Spring is in the air

We had temps up to 10*C (that's right, PLUS 10!) last weekend up at the ranch. In town they hit 14! That started everything melting and made all the non-gravelled paths and roadways a muddy mess. Aaaaah, spring time in the high country!Well not quite spring yet, but nice to get a little preview complete with warm sunshine! The messy roads make it a challenge to get in and out of our place. It's so much better with all the gravel we put on the driveway last summer, but it's still very soft everywhere else, meaning that wherever we go with the ATV, car or truck we leave deep ruts. I wish we'd had Ron gravel the entire driveway and not leave the last couple of hundred metres untouched, but we have to live within our means and we just couldn't afford it. Maybe later this year...?
We had booked a farrier to come up and look after Whisky's feet - he has one hoof that is slightly splayed. This is not surprising considering that he was left to fend for himself on the range for the first couple of years of his life. Either way, it wasn't a big deal but we wanted to establish a rapport with whoever was going be looking after the horses for us in future. Our neighbour, Brian, had suggested we try Jordan Camille, a young guy who used to live up our way and knew his way around. We spoke to Jordan and he arranged to come up on Sunday, March 3rd. Of course, he was driving a regular car and the driveway was muddy, but he had no problem until he got up to the house. He slid around a bit and then just parked it where it stopped. He was close enough anyway so it all worked out. He seemed like a really nice guy and was great with the horses. Whisky was a good boy standing relatively still for the entire time Jordan worked on him. It helped that we had hay there for him to munch on! Jordan spent time walking Whisky around, giving him a short lesson to see where he was in his training. It turns out that he and his wife, Candace, run a training school for horses at their ranch up on Deadman Vidette Road. He offered that they had spots available at the end of March and would be happy to take Whisky. We will go and check out his place - hopefully, Lea from Dreamscape Ranch will come with us to have a look see. We really liked Jordan and the way he handled the horses. If all goes well, we will send our boy up to him for a month. Hopefully, Carol will then be able to put some miles on him over the summer.
We hit a milestone of sorts on Sunday. We installed the floor outlet in the great room (under and behind the couch) and so doing, eliminated the last extension cord we have been using! If you had seen the place when we first moved in, we had a single outlet next to the electrical panels in the basement and ran lots of extension cords from there to provide light and power to the rest of the house while we activated and installed the rest of lines and fixtures. So, it was nice to get rid of the last one! It only took us a year and a half!!
We're off to the Kamloops Cowboy Festival tomorrow (Saturday) and will pick up the drywall to finish the pocket door install in the upstairs bathroom. That will make Carol a happy girl!

February Update

As we get closer to the end of the build, it seems that we have less and less "interesting" stuff to tell you about. It's not that we're not working or that we're slacking off, it's more that the big, exciting things are done and now we're doing the finishing stuff. For example, it was a big deal when we had all the electrical wiring installed. It does not seem so exciting that we recently installed the last breaker in the distribution panel. Or that we have finally installed and activated all the basement lights and plugs. Not sexy, but really helpful at 6am when you're trying to mix up the feed for our hungry horses! It's SO nice to open the door to the basement and just flip a switch to light the stairway instead of fumbling with my LED headlamp. Descending those stairs is no longer akin to a spelunking adventure!
On the subject of lighting, we've made progress on another front. We have installed and activated 2 of the 6 coach lamps that illuminate the deck and doorways on the outside of the house. See my previous comments about the headlamp to relate my feelings about grilling on the BBQ now! Flip a switch....voila....I can actually see the burgers now! We found a great motion-activated LED flood lamp fixture for the back of the house. It was always our plan to use a motion sensor light so we could minimize the impact on our electrical system from high wattage flood lamp bulbs. This little unit uses only 14 watts but throws more than 1,000 lumens onto the driveway illuminating the entire area around the car and driveway. It makes arriving home in the dark (about half the year) much less interesting. We spend much less time fumbling to find our bags and gathering our belongings. It's all very civilized!
At the head of the stairs to our loft bedroom, we had a spot for a light fixture. It was designed to light the landing, throw some light on the top few steps and provide some additional lighting for our bedroom, which has only a small 4 watt bulb on the fan for overhead lighting. We had been shopping for an appropriate fixture and had decided that we would put in a small track light. This would allow us to aim the bulbs to bathe the desired areas with light. Being that we will not install halogen or CFL lights meant that we would more than likely have to purchase the appropriate LED lamps to replace those that come with these type of fixtures - a considerable expense at around $30 per bulb. Long story short(er), we found what appeared to be a great little fixture at Costco. It had 4 lamps rather than the 3 we had been looking for, but came with LED bulbs installed from the factory, and best-of-all cost only $49! We picked one up, installed it, and now have to wear sunglasses when we flip the switch. OMG, this thing makes some light!! We will have to bring the ladder back in and re-aim the lamps so we don't blind the poor person who is still in bed when the other gets up to go downstairs.
We have been getting some much better weather in January and February. Now, with the days getting longer, we can actually make more power than we are using on sunny days. The occasions we have to run the generator to charge up the batteries have stretched to more than a week now, from the 3 day average we needed through November and December. Yay! We are very thankful for our solar charging system and for the most part don't miss being tied to the power grid. It still amazes me that we are able to live more or less the same as most of you reading this, but we have no power lines, tv cable or phone lines running to our house. Very cool!
We'll try and post up some photos in the next few days. Roll on spring!

