Insulating, Backfilling, and Sill Plates

Once the block work was done, Chris applied a coat of tar to the walls.  Then he glued sheets of foam board to the tar.  2 layers thick at the top.  Then he shoveled, by hand, hundreds of loads of clear stone gravel along the base of the walls.  He then laid drainage pipe (Big "O") and covered it with many more loads of gravel.  All this in his "spare time"!  This man works a full time job, comes home to eat dinner then goes out to work on the house.  After helping put the kids to bed he goes back out and works after dark using spot lights.

Big "O" covered by clear stone gravel all around the base of the foundation and down from the window wells.

Big "O" and foam board along the West facing wall

Planks over muck puddles

I don't know how many hundreds of wheel barrow loads Chris walked from the pile of gravel at the front of the house to cover all the Big "O" around the house.  Note his use of construction sandals

He had some help.  Appropriate work clothes optional here too

Clogs, red velvet dress, and hoodie for shoveling gravel?  Why not?

Finnlee makes a great counter weight while Phoenix cuts the foam board with the hand saw

The South facing wall needed a second coat of tar.  The first coat cracked in the extreme heat and direct sun in the days following its application

Chris was excited to use the Kubota on loan from his boss Lynn to do the backfilling and move some of the rock.  Without this machine, Chris would have done it by hand and it would have taken ages!

Attaching the sill plate in the dark

Zander helped with the pressure treated plywood that covers the foam

Cedar strips that the mill up the hill sells cheap as waste wood cover the seams in the plywood

Just this week the foundation was approved by the building inspector, so now we have a green light to go ahead with the framing!  We're planning a work party!  Want to come party with us?

Pest control

We have a little mouse problem.  Not in the house, but out in the mudroom/storage shed that Chris built along the side of the house.  We put out traps and catch some, but there are always more.  We found a solution though...a cute one at that!

Meet Simon and Oliver

Milk brothers.  Simon, the orange tabby, is about 8 weeks old.  His mother disappeared from the farm before he was weaned.  Oliver's mother adopted the litter and nursed them along with her own, 9 in total!  Oliver, the gray tabby is 6 weeks old.  They believe they are brothers

Simon is more shy than Oliver, but he's coming around. 

He proved his worth by catching his first mouse on his second night here!

Oliver is a snuggler

I think he will be a good hunter too

The chickens didn't know what to make of the kittens.  At first they came running over making food noises.  Then when the kittens started moving around the chickens ran away calling out in alarm!  By the way, these are our older chicks.  Junior, a rooster, Dorothy, another rooster, Tiny, yet another rooster, Amelia, rooster, Buffy, still yet to be determined, and our girls, Flower and Breech.
Did you know a rooster learning to crow sounds like a kazoo?

Solstice is in love

And its a very good thing kittens are tolerant!

Its been a long time since I had a kitten.  I still miss Zeppelin and Sebastian, 
but its nice to have cats around again

Almost half grown

Chickens will start laying between 16 and 24 weeks.  Our big chicks are 9 weeks old, and the little chicks are 6 weeks old now.  Its amazing to watch how fast they grow and to try to figure out who their mothers are!  Mama hen, Salt, has decided her babies are big enough to be on their own.  She laid her first post-broody egg last week, and that night she slept up on the perch with the other hens and Fred again.  Leaving her babies in the nest alone.  Since that night, she and the chicks ignore each other completely.  She will chase them away from a yummy scrap of food instead of calling them over to share.  I didn't expect the transition to be so sudden!  But the chicks don't seem to mind.  They are big enough that they can't all fit in the nest at night.  They keep together in a group, just as the big chicks do.  Both groups forage around the yard separately.  Sometimes they mix together with the hens too, but they pretty much keep to their own age group.

The bigger chick on the left is Buffy from our first clutch of eggs.  The other chicks are from the second hatching.  They don't have names yet

6 of the 7 older chicks.  From left to right; Breech, Dorothy, Junior, Amelia, Flower, and Tiny.  So far we're certain that Breech was fathered by Dodger, the Americana rooster we didn't keep.  If she is female, she will be called an Easter Egger and her eggs will be blue, green, or pink!  I'm also pretty sure Amelia is a rooster.  No crowing yet, but her (his?) tail feathers are growing in long and curved and a brilliant blue/black

A strong foundation

One thing we are learning on this journey is that good community is priceless.  When Chris had the footing forms ready to pour cement, he called a few friends.  His boss, Lynn, came over with his tractor and cement mixer attachment.  Friends Louis, Youssef, and John, lent their time doing the dirty, heavy work too.  My dad, Steve, spent many hours helping out too.  Together they all spent a very full day, working past dark, to pour the cement footings.  Lynn came back the next morning to finish up the last bits.  Many hands certainly makes the work go faster!

Lynn driving the tractor, Chris down in the trench

Its hard work

My Dad helped put the pieces of rebar in the frames before the cement was poured

Lynn on the tractor, John at the top of the hill, Louis at the base of the homemade chute, and Chris on the left.

