Hard work, just like Grampa used to do.

At last, we've had some decent weather! I've never seen so much rain in August, it was really unexpected. I only wonder what fall and winter will be like this year, if spring and summer were this messed up.

My friends were come and gone, and, unfortunately, I didn't get the entire project finished like I'd hoped to. We had one and a half days rained out, and we really could have used a cement mixer! We were mixing cement plaster for the walls by hand, in a wheelbarrow, which is tiring work. With a mixer, we could have one person mixing a batch while the other two throw plaster on the wall with trowels or shovels.

This was my last day off of this week, and I spent almost the entire day doing plaster! I mixed it in a wheelbarrow, only this time it was just me doing it. I still managed to get a lot of plaster on the wall, probably about 300 lbs of it in total. I have to use a lot more plaster, because the wall is so thick at the bottom. It has to support the weight of the earth behind it, and some of the building weight, so I'm not holding back on plaster.


When my friends left, we had about a foot of plaster at the bottom. I added everything else, almost to the top, just today by myself. Needless to say, I am very tired! If you look closely at the bottom of the picture, you can see that the excavation has about 6 inches of water pooled in it. We have a piece of plywood under the water, which makes work much easier, but it's going to be difficult to get the plywood out later, especially with all the water over it! I used the water on the bottom to mix the cement with, saving me from using the hose.

This is how much we completed before the rainy day spoiled our fun. I've almost run out of sand, which is quite amazing, since I had an entire truck box full!

Going even further back in time, before any plaster was placed.


When we get a mixer, I expect to be able to plaster around 4 times faster, even by myself. The local hardware store sells an electric mixer for about $350, so I will purchase one tommorow or within the next week. Renting one is $32 per day, and I need this thing a LOT, so buying it just makes more sense! I might even advertise myself out to do small cement jobs in town, if the demand is there. Cement is really quite easy, when you have a mixer!

Once we get a little financing from the bank, we can really take off with this project. I haven't been able to get going without any money, unfortunately. I still need a lot of gravel, and about 3 yards of concrete to complete the foundation, as well as a Bobcat and another day with the excavator. I'm looking forward to starting the framing, which I can do anytime now. The framed pieces will simply sit around and wait for the foundation!

On the garden side, my broccoli just LOVES this weather, and recovered quite well from the hail, but the cucumbers did not do very well at all. Some of them will produce a few cukes, but nothing like they could have! I do have about a dozen little tiny tomatoes, which ought to mature by the end of August.

Testing some crazy ideas

Well, just a short while left in our Alberta summertime, but progress has been made! After many rotten delays, mainly due to very unseasonable rainfall, we had pushed ahead with construction of a unique building, that will hopefully demonstrate the wonderful buildings that can be made with local, inexpensive materials, and not only meet, but exceed the current building standards in every measurable category!

After racking my brain, and making a dozen or so designs on paper, we started construction of our strawbale workshop. Because of the quickly approaching wintertime, and our financial constraints, I elected to use some unconventional techniques to build the foundation and overall structure of our workshop. As it stands now, we have more time and labour than we have money, so we're opting for labour intensive, yet, inexpensive techniques, which I will describe in this blog.

First, a funny story: We rented a small excavator to dig out our foundation, but we could only afford one day's rental, so I needed to really make it worth-while. I had a few projects that I would have like to get to, but the foundation was primary! Unfortunately, there was a horrible turn of events that led to the excavator being trapped in a deep trench (not completely my fault). Only through the wonderful grace of God, and my way cool neighbors with big tractors did we manage to free it! Unfortunately, time was lost doing that, and I spent the next day from 7 am trying to catch up. I managed to get the foundation done, but it was pouring buckets of rain, and I had to stop now and then to scrape off accumulated clay from the bucket. Washing off the excavator took me $40 and almost two hours at the car wash! Then, I broke something on the trailer, which cost me $100 extra too. Even so, I consider that it went well, considering everything that was stacked against me!

My good friends came out to help me slave away, and put in nearly two days of solid work to build an earthbag wall (pictured below), which will serve as the bottom of a rainwater cistern, and will also double as a portion of the foundation.
The Hole. Doesn't look like much, about 5 1/2 feet deep, 11 feet wide at the top. I dug this in about an hour and a half with the backhoe.
Earthbag construction: Literally, filling bags with excavated dirt, placing them on a stack, and ramming them down. Includes barbed wire in between layers to keep them stable. The dirt was simply hacked from a spot on the wall that will become the staircase to the half-basement. One side (seen in picture) is the cistern, the other (off camera) will be a root cellar, and will house the pump and pressure tank.

