Too much wind

Well, time passes, and work gets done (slowly but surely!) More importantly, people who were thought to be enemies are no longer!

Turns out that my neighbor is a facebook user, and I just happened to look him up. I spoke with him some, and I don't think we'll have any trouble from him again.

The llamas escaped from our property about a week ago, and were congregated into my neighbors yard. We were very fortunate that they didn't get to the road, they easily could have! I think they were after the trees in his yard. He called me at 7 am, and I ran out the door to the truck. Before I'd even started it, I saw that the bylaw officer was at my gate!!!

We herded the llamas out into our pasture, and spent most of the day getting the fence fixed up, in scorching 32 degree heat. I've never worked as hard in the first 27 years of my life, as I have this last year alone....and I love it!

I got a bit more money from my business taxes for last year, so I'm pushing ahead on the workshop project. I'm not sure if I mentioned our plans yet, we're going to sell the mobile home we're in now, and move into the workshop, which will be converted into a cottage. We'll stay in the cottage for about one and a half years, until we finish building our house. We will be building a home for our friends first, which will probably take all next spring, summer and fall. We'll break ground on our house, and start the foundation, but we won't have time to build it until the following year.

We have to sell the mobile, and recoup our money. Only then can we start saving and stop paying so much in debt! I had the seeds of a plan to sell the mobile as an "off-grid" home, and include the batteries and renewable energy devices as part of it. I would move it onto whichever parcel the buyer wanted, and probably build a permanent foundation for it, which would give the buyer a better setup, and let them mortgage it as a permanent home. We would purchase and install a rack of solar panels, and the buyer would set up his own water supply system (I could probably build a small water collection tank for not much money by using dry stacked concrete blocks)

I want to set up color brochures, and a website to advertise the house. I plan on doing all of this over the wintertime, and we're gonna try to get about $120k for the whole package. This will not only pay out the rest of the mortgage, but will also give us a bit of extra cash to re-purchase the renewable energy items that we will be selling.

Speaking of renewable energy....my turbine collapsed!!!
We had a heck of a wind storm a few days ago, and the pole that supports the tower just could not hold up. It bent in half like a pretzel. It was the thickest steel pole that I could find, and it wasn't enough. Obviously, we need a stronger setup for a wind turbine out here, the wind can be extremely punishing!!!

The turbine is actually not damaged badly, just two of the blades broke off. The blades can be replaced for a few bucks, and the pole is about $80. Probably $150, and an extra $50 for more guy wires....a necessity. I'm going to fill the steel pipe with concrete too, as an added measure of strengthening. I hope it's enough... That turbine produces about $60 worth of electricity a month, so I want to keep it!!

I'm working tomorrow, so I'd best go to bed now.
Quite likely within the next couple of days I will start framing the wall of the workshop. I've got almost all the bags laid out for the foundation, I just need to cover them with concrete! It shouldn't take me long, a few days to hammer at it should be sufficient. It takes a while to mix the concrete, even with the mixer (that I now own for almost $700). I've placed one side already, as you can see in the pictures below. The water tank is also pretty much finished, just needs a coat of water proofing.



Water tank about a week ago, floor is poured, final wall under construction.

Concrete block retaining wall, which will be actually inside the building shell. It simply holds the dirt back in my little "basement"

One perimeter beam poured, the wooden forms are the 2 x 6 boards that I have now used to frame the floor above the water tank. Nothing is wasted! I have a lot of backfilling to do on the trench and block wall, which unfortunately I have to complete by hand....boooooo! It is good exercise though.

Git er dun Cletus!

Six more days of summer...but daytime temps are still hitting around 29-30 degrees Celcius (85 F), but the daylight is getting shorter and shorter : ( Nice indian summer though!

I received another lovely visit from the Development officer today, and he was a little more terse this time. He told us "Don't bring any more trailers or anything out here" until we've had some approval from the Almighty County Council. I didn't know, but they require a development permit even for temporary dwellings...boooo! I guess we'll get the permit, but I don't want to hear that we need to wait several weeks to allow them to use their new home. We just spent the day moving all their stuff out here yesterday, there's nowhere for them to go!! I wrote a letter today, and I'm going to bring it there tommorow. If I can, I will be attending the Council meeting on Wednesday this week. I want to be there when they read my letter, and possibly explain further.
We just have to leave this in God's hands. There will be a way!

