I must protest, Mr Weatherman

November 27, 2010. Not even December. Alberta has already seen more than a foot of snow, and temperatures dropping to -39 C a couple of nights. I have twice dragged my car down the driveway with my truck because the snow was too deep to navigate with my car. Booooooo....

The really cold weather is behind us (for now), but we still have tons of snow! That's not very common for this time of year, and it brings challenges. Any tools left out will be either gone till spring, or until the next Chinook, the snow forms large, solid drifts that block foot traffic, and of course, driving becomes nightmarish. Then, water pipes freeze. Thanks to some missing insulation under the house (-39 didn't help either) several of our water pipes froze. They have thawed since, but it's very apparent to me that living in a mobile home is going to be a constant battle to keep those lines unfrozen. The only successful thing I have been able to do is to blast a kerosene heater under the house, especially in the direction of the sewer pipe, which again froze solid on me. The heater did it's job tho, and our pipes are clear, and my wife loves me again (haha....ha).

Seriously though, once we are clear of the winter months, we are going to take a drastic step. We are selling our house, and moving away. Temporarily.
Sitting on my "List of things I wanna do someday" is building a strawbale house. The problem with doing that is, how do you build a house, when you already have one? The only real way to do it is to sell the first one, THEN build another! Therefore, we are listing the house in the new year, and we are going to try selling it with all of the renewable energy stuff inside. I will even offer to move it (the first 100 km) to sweeten the deal, if we don't get a lot of interest at first. I'm going to ask for a bit more money to cover the replacement of the RE stuff, probably 15k more.
It shouldn't take more than 1 year to build a house, at least far enough along to live in it. We only need to obtain financing from the bank, which is no easy task to be sure. I will give it my best shot. We probably need about $60 k, which isn't much, but I never take it for granted that getting any kind of loan will be "easy". It almost never is, except for the first time.

In other interesting news, my darling wife, who up till now has never really taken much interest in business, has had a lightening bolt of a business idea, which I think has a real shot at producing something. I won't go into extreme detail, but it involves crafting personal health products, like lotion, soaps, perfume, and selling them. This idea has kind of revitalized her, given her something to reach for. Of course, I support the idea, and I'll put whatever money is needed on the table, even if my own business plans suffer a bit.

Because of the house-building quest, most gardening will take a back-seat this year. I may attempt some peas, carrots, and other easy veggies, but my main focus this year will be purchasing some cattle, and getting them growing out on the grass. In time, I plan to market the beef for bulk purchase. It looks to me like there will be quite a bit of interest, many of my friends and coworkers have said that they would purchase bulk meat. Raising cattle is more of a "hands off" type of activity, they don't need much except wind shelter, fresh grass, and water. That will free up my time for construction.

My phone's camera is still shot, or I would have pics of the snow. It's quite deep, but thankfully it hasn't drifted too much yet.