Twelve layers high forms a good foundation. The wall is curved to give it strength, and will be reinforced with rebar, and wire mesh. The plywood on the ground helps us work in the mud. It rained twice, and is raining right now. In the middle of August...sigh.
I left to purchase cement and sand, and return to find that, not only have my friends placed the rebar, they bent it to fit the shape. With just their hands. I was very impressed!

We left off by placing many tall rods in place, and putting wire mesh against it. This will provide the strength needed in the cement to withstand not only being filled with water, but also the pressure of the dirt and some of the building weight as well. I believe it will be fine, but I'm not taking chances. I'm simply over building as much as possible to avoid any failures! The corner of the cistern that will be under the most strain is curved, which gives it tremendous strength over a flat design. The bags, rebar, wire and cement plaster should hold up better than conventional techniques, yet uses less cement, which is very expensive!

Tommorow, I rent a big 'ol compressor, which will power my plaster sprayer. I bought a truckload of sand for peanuts, and my cement bags are rain-protected. My friends will be back to assist tommorow, and we have two days to get the job done!

I'd like to point out lastly, that we are doing something that has NEVER been done before (as far as I know)! I have never heard of someone using earthbags to build a water cistern, especially not below the ground! When we're finished, hopefully someone will be able to see this, and either use it, or possibly even improve on it.

Just to give you an idea, so far I've spent less than $1500 on the entire project. The entire building will cost around $8000 (or less), and will be more than 800 square feet inside! This is a building that could easily be turned into a small home, or scaled up and made into a bigger home! In fact, if anything were to happen to our main house, I would move my family into this building until more permanent arrangements could be made.

Stay tuned for more pics in a few days!

PS - We're having another baby too! We just found out! We're ECSTATIC!

Hail!!!!

I was educated yesterday, regarding severe weather in Southern Alberta. A couple of days ago a person was killed at the Big Valley Jamboree when a massive wind gust blew down the concert stage. The wind that caused the damage was called a "plough" wind, and preceeds a thunderstorm. It's basically a powerful downdraft wind that spreads out in all directions like water pouring from the faucet when it strikes the sink. It can reach speeds of 100kph, which is almost hurricane velocity, and 1/3 tornado velocity. The same downdraft blew through downtown Calgary, and tossed plywood sheets off of construction towers onto the streets. A 3 year old girl was killed when she was struck on the head by a piece of metal flying off a building!
A friend of mine was on the Bow River when the downdraft hit, and Calgary Fire Rescue pulled him and his family to safety. So, these downdrafts can be deadly, even though they don't last very long.

We experienced this twice over several days. No major damage occurred from the winds, but the thunderstorm last night brought hail, which basically pulverized my vegetables. Some of them look like they might make it through, which is encouraging, but all of them sustained pretty severe damage, except the tomatoes, which were getting out of control anyway.

I have come to the conclusion that I need a permanent system to deal with hail, which is a constant presence out here on the flat prairies. We very much need a shelterbelt around our house area, which of course takes time to establish. I also plan to build a metal framed mesh around my garden tires, made of bent 5 foot rebar with chicken wire stretched over it. The chicken wire should deflect most of the hailstones and reduce the damage significantly. It's also inexpensive, and lasts a very long time. The rebar will be bent in a curve or two bends (whichever works best), and tied to the chicken wire. I could also stretch plastic over this and make a very decent mini-greenhouse in the spring, perhaps starting the seedlings a week or two early.

I really pray that my plants will recuperate from the hail, which will surely knock them back in growth by a week or two.

The workshop/shed/barn project is progressing well, with tommorow being the excavation day. I staked out the 42 x 24 foot area and cut all the vegetation down to make it easier to see. I purchased some thick cable for the electrical circuit, and ran it out to the edge from the house. I want to be able to just dig the trench, bury the wire, and rebury it right away. I only have the machine for 1 day, so I have to be completely prepared!

Look for pictures as I complete the digging.

