Since Easter is a chocolate holiday in our house, we chose to collect our children and at the crack of noon — because no matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to get all our ducks in a row before lunchtime — we headed to the farm for a bit of fun. Spring is threatening to show up any day now. Today really wasn’t that day though, we rose to great chunky flakes of snow accumulating on everything. It was beautiful for sure, but hard to imagine tulips and fluffy bunnies when it still feels like we are in the the death throws of winter. Only a few days earlier we were solidly in the negatives and thought there was a bright spot coming…not so.
I try to keep the house build progress out of the family happenings side of things, but occasionally they intersect. We have been humming and hawing about the materials to use on the outside of the house. Jeff and I both prefer natural materials to anything else but cost and maintenance on hard to reach places makes decisions on what to choose a bit more calculated (especially when we are both looking at aging with this house). We decided to go with fir T&G on the cathedral roof just outside the kitchen, which means we will also be adding it to the matching roof inside the kitchen and living room, and the rest of the soffit including our rather deep covered porch. To keep costs down, we decided to add some sweat equity in the form of staining the wood ourselves before it gets installed. The cathedral roof needed to be installed before they poured the floors so this required some quick work on our part to get it done. A trip to the Home Hardware to pick the 65 10ft boards that we would get started with, some scrap materials from the build site, and a couple of seriously expensive gallons of stain and we were off to the races. The wood was less than spectacular and Jeff spent a good amount of time outside the garage in negative temps sanding it so we could have a good surface to stain. The girls and I took shifts staining the boards inside the garage, which we were able to keep at a balmy 6 degrees C with the help of three oil heaters.
Lizzie and I were on shift 2 and I think all told, Jeff spent 6 hours sanding and we spent the equivalent staining. I think we have some refinement to do on our assembly line. We also discovered we were 5 boards short so there is more to come. Jeff timidly informed me that we have upwards of 300 more boards to stain so we are going to have to get much more efficient and find more dry and warm space to get it done. Maybe Mother Nature will throw us a bone on this one and let the warmer Spring weather finally arrive. The stain turned out beautifully though and it is just the right colour (despite some variations between staining teams!)
A silver lining to all that cold frosty weather is the amazing vistas that come with clear evenings and mornings.
Back to Spring, or the hope of Spring anyway…with all of us in the same place all at once, we decided it was time to get that bonfire going and burn some of the wood debris at the end of the property. It has been aging well for over a year (might be closer to two!). It was time.
We arrived to about an inch of snow which is nothing really, and clearing skies. Jeff unhooked the trailer so he, Margaret and Lizzie could get started on the fire, while Mary and I went to get supplies for our first cook-out of the year. We encountered a slight problem when I tried to turn the truck around to get back onto our gravel road. We seriously underestimated the mud. In our defense, it didn’t look that bad and we thought it was still pretty frozen. It was bad, and it wasn’t frozen. 0 for 2.
The Ford did not win the battle to get out of the mud, only serving to deepen the ruts and sink further into the muck. We do not love a couple of the “features” of this truck. The first being the traction control that decides to immbolize the wheels when you are stuck, and the slow response time when you are shifting gears. This gave the mud a distinct advantage, but we have a secret weapon. Archie. I love that tractor.
One tractor and a set of chains and we were able to drag the Ford out of the mud lickety-split. It should be noted, that by the end of the day, the temperature had risen and there was no more snow, but what remained was a large muddy bog. Jeff proceeded to dig a trench to try to relieve the land of some of the standing water.
With the Ford free’d, Mary and I continued on with our task of gathering supplies, adding a stop to the wand wash to get all that gooey mud out of the wheels and wheel-wells. We arrived back to a good sized fire well on its way. We have two large piles to burn so this might just go on for a couple of days.
We had a bit of fun roasting hot dogs and making toast pie while we worked our way through the first pile. We almost got to the bottom by the time we packed up for the day. Day 2 might be a reduced crew since it is hard to get volunteers two days in a row…Mary on the other hand, is keen to use some of the scrap building materials to get her chicken coop started, so we’ll likely head up again today with her to get the fire going and work on V1. I expect we’ll have some renovations as we figure out how to keep the foxes out especially since Max is not wired to be a livestock dog. Max, as always, was the happiest he ever is, loving the freedom and space and no responsibility. We ignore his affection for the snacks that the elk leave behind.
Along with Day 2 of the burn and chicken coop building, we will need to do some Easter Egg hunt planning today. It would not do to miss out on this annual tradition.