Despite the lack of money for materials, I've been chugging away at my workshop. I managed to find cinderblocks for $1 each, and I got 60. It's enough to finish the half-basement wall, but I ran out of cement! The basement wall isn't really supporting much, so I'm just filling the holes with cement, and then I'll plaster the outside of the blocks to keep them together.

I've amended my expectations to assume that it will take me until the end of October, which is fine. As long as the weather stays fairly dry, and it's not excessively cold (think -20 degrees) I can git er done.

Nosy people

Well, summer is really almost over now. Ironically, the weather has been very nice, and should be nice for a while yet, probably till the end of September. I've been doing as much work as I can afford, when I have a spare moment to do it. Our friends have started moving stuff out here in preparation for the Big Move. There's now a big 5th wheel trailer sitting here, and there will soon be another smaller trailer for some more of their kids to sleep in temporarily. They're insulating both trailers heavily to prepare for the winter chill, and save propane/electricity.

We now have llamas! We located some free llamas and brought them out here just a few days ago. They've been roaming around the land here, almost in a regular patrol pattern. We had to stretch a gate across the entrance just to make sure they wouldn't get out, and they've been drinking from a huge wetland area that covers almost a quarter of our field, which brings me to another topic.

Our neighbors are being NOSY! Twice in two days, I've had a visit from a gov't official regarding a "concern" about what we're doing. The first was the development officer, who came to investigate why there is a trailer here, and a building being built. Someone apparently thought it was a house! He mentioned that we might need a development permit for the trailer, since it's going to be occupied full time, but he didn't seem too concerned about it. We don't need a permit for a workshop, and it's not really any of our neighbors business anyways!

Then, today I noticed the Bylaw officer had stopped his vehicle just outside of our entrance, and was just sitting there. Now I already know the officer, and I know how to deal with gov't and police (since I am one), so I went to chat.
Apparently someone had a concern about our llamas not having any water..........not joking at all.
WTF!!!!
I laughed and told him about the two troughs of water that we put out, and the huge wetland, and he just said he'd close the file. They have to investigate, so it's not his fault at all, in fact he confided in me that people in the county tend to be nosy like that since they're all quite elderly.
I'm not sure what to do about these neighbors, whoever they are, but we're here to stay, and I'm not too pleased with the harrassment.

On a more pleasant note, I was pouring through my taxes and all of the farm expenses we've incurred, and I think I can get about $5000 back in taxes from last year, and maybe another $2000 from this year. There are quite a few things I can write off, and I've got to collate all the receipts and numbers to file the right paperwork. It's a real pain in the hiney, but it'll be worth the money when I get it back!

I should go now, and resume my work outside while there's still sunlight to do it!

The brick wall of economic reality.

August is now over, and the summer is winding down quickly. In two weeks, I expect our first fall frost to kill my tomato and cucumbers, but the broccoli should continue to grow for a week or two after the first frost. My single pea plant has been producing peas vigorously for a couple of weeks now, and man, are they delicious!!! Next year I'm planting waaaay more peas. I plan to bag them and sell them to friends. People love peas, at least most do.

Now for the hard facts...we didn't get any financing for this project at all. Well, we got $1000, which isn't nearly enough to finish it on the scale that I wanted! We're at our limit for debt, and with the credit crunch hovering overhead, banks won't lend without equity or collateral. I could perhaps refinance the land at some point in the future, but the cost of the appraisal and other fees is a lot, and I don't want to pay a lot of money just to find out we can't refinance!

So, we scaled it down. A lot. It's going to be really basic, just a shell until next year, and only half the size we wanted, although I admit the size I wanted was pretty big (800 sq feet). It will still cover the cistern, and I can still put some living space, and even park my car inside, but the strawbale aspect will have to wait, and even if I can put some bales around it, there will only be one door and one window. I'm going to have to get those for free too, which shouldn't be too hard.

I have almost finished plastering the water tank, which I ended up doing entirely by hand, mixing the plaster in a wheelbarrow.
I'm waiting an hour for the plaster on the upper level to dry, then I'm going to place some forms on the backside, brace them, and pour concrete down into the space. I'm not going to hand plaster all of that, especially since it has to be thick.

I did attempt to find an easier way to mix plaster, I bought a powerful corded drill and a mixing paddle, and then I bought a compressor to run the sprayer, but it's still faster to place the plaster by hand, ironically. Unless I had a big mixer, and a large capacity compressor, I can do it faster by hand. When we start plastering the bales, I WILL have a mixer for that. I am not mixing all that stucco by hand.

Well, time to go back and finish the job!