Gardening is the mother of all therapies

I would like to suggest to anyone with a lot of stress in your life...take up gardening. Yes, you can't really do it during the winter (maybe herbs in pots), but during the stressful, busy summer months, a garden is a panacea of positivity in a world drowning in disaster. It reminds us that God still sends rain in due season, peas still come in a pod, radishes still grow like crazy, and tomatoes love the sun!
Many people may be unaware, or perhaps only vaguely aware, but a food crisis is developing, slowly but surely. As the West gradually falls into Depression (yes, no recession here), our ability to grow enough food to meet our needs is falling further behinds. We are mining the goodness right out of the soil, and I only have to look out my window to see the results...genetically modified crops, a desperate attempt to avoid nature's loathing of monoculture. Nature (which is to say God Himself) prefers a huge variety of plants, which feed each other in healthy competition. Add some animals, and we have a harvest for ourselves, and the land does not starve. God never intended for 10,000 genetically modified canola plants to exist in the same 1 acre of land!
I love my garden, small as it is this year. I have about 14 broccoli plants, which are doing quite well, about 10 cucumber plants, which got off to a late start, thanks to frost kill of the first batch...live and learn. We just pulled a whole schwack of radishes, and some beans are climbing up. I purchased some tomato plants, which are now flowering and attracting bees. My daughter planted sunflowers, which grew (without much watering at all, I might add), and are now more than 1 foot tall! Everything is growing fast, and strong. Weeds have been beaten, and the tiny ones sprouting at this stage are nothing. Only the carrots did not germinate well, but the seeds are old, so, I suppose a new batch is in order...next year.
We are well on track to bringing our friends out here to live, the bank will loan the money, and we will have a barn with plenty of water for winter (and a root cellar!)
None of this happened without generous blessing from God, and lots of agonizing, praying, sweating, and selling things I didn't really need to get the things I wanted.

Here are some photos for those who like the visuals:
Blueberry bushes! We now have 21 bushes in total, all about 2 years old (I think), about 1.5 feets tall. They were on sale for about $2.50 each, and in very good condition, so how could I resist? I just love blueberries, and so does the rest of the family.Broccoli, peas, and tiny asperagus plants growing in tires filled with soil and manure. The asperagus are in a circle around the broccoli, and I'm going to move them somewhere else soon.
Radishes and beans in the same tire. The radishes will be harvested long before the beans ever get going, so I can use the same space twice. Companion planting!
Not pictured: Tomatoes and pickling cukes in several tires, getting VERY big!

Hot weather...sort of

Well, it's the middle of the hottest part of summer, yet we have not used either an air conditioner, nor a fan at night or even during the day! I'm sitting in our house right now, and it's 29 degrees C outside, but inside it's only 23, and very comfortable. I'm pretty sure that I can thank our lack of windows on the south side of the house. All of our big windows are on the north side. It does affect our heat gain in the winter, however ie, we get almost no heat from the sun at all!

Although it's now more than halfway through the growing season, I came across some blueberry plants at a local supermarket for a bit over $2 each, which is waaaay cheaper than they normally are! So, I crammed as many as I could fit into my car, and I'll be going back for more, if there are any. I got 15 this time, and I just planted them. Eventually, I'd like to have an acre or more of berries, maybe several acres and I'll make a U-pick farm out of it all.

I also got a gas-powered weed whacker for $50, although it didn't have some of the parts (it was a demo model). I found a new spool for it, and it works great! So much more powerful than the electric variety, and I don't have to drag around the stupid cord. I use it to keep the weeds away from my trees and shrubs, and I've also declared war on thistles. I've pulled more than a hundred just around the house. I'm not pretending I can beat them entirely, but I don't want them to go to seed, so I whack the big ones.

I booked a digging machine for me to fill in some big holes, and make some new ones. I didn't book it for a week like I originally thought to, just 24 hours. I figure I can probably sit in the thing for 16 hours straight, and just get it all done in one day. Saves me a bit of money, and if I don't get it all done, I can always rent it for another day later. I'll have to anyway, to backfill the trenches and holes in, once the cistern is in place. For the cistern, I purchased a plaster sprayer for a couple hundred $, but it should save me many, many hours of handtroweling, and slopping the plaster one bit at a time, when this thing just blasts it at the wall in a few seconds.

That's it for now, remember, winter is coming!

Springtime during summer?

