Category: Home Fires

Normally the phrase free shed sends shivers down my spine. Where we live a social media post that offers something for free is more often than not someone looking to get rid something without having to have it hauled to the landfill.

Especially small building and trailers and RVs.

When my boss sent me a note that we had a contract to remove a shed that was deemed to be on the road allowance and suggested maybe I wanted to re-home it instead I was skeptical. Most shed can’t take the move and halfway through the attempt you end up with a shredded pile of scrap wood. Usually poorly build and full of rot.

I was quite surprised when I looked at it.

Kinda cute and quite solid. No rot except the front porch deck.

I’ve been planning a new shed for a year of so. I really want to get the canning supplies and camp gear and lawn chairs out of my tool shed. They’re in there because the tool shed dry and well vented. Damp and mildew is an issue here in many building and trailers. The tool shed in the only place other than in the house that we can store things safely from the weather.

Kelly has her own reasons for wanting a new shed. We currently have a metal shed in the back yard we use as a garden shed. Takes, goes, lawn mower, generators, fuel can. She hates it. Wants it gone. I hate it. Condensation rains off the ceiling.

So it is serendipitous that this clients shed is both available and as it turns out moveable. The first have of the project is done and it is now sitting in a flat pile in the yard waiting for me to build a new floor for it to sit on.

Well, we survived August.

For us August wasn’t as bad as August was for countless others affected by the fires across the globe. Thankfully the closest fire to us was over 60km away.

It was also not as hot as previous Augusts have been. Just a few 30+ days. It was just as dry though. Ninety days without a drop has become the norm around here in summer. The extra rain cistern we added for the garden proved to be a very good idea.

Speaking of gardens I pulled the last of it out today. Onions were successful if a bit on the small side. No rot or worms so a thumbs up in my books. I’ll add them to my plant list for next year.

Peas without trellising – mixed. Great production. Yummy flavour. More difficult to harvest (duh).

Beans – Incredible! The MacKenzie Heirloom Stringless were a marvel. Great production and great flavour. Four successive flowering meant fresh garden beans the whole summer. The Blue Lake also produced well and had a second flowering by no where near as bountiful as the Heirloom and you had to catch them early as they got woody fast.

Leeks from seed were a total bust. I ended up with a row of grass.

Butter lettuce was also excellent. I will do that next year too. Potatoes in bags did poorer than last year. I think I will create a new bed for them instead of bags.

Tomatoes continue to elude me. We will start the seeds earlier next year and I think I will tent the transplants longer. I suspect cold shock they don’t recover from. We are going to give up completely on peppers. They don’t grow well and since we no longer make salsa we don’t eat enough for me to even want to try to figure them out.

Now I can focus on fall lawn reparations. The hounds destroyed it over the summer and we have a big dusty yard. I should be looking at fall rains and still warm weather so I will reseed (again) and hope some takes before the December snows.

That’s for another day. Today I will relax and recover from the last of the cold I got travelling the last couple weeks. Every time I go near an airport I catch something. I think driving back to the prairies will be the future preferred practice.

The deck is done. The shed is done. The rose pergola is done. Good timing too because it’s too hot to work this afternoon. 30 degrees, our hottest day this year but far.

The first harvest of peas are ready and the green beans are a day or two away. I’ll pull a garlic tomorrow to check them as well. They should be ready.

Now however it’s nap time.

I worked until twilight last night and managed to find a place for both the pegboard and the parts bins. In order to make it work I have had to relocate 90% of everything in the shed. Complicating matters is the fact the various camping and recreation items are squatting in the shed along with the tools. I would love to evict them but I would only contributions to the epidemic of homelessness. They simply have no where else to go.

Had a late start today. Coffee and some Civ kept me indoors most of the morning. After a run to the lumberyard to trade another $150 for plywood I spent the rest of the day and evening finishing up. Everything is now back in the shed. I still need to do a bit of sorting and shuffling to get some ransom bits put away but that’s for tomorrow now.

The cubbies worked ok. I wish I had another four feet of them. I ended up double bunking some items. Less than ideal. The sporting and camping gear worked out much better. I’m very happy with that piece. Everything is together and more importantly OFF THE WALL. No more folding chairs hanging on hooks, getting in my way.

So, another hour in the morning and then I can move to staining the attached deck. It’ll be nice to get the bbq’s off the driveway.

Tools keep following me home.