The homemade chute did the trick....for a little while

The next step once the cement had hardened was the block work.  Chris's dad Adrian, a bricklayer by trade, came from Saskatoon to help with that part. As Chris says, "After all a parent should do their best to give their children a good foundation!"  Row upon row the walls rose out of the ground.  Its nice to be able to see the actual scale of the house.  To see the size of the rooms.  To show the kids where their bedrooms will be.  To see your dream coming alive.
 

The side door on the West wall

The back wall looks imposing, but I've been assured it needs to be that high!  Once the floor is in, the block work won't take up so much of the height

Adrian laying the blocks on the South facing wall

Cutting the blocks was messy, dusty work

They cut out the centres of the top 2 rows of blocks to lay rebar in and fill the channel with more cement

The last block!

Parging the outside of the blocks

The last batch of mortar!

Job well done

Well, not quite done.  After Adrian left, Chris and my Dad mixed the cement in the smaller mixer to pour into the top 2 rows of blocks.  Chris made hundreds of trips up the hill with a bucket of cement to pour into the channels

Rough work on the hands

Now moving on to water sealant, drainage, foam board, and back filling.

Breaking ground

 It has begun!  The digger arrived.  It dug a hole.  A big hole!  It found lots of rocks.  Big rocks!  We have more rocks for landscaping and using in our build than we know what to do with.  We also have a huge pile of dirt, several of them in fact.  What fun for kids who love to get dirty!

This is the biggest of the rocks.  It took about 30 minutes to remove it from the hole!

Who can resist playing in the dirt?

This isn't even half of the rocks!

Ready for the footings!

The view up the hill to the North.  Prettiest sunset I've ever seen

Foxes, and chickens, and bears, oh my!

One morning last week I heard lots of squawking and noise outside.  Finnlee came running saying she saw a fox.  We ran outside to find the chickens all flustered.  Fred was calling out his danger cry.  There was no sign of the fox.  But I found a pile of feathers in the chicken run.  Then at the edge of the clearing another pile of feathers.  Off in the woods I followed a feather trail to the body of our sweet Rhoda.  The fox must have broken her neck in the attack but I scared it off before it had a chance to eat her.  Such a shame to loose one of our best layers that way.  I cleaned and skinned her body and she is sitting in our freezer beside the first one we haven't had the nerve to eat yet.  Inside her I found one last egg, fully developed, ready to lay.  That evening as we were eating dinner I heard Fred's danger cry again.  Sure enough the fox was back.  I yelled out the window and clapped my hands to frighten it away.  Chris ran out of the house barefoot and chased it all the way into the woods yelling at the top of his lungs.  Everyone says you can't scare away a fox.  They will keep coming back as long as they can get your chickens.  Chris must be scarier than anyone else because we haven't seen the fox since!

I took this picture of Rhoda a few days before the fox killed her

To help keep the fox away we have been keeping Molly dog outside all day.  She hunts chipmunks, follows the kids around, and sleeps under the van.  After feeding the chickens one day I whistled for Molly as I walked up the path to the house.  I saw her hunched black form on the driveway ahead of me and called her again.  She nudged my hand from behind as I was looking at the black furry mound on the driveway.  Then it turned its head.  It was a bear.  Then I saw another one.  Both small, but larger than Molly.  Likely last year's cubs kicked out by mom to make room for a new baby.  I kept Molly's attention as I lead her to the house.  I didn't know what she would do if she saw them, and I didn't want to find out!  I put Molly in the house and came back out to watch the cubs.  I was torn by the urge to go get the camera or keep watching.  I decided I should see what way they went and make sure that Mama wasn't with them too.  I stayed on the porch by the door in case I needed to move fast.  The cubs ignored me as the ambled across the driveway.  A car drove by waving and pointing at the bears in front of me.  The cubs took that as their cue to meander into the woods along the road away from the house.  They were so beautiful!  I feel honoured to have had the opportunity to observe them.  Maybe I need to start carrying the camera around when I do chores!

More peeps

So, right after we spent 3 weeks incubating our eggs we had a hen go broody.  The. Day. After the eggs hatched to be precise.  Since we only had 7 chicks from the first batch, we decided to let our broody Salt sit some more eggs.  I gave her 12 eggs to start.  After almost 2 weeks I slipped into the coop after dark with a flashlight to candle the eggs.  To my surprise, they were all viable except for 2.  I moved her from the hens' favorite nesting box into a temporary brooding room I built into the corner of the coop.  On day 21 we woke up to find this darling little face peeking out at us!

Hello little one!

Salt did such a good job sitting her nest that all 10 eggs hatched out without a problem!  I have to say, its so much easier letting a hen do the incubating, hatching, and chick raising!

Salt all plumped out to make a nice warm place for her babies

We named this one Happy Feet.  Doesn't she look like a baby penguin?

Our first babies are more friendly with us than the new chicks because they imprinted on us from the start.  This is Amelia, our best flier named after Amelia Earhart of course.  As soon as we open the brooder she flies up onto whoever's head is nearest!

The new babies look so tiny

And the older babies look HUGE next to them even though they are only 3 weeks older!  They look like awkward teenagers now!

The older babies have most of their adult feathers in now.  Its very interesting to see their markings coming out

These 3 certainly have their father's legs!

Salt has started to take her babies out of the coop for walks.  She's a great Mama and makes my job so much easier!