It's true what they say about eavestrophes

When I lived in the city, I lived in an older area of town. The houses are mostly semi-detached, and even the detached homes are a mere 8' apart (at most). The front and backyards are often micro yards, and most of the backyards even further reduced by garages or parking pads. Extending a downspout more than 2' in any direction is often very tricky. I guess I didn't ever connect our damp (but not flooded) basement with our eavestrophe drainage - I just chaulked it up to age.
Here in our house atop clay soil, however, it is impossible NOT to make those connections. Even with our downspouts drained up to 4' away from the house, we still had a wet basement during the melting months. I've really learned the physics of water travel, though, during the last week while our front eavestrophe has, unfortunately, been off the house.
To explain how this happened: the front eavestrophe has always leaked, and so our cold cellar has always been wet. My guy took the eavestrophe down to replace it, and in trying to remount a new one discovered that the wood holding the soffits / flashing was rotted. Before he could repair / replace the whole run of wood, the weather turned on us and it's been raining non stop for a week. Consequently, the water runs off the roof onto the garden and then seeps down alongside the foundation... finding every miniscule flaw in the concrete and forcing it's way through, ending up in a puddle in the basement.
In our basement, we can see evidence in the foundation of the shifts in the cinder blocks due to the years of freeze / thaw cycles. While a structural engineer told us that such shifting is normal (especially in this area), those shifts have clearly opened up cracks in the mortar, providing an easy route for water to find its way inside. The leaking wasn't noticeable last summer, despite the never-ending rain. So the fact that we've had water in the basement this year goes to show how much more water is running alongside the foundation, now that the eavestrophe is missing.
The "Do It Yourself" books tell you to run your downspout away from the house as far as possible. Before this week, I have been a lot more cavallier about that distance. Now that I have the 'before' and 'after' evidence, I'm planning on aiming for 8'. I hope that will tide us over until we can deal with waterproofing the basement (about a $10k investment).
It's been another hard, but helpful, lesson in homeownership.

April (through June) Showers

The past week or so has seemed like an echo of last summer, where rain and dampness were constant companions. It's been raining on and off for more than a week - a day here and there of sunshine, but mostly cool wet days have finished off our spring.
The garden hasn't suffered too badly, yet - the sunny days were warm enough to dry things out before another wet patch, so apart from one rotted bean seedling and one tomato vine with a small patch of powdery mildew, we've been faring OK.
The rain barrels are full to overflowing (600 gal each... if that gives you an idea of how much rain has fallen) which I hadn't expected so I didn't plan for an overflow system. Thankfully they are away from the house, though, so if they overflow it will just mean soggy walking around the raised beds.
The compost pile has soaked up enough rain that it has dropped down by 6" or so. I haven't seen any worms migrating out of the pile, so hopefully the middle isn't waterlogged. I've been trying to add some bulky things (unshredded toilet paper rolls, for example) to give the worms a bit of a safe haven when the rains are particularly heavy.
Another rain blessing is the success of my 'donated' perennials. Most everything that I transplanted has survived, and in some cases thrived - the hostas are glorious and many of the irises bloomed. Even the wild rose that I thought wouldn't make it has shown new growth (I cut the stems down to the ground almost, when I thought it was on its last legs). The raspberry canes (another gift) are trying to decide whether to live or not... but the ongoing rain has helped keep them on the fence at least.
While our soggy weather has had its good and bad points, I have to feel sorry for the farmers out west that are suffering through a drought. The survival of those families depends on the rain and it seems that the past few years have provided too much or too little. Some people will talk about the give and take of Mother Nature, but it certainly appears that the the cycles are shortening - it's only been 7 years since the last drought out west. It must be hard for them to see their neighbours to the east embarking on another year of (too much?) rain.
Here in what's turning out to be 'the rain belt', I've been thinking that the sump pump is one of the greatest inventions of our time.

Ellie & John

I finally had my more-like-a-sister cousin and her 2 kids out to see 'the new house' (a year after it was new to us). Chalk it up to busy work and life schedules... skating lessons, skiing lessons, girl guides/boyscouts and gymnastics or ballet on her end, work and snow plowing and gardening on my end. So, Sunday (me hung over and tired for a million reasons) she brought the kids and the dog out for a visit.
It was more of a joy than I could have anticipated, to show them around and to see the kids REVEL in the 'countryness' of our life ... helping to water the container plants and the newly-planted perennials, chasing each other with watering cans (filled from the rain barrels), taste-testing the herbs. Offered TV, they elected to only watch 20 minutes of "Prank Patrol" and then came up to help me harvest (and clean) the radishes ("too hot!"), some salad and miscellaneous leaves. I divided the 'bounty' in two, and they took their half home to share with their dad.
Then the dog... running with abandon, smelling the smells of the neighbour sheep and horses, the smells of the recently-visiting dogs, the uncity smells of country life (the rabbits that eat my raspberries, the moles that make holes in the garden, the feral cats that roam the county), uncatchable and so dog-like.
It reminded me (and my sister-cousin, no doubt) of what it was like to visit our grandparents as children - pulling peas and beans and raspberries from their kitchen garden, helping to turn the compost pile, internalizing the smell of the 'workshop' (the dirt-floor basement under the summer kitchen).
Watching the kids amuse themselves made me so happy -- to have her kids associate our house with 'the farm', the place of growing edibles and new mysteries, of wildlife and wild living. To know that my other nephew eagerly awaits "Strawverry day" (when they make the 2 hour trip to our neck of the woods to handpick strawberries at Murphy's), to anticipate how his sister (only 6 months old on our last berry picking day) will react to picking then eating fresh strawberries.
I think that, for all that this place means to us, it is a blessing to provide memories to the children in our lives... memories that will stay with them and that they may be able to recreate with their children.

The blessing of rain

I feel pretty lucky that I was able to install HUGE rainbarrels near the garden. By the end of a 2-week dry spell, during which time all of my transplanting took place, I had almost come to the end of the water reserve I had. It has rained enough in the last week that they are topped up again (not to mention my new beds are thoroughly soaked) and so if the 'drier than normal' spring that is predicted does materialize, I have hope that we'll be able to make it through to the next rain.
Last week I added 2 more collection barrels - a 45-gal drum that I added a spigot to at the bottom and then extended a down spout to, and a 45-gal GARBAGE bin that I just placed under a down spout (with mosquito screen covering the open top since it had no lid) that I'll just have to dip my watering can into. I managed to finish them before the rains came, and I've been happy to watch them fill up, too.
My whole relationship to water has changed since moving here. Without access to un-softened water (I doubt the plants would enjoy salty water), rain water is literally the life blood of the garden. And so I'm 'one of those' who waits for rain (despite the fact that we still have leaks in the roof), who is grateful for pop-up showers. The compost bin needs the rain, my new 'donated' plants (freshly transplanted) need the rain, the greedy rain barrels need the rain. The peas seem to grow before your eyes after a rain shower.
And rain becomes 'free laundry'... I hang the and blankets outside and let them get a soaking during a rainstorm, and then dry them on the deck railing. The dirty mats get left outside for a few storms, after a good shaking / beating.
Finally, a good rainstorm is preceded by a over-seeding of white clover on our property, so that eventually the grass will be replaced by the sweet-smelling, white flowered green that requires no mowing.
Despite a small leak in the roof and a few leaks in the foundation, I now find myself eagerly awaiting the rain, and all the good it means.