We've been getting some strange weather lately...it's been raining quite frequently, and it's almost the middle of July! I thought that this was normally the dry, hot season, but it's already rained more in the first 10 days of July than in all of June! Not that I'm complaining about the rain, it's good for my trees, but it's just odd.

I also sold my motorcycle today, for a couple thousand dollars, which is terrific, because now I can rent a very expensive machine, and start digging all of the many different projects that I've got planned for the summer and fall! I didn't get as much as I would have liked for the bike, but I got a quick sale, which I'm glad for. It was difficult to sell, because we don't live in the city anymore, and I had to come in to let people test drive and such.

I've come up with more new ideas, and I've also got a few decisions to make, just some small ones really. I can't decide whether to put the jet pump for our water in the barn, or keep it inside the house. I can see good points to doing either one, but I've got to make a decision one way or the other.

This year, I'm planning ahead for winter big time. I've already started cutting firewood, and I've got almost a cord cut already from a giant schwack of packing pallets that I picked up for free. I use a chainsaw to slice the flat parts out, then a mitre saw cuts the rest into manageable pieces. It didn't take more than 2 hours, which is good. I've kind of perfected the woodcutting process, I can strip a pallet down in about 10 minutes or less. In extremely cold weather, a good size pallet is about a day's worth of wood, so the further ahead I can get in this chore, the easier my winter will be!

I've also been planning a small car shelter for the end of our house, which could probably for the basis for a small garage when I get around to it. I need somewhere to keep a vehicle out of the cold, something that could be heated with a propane heater (supervised of course) and I'd like to store some of the firewood there as well, because it tends to get quite piled up with heavy snowfall, and it would be easier on my wife if it were sheltered. I plan on cutting and storing most of the wood in the barn, but I'll bring a weeks worth at a time to the shelter for easy access. I may use the skeletal remains of the canvas shed that I bought last year, which died an early death from wind. This time she'll be bolted together at every joint, and the walls will be OSB or some sort of stronger material. A canvas roof would be fine, it's just a temporary structure for shelter after all!

I just noticed I tend to start all my paragraphs with "I've". Is that egocentric of me? Well, "I've" got to go now, thanks to the couple of people who read this. I know I'm long winded, and I'm working on it. Maybe. With limited success.

Waterfight!

Today, for the first time we took advantage of a local provincial park, only 20 minutes away! It's a gigantic campground, with a huge irrigation reservoir in the middle. Lots of mature trees, swimming area, a small sandy beach. There's a concession stand too, but the guy said it wasn't open, someone broke into it! He actually did let us buy some ice cream though, super nice guy : )

It's officially summer, and it's hot enough to prove it too. Although for us in Alberta, hot isn't really that hot. We just feel hot, and complain a lot, but it's really quite nice. We've had some rain, not a lot, but enough to keep the trees alive for a few more days. For some reason quite a few of my poplars are dying, while other ones are doing quite well. All of the dead ones are in a certain area, so I should probably test that area's soil and see what's wrong. I'll replant them next year, once I've amended the soil or whatever.

I've been brainstorming on behalf of our best friends, who have said that they would like to move out here with us. I really want to see them succeed in that, but I also don't know exactly how serious or dedicated they are. We haven't talked about it for months, and it's the middle of the year. Winter will be upon us in a heartbeat, if we're not careful! Once August rolls around, I should have enough money to build the barn, and hopefully, we'll have enough time as well. It's a huge project, and I'll need lots of help, and I really like to have some extra hands out here for that sort of thing!
The idea that I had, was to build the barn, and put a large 5th wheel trailer right next to it, connected by a temporary "hallway" to the door. We'd have to insulate the crap out the the trailer, since they aren't strictly designed for winter, per se. Have an insulated and frost protected water hose from the barn, into the trailer, and build some temporary bedrooms in the barn (which will have a dirt floor, and a woodstove for heat), for the kids. We can all use the water out of the large tank, and if it's not terribly expensive, I plan to put a well out here, for all of our use. I'm hoping $5000 or less will take care of that. We'll see.
If this works, they could move out here as early as the end of July or August, and we could then put our muscle into the barn-building project! The only cost that they would have to pay for is the trailer itself, and maybe a generator, but I've got a plan for that too. A large diesel genny could run two houses at once, and use waaaaay less fuel as well. We won't need too much in the way of extra electricity, if we can get another turbine set up, and maybe a few solar panels. Just a boost charge here and there will keep us afloat...