Friends and Neighbours

With Christmas and New Year done for another year, we are starting to settle back into the realities of off-grid living in the high country. It was wonderful to spend some quiet time at home over the holidays, hosting a couple of casual dinners with friends and in turn being treated to wonderful meals on the reciprocal visits. A million thanks to Bud and Lea Thorson from Dreamscape Ranch in Knutsford. We love you guys and really enjoyed visiting with you!
The same goes for Jackie and Vance Brommeland, our closest neighbours, from just a few kilometers down the road. We have been up here for almost a year and a half and have never been over to their  beautiful home until New Year's Eve a few weeks back. It was encouraging to see what a beautiful home they have built for themselves over the past few years. Hopefully, it will help motivate us to finish our place! Vance rescued us last week when our tractor tore up the plate which anchors the steering cylinder to the front axle. He was kind enough to do a skookum welding job on the part, getting us back plowing right away.
Speaking of plowing, Brian Foley (Brian and his wife, Louise, are the couple who sold us the land) brought his big tractor over the other day and did an awesome job widening out our driveway, pushing the snow banks back to the ditches and making it easier for our little tractor to keep it all clear of the white stuff. We've had so much snow this year that we got caught out a bit. I didn't widen the driveway enough early on and before we knew it we were barely able to get our little car up to the house. Anway, thanks, Brian! I don't know where we'd be without your help.

We did have some very good news just before Christmas. Carol won a Weber BBQ package in a contest run by the local newspaper. The picture shows her with the barbecue and all the accessories that came with the package. Way to go, Carol!

Merry Christmas 2012

 It's been snowing almost constantly for a week, but today, December 23rd, it stopped! Okay, it started snowing again at 5 pm, but up until then we had none. We even saw the sun for a few hours dodging in and out of the clouds allowing our PV modules to make some power for the first time in 6 days. Everything looks beautiful! What a winter wonderland we live in! It was picture postcard pretty, with snow dripping from the over saturated branches of every tree. Rather than try and tell you how it looks, we've uploaded some pics so you can enjoy it right along with us.

Whisky wondering if we've brought him something to eat.

Mystery hoping for a treat.

The back side of the house. Note our snow-covered truck on the lower right.

What a beautiful paddock our horses live in!

Joey and Ben on the driveway below the house.

Looks like a postcard!

Carol and I both hope you enjoy reading our blog as much as we enjoy writing it. Of course, we'd like to post more often but life gets in the way. Living on and building a ranch in the hills around Kamloops means there is always something that we should be doing so time to sit and work on our blog comes at a premium. We'd like to take this time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

How NOT to plow snow!!

I think that the pictures speak for themselves, but for those who weren't paying attention to our previous post I will illuminate.

 We have received somewhere around 12"-15" of snow in the last 4 days. I had plowed off the worst of Thursday evening's dump on the weekend but needed to have another go yesterday after we got another 6 inches. I managed to get 2 passes done but halfway down on the 3rd pass I got a little too close to the right side ditch and managed to put the tractor on its side!!

These pics are the scene of the crime as I left this morning on my way to the office. I won't be able to try and get it out until late tonight or maybe even tomorrow sometime. By then it will be well frozen into the landscape! :(

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.