Spring Workout

I went for a dress fitting (I'm a 'groomsman' at my friend's wedding in the fall) and discovered that I'm 3 inches thinner than ususual. I think that it is due to my 'homestead workout plan'.
The tractor isn't working so I've had to mow the grass with the (environmentally friendly) 4-stroke push mower. I then had to rake and haul all of the grass ( about 9 yards worth). That would be my cardio routine.
We've also been building the raised beds for our garden, and decided to buy a 4-in-1 organic garden soil, which gets delivered by the yard. So, I've spent the past couple of weeks moving 6 yards of dirt by hand. I considered this my strength training.
Then there has been the rapid planting of the plants my friend Lucinda gave me, all which involved digging, amending the soil, planting, watering. A bit of interval training.
Finally, there is the daily routine of watering all of my newly planted vegetables. Since our rain barrels are gravity fed, this is done mostly with watering cans and so a lot of walking back and forth from bed to barrel to bed. This could be described as endurance.
All of this on top of the every day activities like cleaning, working, shopping, laundry, etc. It feels like I have been constantly on the move for the past 4 weeks (and thankfully I've been on 'vacation' for the past 3). In fact, I feel like I've been on the move since we moved out here.

The vegetable garden is showing promise - after a slowish start the peas are pulling themselves upward, the carrots have germinated and the 1st radishes and salads are almost ready to harvest. I planted out the tomatoes, and the peppers and basil will go into the ground in another week or so. The raised beds have really been great in that the soil has warmed up really quickly, so I'm a bit ahead of the game. I put my first succession of beans in yesterday, and will put another 2 plantings in over the next few weeks. Cucumbers will come next, once the weather is really warm. I have noticed that the raised beds require more watering than I would have thought ... even with the vermiculite that I incorporated into the soil, the beds seem to dry out pretty quickly.

Given that this is my first year gardening on such a scale, I'm a bit uncertain as to my eventual success rate. But the PROMISE of success (and envisioning the towering plants in a couple of months time) certainly is worth the effort.

Freecycle Gardening

My friend Lucinda invited me over to take some plants from her garden - she is repainting her garage and so needed to clear out some space, plus some of the plants needed dividing. By the end of my afternoon, I had filled our truck full of hostas, bleeding hearts, irises, Solomon's seal, wild roses, hydrangeas and columbine. She was pragmatic and rather ruthless, cutting them out and housing them in whatever was handy - garbage bags, cement buckets, old plant pots. We watered them and she waved goodbye as I rushed my new friends home.
Last night I planted the shade lovers and the more delicate specimens in a so-called 'bed' I had sort of started last year, but to be honest I wasn't ready for the number of plants she so graciously gave me. I had expected a couple, not dozens. Today most of them seem to be holding on. The rest I've had to keep in their containers on our shaded front porch and hope they last... we've had raging high winds today and I didn't think the plants could withstand that kind of shock (coming as they had from a well-groomed, peaceful back yard).
It made me think, however, how amazing it is to grow enough of something that you can give it away to someone who will be so happy for it (this would include dividing plants and also extra produce from the veggie garden) and how the history of gardening is ALL about the freecycling... getting clippings or bulbs or divisions from family and friends, handing over your own treasured specimans. Once you put them in the soil that you've kept healthy with your homegrown compost, you're pretty much set. It doesn't have to be expensive to have a garden, once you've hooked up with other gardeners - there seems to be a lot of pride in trading or giving away plants that have been lovingly tended. And the opportunities for heirloom or out-of-favour specimans is unlimited - far better than the uniform trays of plants that you and everyone else is offered at Home Depot or a big-box gardening centre.
With a little bartering or freecycling, it is possible to create a unique and lush garden without going broke.

Grass Cutting 101

Last summer I rarely managed to cut the grass. Mostly it was because it rained so much that the grass was always wet, but when I did find an opportunity to cut it, the lawn mowers failed.
I had bought a push mower (4 stroke and very environmentally friendly) because the tractor that came with the house is ancient and probably creates more pollution than a hundred cars. I also thought that a push mower would be great cardio for me (who had been accustomed to walking a lot in the city and now had to drive everywhere). I was diligent about mulching, so had the mulching plugs in place. I rarely got a hundred meters before the push mower would conk out - plugged and exhausted from a lack of oxygen caused by the abundance of long, wet, matted grass clippings.
The tractor was more reliable but also struggled in the backyard where the leachbed is. I can't even count the number of times I had to push the tractor back into the drive shed because it had been crippled and suffocated out in the deep green grass.
I spent the winter trying to figure out what I was going to do about the lawn. Not only was the grass going to keep growing, but there was going to be a significant amount of matting at ground level - last years' decay. Max suggested burning it all (healthy for the soil but probably a bit stressful for the nextdoor farmer) and reseeding with clover.
Early on in the spring I overseeded with clover again ( I started this last year, we'd like to do away with grass altogether) and yesterday I decided to give mowing another try.
This time I used the push mower with the clippings bag. I had decided to use the bag because I wanted to save the clippings for the compost pile (and to relieve a bit of stress on the already matted lawn). BOY WAS I STUPID LAST YEAR. Without having to mulch and spray long wet grass, the mower operated tremendously!! I had to dump the grass clippings bag once a row (and so the process took a very long time) but the mower managed to mow down 8" grass and only sputter to a halt once. It seems so obvious, but last summer I was unprepared for the success of our lawn (compounded by the rain) and since I had only owned a manual mower in the city (with our 20' x 40' back yard) I didn't know how to properly operate a gas-powered one.
It took me about 5 hours to cut the front and side part of the property, and another hour just to mow between the house and the septic tank (where we had a lush and lovely mop of foot long grass). Today I'm going to try and finish off the back yard.
I'm so grateful to be able to use my heart- and earth-friendly push mower, and even more grateful that my lawn-mowing addicted neighbours (who have at least 3 acres of manicured lawn) won't show up offering to mow our grass finally.

More gardening

Yesterday I finished hauling the last of the garden soil (more than 3 yards) into the raised beds we built. It seems that we'll need another 3 yards (plus more manure) since we added in another 3 beds. But based on the number of tomato & pepper plants we have started, plus all the beans I want to plant, we'll need the space (even after I take into consideration using up space on the deck with containers).
The peas have started shooting up - the "Sugar Snap" from Terra Edibles are doing great, they are at about 2" (with support vines started ) and it's been just under 3 weeks since planting. I also put in "Homesteader" from Terra Edibles, "Oregon Sugar Pod" from Aimers Organics and "Laxton's Progress" also from Aimers Organics. I didn't have 100% germination from any of them, but the Sugar Snap had a 7/8 germination which I thought pretty good.
The radishes are doing well, and the salads starting to show some promise. The beets are taking their time sprouting, but they eventually do.
The shallots that I planted mid-April are also doing well. The onions and leeks that I started in the jiffy pellets aren't doing so well, but the direct seeded green onions show a lot of promise!
With most of the beds done, I'm going to start succession planting more carrots and beets, and put in some parsnips. It's hard not to be overly ambitious when the beds lie there, showing such promise. I am really hoping to be able to have some root vegetables over the winter, although I doubt I'll have much in the way of onions. Oh well, onions and garlic next year.

Spring Plans

Having spent a full year at our little homestead, we are now making some long-term plans on how to incorporate our wish list into the reality of this place.
We're planning a pond in the front yard - in part to enhance the visual interest on the property, in part to provide a bit of wildlife habitat, but also in part to offer a bit of fire suppression. Our neighbours had a car fire and it took the volunteer fire department about 10 minutes to get out here (which is not bad considering how far we are from town) - a lot can burn in 10 minutes. We figure if we outfit the pond with a pump, some power and a bit of 1 1/2 hose nearby, we could perhaps stave off destruction until the pumper gets out here. Fire notwithstanding, the birds should love it.
We've also refined my 'greywater garden' plan - we're going to trench the outspout further along the backyard and therefore relocate the garden to a more convenient place. Where the outspout is currently, it prevents people from accessing the back yard from the deck and is also hindering our efforts to make a garden bed for the cucumbers.
Our rainwater collection barrel have been working astonishingly well - so much so that I'm going to try and install a third one. We used 100 gal. industrial containers that we bought used. They come in a metal frame for support so while they are pretty ugly, they are rugged and large enough to be really useful. Max adapted the existing valve so that we can attach a hose to it. Since gravity will be the 'power source', it isn't the most high-pressure system, but it works and it's free.
We're hoping to plant some fruit trees and canes this week.... I can hardly wait to compete with the birds for the mulberries and raspberries!

Another Nesting Season

I know that spring is here because the starlings are once again nesting in the attic of the workshop. The shop has metal siding and a metal, corregated roof. It seems that there must be a few gaps between the siding and the soffits because the starlings make several attempts at finding the gaps before disappearing under the eaves (presumably into the attic of the shop).
I watched this dance last spring, too. The females come to rest on whatever is available below the roof overhang (pipes, workbenches, blocks of styrofoam, whatever we've left there). At this time of year, they have nesting materials in their mouths, although later in the summer it is food for the young. With the added weight, they can't remain airborne too long. So they take running jumps at finding the gap their looking for. Literally, they fly upward with all their might only to discover they've come to the wrong place in the overhang (ie no gap). So they flutter downward and then heave themselves upward to a different spot. Over and over again until they have found the gap. They disappear into it (again, presumably into the attic where no doubt they have built an entire city, if the nest in the attic of our house is any indication) then reemerge a few minutes later to go off in search of more stuff. Then back again to start all over.
There is another clan of starlings that have found a gap in the shop's door frame, and I notice them disappearing into that hole - although there can't be much room in there for many.
The bird books describe the starling's "large roosting congregations" as problematic. Perhaps the giant nests in our attics are not uncommon. But the starlings do take nesting holes away from native species such as the Eastern Bluebird. Our nearby conservation area had an Eastern Bluebird Nesting Box workshop - these programs have helped the Eastern Bluebird recover. I couldn't make that workshop, but I've been thinking I'd like to learn to make birdhouses.
The robins haven't been nesting on our bedroom window, yet - I haven't seen the females around so maybe it's too early. Last year I loved waking up and watching the eggs and then the chicks.
The thing about living outside of the city - it's impossible to deny the power of Nature and of Life. Everything from the seeds growing into plants to the eggs growing into birds, it is much more obvious and unavoidable out here.

Free Dirt

After saving all sorts of money (not to mention space in the landfill) by creating raised beds out of whatever wood we had lying around, I had to go out and buy soil. We have a lot of peat moss (leftover from a job we used it on, and now that I read Andrea's posting on the environmental consequences of peat moss harvesting I won't be buying any more - you can read it at www.reclaimingdinnerproject.blogspot.com , posted April 18) and vermiculite in the shop, so I really only needed manure and soil. When I went to the gardening centre (where I have bought bulk 3-in-1 before) it was too early for the 1 yard bags. So I ended up having to buy those little 15L bags of 3-in-1 and 30L bags of manure. All in all, to fill 1 bed I spent $70. What???? I have consoled myself by thinking that the bed has now been properly built and so I'll never have to buy ammendments again, but I have 5 more beds to fill.
We're getting some free horse manure from a friend who lives on a farm ( a 2 1/2 hour drive away, but since we don't know any of our neighbour farmers yet and since I haven't been able to find a local source of manure anyway, it seems our only option). But the real issue is that we didn't build a compost bin last year.
Where we live, the municipality picks up the 'green bin' and so citizens are encouraged to fill the bins up with their kitchen scraps and 'food waste'. We've been diligently sending our greens to the city so THEY can compost and sell it to agribusinesses in the province. Last fall I didn't even think about what it would mean that I wasn't creating my own compost.
So now I'm in the position of having to buy soil and compost, instead of grabbing it from our handy compost bins. I'm able to wait now for the bulk soil to arrive (it is much cheaper to buy it in 1 yard bags, and even cheaper to have multiple yards delivered) so I can order it. Next weekend we'll go and get the manure and straw, so that I can lay a good layer down under the expensive soil and then use the rest to topdress our existing beds. But I am still feeling grumbly about the expense of the soil purchase.
We are all able to make free dirt (compost, actually) in a small space with a minimum of effort. My grandmother would be horrified to know that I went out and bought dirt. It is the simplest thing in the world to take the kitchen scraps and cardboard and tree leaves to the compost bin, then to let the worms do their work. My dad is now saving the leaves from his very shady backyard for me, since we don't have much in the way of deciduous trees on our property. Worms especially like cardboard, so even newspaper, boxes and papertowel rolls can be thrown in (cut up into smaller pieces beforehand). All added up, we can produce enough compost yearly to ammend the beds each spring and keep the fertility of our veggie beds in prime condition.
I appreciate that my purchase of soil and manure is helping employ farm workers, but it seems that buying compost goes against something fundamental - give away our kitchen and yard waste so we can buy it back again composted?
Not from here on in at this house.

Some good reasons to prepare new beds in fall

I wasn't organized enough to prepare the garden beds last fall. Or, maybe organization wasn't my problem and time was. Either way, I'm playing catch up now and trying to get some beds done up in time for planting (especially since I've got dozens of plants on the go in the pink bathroom that will need somewhere to live pretty soon).
I've built a few raised beds already (old cinder blocks supporting frames I made out of 2x4's) and have lined them with screening in an effort to keep the mice out of the beds as much as possible. There are more beds to make, though, and then the filling. I didn't think it would matter that I started in spring, but there are a lot of drawbacks:
1) The weather. Of course the weather.... it is often too cold or too windy or too rainy to do much effectively.
2) Materials. As of yesterday, I still have not been able to get bulk soil trucked in - the deliveries don't come in for a week or more. And those plastic bags of 3 in 1 (which would bankrupt me if I used them in place of a truck load) contain soil that is still partially frozen. There is supposedly an abundance of manure available, but I haven't found many farms selling it yet.
3) Time. Getting the beds ready takes time away from all of the other spring duties that are begging to be done, now that the temperature has suddenly jumped from barely above zero to high teens. The stones to rack off the lawn (courtesy of the plowing), pruning the lilac bushes, fertilizing the shrubs... it all needs time, too.
4) Ambition. The soil needs to warm up sufficiently before I plant all the tomatoes & peppers I've started, or the beans I've selected. This means that the time I'm spending on building the beds could have been devoted to building cold frames and the time delay in getting soil and manure could have been better spent with the prepared bed under plastic to warm it up.
5) Soil health. If I had done all of this last fall, the worms and soil organisms would have had all winter to enjoy the ammendments, and to start colonizing the new layers.

But it is what it is and I've learned my lesson. Should we decide to expand our garden dramatically, I'll start in September or something - or at least today I imagine I will, but no doubt I will run out of time and end up doing the same thing over again.

Recycling for Food

Last weekend I built the first raised bed of the season - a very HIGH raised bed, as it turns out. Since I'm enthusiastically embarking on growing a lot of food this summer (documented thoroughly at http://www.reclaimingdinnerproject.blogspot.com/) I'm going to have to create a lot of growing space.

I am fortunate in that we have a lot of space that is available for growing: part of the backyard near the garage (out of reach of our leaching bed), "The Back 40", our deck, and I suppose even parts of the front yard. In an effort to not bite off more than I can chew (or plant more than I can weed), I'm starting off reasonably slow: raised beds this year behind the garage and containers on the deck.

Since it doesn't make sense to me that I go out and spend tons of money on things to build my beds (apart from better soil and some hay), I've been trying to figure out ways to create sturdy beds with what I have. So, bed #1 was constructed using some old cinder blocks (leftovers, I think, from building the garage) and old 2x4's that we had lying around (not pressure treated so no doubt they'll disintegrate!).

I'm planning on building some additional ones this week, and have started to amass more wood. My sister is 'donating' old bricks for the cause. I'm also saving up liquor and wine bottles because I thought that somewhere down the road they would make a great border for a little garden (and an excuse to have people over for drinks!)

I've also started looking out for other interesting things to make containers and beds out of. I read an article in "Permaculture" about a girl that planted marigolds in an old pair of Doc Marten boots, which I thought was a tremendously fun and inventive way to reduce reuse recycle. Plus, they looked lovely on her balcony. I was thinking of making a raised bed using wine and liquor bottles, but then I realized that might really say something about me....

It would be an excellent way to live - repurposing things again and again so that the concept of 'garbage' changed entirely. But of course we would have to start to manufacture things that could actually be repurposed, as opposed to being created with built-in obsolescence. Can you imagine the 'antiques' from our generation, being sought out by collectors in the future? Plastic water bottles, cellphone shells, styrofoam packing peanuts. Nothing else that we manufacture is built to last, it's all now disposable, cheap to manufacture and thus cheap to throw out and replace with something newer and more exciting. Which leaves very little for a permanent raised bed to be built from.

Perhaps those non-decomposing plastic water bottles could be filled with sand and turned into an attractive perennial garden border....

Dog Desperation

Our family starts to become apprehensive during the spring because with spring comes thunder. Our dog (who alternates between his 'country home' with us and his 'city home' with my step-daughter) is profoundly phobic about thunder. I know that many people say that their dogs are afraid of thunder - shaking and hiding under beds. When I say that our dog is profoundly phobic, I mean that in the strongest sense - he has dug through plaster walls, chewed through glass doors, knocked over book shelves, unseated toilets. He has ripped out his own tooth and a toenail while obsessively digging and chewing during a storm. He has even gotten himself wedged between some steam pipes in the ceiling and a shelving unit.
We have tried to desensitize the dog, but have struggled because the causes of his fear expand as the season progresses. It STARTS with thunder, but quickly grows to include rain (which often precedes thunder) then by wind (which often precedes rain). Then, airplanes or motorcycles or certain trucks all sound similar to what thunder sounds like.... so you see, by September he is afraid of everything and we are exhausted. I don't even want to describe how he is on fireworks holidays or during an air show. In fact WE start to fear everything because everything could be a trigger for disaster. No matter where any of us are, the moment we hear thunder our first instinct is to panic and rush for home.

The vet has prescribed medication to give him before and during the storm - the pills semi-sedate him and turn him into a food junkie, scavenging at every spot on the carpet or corner of a room for missed crumbs. But he seems to be developing a tolerance to the pills, and they take an hour to take effect (during which time he can do a lot of damage). If noone is home when the storms start, he can be astonishingly destructive and unreachably terrorized by the time someone does get there to medicate him. It is becoming impossible to live with his phobia.

