Snow Plowing 101

It's been a while since our last post so I thought we should update everyone on our progress. As I write this, I am looking out the window at the 6-8 inches of snow that fell on Thursday. We made it in to the office in our little 4WD car but it was obvious that we needed to plow out the driveway. We took the afternoon off and headed home. The tractor was a little reluctant to start but came to life nicely with a little persuading. I managed to get 4 passes done on the 2km roadway up to our house - 2 up and 2 down. Plowing downhill with a little tractor is easy. Gravity helps keep you pushing the enormous weight of snow off to the side. Plowing uphill, however, is another story. Without gravity on your side, momentum becomes the tool your turn to. The trick is to keep the little diesel tractor engine running in its sweet spot rev range. Too many revs and you can spin all 4 wheels. Not enough revs and your speed quickly falls off. Keeping your uphill momentum takes a little skill and a lot of luck. Several times my luck ran out and I had to back down the driveway and clean up the mess with the front bucket before attempting to continue up. With the amount of snow that fell, it takes about 15 minutes to make one pass up or down the driveway so it was almost dark by the time I had completed 4 passes. If you're wondering why we don't just make 1 or 2 runs with the plow, the answer is "width".  The blade is around 5 feet wide and angles off to the right side so the snow is moved off the road. Our neighbour told us when we moved up here that you need to keep the plowed area as wide as possible, especially early in the year. As the winter progresses, the snow comes, melts a little, freezes and creates rock solid ice berms where the plow piles it off to the side of the road. As you continue to plow over the winter months, these berms trap the plowed snow causing your roadway to narrow a little each time. If you didn't keep them very wide to begin with, you can barely get your car between the piles on each side  by late in the season.
So you start plowing just off the center line with the first pass, with the second pass going in the opposite direction on the other side of center. The next passes are to increase the width by plowing as close as you can to the ditches on either side of the driveway. Don't get too close to the ditch or the tractor might slide in or even tip over! Oh, one final tip...make sure you have lots of fuel in the tractor. I know that this seems like a no-brainer,  but after having the tractor get stranded on the narrow driveway last year when I managed to run out of diesel, it seems like good advice!
We have managed to finish all the paddock fence wire and will be installing the final gate this afternoon (this does not include the gates and wire that will eventually be installed across the driveway at the front of the house). Carol has returned from her trip to visit her family in Ontario making all the animals thankful that they don't have to deal with me full-time any more. It's nice to have her home for the holidays!
We will try and post some photos over the next few days but would like to take a moment to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Horses!

After a very busy month putting all sorts of infrastructure in place in anticipation of Whisky and Mystery arriving, they're here! More than a year earlier than we had planned, Lea and Sara trailered the horses to their new home. Whisky is Carol's horse, and Mystery is on loan to us from Dreamscape Ranch to keep Whisky company (horses are herd animals after all!). Mystery is retired from being a riding horse due to a medical issue so he is the perfect buddy for our Whisky. We had been completing the fencing work right up until minutes before their arrival. We managed to get the area we call the winter paddock all fenced and energized with the solar controller.

Whisky and his blue eyes are interested in what I'm doing.

The other 3/4 of the fence project can be completed over the next few weeks. We have around a dozen gates to be put in as well, so we will be busy at this for a while yet.
Apart from the weather challenges - first the rain and now all the snow - the HotCote fence wire went in quite easily. All the tensioners, post bracing, grounding and wire hookups takes much longer than the actual fencing.

 We chose the HotCote fencing after much Googling and surfing and couldn't be happier. The proof is in the pudding, they say, and it was very satisfying to hear that friends who have seen our installation are now considering a similar fence system for their ranch!
I mentioned the weather a few sentences back and I should elaborate on that topic a little. We went from a cool wet spring this year to a wonderful long, dry summer that extended right through to the middle of October. Since then we have seen very little sun with dreary weather being the norm for the last month. The rain turned to snow as the temps fell and for the last couple of weeks it has snowed almost every day. We now have 6 inches of the white stuff on the ground making any kind of outdoor work a little more difficult. I should mention how wonderful our Bobcat 3400 ATV has been. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's hot and dry, cool and raining, or cold and snowing out little buggy starts, goes and does everything we ask it to. It has been awesome and we really recommend that anybody looking for something similar give the Bobcat a look. Carol is now using it to haul feed, water and hay to our horses. I then throw all my fencing tools in the back and go to work on the wire. When that's done, I load up the chainsaw and go looking for firewood which is loaded in the back and then automatically dumped when I return.
Carol has been working hard on cleaning up and organizing the basement/barn/garage and has been making wonderful progress. It is a wonderful space for all those uses and has also been serving as our mud room to keep from tracking everything into the main part of the house.

Fencing

We've been working our a##es off lately and this last weekend was no different. After getting our fence posts in last week, we needed to get on to installing the electric wire, gates, solar engergizer, and ground rods. If you are not aware, our weather has not been great, with several inches of snow having fallen, most of it still on the ground. This has made working outdoors difficult & messy. It's not quite cold enough to be frozen solid, but it's not quite warm enough to melt everything either. It's just ugly.
All the "stuff" for our fences arrived safely last week, thanks to John and Lesley at Ferris Fencing in Courtenay, BC.

The heavy coils of HotCote wire and the solar energizer arrived directly from the manufacturer in the USA with the remainder coming from Ferris on the Island.
We quickly realized that we needed some way to unwind the wire in a way that enabled us to feed it through all the insulators (900+) that Carol had installed on the posts, without binding up or kinking. After some Googling we discovered the device we needed was a "spinning jenny".

Of course nobody in town had one in stock but Tom at The Horse Barn ordered one up and promised it would be here late on Saturday. We spent Saturday putting in some of the many gates we would need and installing a few of the ratcheting tensioners that mount on the terminal posts. I went into town, picked up the spinning jenny, brought it home and assembled it ready for use on Sunday morning. Sunday was foggy and snowing when we first went out but it didn't take long for the fog to burn off revealing beautiful skies and even a little sunshine.

 The spinning jenny worked great and we quickly became electric fence wire stringing experts. Good thing, as we have 2 miles of the stuff to install! By the end of the day (and the end of the light) we had one of the paddocks almost completely fenced in with only a couple of short sections still needing wire. We have yet to brace the terminal and corner posts so could only apply very light tension to hold everything together. The bracing rails will be here on Wednesday so that job can be completed and the fence brought up to full tension. And so it goes...

I've included a couple of other shots to show off our "Muskoka" wood rack that we keep in the house. As you can see, Ben loves laying in front of the fire!

The other image shows Carol preparing a meal on our wood stove. She's become very good at this great energy conserving method of cooking. We have the stove going anyway to heat the house so this was just a no-brainer. BTW, it was a very tasty beef stew! Mmmmmmmm

Snow!? No wait, we're not ready for winter yet!!

It's hard to believe, but we woke up to 2" of snow yesterday (Saturday). Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that we were in the middle of some beautiful summer weather? I guess that's life up here in the high country.
On the way back from Lea's last night, there was a big fir tree blown down across Campbell Range Road, about 1/2 km from our driveway. We decided that we would get up early the next morning and go buck it up with the chainsaw and bring it back home to split for firewood. After getting over the shock of the ground being covered with the white stuff, we headed out at 8:30am to do just that. Of course, by that time some good samaritan had already chopped up the top of the tree that was laying across the road leaving most of it for us. We took both the truck and the Bobcat ATV as we expected to get quite a haul of firewood. We were right. We left the site with the pickup almost filled level in the back. We thought that rather than waste the empty ATV, we would stop on the way through the crown land on our driveway and find another downed tree to cut up. We didn't have to look for long so only 40 minutes later, we had both the truck and the Bobcat full to the max.
Last year we used the deck to mount the splitter on when doing the firewood. Seeing as the deck is now finished with railings and a vinyl covering, we have built a small splitting station next to our wood shed. It is very convenient in that location and Carol has been keeping busy splitting all the logs that I bring back with the ATV. We have the woodshed full and then some, because we know from last year that we will need to have the equivalent of 3 to 4 "wood sheds" of firewood to get us through the cold winter months. That work is still ongoing.
One job that is complete is the fence posts. John, from Frolek Fencing brought his amazing skidsteer vibratory post pounder up to our place on Wednesday evening and by noon on Friday, he was done! Over 300 fence posts were installed, giving us 4 large paddocks, a round pen, and a smaller "diet" pen. This would enable us to have cattle on our property as we have the last couple of summers, and keep the house safe and give us lots of room for the two horses.

Some of our 300 fence posts!

We will be using a solar powered energizer to power the 3 strands of HotCote wire that will be installed on those posts. Each post will receive 3 plastic insulators to keep the wire from shorting to ground once energized. It will give any animal that touches it, a healthy jolt (like a static shock you get when running around on the carpet with your nylon socks on!). They quickly learn to give the fences some respect which results in less wear and tear on both the fences and the horses!
We should have all the wire and hardware tomorrow. It is being shipped to us directly from the States by our supplier. We've already managed to install some of the insulators but with more than 900 required, we still have many left to go.

Speaking of horses, Carol and Whisky are still getting together with Ray at Dreamscape Ranch every Wednesday afternoon. He is doing great! Apparently, he is a quick learner as Carol is now able to steer him around and back him up with the reins. For now, of course, Ray is still there with a lead rope on him in case Whisky gets annoyed with Carol on his back, but so far, all is going well.

Whisky changes everything!

In my last post I mentioned that we were getting a new addition to our family, Whisky, the little rescue horse. He is doing very well at Dreamscape Ranch, loving all the attention that Lea, Sara and the girls are giving him - along with all that good food! Lea estimates that he has gained 50 lbs since his arrival just a few weeks ago! He is looking much healthier and happier. The farrier (Shelley) has trimmed his feet, the vet (Jennifer) came up and gelded him (I'll leave it up to you to Google "gelded" if you're not sure what that means!) and removed a small growth from his thigh, Lea gave him his de-worming medicine, and Carol has been up working him in the round pen a few times. He is much improved and has bonded nicely with Mystery, his corral mate who will be accompanying him up to Gull Lake Ranch.

He seems very smart and learns quickly. So much so, that Lea and Carol decided to bring their favourite horse trainer, Ray Scott, up for some lessons with the little guy. Ray put him in the round pen and after a brief episode running, bucking and generally being a baby horse, Whisky settled down and went to work. He did well and even allowed Carol to mount and sit in the saddle while Ray walked him around the pen. It was all very exciting. Carol was a little nervous at first, but trusted that Ray would know if Whisky was ready for that big step. Apparently, Ray was right (as usual!) and rider and horse had an uneventful first ride together.

We had planned on owning horses "one day", but with the arrival of Whisky, that day is today. That means that all those jobs that needed doing next year to prepare our place for keeping horses, have to be done right now. We need fencing, corrals, gates, hay, feed, water, and shelter for Mystery and Whisky to be able to winter up at Gull Lake Ranch. We have decided on electric fencing as this will be much less expensive than traditional post and rail fencing. Arguably, it's also better for the horses as they tend to get tangled up in just about anything. The shock from the electric fencing keeps the horses safe as they tend to avoid getting too close to the fence itself. After asking around and shopping for fence vendors we have chosen Ferris Fencing on Vancouver Island to supply the fence hardware. We are already in the process of having all the fence posts installed by John Frolek of Frolek Fencing. Jim and Val Kershaw were kind enough to deliver 150 hay bales up to our place last weekend. We found some plans online for horse shelters, or loafing sheds as they are known. We will be building one using left over material from our house build. Eventually, we will dig a trench for a water line to service the paddocks, but for this winter it will be a "bucket brigade" job hopefully using the ATV to haul water in containers to the horses. Grain and supplements will be prepared in the basement/barn as we have come to refer to it lately. This gives us a warm place (thanks to the new heaters!) to perform this chore, but is 100 yards from where the horses will be so time will tell if this works out. Some friends have donated or lent us enough blankets, halters, and lead ropes to get us started. Lea has volunteered to bring the two horses up in her trailer once we have the fences in place. Lesley at Ferris Fencing thinks we should have everything we need by the end of next week so as long as John manages to get all the posts in by then, we should be good to go by the end of October. That should be just in time for the snow to arrive! I guess that finishing the siding will have to wait for now.
Hmmmm, better get cracking on the firewood supply, too. Where did the summer go?!

It's fall already!

