hard to keep up with how his brain works - one moment he's talking redesign of timbers on the workshop, and the area that houses the system, and the next he's telling me about battery replacements, electrical building codes, wiring, inverters, panel mounting design...  I suggest we start our sentences with something simple like "New topic"....

We go through the local store ads every week and keep an eye out for sales for anything else we will need - faucets, shower heads, sinks, toilets, bathtub, etc.  Luckily we don't have to think about buying kitchen or bathroom cabinets, as anything that Rob can build - he will! We still have to decide on the colour for the acid etch for the concrete floors (we've narrowed it down to two!) and decide on the style of metal roofing.

In between working on house plans and researching, we have settled in to our "normal" January activities. We move firewood onto the porch every couple of days, keep the wood stove filled constantly, and cook up lots of  home made soups to stock pile in the freezer.  Thanks to our friend Bob, who not only gave us a good recipe for granola, but brought some over for us to try first, I am now making my own granola as well. I still make a couple of loaves of rye bread each week, as well as a loaf of banana, walnut cranberry bread, and sometimes some healthy oatmeal cookies. I've been trying out some new yummy Vegetarian recipes too (sorry Rob!) I still buy food once a month from our local co-op, so took the opportunity to stock up on some Delicata Squash, and tried out a new recipe for filling them. A mixture of wild rice with cranberries and pecans tasted pretty good!

We are fortunate to have an amazingly good library in our township, so have been reading and enjoying some great books this month. It's nice to see Rob relaxing and reading a novel after months and months of reading "how to" articles and instruction manuals before falling asleep at night!

Of course, no matter what month it is, or what weather is coming our way, Jet reminds us three times a day that he needs some play time and a good long walk. Here he is, making sure that we don't forget to bring along his Wubbas, which are stored in the plastic bin by the door.

After his walk and play time, we often bring him home, and then go out ourselves again.  As much as he would love to come along, sometimes I like to go out alone and bring along my camera, or Rob and I like to go for a good long walk and chat - sans German Shepherd! Sometimes it's just hard to have a conversation when Jet is busy barking at the ravens overhead, or diving off the path on the scent of a deer or fox. He certainly hasn't yet learned to stand still while I take photos either. I'm sure that someday he will learn to stand still, admire the beauty around us, and appreciate the absolute quiet.  Someday...

One blustery day I stood for quite a long time watching "snow devils" blowing across the fields; swirling funnels of snow that spiral up and over the fields for remarkably long distances.

Of course, no walk is complete without a visit to the river, and it's ever changing conditions.  The river levels vary quite a bit, so we are always cautious. An area that might be frozen solid one day can be quite different the next!

This pond area was used years ago as a winter skating rink by the children of the former property owners. One of these days we'll find our skates and give it a go!

In the last week or so, the river has frozen more at the edges. There is still open water in the center, and every now and then I spot a lone duck.

Last year the river froze solid across the span and the deer, fox and coyotes had a regular highway going back and forth, but this year, with the river still open, there is no way that they are able to cross.  I notice there are fewer tracks even just leading up to the river's edge. We will sometimes see wild turkey tracks, and possibly the tracks of the mink and the river otter running along the shoreline.

Due to the shallow snow base, we haven't had a chance yet to do any snowshoeing this winter.  We did manage to go for a good walk with our friend Bob, and skirted along the edge of the lake he lives on.

 It appeared someone may have forgotten to clear off their dock area before the snow arrived! Although I think a canoe would be more appropriate than a bicycle?

It was nice to get out for some fresh air, and we were joined by a few of the neighbourhood dogs - who seem to know that Bob is a good source of cookies!

The arrival of some grapefruit from Texas, sent to us by our friends Gary and Liz who live in Florida, added some much needed Vitamin C to our diets this month. It was a huge box of grapefruit, and they quickly filled the bit of empty space in our fridge. So we stuffed the rest into a cabinet in the living room. The cabinet borders an outside wall, and it seemed to keep them cold enough! (We already keep our potatoes there) Thanks Gary and Liz!

Even though I am eager to be moving into the new house, I must admit that after 2 1/2 years in this lovely little cabin, I know there are things I will miss. There are days when I love the small kitchen, and that everything is within arm's length reach. We keep just a few plates and bowls at hand, and a minimal amount of "stuff" in the kitchen drawers, and cupboards, and it just makes things so much easier. It's funny, because we follow a fabulous blog written by a young couple, Melanie and Josh, who are building a beautiful wooden yurt in the eastern USA. (Rob met Josh during one of the timber framing courses they participated in.) While they are building, they are living in a small fabric yurt with their two young children.  You would think they would all be anxious to move into their new space, but like us, they find some of the aspects of their smaller shelter to be quite comfortable. I am sure though - that like me - there are days when they just want everything to HURRY UP and get done, so they can move into their new and lovely building !!

I know that I am looking forward to having just a little bit more space, and there are certainly days, when I'm balancing hot pans of freshly baked bread, while trying to roll out pizza dough and cook pizza toppings all at the same time and I just wish, wish, wish for one more foot of counter space... And I miss some of "our stuff" which has been in storage all this time.  Mostly I miss our funky artwork, my sewing machine and fabrics, and a few of the things that I sometimes reach for, then remember - they are somewhere in a box...

In the meantime though... we continue to enjoy and love the area we live in and where we live. While we may not be physically working on the new house, there's plenty to think about, and still lots that we can do to prepare for the year ahead.  We are both anxious to get at the next building stage, but for now  - we just have to wait.