As predicatable as it may sound, I've taken to watching "The Dog Whisperer". If you haven't watched it before, it documents the efforts that Cesar Millan (the dog whisperer) makes to rehabilitate what he calls "unbalanced" dogs. The problems he tackles fall usually into the 'extreme' categories - aggression, neurosis, resource protection, fear. The viewer is often left with the impression that Cesar is the last hope for either the dog or the human (especially in terms of marriages and other relationships). Sometimes it seems the last hope for both.
His technique is pretty amazing to watch, because it doesn't seem to be about 'training' the dog to do things or not do things. He seems to be able to communicate with the dog in some unspoken way, and actually convince the dog to modify its behaviour almost instantly. Of course it's not instant, but even over the course of 15 minutes or an hour, he can completely turn a dog around, and can therefore show the owner how to modify his/her/their behaviour in order to successfully rehabilitate their dog.
I've been watching the show, desperate to see an episode that features a dog with the same extreme reaction as ours has. I finally saw one - a working dog ( a bomb sniffer for the ATF in the US, who had also done a tour in Iraq) had what seemed to me to be complete post-traumatic stress disorder. EVERYTHING scared that dog, even its owners. It took Cesar 3 months in his rehabilitation facility to help the poor dog, but the shows jumps ahead 3 months to the dog's reunion with his 'family', and the difference was amazing. Since that dog's fear was so similar to our dog's fear ( that dog didn't destroy things or himself, but was completely catatonic in fear so equally as overwhelmed) I thought that perhaps I could do something to help our dog from a behavioural perspective.
So I went out and bought his book "Be The Pack Leader". It is a GREAT book for dog owners (although I have never bought one before so I have nothing to compare it to) because it explained to me how I needed to be in order for HIM to be balanced (actually, WE since the whole family needs to be on the same page) . Without going into a full-blown book report on it, I will just say that I highly recommend any dog owner ( but also anyone interested in nature in general) to read this book. His observations and beliefs (which translate into his techniques) are very thought-provoking. Having finished it, I've now gotten "Cesar's Way" (which I think is actually the first book you are supposed to read), and I'm going to start reading that tonight.
On our walk today, though, I tried to put into practice the techniques that Cesar describes. It was raining and usually that puts our dog into the beginning stages of apprehension, but I consciously tried to project "calm-assertive" energy (Cesar's description) and also worked to have my energy reassure and calm our dog. The walk was great, considering the fact that it was raining, and tonight he has seemed less bothered by the wind that is gathering strength. In conjunction with MY behaviour modification, we've also been medicating him a bit differently - starting before the usual triggers set him off. So I think he's had a relatively peaceful day, which should, with any luck, translate into a relatively peaceful night.

Tales from the Attic

It rained today. Insistant, spring-like rain that does such good for the yard and the garden, but not such great things for the roof.
Of course we haven't re-shingled the roof yet, and after the blistering high winds of the winter it is in worse shape than ever. I took the dog for a walk the other day and found 2 of our shingles in the field across the road, if that is any indication of the winter winds we had.
Before the snow came, I went up onto the roof and caulked everywhere I thought might be a problem - around the vents, the flashing around the chimneys, anywhere the shingles looked particularly worn. Even so, we had a very obvious leak at the beginning of March - a leak we thought we fixed. Today I heard the familiar thwock thwock sound (I know thwock is not a word) above the living room ceiling. Anxious to divert it before it leaked through the ceiling, we boosted me into the attic.
I have been in the attic once before (when we lost the chimney to high winds), but I was a bit more apprehensive this time (memories of the bat in our basement came to mind and I imagined a flock of bats suspended from the rafters). I was relieved to find neither bats nor super-sized spiders. I was especially relieved to find only two leaks, around the vents of course, that could be contained by buckets.
A momentary diversion to some back story: last spring and early summer I watched a starling ( or perhaps many starlings) dart in and out of a hole in our soffits - a hole that was there when we moved in (the Mrs. Previous Owner said it was left over from a dismantled hydro meter). Not wanting them to nest in our attic again this year, a couple of weeks ago, Max stuffed the hole with some 'snow blanket' from the shop out back (a spun polyester we use for work).
Back to today. While I was up there I decided to try and find the nest - we didn't want any birds trapped in the attic if they had already started nesting. I shone my flashlight across the attic (of course it was on the exact opposite side of where my leaks were), expecting to see an abandoned nest perching on the rafters. Instead, I found the outside wall of an extraordinary feat of engineering - a veritable Starling Condo complex. Of couse I didn't have a camera up there, so you will have to imagine:
They have built a domed-shape wall out of mud, straw and insulation from our attic. It is located at the very end of the attic - where the peak of the roof is met by the vertical 'wall' between that joins the slopes (the area inside the triangle, if you will, between ceiling and slopes) . It completely encapsulates the hole that leads to the outside. As far as I could guess it is about 3 feet wide at the base, and perhaps about 2 1/2 feet high. It almost looks the back of a miniature Adobe house. On all sides it seems to be tight up against the attic floor and the "wall". It is HUGE, in comparison to the size of the birds.
Not being able to see inside the nest, I have to wonder - do the starlings live communally, or have they subdivided that half of an adobe structure into individual suites, like a honeycomb? Perhaps it is one big nest where all the eggs are brought, and a nanny is left to guard them. None of my bird books describe the nesting habits of the starling in detail, so a more in-depth search is called for.
I haven't thought about dismantling it - part of me even thinks that we should open the hole up and let them use it again. The whole of the structure is over the soffits or the front porch (ie they couldn't nest through the ceiling) and the structure seems so completely contained that I'm not sure any hazard to our health would exist. I think that I'll have to do some reading.
I was also relieved to see no evidence of bats up there - perhaps I'll build a bat house to keep those guys out.

High Speed Country Style

I work from home a lot, and so high speed internet feels as necessary to my livelihood as my brain. AFTER we signed the papers which confirmed our new ownership of our country home, I discovered that high speed in the country isn't perceived as a necessity and is therefore pretty tricky to acquire affordably. I suppose I should have spent more time reading Harrowsmith magazine, because Tom Cruickshank wrote an editorial on just that topic quite some time ago.
It was an annoying struggle just to find out that I had very little hope for high speed to begin with. I won't bother to elaborate on the fruitlessness of dealing with our utility companies in my search for hookup ( 3 confirmations it was possible using various methods involving wireless, 3 visits from technicians, 3 announcements of failure due to barns /trees / silos in the way), or the frustration in dealing with 20-year old customer service reps who assured me that being billed for high speed despite my lack of such was because in fact I SHOULD be able to receive it....
A call to a local cable / phone / internet provider had resulted in the announcement that EVENTUALLY there would be cable and internet access to my area, but the hookup fee would be about $2000 because they would be running the lines out to our end of nowhere just for the few of us living out here (who were just silly to be living out here anyway, was the implication).
I ended up with dial-up for the short term but when I realized that just downloading my emails would take about 1 1/2 hours, I bit the bullet and got satellite. It was expensive to install - paying for the dish and the receiver and the guy to set it all up, but the monthly rate has been almost on par with cable or phone high speed. The service itself has been OK - a few glitches during blizzards, but not moreso than our satellite TV. It also offers up what I've been calling "high-ish speed", but it's better than dialup. Unfortunately, I also had to sign a 3-yr contract.
So you will understand my dismay when I noticed the trucks bearing the logo of the local cable/ phone / internet company on it, working alongside the road. It turns out that they are running the lines out here, after all (and without my $2000). Slowly they have worked their way out to our house.
On Wednesday there was a knock on my door and a young man in a safety vest announced that he needed to install a conduit to my house (for my eventual hookup, I guess) and was my leachbed in the way?
The conduit was installed in a couple of hours without any digging on our property at all. They have a digger which basically tunnels underground, parallel to the surface, and it seems it pulls the conduit that will eventually hold the wiring with it. The machine itself is remarkably small and quiet. Apparently this is how they have been installing the conduit down our country road ( I had wondered not only how there was so little digging, but how they could be installing it during the height of winter), just burrowing under the ground from driveway to driveway.
I haven't yet received any fliers telling me about the wonderful new service soon to be available in my area, so I'm not sure when I'll have to call the satellite company to break my contract. But it seems to be my luck that we chose to buy in an area which is close enough to 'bedroom community development' that the rural folk have even been noticed. Of course, it could also mean that the developers are eying our end nowhere as possible subdivisions in the future, so that offers up a whole host of other problems. In the interim I'm sure that there will be plenty of families with home businesses and kids (who up to now have relied on antennaes, dialup or satellite for their pop culture) who will sign up so with any luck I won't have to remortgage the house to pay for the service.