The fall weather means that we're going to need to stock up the wood pile again. We had planned to install direct vent space heaters in our home so we could leave the house for more than a few hours without having to worry about everything freezing up. After much online research, we settled on Cal-Gas here in Kamloops to supply the units we needed. Fred uses the Empire brand heaters in his own home and highly recommended them for our situation. Being "off grid" we must satisfy all of our electrical power needs with our solar panels and diesel generator. There are no hydro lines running to our house. The Empire heaters we chose use no electricity at all, burning propane and using convection to heat the cooler air at floor level, allowing it to rise naturally. That's where our ceiling fans come into play. They will push the warm air down from the roof to the rest of the room. Granted, the fans do use some power but it is a very small amount when running at the lowest speed and they wouldn't have to operate continuously.
We chose 2 different models for our home - the DV-35 (35,000 BTU) and the DV-210 (10,000 BTU). We put one DV-35 in the basement, one DV-35 in the dining room part of the great room, and one DV-210 in the spare bedroom on the main floor. This bedroom receives the least benefit from the heat of the wood stove and will not be used most of the time so we can keep it cooler until occupied by guests, at which time they can simply turn up the thermostat to a level that keeps them comfortable. We haven't had to use these guys yet (thankfully!) but are confident that they will allow us to keep the house warm at all times, even if we're not home to fill the wood stove every 8 hours or so. The basement heater will keep our water lines safe from freezing and make the area usable for whatever we want.
Direct vent technology means that the heaters get all their combustion air and vent their exhaust gasses through a double-walled pipe going through an exterior wall. Outside, all you see is a small vent cap mounted on the siding. In testing, the units are very quiet - another benefit! - and seem easy to use. There is a pilot that needs to be lit at the beginning of the season but it has a BBQ-style sparker to ignite it and a thermopile that shuts off the gas if the pilot light goes out. They come with everything you need to install them except for the short flexible gas line that must be installed by a certified gas fitter. We hired Brock from Rivercity Air to come up and install the units and he made quick work of it installing all 3 in less than 8 hours. He's a very nice guy and does great work so if you need someone to help with heating and cooling your home, look him up and give him a call.

Work goes on again this weekend with the siding. We've got to get all the remaining stuff on the front of the house. Then we will need to rent some scaffolding to finish up the siding on 2nd floor. Hopefully, the weather will continue to be dry - at least for a couple more weeks. I missed last weekend working on the house as I took a motorcycle trip to Edmonton, Alberta to visit my family. My mum lives just north of the city in St. Albert and my son and his family live in Sherwood Park, on the east edge of the city. It was great to see my granddaughter, Harlee, again. It has been almost 2 years since I was last there. She was only days old then and the change in her is amazing! She's walking, talking and generally being super cute. It was worth missing some "house" time to spend some time with her!

Oh, and it looks like we have a new addition to our Gull Lake Ranch family - a young colt we rescued from a future at the meat plant. "Whiskey" is a little over 2 years old and is a quarter house/paint horse cross who (we think) will mature to be a little over 14 hands high - perfect for Carol. He was gelded yesterday and had his feet trimmed so will not be in the best of spirits for a day or two. We owe Lea and Sara and the girls at Dreamscape Ranch a big "thank you" for finding him and looking after him until we have our place set up to look after him. He is super cute and seems very calm and friendly. We hope he likes his new home. One of Dreamscape's "retirees", Mystery, will be keeping him company at our place.

September...yikes!

Looking at the calendar, I notice that it reads, "September 5, 2012". We've been living in the house now for just over a year. It's hard to believe that a whole year has passed since Carol's parents visited late last summer. Inside the house is dramatically different with insulation, walls, flooring, a kitchen and two bathrooms all looking much like the finished versions we had in our minds' eye. Our electrical and water systems are pretty much finalized with just the basement and exterior lighting left finish. The mechanical room is looking pretty good with everything organized per the inspector's report.




We are slowly reducing the piles of "stuff to be installed" and getting some of the boxes of personal items put away in their new homes.
Outside, it's still a different story. The siding we were hoping to finish by the end of August is, of course, taking much longer than I first anticipated. Don't get me wrong, it's coming along nicely now, but it will be another month before we have it all done.




Where the siding is up the house is looking really nice. Finally, we are managing to hide the Tyvek house wrap under our Autumn Red fibre cement Certainteed siding. It goes up quite quickly but slows down around all the items that interrupt the clean expanse of the walls - stuff like windows, doors, vents, faucets, and outlet boxes. Since we have 19 windows, 3 doors, 5 vents, 4 outlets, 2 taps and a couple of conduit entrances, the installation goes "slowly," if I have to choose a word. Before they are nailed to the wall, the siding boards are easily broken if not handled properly. 



Compounding that concern is all the cutting and manipulating that has to happen to go around all the aforementioned obstructions. Tedious and fiddly work, this satisfying the Building Code! As I said earlier though, the place is starting to look good!
I have to get my butt in gear. We're running out of warm weather (not this week though, with highs forecast to hover just below 30*C) and I will soon have to focus on our firewood supply. Some good news on that front is that we should have our direct vent propane space heaters installed by the end of next week, courtesy of Fred and his team at CalGas.

That will take some of the pressure off our wood stove this winter and allow us to leave the place for more than a few hours without fear of freezing up all the pipes. We will use more propane with these in place but if you consider that we have only used about a third of our tank over the last 11 months, that should not be a big problem.