Our Trip To Grand Forks, B.C.

I woke up at about 7:00 A.M.  to get an ready start on the day.

We're driving to Grand Forks to visit friends that moved there about 6 years ago. 

We haven't seen them for all these years and sort of lost track of where they were.

We thought that it's not right to lose touch of old friends 

and decided to see where they went.

She was missing when I got up but I didn't have to look too far.

She lives for her garden and she's in the process of building a new one here.

She had a few things that had to be done before we made the 3 hour drive.

So our first set of friends we wanted to visit were Bob and Lisa.

I sold Bob a piano about 21 years ago and Lisa was our Yoga instructor for about 10 years.

They bought an acreage in Grand Forks 2 years ago and moved out here for a quieter lifestyle.

Lisa has had this turkey for 13 years. She's a vegan so this bird has had quite a nice and safe life.

Beautiful colours.

Bob's laughing and telling me that the bird gets riled up when touched.

He tried to antagonize the turkey but she just walked away and laid down in her shed.

Guess she's getting tired in her old age.

so we're sitting in the kitchen having a coffee when Lisa pointed to the oven 

and told Bob to get rid of that mouse.

I didn't see it at first. 

This little guy crawled out of the heating element.

Life on the farm. Haha.

Funny how we all get use to these things as we get older.

No big deal.
They use live traps and then relocate the little buggers.

Next stop was to visit a 20 year old food forest.

Ruth has been talking to this couple on the net and she wanted to see what it was like.

Seven acres of self producing crops.

Not quite.

He does quite a bit of pruning each year but they are also making a living from what they grow.

It's quite a cool place.

We have a nice area on the farm which we think we can so something like this.

It's all in addition to Ruth's vegetable garden.

Should be fun.

We arrived at Dave and Cheryl's just in time for feeding time.

They got the horse as a rescue and the goat as a companion for the horse.

They're best friends.

Ruth and I laughed when we saw this.

Their horse had been starved in it's past life when Dave and Cheryl rescued him.

When Dave tool his dinner to the corral he ran full speed across the property and into his stable.

I could see why. Not only is it food but it's nice food.

 Dave cuts up a couple if apples with his regular dinner and makes in a nice presentation.

This horse won the 649.

This guy really likes Dave but Loves Cheryl.

He's such a nice horse. He even let me pat him like a dog.

When they got him he was so skinny the SPCA came onto the farm where he was the next day and arrested the owner for abuse to the remaining horses and had to put some of them down.

This guy would have been on that list.  So Sad.

So Dave had a book of advertisements from when we were in business.

I think he made this ad up for me 15 years ago.

So cool to see it again.

Who wouldn't like to wake up every morning to this.

They've carved a nice life out for themselves here on the farm.

Here Dave spotted a coyotee in the pasture at morning coffee .

We weren't in a hurry to leave the next day so we hung out for a while and enjoyed the morning.

Cheryl was a great hostess and made sure we were full of caffeine for the ride home.

It has been a long time since we have hung out with these two

 but I hope we get to see them more often now that we know where they are.

It was a nice visit.

The Grand Kids Were Over

It was pizza night a couple of days ago. 

Ruth and I drove into town to get everyone's favorite.

I love pizza night.

The kids broke in the new hot tub.

Jack is specializing in the back float.

Carrie bought the kids a trampoline yesterday.

It's a great addition.

They don't even ask for screen anymore. 

Just more bounce time.

While the kids were bouncing I built a fire in the pit.

It's becoming a conversation pit. Nice.

I also took advantage of my burning permit and built a fire to get rid of some scrub.

I didn't realize how wet it was.

These kids are funny . they found these masks in the shed.

So I got a good lesson today on where not to park.

I thought I had found the perfect spot to put the coach last night.

It's in the back forty and under this dead tree.

 Out of the way and no leaves or needles to fall on the coach.

Wait. This is worse. 

Birds hang out in this tree. 

I never knew.

But I do now.

This is only after 12 hours.

I moved it immediately. 

Now it's free and clear of the bird missiles.

Tomorrow is wash day.

Lot's Being Done On The Farm

So yesterday we were talking about burning the brush we have cut down over the last 4 months.

We have a burning permit but I'm a little gun shy.

We've already lost one home to fire.

Luckily the calvary showed up just after lunch.

I'd talked to these guys about one week ago when they were doing a tree in the neighbourhood.

They cleaned up our mess in less than 2 hours and for less than it was going to cost us 

to rent a chipper from the local tool place.

The bonus here was that they dumped all the chips into our compost area for future use.

We have bags of dirt from a local organic garden and now a pile of chips from our property.

I see Ruth's raised beds getting something special this spring.

So I went to have coffee today with Carrie. 

She is the building engineer for Lake Country community centre.

Between games she runs the Zamboni.

I had to wait for our visit.

It's a real art shaving the ice and laying a new layer.

She let me do it last year when there weren't any more games happening.

I did 4 laps on the rink , shaved too much ice , dumped too much water 

which made the rink lumpy but I thought it wasn't too bad.

It took about 30 minutes for Carrie to fix my mess.

Now when I drop in she has me wait in her shop while she lays fresh ice.

The highlight is that I get to say I drove a Zamboni.

So the chinking is going to be finished tomorrow ant the West Entrance needed to be changed.

This use to be a cat door and it looked terrible.

I locked the swing and filled the cat entrance with insulation.

Every time I looked at it I would cringe.

I bought a new door today and Ruth helped me remove the old one.

I also bought new hardware. Looking good.

I got a little frustrated installing the new electric keypad but finally got it working.

I put them on the 3 swinging doors to the log house. 

I love this system. 

Someday I'll actually read the installation manuel to see if i've been doing this properly.

So being the good Scot that I am ..........I've created myself a lot of work.

I'm building myself a fence 120 feet long and need about 100 2x2's for trim.

They (Home Depot) want $4.80 for each pressure treated  2x2. but  $5.20 for a 2x4.  

So I bought 50 pressure treated 2x4 's today and spent the afternoon cutting them in half.

Each board took 2 cuts because I wanted them to be 1.5 inch square. Big job.

So I've done one panel to see what it looks like.

I like the result.

Now Ruth is going to paint the fence frame black before I put it together.

Once this is done I have another 100 feet to finish fencing the yard.

This place is a lot of work but once done it will be easy to maintain.

So today is Easter Sunday.

After a big day working outside Ruth and I decided to do a special dinner.

We had a nice bottle of red and smokies at the fire pit.

Easter doesn't get much better than this.

Only improvement would be if we had a few of our good friends with us.

Hey Julie, I'm Still Here

Yup. We're still here and starting to enjoy the finer things on the farm.

We had friends over for dinner on Saturday who brought these beautiful roses .

What sets the mood better than flowers.

I fell asleep in front of the fire Sunday afternoon.

Finally we had a day without rain.

So Ruth came out to enjoy the fire after I woke up 

and we watched two Canadian Geese fly in circles overhead for at least 20 minutes.

They finally landed on the tin roof of our log home.

We thought it was cute until I said that I hope they don't crap.

That's when Ruth got up from the fire pit and ran down the sidewalk yelling at them.

Problem solved. Hopefully they won't be back.

So it's rained for days.

I think Daisy is tired of having to get dressed to go outside.

We have come back from our walk for 6 days now to watch young John chink our house.

We call his boss old John. It help us differentiate between the two.

We could call them skinny John and fat John but I think this is likely better.

He's doing a great job . It's a lot of work. They figured it would take about 10 days to complete.

We will paint the place when he's done. I hate this colour the last owner did.

I wish he had left it natural. Oh Well. We'll make it look good.

So today was a big day. Ruth got a new car.

She bought a 2 year old Mitsubishi about 2 months ago 

and we found out it had been in an accident.

That bugged us . There was a problem with it we were upset with.

The dealership said they would fix it but we weren't too happy with that.

(It was a bent control arm. Something you wouldn't see)

They gave us all our money back, and a decent discount on a new car.

I've had new trucks since 1980 but Ruth has never had a new car.

She has now. 16 kilometres. Nice.

She's happy.

So Carrie came over to collect her kids after putting in a full day working for Lake country .

She is the building engineer at the community centre.

She saw me working on the fence and told her kids they were staying for another hour.

I love this kid. She's my best friend.

 She never backs away when she thinks I could use a hand.

So the sun has set and I realized that it is garbage day.

The driveway is quite steep and one of the buckets is really full and heavy.

Being a lazy guy I fired up the tractor and tied the garbage cans on.

This is the lazy man's way to get them up the hill.