Spring brings familiar faces

When we first bought this place, we dealt mostly with the Mrs. She had some tips and suggestions about things in general (although not nearly enough as it turns out) but stumbled on the killdeer.
After we moved in, I noticed that a pair of robins were building a nest on the ledge outside the master bedroom window. When I mentioned this to the Mrs. on a day she had dropped by to pick up some mail, she lit up and said that the robins build a next there EVERY YEAR. She mentioned that there were these birds... and here was the stumble - she didn't know the word in English for what she was trying to describe. These birds that ran up and down the road every year. In my mind, she was talking about the ROAD, the country road that runs in front of our house. I couldn't imagine what she was thinking, so I offered up 'pigeon' and she agreed that was it. Every year the pigeons run up and down the road.
Not so. Every year a pair of KILLDEER (or what I think to be killdeer because according to the 2 books about bird identification that I've been given, there are many types of pipers and other similar birds that might be expected in our region and they all look similar) run up and down our DRIVEWAY. Last year I hated to mow the lawn, for fear that I might run over their nest. By the end of the summer, the adults (with their scrawny 4 offspring) seemed to be hunkered down mostly in the ditch. But this year, there are three adults, and they are keeping pretty close to the parking area. It's still too early to be mowing the lawn (and so to educate them about danger), so I'm a bit worried that they might nest somewhere we don't notice, somewhere in the way of the riding tractor.
Right now they seem to be mostly hanging out near the 'lake' that encompasses 1/5 of one side of our front lawn (a result of the winter thaw and the gravelling that we did in November which has dammed up the water from running over the driveway). They seem to also like the deep grooves the bobcat (and later the snow plow) have made in that part of the yard. It seems like good eating and drinking in that area for a killdeer. But they blend in so well to our winter-killed brown grass that it is hard to see if they've nested or not.
I suppose that it is a matter of watching out for them (or the absence of one, which might indicate a hidden nest) and perhaps leaving off the mowing in that area (which would suit me fine) until the red clover takes over. I'm planning on over-seeding the clover in a week or two, which might eliminate the need for mowing all together - the clover made a huge indent into the grassy lawn last year.
I'm pretty enthralled by the visits from last years' friends, or from the decendents of those parents of last year. I wake up every morning and pull the curtains back, hoping to see the beginnings of a robins' nest on the ledge. How do they know to return and carry on, year after year? But it's a complete bonus to have these signifiers of the approach of spring - the killdeers running, the robins nesting, the other wildlife emerging after a long deep winter. It may likely snow again before May, but at least we know here that spring is settling in.

My New Pantry

Technically we do have a cold cellar. However, with the spring thaw, we've also realized that it is a leaky, damp cold cellar. All of our carefully hoarded jams and jellies and sauces and flours (mine, for my gluten-free baking) were either sprouting moldy lids or worse, were completely soaked. The cold cellar clearly needs of a bit of a reno job. But what to do with our dry goods in the meantime?

We had a closet in the upstairs hallway area that I primarily used as The Dumping Ground... a place to throw the hat or coat or pair of boots one was too lazy to put away properly. It was pretty much a luxury - we do have proper coat closet. So, it has become our pantry.

Converting it was surprisingly easy. I tore out the existing coat hooks, filled the holes and painted. I left the "hat" shelf, which became the top shelf of the new storage area. Max cut some excellent shelves (3/4" plywood was all that we had on hand, which is perfect, considering the weight it has to support) and some 'brackets'. After the paint had dried I just went in, screwed in the braces, lay in the shelves, and started to load it up.

What a huge difference. It's remarkably convenient for cooking - being able to just turn the corner from the kitchen and find a jar of pickles, or some beans. It has also improved our shopping - where in the cold cellar it was "out of sight, out of mind" (ie lets just buy more in case we don't have it at home), now it's easy to take a peek in and figure out what we really need to replace.

I know that people who have lovely kitchens with pantry cupboards already as part of their layout might raise some eyebrows and ask why the big surprise. But I've never had such a kitchen and The Homestead's kitchen doesn't even come close to having sufficient cupboard and storage space. Hence the cold cellar and the mud room. So it's been a luxury to have access to our dried goods.

We are a couple that cooks at home mostly, and Max in particular is an adventuresome cook. We typically have a lot in stock. And now, we only have 4 or 5 extras of everything, and they are dry, accessible, and they look surprisingly reassuring all lined up and ready to go.

Not Quite Noah's Flood Part 1

I've become a bit afraid of wind and water. Strange, since I love to sail. But when it comes to our small homestead, these two forces of nature now seem a bit intimidating.

Over the Christmas holidays, wind tore shingles off our house and sheared off the top part of our furnace chimney stack. Now that spring is approaching and the weather is periodically surging above zero, water has become the new struggle.

I heard on the CBC the other day that the "Greater Toronto Area" has experienced 17 freeze-thaw cycles. I don't know how many such cycles our area has experienced, but since our weather is tempered by both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, I have to think we've had at least that many. I know that the ground is thawing because I can see the evidence over our septic holding tank - it is much soggier there than I have ever noticed. And the sump pumps have been going non-stop. And, most troubling of all, is the water in the basement.

I thought we had a leak in the water softener, because the water in the utility area seemed to be leaking from the softener. "The Culligan Man" came to check it out and couldn't find a problem. But the weather dipped down into the minus tens and no more water appeared, and so it seemed that the problem was another mystery of our strange little house. What that really means is that our basement leaks.
The layout of our basement would be considered strange to a visitor - the 'finished' part (ie the family room) is in the half of the basement that has no windows. The 'unfinished' part (which means that it has lovely concrete walls and floors and even some studs in place but no drywall) is bright and sunny thanks to the 7 windows that face north, east and south. But when the house was built, someone made the unorthodox decision of scattering the utilities around that area so that the furnace, oil tank, water pump, water softener, water heater and sump pump are all in different places and all near windows. This of course makes finishing that part of the basement more challenging. At least this was my first thought.
Now, having witnessed the pockets of water mysteriously appearing in strange places in the basment (which means not necessarily connected to an outer facing wall) I think that once this part of the basement was finished and the previous owners had discovered that the basement leaked. So they ripped out the flooring and drywall (leaving the studs!) and left that half looking as if it had never been finished. Then they sold the place to us.
I've pretty much figured out where the small drips find their way in to the basement, where the water then pools in some other, low-lying area. My brother-in-law, who does home renos, says that there is a new water-proofing system which can be done from the inside - it doesn't prevent the water from getting through the foundation but it does prevent it from getting into the drywall or flooring. It costs a fraction of what an exterior trenching/waterproofing does, and can be retrofitted or exanded, should the need occur.
The 'Culligan Man' assures me that most houses in this area have leaky basements, although that doesn't give me a lot of comfort. I do, however, know that my grandparents' house floods in the basement every spring and 70 years later my grandmother still walks on the boards that bridge the wet spots - her house is not falling down yet. Our leak problem is then just another add-on to the "HOUSE TO DO" list.

