And so it was....

Now here is a testament as to who we are.
My lovely wife celebrated another birthday milestone in her life and so, as is the custom, there were celebrations to be made.
We headed out in the wagon to the fair city of St Albert and The Enjoy Center which is an elaborate garden / wellness marketing facility and a good way to spend a few hours.
Meeting with the kids there, we had a good time pondering and purchasing all what we needed before a group decision was made that Mother's idea of going to Timmy's for a sandwich was not in keeping with the sentiment of the day.
It was to Montana's that we then headed for a very pleasant supper with the 6 of us together, which, once done eating, led into the highlight of the day..... A trip to Value Village!!!
Make of that what you will.... but now you know.

As I was driving home today I got a call from a young fellow named Freddie, who's family were our farming neighbors for many years before we moved away about 15 years ago,
His Father (Bob) had died after some illness and he was calling to let me know about the funeral arrangements.
It was good to talk with him again and brought back memories of those days gone by.
We have known Freddie since he was a child and shared in many episodes of his life.
After the call, it occurred to me that this was the passing of the torch. Freddie and his brothers were assuming the mantle of responsibility towards their father and taking care of his affairs.
This is a profound measure of life's passage.
We don't see the calendars come and go but events like these mark time in our lives.
Bob's family were the best of neighbors to us and we remember them well.
Good people.
Sylvia and I will go to the funeral next Tuesday.

Wood, Coal & Love.

Despite the uncanny warmth of late, we are of no doubt that winter is about to deal us a blow.
A year ago we were in the -25 C range, today we are +7 C with water running down the yard.
We even sleep with the window open.
In the middle of December, that's never good but we are making the best of it.
It was therefore a pleasant trip we made down to Ryley, Ab today, on the coal run as we call it.
Dodds Coal is one of the few suppliers left these days and they are busy people. Despite the bad rap coal is getting by the media, there are many homes and businesses still burning the black stuff.
We took the truck and trailer for the last run of the winter and hauled home 1 1/2 tons to see us through with a good margin of safety should we get a blizzard or two on the tail end of winter.
Running around $80 / ton (half is the B.S. carbon tax), we still have no issues with the economy of coal. There is no additional monthly charge for administration, transmission, maintenance, etc; as with gas or electricity. It will be interesting to see what we get for the carbon tax dollars, if it's like the tire tax, we won't get anything.
Half the load is already under cover and the trailer is safe and secure from weather, so all is good.
It's amazing how quickly one can move a ton of coal with a grain shovel. Try it once.

The wood pile is doing very well in light of the mild temps and the horses have had their warm coats on only once so far, which is good as they can be a pain to keep putting on and taking off to suit the sun. The hay too is stretching well but again, we know that can change overnight so another load will be hauled early next week to fill the need when it arises. They are still picking in the field and chewing on bull rushes which keep them occupied if nothing else.

It's my lovely wife's birthday tomorrow, she's at that indeterminate age where we're all just people and the numbers don't matter.
We have fun together, we are still each other's best friend and neither passes a day without seeing the beauty in our lives.
Somewhere along the path, we chose to distance ourselves from those who lie, cheat and pursue greed.
Those with darkness in their hearts.
So we're going to have a nice afternoon out with the kids at The Enjoy Center in St Albert and declare the whole day a happy, B.S. free event.
When you surround yourself with those who embrace truth, honesty and love, darkness doesn't stand a chance.

.

The Winter Solar System...

When it's 9 degrees C on December 9th, there's something going on.
Whilst this helps shorten winter, it brings an uneasy comfort.
The lull before the storm kind of thing.
The Saskatchewan runs mentioned in the last post went well, no ills befell us this time and we have also enjoyed a Ritchie Bros auction in Edmonton over the last couple of days. No bargoons were found at this sale but I maintain "If you don't go, you don't know".
We are looking for a 53' refer trailer for our next project and finding one in reasonable shape for a reasonable price is tough.
Just as well we are in no rush.

We have done a little "Winter Reno" on our solar system, mostly to the batteries which were in need of some love, so we are now back up to our full quota of 8 batteries and added two more solar panels.
Our system is everything that it should not.
There are 350 watts of panels charging 1600 amp/hours of  8D batteries with a Honda inverter generator supplying a charger for the days with no sun. A 3000 watt inverter runs the house and despite all the corners we cut to build it, the darned thing has worked well for 2 years. We almost feel like solar outlaws as we have done just about everything that one should never do in building a system.
We even run a full size electric fridge / freezer which is a power hog and a full size front load washing machine as well as an electric dog bed warmer, yet it all works and we manage just fine.
A video is in the works on how we arrived at our present creation and what we learned along the way.
This year is our 8th anniversary of living off grid with solar power.
Some roads you venture down blissfully unaware that you will never come back. The solar road is one.

We hauled 100 gallons of water today for the cabin and the horses, this is a twice a week chore, that would be cut in half without the Naggeroos but they are here, so the water must be too.
Despite having to make the 1/2 hour round trip to town, our water bill is $10 / month so well worth the effort. A larger indoor tank would easily reduce the time commitment. Throughout the summer months we haul 700 gallons at a time (about 2 months worth) for our household use as the naggs drink from the ponds but winter cold renders that operation redundant. Everything must be inside.
We do not drink chlorinated water, we have proven to ourselves the evils of chlorine.
Another trailer load of hay will be coming in this week as well as another trip to the coal mine before Xmas to ensure we will be in good stead on both counts well into march.
We usually make these runs in raging blizzards or on sheet ice and they invariably become day long episodes in winter misery.
To be doing them in an almost leisurely, comfortable and civilized manor really is quite bizarre.
We may even have time for another cup of tea.
How nice.

Due East....

It's a fact of geographical convenience that the Saskites in the lands to the east are an easier peoples whom to trade than those across the Great Divide to the west.
It has therefore become a part of my business to travel into those desolate lands in search of the mighty buckaroo. And many there are to be found, as those wily flatlanders find their financial feet in the global oil and gas industry.
It's a hard statistic to get the head around.... but it's said there is more oil and gas under Saskatchewan than Alberta ever had.... and the only reason it's still there is thanks to the socialist provincial governments with whom the pillars of capitalism refused to deal. But times have changed and that oil is needed and I am a part of it.
Yesterday I girdled the loins and set out in the trusty Ford for the 2 hr pilgrimage into the prairie.
The run went well, almost pleasant in fact but I never get too comfortable in Saskatchewan.
Expect the unexpected.

Many years ago, I was trucking into Regina in a cab-over Kenworth when the heavens opened. And I mean OPENED.
The rain came so hard, I had to hunch over the wheel and stare down at the lines awash on the road to know where I was. Visibility was near zero but I was able to make it into the Husky Truck Stop and sit out the worst of it. As the deluge eased, and vision returned, the scores of trucks parked in a blind, chaotic gridlock emerged.
No-one cared, they were just happy to have got off the hi-way.
I threw on my coat and legged it into Husky. It was packed. Drivers everywhere, talking , eating, smoking.
I squeezed in the door and stood beside a weathered old trucker, peering out into the pour.
"Man" I said. "That's a bad rain!!"
He said "Son, there is no bad rain in Saskatchewan".
"It's all good".

Most of my work is in winter, courtesy of the extreme cold that invariably brings all things mechanical to a standstill.
We do make a couple of summer trips, showing us the opposite extreme of heat, drought, hail, plagues of grasshoppers and of course "Gainer The Gopher". It is however, the brutality of winter I know best.
The desolate starkness, devoid of color. Only white and the drab, morbid grey of anything that is not.
If there was any color, it would be an intrusion. Unwelcome.

This trip and a couple more I must make in the week ahead has been blessed by a break in the weather.
I know it's just an illusion that will vaporize and plunge us back into the frozen hell.
The other little quirk to add to the misery is that unlike Alberta, The Saskites do not change their clocks.
Ever.
Nice one Gainer.

Giving Thanks for Springtime in November....

There is a saying here in Alberta that if you don't like the weather, wait 20 minutes.
And change rapidly it does, in either direction, so much so that we are now siting at +5 C with water dripping everywhere.
Oh Yeah... It's spring!!
The warmth today prompted me into some truck tire repairs for an up-coming trip to Saskatchewan.
Wrestling with frozen tires is not for the faint of heart and I take my hat off to anyone who wrangles tires for a living.
With help from my furry little feline friend Smokey Joe, the morning went well with two 16" trailer tires changed AND the gear shift linkage in our Ford truck repaired as well as plowing the sloppy slush out of the yard. It doesn't get much better than that.
This afternoon continued the tire trend to the point that the truck we are taking may actually make it to Saskyland without shedding a wheel.
Darkness descends at 5pm these days, so the outside work is governed by both temperature and light, all of which cramps the style. Winter makes it doubly hard and costly to work. We may be sitting on the worlds 2nd largest oil and gas reserves but energy prices here are hefty.... It's darned expensive to heat a building just to fix things in the warm.

Here's wishing a happy Thanksgiving Day to our southern cousins, which seems strange as it's only a month to Christmas but U.S. farming is done in much more pleasant weather with a longer growing season and therefore a later harvest for which to give thanks. It's quite an occasion down there too and rightly so, almost as important as Christmas. Our Thanksgiving has almost become a non event in fact, just another little holiday. Which is a shame.

One final note for which I give profound thanks, is my Lovely Wife's cooking. Despite the gastric intolerance's of my years, she continues to bake for ourselves and to
give to those who deserve.
One of her most long-lived and successful recipes has been Marmite fingers, which she inherited from my Mother and has since developed several variations thereof.
Those of you with British origins and who were correctly raised as "Marmite Babies" will recall that glorious black product with which she produces various savory pastry renditions that continue to create addicts far and wide. No one in their right mind will ever pass on a plate of fresh baked Marmite fingers.
And if you know not of what I speak... truly, you have not lived.

Fire & Ice

Winter in Alberta is miserable, there is no better description. Fit for neither man nor beast.
We had no more than dropped that heater into the trough and the temperatures plummeted with brutal wind-chill, minus 30C being the bottom line here for a couple of days.  Respite is in sight tomorrow but the up side of this dismal few days is that the tank heater was thrown in the deep-end and came up swimmingly.
Not having to run the genny to water the nags is a treat and I'm still in awe at hot little wood / coal is needed to keep the water open, even at these levels of cold.
I drop 6 small sticks down the tube, leave the butterfly open for 15 mins and come back to a raging inferno, drop 6 or 8 nuggets of coal down the hole and close her up. That will be good for about 6 hours. By then there will be a thin skim of ice forming, so repeat the process. The ashes are still hot enough to re-ignite.
I have yet to clean the ash out, perhaps in a couple of days we'll tie into that.

The brutal weather has also rendered the additional solar panels we connected yesterday somewhat of an anti-climax, although we did get almost 15 amps for a brief period this morning before the cloud settled in. We are now at 350 watts of panels with another batch to add that will put us in the 800 watt range which will mean our genny run time will be halved, the fridge/freezer being our largest power hog.
With the 1600 amp/hrs of battery capacity we have we could last 4 to 5 dismal days with no solar, were it not for the fridge.
The thought of dropping $5K into a new propane fridge / freezer combo is hard to process but there are times when I catch myself pondering just such a move.
Seems crazy to be running a deep freeze...... when we live in one.

Tank Heater.... Day 2.

Despite being a monumental hoarder, there is an occasional situation where I don't have all the "stuff" I need, causing much consternation to my Lovely Wife, who immediately envisions masses of more "stuff" being acquired, half of which will not be needed, therefore requiring more "stuff" storage space which she (very mistakenly) claims we don't have.
As a dear friend (whom I'll mention below) and a welcomed helper on this very project often comments, "Every hoarder can always make room for more stuff " or something to that effect.

That old blue water pressure tank has been bouncing around here for years, awaiting the planetary alignment necessary for tank heater creation and yet now I am at a loss for the intimates necessary.
Oh!! Woe is I....
An afternoon in the Great Metropolis yielded the necessary "stuff" and creation resumed.
With top holes cut, access to the rubber bladder could be gained and said item removed. The old water inlet line was plugged with an expanding plug and being submerged in icy water, I have little fear of the rubber being at thermal risk.
The 4" inlet tube was inserted with a butterfly damper to control draft. It's nothing more than a tin heating duct but this tube will slide in and out of the heater to allow cleaning and also permitting the air supply to be placed adjacent to the fire even as the ash level rises in the heater.  The 6' long flu pipe installs easily onto the heater and a small cowl sits atop the 5" pipe to help deflect any down drafts.
This little project only took about 4 hours of actual work in the shop.
We did a brief test run, placing the heater in 8" of icy water and lighting up. It went well but very buoyant and clearly showing the need for securing it to the water tank itself. Ballast would be an option if  the heater did not need to be removed for cleaning but initially we assume it will, therefore providing heater supports that can be attached to the water tank is likely the best plan.
My Lovely Wife suggests building something akin to a giant soup ladle to pull the ashes out through the flu opening, an idea that may have some validity but I am suspicious her only motive is to discharge herself from any physical exertion associated with lifting the heater out of the tank for ash removal.
Small she is.... but cunning she are.

It was all welded together last night with much assistance from my very dear friend and "stuff" adviser, Howl'n Smokey Joe Jr, whom you might well envisage as a weathered old blues harmonica player but who is in fact, a stray grey Tom cat. And indeed, a most agreeable fellow he is.
Today we emptied the water tank, put some insulation beneath it and secured the heater in the center before filling with water and igniting. It's very easy to get the fire started, with such a tall flu the updraft is considerable and soon the fire was roaring.
We dropped about 8 small nuggets of coal down the tube and closed the damper. Within 20 mins the water was steaming as seen here. We'll see how it copes with severe cold but at this point we're calling it a qualified success.
In fact that horse trough is starting to look very like a hot tub.....

Tank Heater.... Day 1.

One of the joys of living in climate where water is solid for 6 months of the year, is the battle to make it not so solid. Those who keep livestock face this challenge with relish.
The thought of a frozen stock waterer brings a stir to the soul.
Most rely on electric water heaters to maintain the constant flow, but what if you don't got??
Those who live off grid cannot plug into the monthly power bill to relieve their misery.
Our 3 Naggeroos consume about 30 gallons a day in the winter months, all water is hauled and all is frozen solid within hours of arrival, so it's time to get creative.
The 100 gallon tank they drink from is heated with an electric heater that only runs when the the genny is on, usually for block heaters and to top up the batteries when solar can't keep up.
In order to avoid additional genny time, we're trying something a little different.

Using an old water pressure tank, we are building an underwater stove to burn small coals and wood scraps, keeping the tank open.
Today we hauled water in a balmy -20C so the motivation to tear into this project was strong. After the required ponderings, holes were cut for the wood feed / air supply tube (smaller) and the larger flu pipe in the center. The old rubber diaphragm was then removed and the inside cleaned out.
The flu is a 5" forced air duct pipe, 6' long to get a good draft upwards and the smaller feed tube will also control the air supply to the fire with a damper. Engineering may be crude but we'll see how the Mk 1 version works before getting too technical.
Another issue will be the heaters desire to float in the tank, so either ballast will be required or a method of securing in the submerged position. The only way to empty the ashes will be to remove the flu, lift the heater out and up end it, therefore handles are required...together with a wife of good stature for the task.
I now see the wisdom in my parents advice to seek out a wife suitable for "agricultural" purposes.
Today's effort was a start, tomorrow will be a day of finding the "stuff" needed to finish. Sometimes "stuff hunting" takes longer than the building..... so a day may not be enough.

And the winner is....

Who really is the winner in our lives? I think of my Mum, just turned 98 and living well in a comfortable full care home in Devonshire, England.
She can remember much of her early life but little of my Father and her later years. She's done better than many and we are grateful.
My dear Brother John, who lives nearby her home has been battling the Government to get the funding she has been entitled to yet denied by bureaucrats in their ivory towers. He's held them accountable and stood his ground and done well but he knows you can only push so far and for so long.
So this leads one to ponder what it's all about.
Is it nothing more than trying to squeak by your daily grind, whilst contributing to the Govt.pension plan that you know will not be there for you when needed. What then?
Many remember the glorious pension promises of retirement at 55 with nothing but luxurious good times ahead. It's touted that a 1 million dollar investment portfolio is now needed to retire on comfortably. And in reality, how many of us have that??
But this raises even more concerns. You don't have your retirement money in your account, it's in the pension funds account. And so the security of the whole house of cards starts to look pretty shaky.

There are an alarming number of us starting to make our own plans, forget the rest and hunker down to the realization that it's going to be tough.
Packing a monthly deduction away to the pension fund was touted as the smart thing to do, but we've seen those funds vaporize overnight, with zero recompense for lost retirement savings.
So in reality, many are now looking at a meager fixed income for retirement and that's it.
Many do indeed own their home and have some security but that may not be enough.
More are waking up to the idea of $500 / month as your living allowance and planning to make that work.
So how does it work?
Living in a RV is becoming an increasingly attractive option to stretch the retirement budget. Spend summers in Canada and winter where it's warm and cheap in the south west US. That's usually boon-docking in Arizona or New Mexico deserts and it's becoming a viable option for many who choose to face reality early.
Taking action whilst they still have health and realize they can live both well and cheaply.
Can't be done??
Take a look here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAj7O3LCDbkIR54hAn6Zz7A

And.............. We're back!!

Thank-you for remaining on hold here, while we got on with our lives. Damned good of you! That's the down side of this gig, life comes at you out of left field and your're left wondering what the hell happened. Our 12 acres has been on hold, nothing done other than decay and overgrow. What worked yesterday won't work today. That's how we move ahead. Our time here has served us well, the kids are getting what they need and the boom in the oil industry has ensured Albertan's live in bubble envied by the rest of the country. The streets are awash with money and/or credit, jobs for everyone, life is good. The down side is bobbing just below the surreal surface and that is what's driving the change in our lives. The cost of living in this fools paradise is skyrocketing to the point that some are bailing out, throwing in the towel and saying "no more". Perhaps that's where we're at. We are sun lovers through and through so this past summer has been dedicated to getting our cabin set up and moving out of the camper. For most people, getting back to nature means destroying it to make it user friendly. Our objective was to preserve and protect all we could with minimal disturbance and using as much re-cycled material as we could. We feel that we did an alright job too but that will be a story for another day.  Despite a wet spring and early summer, the water level out there has dropped lower than we have ever seen it, so this is the perfect time to get the ponds cleaned and re-shaped for next springs flood of life. In the meantime Old Man Winter is beating on the door, with darkening skies and cold winds from the north so we need to be grabbing some gears here. If nothing else, come April there will be water in the right place, fences in the right place and us in the right place too.