Some things come full circle

These days I have the feeling that a lot of things in our lives have come full circle. During the ice storm of ’98, I remember two guys showing up to install our new gas furnace. Natural gas had just arrived in the village, and we had somewhat reluctantly decided to get a furnace installed. We had been heating the house with a big Jotul wood stove for 20 years or more, but we were in the midst of plans to open a store and knew from experience that the long days required in a store would make it difficult to keep the house warm during the winter.  We were all too familiar with coming home late at night to a cold house, with not enough time to get the wood stove going properly before it was bedtime.  So there we were, in the middle of an ice storm, with no power, and the two guys showed up to install a furnace (luckily with chainsaws as so many branches had fallen that they blocked the entrance to our house) Somehow they still managed to get most of the install done too!

Before long, the gas furnace became a nice convenience, thanks to a programmable thermostat, and we woke up to a warm house, and came home at night to a warm one.  A flick of the switch when we were chilly was all that it took to warm us up.

I guess over time I forgot what it was like to heat with wood.  But I sure remembered last week, when the colder nights hit, and the frosts arrived. Suddenly we are back to getting up and getting dressed rather quickly. Our morning routine now includes coaxing the wood stove to life, and that chilly interim period when the house is still cold, before some warmth comes out of the stove. We have to make sure we have papers and kindling on hand to start it. And wood to burn.  This week Rob and I spent time gathering up some of the wood from the trees that we cut down when we put the road in.  There is lots of poplar and birch, and a bit of maple that will be useful.  Some of the logs are dry enough, but some are too wet, and will have to be left to dry ready for next year. We are back to choosing a location to stack it – close enough to the house that it isn’t a chore in the winter to get to it, but not too close that it will cause problems with critters and insects.  I’ve had to re-learn how to stack it properly so it doesn’t all fall over. Rob had a stack that he had cut sometime earlier, and it all needed to be split, so he was soon back into a good splitting rhythm.  We will still have to order some firewood to be delivered though. In future years we can probably pull a lot out of the forest, but for this year we will have to order some, as we need good dry hardwood.

As we plan for the new house, a lot of our discussions will be about heating systems. If we go off-grid it will get even more interesting. This winter will see us do a lot of research on heating systems.  While we are curled up in front of this nice wood stove no doubt.

 

 

Now that the nights are colder, we are suddenly loading on the bedding too. We have a lovely quilt that was made by Rob’s Mom.  We once all spent an amazing Christmas here, Rob, his Mom and myself.  The quilt was our gift from her that year and this is a photo from that Christmas, when she was still working on it! Some people say you shouldn’t use a handmade quilt, you should keep it tucked away as a memento, but I feel that it was made to be used, and to enjoy.   So it is on the top of our bed;  it sure keeps us warm, and it’s such a pleasure to see it back in the cabin. And we always say “Thanks Mom!” when we snuggle up under it.

It washes up beautifully too, and here it is out on the clothes line earlier in the summer. Isn't it gorgeous?

 

We have also reconnected with an old friend, Bob, who lived with Rob just before I met him. We have seen each other off and on over the years, but now we get together more often, as he lives in a lovely log cabin about a half hour drive from here.  He has been in the area a long time, so can help us when we are trying to locate specific items. As well, we all enjoy hiking and have been on a great hike together, which I wrote about here in the blog. We all went on a Studio Tour in September, and this is one of the pieces I picked up at Tim Storey’s studio.  (I posted a photo of his teapot earlier in the blog) I bought this thinking it would make a nice gift, but it was quickly put on our kitchen shelf, so I guess it was a gift for us. It is a beautiful mortar and pestle, and I love it. 

 

 

We went and  visited some of the off-the-grid houses that are in the area as well that day. It’s good to reconnect, and we seem to all share a lot of the same interests.  Funny  that we both ended up in the same area, it just took Rob and I a lot longer to get here!

We had snowflakes and ice pellets in the air last week, so most of our week was spent looking after things that had to be done before it got much colder out. Nothing like a little snow to get you thinking about winter.  I didn’t see much of the chipmunks or red squirrels last week, so obviously they prepared themselves much earlier than we did ! We still need to get a lot more firewood in. We also need to address the issue of coming into the house through the kitchen. In the winter we will pull too much cold air and snow in, and have nowhere to put wet boots or hang winter coats. Rob is thinking of building a small temporary insulated area on the porch, so that we can use the porch entrance instead.  We should be able to let our boots and coats dry off there, and it may cut down a bit on the blasts of cold air coming into the house. 

We’ve also been going through boxes of stuff, trying to get ourselves organised a bit. We seem to have a bit more time to do things inside the house now. The days are suddenly shorter, and we are finding that the outside activities start later and end earlier. We don’t have a fenced in yard here, so we need to make sure that we have played with Jet while it is still light out. We don’t want to lose him in the woods!

On the weekend we went to the Taste of the Valley event in nearby Cobden. It was packed, both with visitors and vendors. There were all sorts of crafts, preserves, and local produce. I was pleased to see one of our favourite vendors there - Moonlight Crofter's Farm - so I was able to pick up some of their organic garlic, potatoes, and stewing beef.  Their beef is, I believe, Scottish Highland, and very lean. Later, I cooked up a huge pot of chili with it, using up some of my stash of guajillo paste and chile powders.  Delicious. We froze some of it for later in the season.

Well, Jet is getting restless. That usually means that Rob is coming down the road with the truck and trailer. Jet hears him long, long before I do of course.   Time to think about dinner, and get ready for tomorrow's adventures. I am supposed to go to my first yoga class tomorrow. The last time I took yoga, I was 14 years old, and went with my mom, when we lived in England. I guess that little circle took a while....