I can't believe that so much time has passed since I last posted. Life just got away from me.
I went to vist my grandmother for a week somewhere along the line. She's 96 and still living in the house she's lived in for at least 70 years. She puts in a kitchen garden every year, and grows enough potatoes and carrots that she is still eating them in February. In talking to her about my plan to try and grow my own food, I asked her when she plants her seeds (she lives in a different zone than I do) and her response was "when the soil is ready". I asked her how she knows when it's ready (hoping for some kind of useful clue that would help me understand my soil) and she looked at me like I was a bit slow and said that she just knew. And I realized that she has spent her whole life depending on that garden and the food she grew there. She fed her children with what she and my grandfather cultivated out behind their house. They hadn't had a lot of money, but even more than that, she was a farmer's daughter - it was the way you ran a household. Raising fruits and vegetables, canning and freezing, putting by for the winter is just what has always been done.
Which of course made me think about what our relationship with food is nowadays. How most people don't know what a freshly-grown tomato tastes like, much less how to go about growing one. How did we get so far away from nourishing ourselves?
So of course lately things keep coming back to how excited I am about trying to turn our little homestead into a lush, thriving personal supermarket.
In the meantime, the snow is melting (and so the basement is flooding...), I planted some red pepper, onions and leeks (and I gave in and bought a heating mat because I'm afraid the house is too cold for the seeds to germinate) and it is definitely the mud season. Once again I appreciate our sump pumps.
Spring is definitely on the horizon.

A Days Work Gardening

In my mind, anyway, I spent the day gardening. The snow is virtually gone, and through the dining room window I can almost believe that spring is around the corner. So, I've been planning the 1st garden I've ever started from scratch.
Wanting to have a real vegetable garden certainly isn't a new ambition, but with all the reading that I've been doing this winter, I'm more convinced of the necessity of it. It pretty much horrifies me to think that even though I eat predominantly 'whole' foods, the food that I am eating isn't nearly as nutritious as I had thought it was. And it's not just about the food being grown in far-off places (that may not have the same restrictions that we have on pesticides...), or about how that food travelled, or how long since it was harvested. On top of all of that, the food that we eat has been consciously selected / modified / 'enhanced' to make it a better seller. What matters is how it travels, how it looks, how long it lasts on the shelf, how resistant it is to damage / disease / rot. What matters is that it is grown / raised anywhere and shipped to us here, just the way we want it. What we eat now are mostly products, commodities.
But a commodity in a truer sense than just a stock market item. The industry that provides the bulk of our food isn't really concerned with nourishing us. It's really about the sales. It's about creating a product, not about creating food.
We as consumers are part of the problem - we've been trained to expect tomatoes that are a certain shade of red, a certain size, a certain blemish-free alikeness to its neighbour. The lemons we buy are all the same size, the oranges, the apples (all 4 brands you can find in the supermarket). Our rice is white and quick-cooking, our oats are pale and quick-cooking, our potatoes are white and have no Vitamin A in them any more.
Is it that we don't know the difference? Certainly people older than me must remember what a real tomato (beautiful in its uniqueness of shape and colour and size, when compared to its neighbour on the vine) or a fresh grown garden carrot takes like. For people in my generation, I suppose it depends on whether your parents or grandparents had a garden. But, in the city, I didn't know too many people who grew their own food (except for the old Italian guy down the street who grew everything under the sun in his small plot). More importantly, I didn't know too many people who WISHED they could grow a garden, or even thought much about it. And the young people now... do they have a connection to their food outside of their relationship to a store?
So now, here we are in our fairly-wealthy, industrialized country, completely industrialized. Could we feed ourselves if we had to? And I don't mean just our country feeding our citizens, but each of us individually. Could we as individuals feed our own families without the help of the supermarkets / industrial producers / Kraft Kitchens??
So, I want to grow a garden. Firstly I want to grow food that is nourishing. Secondly, I want to be able to store that food so that in the dead of winter I am still eating nourishing food and NOT relying on veggies from Chile and California that have 1/2 the Vitamin C that they used to have. Thirdly, I want to see if I can eventually feed myself - despite my work schedule and my eating restrictions, I want to see if I can be fairly self-reliant. Mostly, though, I think I want to feel that I'm standing up for myself and my family.
And so the books and the magazines are spread all over the dining room table and I have my notepad and my stickies. I'm trying to learn how to garden. Thankfully I have a mother who will no doubt jump in to help me whenever I call, but I'm still anxious to do it as right as its possible to do on your first time around. I've got a plan for rotating the crops, I've got a plan for our crappy clay soil (raised beds!) and I've got "Carrots Love Roses" to help me plan our companion planting. It's pretty exciting. It's going to be so much work and such a mess on most days, but I'm sure that at least a few tomatoes will ripen and be eaten (ugly and blemished but totally yummy) and maybe even a carrot or two...

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Sump Pumps: The Unspoken Heroes

We waited for the January thaw that didn't come. Instead, we got more snow dumped on us every day. And now we're getting a ... February thaw, which is turning all that snow into little lakes scattered around the property.

The 2 sump pumps in the basement have been working non-stop all week. I used to be afraid of the sump pumps - the surprise of them turning on without warning at any time of the day or night, the sound of the water swishing its way across the basement as it headed for the drainspout... But today I realize that now I love my sump pumps.

Once it seemed a bit scary to see the concrete holes in the floor (slightly slimy and pretty rustic), but now the simple elegance fills me with confidence - our basement remains fortified! As soon as the water fills up the hole where the sump pump sits, the float triggers the pump and over the next couple of minutes the pump removes all possibility of flooding danger. And the best part about the sump pump is that it does its job without me having to remind it - without me having to turn it on or off (unlike the heating element around the laundry outspout!)

I'm not sure how much energy my little warriors draw, but it's pretty great to walk into a dry basement (grateful to only have to be worrying about the bat which we haven't found yet).

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HAYDEN... the smartest, most loving 4 yr. old that an aunt could wish for.

Farm Fresh Eggs

After reading "The End of Food", right after finishing "The Omnivore's Dilemma", I was determined to find a supplier of local, fresh, "happy" eggs. I wanted eggs laid by cheerful, free-ranging, grub-eating, grass-scratching chickens. If you haven't read either of these books, let me just say that I no longer consider "organic" to be a reassuring term when it comes to eggs purchased at a major supermarket chain.
So I checked out the "Eat Local" blog put out by my municipality and came across Fenwood Farms. They have fresh farm eggs. They sell meat that they've raised, or that their neighbours have raised. Much of it is organic. They grow their own feed, a family member runs the abbatoir where the meat is butchured, and they sell their 'produce' in a family-run store out back of their house. They are what city folks would consider very "LOCAL".
Only having just found them, and it being winter, I haven't seen their happy cows grazing in their fields, nor have I seen free-ranging pigs rummaging through last years corn stalks. But I did get a lesson in "free range chicken" politics.
It seems that here in Ontario, chickens can no longer be let outside, free to wander in the field or garden or where ever they like to roam as they seek out bugs and grubs and grain. Due to the threat of Avian Flu, chickens cannot be 'free ranging' anymore. Apparently, if they are to venture outside of their barn, they must be enclosed by double walls of wire, with a roof enclosing those walls so that in fact they are contained in some kind of see-through barn. I suspect that few farmers would have the cash available to build such a specialized 'cage' for their layers... and how many eggs would one have to sell to pay for such a structure??
I will admit that I haven't done any research to date in an effort to confirm or deny the new law. But since that information came from a chicken farmer who sells "farm fresh eggs", I'm pretty sure it must be fairly accurate.
It seems that I'm not going to get eggs that come from free-ranging chickens. But the chicken-raising farmer was so proud, so excited about her flock (and also about her flock of turkeys!) that I could not help but believe that, during the winter anyway, her chickens are living a happy existance in the comfort of their warm barn without fear of predator, storm or starvation.
And when I got home and we tried the eggs I could honestly say that they were the best eggs I ever remember eating. Happy eggs.

Our Mailbox Full of Seeds!

I finished reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and started right away on "The End of Food", and have decided that we need to grow our own food. OK, maybe not our own grains or meat or dairy (yet), but certainly our own fruit and veggies. So in the past month I've come up with a plan.
I figure that we won't be able to have a full kitchen garden this summer - there is just too much to do to turn our heavy clay soil into nice fertile loam for the plants. So, this year I plan to plant a couple of raised beds with some tomatoes, beans, peas, radish, lettuce and carrots back behind the garage. Last year I put in an herb garden (fingers crossed it survived the winter) so this year I'll just replace the annuals like basil and dill.
Out in "the back paddock", I'm hoping to put in some red raspberries, black raspberries, and blueberries. I'm also thinking it would be great to put in some asparagus... so that in a few years we'll have yummy berries and asparagus. We had raspberries in the back yard of our house in the city, and I really miss going out into the garden early in the morning during July and getting ripe berries.
Then, I'm planning to put down some kind of mulch to kill off a section of the weeds in "the back paddock" so that come the fall I can till it under, and plant more things next year!
So, I went on line to the Terra Edibles site, ordered my seeds, and they arrived on Friday!! I'm very excited. Tomorrow I'm going to lay out the packages and make a plan of what to plant, when to start, etc. I'm going to use this blog to track my process. I'm sure that it will be quite the learning experience, but it's going to be so great.

A Bat in the Basement

It's the dead of winter, and a cold, snowy winter it has been thus far. The finished part of our basement is unheated - which is a bit strange considering that the unfinished part is - and so it's been hovering at a frosty 10 - 11 degrees.
And yet the other night we had a bat swooping around our rec room.
I thought that bats hibernated during the winter! And I know that they will often hibernate in the attic, but there is no access from our attic to our basement (that I know of). So how did it get downstairs in the first place and why is it awake in the second?
Max thought it was because the dogs were downstairs with us, and barking as they played ( so maybe they woke it up??). And it had been quite mild (it almost got up to 0 outside), so maybe the bat got confused and woke up thinking it was spring?
I managed to get it back into the unfinished part of the basement and shut the door, but now I don't know what to do with the poor bat. I think that if we catch it and put it outside, it will freeze. I'm not crazy about leaving it in there, because I'm pretty sure that bat droppings aren't good for us (and I don't want to find them in the boxes I've got stored down there!).
Now the problem is that I can't find it! There are windows in that part of the basement, and so it's really bright during the day. I've gone looking (in a timid sort of fashion) but can't seem to find it hanging anywhere. So maybe my dilemma is moot point, but that's no solution.....

First Winter

We've survived so far, us transplanted city folk.
The pickup truck with the plow attachment was out of the mechanic's shop, pretty much road worthy, in time for the first major snowfall - thankfully. We got snowed in (like most of Ontario) and spent four days plowing and shovelling out ( I like to refer to MY job as hand-plowing). I had bought a 'sleigh shovel' in anticipation of that storm, and it has become my best winter tool... easy on the back, efficient at moving lots of snow in a short amount of time, and great at creating high wind-breaking banks alongside the drive. This is our winter to figure out 'logical snow piling'... where best to plow in the banks so that we can keep adding and adding and adding without running out of space. Where to start so that the most gets cleared with the least amount of 'hand-plowing'. After every snowfall, we congratulate ourselves on gravelling out the yard so that the parking area is expanded - it's all taken up by snow, now. It will be interesting to see how the grass made out, come the spring - it takes practice to keep the plow blade low enough to scrape the snow but high enough to spare the grass.
We lost a shocking number of shingles during the fierce winds after Boxing Day, along with a section of our chimney stack. Thankfully the shingles were the 3rd layer, so the roof seems sound (a hasty climb into the attic only showed 1 small leak, which can be put off until the snow starts to clear) and Max was able to do a repair on the stack (again, to last until spring when we re-do the roof). I had to hide in the basement, though - the sound of the wind tearing around and over the house and garages was terrifying. I guess the longer I live here, the more I'll trust the house not to fall down or the roof to rip off.
We've started feeding the birds, and now have dozens of them daily - everything from a pair of cardinals to the typical flock of starlings, with lots of finches, sparrows and blue jays in between. It's hard to distinguish them in their winter feathers, but I'm trying to learn the different species. It's also interesting to see how they interact as they feed - the Northern Mockingbird ( I think that's what it is) seems to take on the 5 blue jays, and the starlings are every bit the gluttons that the bird books say they are. I've taken to scattering the food out in a few places, and hanging suet balls on a few trees, just to give the smaller birds a chance. 2 days ago we had a flock of snow buntings show up and they looked amazing from below as they flew off together. It's a pretty terrific change from the city, where the number of species seems so limited (and limited enough to have prevented me from ever before taking interest in learning how to distinguish them!)
So far, we seem to have done little to embarrass ourselves as 'the city folk'... we even got the chance to offer our neighbour a tow when he got stuck at the end of his (mile-long) drive. I think that the '86 Chevy pickup truck (with the remarkable plow blade proudly riding out front) has done a lot to improve our reputation.