The nearly unending saga of the roof

This roof has been the biggest struggle in this whole process so far.  Its taken months longer to install than we thought.  Its been a long and frustrating journey.  I've learned to have even more patience.  I've also learned that taking roofing photos results in an awful lot of bum pictures!

We've had a lot of help along the way.

Steve, Michael, and Eric came over to begin laying the metal sheets

First sheet on the South slope

After the first few sheets were up, Chris was able to do some on his own.  This was before he became ill

He rolled the sheets up, hauled them up and over the peak

Then unrolled and secured them

Through the whole roofing process we had several work parties!  The kids all had a lot of fun while the dads and one of the moms (I didn't get any pics of Emily up on the roof, but she was there!) were working on the house

The house from the edge of our property

Youssef, Chris, and Jessie working on the South slope

The view from my parent's property

Eric, Kevin, and Chris secure the last Southern sheet!

And finally, Austin and Chris secure the ridge cap, and its done!  I guess it wasn't unending, but it sure felt that way!

And Summer becomes autumn

We have had one heck of a summer and autumn here.  The house construction slowed down almost to a stand still when Chris became unwell in August.  He was quite ill for a long time.  In fact, he only just returned to work this week.  Three and a half months of illness will really screw up a lot of things.  We're much farther behind on the build than we wanted to be.  I've been doing my best to parent, homeschool, care for the house, yard, and sick husband.  Its been a little overwhelming.  But here we are, trying to get back to normal, whatever that means.   

Hiking to the back of the property before Chris got sick

Living in such a small mobile home makes sleep-overs challenging.  A tent set up in warmer months fixed that!  And now Zander is able to say that he has slept in his new bedroom!

The kids discovered a snake trying to eat a huge toad! 

They followed it all over the place as it kept thrashing and struggling to get the toad down!

We had some hitch hikers come into the kitchen on this fresh dill

We kept them until they made a chrysalis and out came gorgeous Black Swallowtail butterflies

Poor old girl Rainbow tried to hatch eggs all last summer.  But since Salt already had chicks, I kept taking Rainbows eggs away.  This year I decided she should have a turn.  A friend gave us some fertile eggs to bring in some new blood for our flock and Rainbow happily sat on them!

She hatched out 11 beautiful babies!

They have some pretty neat markings!

While Rainbow was sitting on her eggs, another hen, Buffy was getting picked on by the others.  It was so bad I had to isolate her.  Trying to help her reintegrate into the flock, I gave her a couple of eggs of her own to hatch.  Unfortunately, 2 days before they were due to hatch, a racoon snatched her off her nest in the middle of the night. 

I managed to save her eggs and keep them warm in our kitchen in a makeshift incubator for the last 2 days, and they hatched!

This one was Finnlee's favourite, she named it snowflake

Luckily, sweet Mama Rainbow adopted the two motherless chicks and claimed them as her own

We had a vegetable oddity in our garden this year.  Corn Smut!

Its a fungus that grows inside corn kernels causing them to grow like this.  Its considered a delicacy in Mexico!  Since I just couldn't bring myself to eat it, our friend Armida cooked it up for her family.  She said it was delicious, I'm still skeptical...

Chris went up Blueberry Mountain with the kids and my Dad, my brother, and his daughter while the Moms stayed home prepping for Thanksgiving dinner

The view is breathtaking!

There has also been a new addition to the family.  My parents got a new puppy!  Her name is Annie.  She's very cute!

Spring turns into summer

Spring goes very quickly here on the homestead.  There is always LOTS to do!  Chris gone back to work means slower progress on the house.  Gardening, fencing, animal care, and spring cleanup leave little time for blogging.  So here's a condensed version of spring 2016.

The metal for the roof arrives!  Safely unloaded after the truck was almost swallowed up by the very soft mud

 Leveling and squaring the roof has been the most difficult, tedious, and frustrating part of building so far.

Our friend John is much more experienced with roofing and spent some time with Chris to make sure it was done safely and correctly.

It was hot, but thanks to the drought we have been experiencing it didn't rain

Chris spent many hours at night, in the cold of spring moving rocks by hand to create a small retaining wall along the East side of the house

Some of these rocks are huge!  I guess he's pretty strong!

He found some really interesting rocks.  See the profile of a face?

I found a tiny newt in the garden!  Great little bug eaters to have around!

Our several hundred garlic plants put in last fall produced several hundred delicious garlic scapes this spring!  I made 20 batches of scape pesto for the freezer and 7 pints of pickled scapes.  I used weeds (Pig Weed and Lamb's Quarters) in the pesto too.  One of our favourite pasta and pizza toppings!

Mama Salt hatched out some more babies this year.  See the tiny pip in the egg on the right?  We could hear it peeping!

Peek-a-boo baby chick!

I gave Salt 12 eggs to hatch, but I forgot to mark them.  Two days later she had 18 eggs under her!  I guess her sisters decided we needed more!  Unfortunately, 18 eggs is too many for a hen Salt's size to sit on.  Some eggs ended up not incubating properly and didn't hatch.  Some were also ready to hatch later than the original ones I let her have.  Once the first batch of eggs hatched, Salt abandoned the unhatched eggs to tend the new chicks.  I had to quickly rig up a makeshift incubator out of a margarine container and plastic wrap set to warm in the sun so the last few had a chance!  We hatched out 3 more babies and Salt accepted them as her own, 11 fluffy little chicks!

Salt is a good mama

I think that's the same expression I make when the kids are climbing all over me in the heat....

They're growing so fast!

Rafters: Part 3

Well, the stubborn ingenious man figured out how to raise the remaining rafters on his own.  I still don't know how he did it!  Leverage, strength, sweat and a few pulled muscles.  He humored me once by letting me hold the rope for him, but I don't think he really needed my help.  Because he was running out of horizontal room on top of the walls he raised the last several rafters and stacked them together in the center of the house.  Once all of them were vertical, he put a 2x12 through the peak of all of them and attached it to the far West rafter.  Then he slid each rafter along into its final placement from West to East fixing them in place as he went.   

Chris used rope to secure each rafter to its neighbour as he stacked them

Here you can see the rafters coming back to the centre of the house from the West side

Two more to go!

Done!

Feels like a real roof already!

22 roof rafters in all

Chris attaches the strapping that the metal roof will be fixed to

Site inspectors give us a pass

I guess its spring now

The site is pretty mucky

Chris built us our own temporary boardwalk to get us through the mud