I don’t encourage them. I don’t give them bits of my sandwich at the work site. I don’t call them over. Yet, the number of tools living in my shed has constantly increased over the last few years.

Now, one might think “Great!” and it is in many regards. Where it isn’t though is in where they all roost at night. Frankly, I have run out of nesting sites for the poor things. So this weekend I have begun the great tool coop remodel of 2023.

Taking a page from Ron Paulk I decided to build adjustable partitioned cubbies for each major tool. A. day and $600 later I have all my stuff presently scattered across the deck waiting to be re-homed back to a nice new bed…er… cubbie.

It will take another day working in the driveway to finish so I’m not completely sure how this will work out. I am slightly concerned about the tools that used to live on the pegboard. I had to take that down to fit the new shelves and I really don’t know where I can hang it back up in the new layout.

Stay tuned

Another cool and wet spring. I am beginning to feel I’m the victim of false advertising when I look at the season norms in the weather forecast. This is the second cool spring in a row. I sure hope the garden doesn’t suffer as much as it did last year.

We have upgraded our little seed starting greenhouse this year. Lights and heat pads. Germination was excellent. Near 100% and very fast. Hopefully the lights will help the starts be less leggy that we usually end up with. In previous years the tomatoes we started from seed didn’t take off until late summer, far to late for a crop.

Grey saw the “man with two bricks” last week and is wearing a cone until next week. The two pups are having a hard time understanding that they can’t run and play fight as usual right now. They are storing up a good deal of energy I’ll need to help them burn off later.

I am definitely ready for the cone phase to end too. Outside only on a leash, which means I’m up early so take Grey out to do his business. Makes for a long day.

The warmer weather has brought the rain we were all looking for back in November. The last two weeks have been VERY wet. The pups look like they were swimming when they come in from the yard.

The seasonal creeks are all running again. The cistern is full, and soon I can think about overseeing the lawn.

For now, the only gardening going on is indoors.

I really need to get out of the house. I have become a big slug, and my pants are getting tight. Never a good sign. I did manage to do three hours of forest floor cleaning yesterday between rain showers. This sounds weird but it is mainly aimed at reducing the fuel load of forest a bit. Picking up storm damage in the form of branches and fallen trees. Anything large enough for firewood I’ll buck up and give away. The smaller stuff I will chip and use as bedding mulch this summer.

I figure to do the whole property will take me around 100 hours. In calendar time I think that will be a month if I keep at it. More likely it will be six months. Meh, whatever. It’s not going anywhere and neither am I.

Christmas has come and gone and along with it the 12” of snow we got as part of the North American December storm event(s).

Snow never last long, a couple weeks usually depending on how much we got. In this case it was erased by 6” of rain that came after.

We also had our second deer die on the property. I never do anything about this when it happens. The forest critters make pretty quick work of reducing them to bones.

The carcass drew quite a few scavengers including a bald eagle who hung around for quite a few days. Long enough that we were starting to wonder if it had plans on our dogs.

Christmas itself was pretty good. We got a real tree for the first time in many years and it was a beaut! We managed to get though two storm day suppers without losing power – bonus!! The kids were pretty leery about the outdoor cooking though.

Now it’s world junior hockey time. See you in a few days.

What an interesting couple of weeks we’ve had.

First was the wind storm. No immediate damage but we did have to take down a couple trees right after it as their root balls began to pull out. It’s always better to drop them where you want to rather than let nature decide, especially when they are close to the house.

Next was the blizzard. Fairly unusual for this area. Now granted it’s not prairie level blizzard but for our climate it was officially classed as “nasty”.

The big impact this one had was it whipped the fibre cable serving the entire island into the high voltage lines. Net result was 7 days no phone, cable, or internet and local cell towers isolated.

Kudos to the phone company. They brought in a cell site on wheels, upped the power of other sites, and redirected some antenna beams to improve coverage. Next they installed a new microwave link to restore service while they arranged to replace the fibre.

In the meantime we have had 4 separate power outages. Two storm caused and two restoration related. Turned out not only did the fibre cable fry, snap, and fall into the ocean but two of the three power lines were damaged to the point they could not be re-energized until they were replaced. They have to de-energize the remaining one while helicoptering new spans to our island. Tomorrow will be the 5th outage and then hopefully all is good.

Whew!

So today we sit in the dark, wood stove heating the house, and wait for the power to come back at 6pm. My day has mostly looked like this: