And here’s my first laundry day in the great outdoors. Nasty memories, and the picture doesn’t even hint of it! Here’s the way it went; * fill that little white tub with cold running water, take into the trailer, dump into the tub on the stove,* repeat from * to * several times until tub is full. When water is hot, repeat from * to * in reverse only this time take to the washing machine until full. I am sooo glad we are too busy to use this right now as we are putting in full days building the cabin and it’s back to laundry in town.

Here I am with "hot off the needles" socks. They look like confetti so that’s what they’ll be called, confetti socks. The small pieces of color where thrumbed in. It was an idea I had that backfired when I tried them on. Sure hope the thrums felt to the sock quickly as it’s not easy getting ones foot into them… The wool is from Violet’s farm and was lovely to work with. She taught me how to prepare a raw fleece a few years ago, and I’ve taken to raw fleece since then. There’s something about being able to wash, spin and knit your own yarn isn’t there? When you know, give me a call :)

It rained here for a couple of days and we woke up to see this one morning on the driveway. Needless to say we were holed up for a few days while we worked on draining this lake. Andrew must have been a ditch digging supervisor in his past life as off he went that morning in his rubber boots, shovel and bucket. I’m sitting here wondering how we are going to get to town and how blah blah blah…

I’m always checking to see how things are going so I decided to go out and see Andrew. There he was with a deep hole off to the low side of the lake and hauling water to the ditch at the side of the road. He was at 30 buckets when I left, yawn, maybe I’ll put the teapot on. An hour and a half later he pops into the trailer and after 130 trips, the hole wasn’t filling up right away so he was taking a break, whoa… Then, he went back out and I didn’t see him for a couple of hours and he pops back into the trailer. This time he had dug a ditch on the high side and tossed the clay onto the lake area to build it up. We had to let it dry for a week but we were able to drive over the left side in a couple of days. And this last rain, no problem! Yes, a ditch diggers wife I am. Oh, if you’re wondering about those cats in the background, they are our neighbors. A coalbed methane drilling rig moved in the same time we did, just behind those trees, and he uses the cat the fix their roads etc.

This, is an old beaver dam on our muddy Lynk creek. When we first purchased this land the beaver had just moved in and built themselves this 6’ high dam. Five years later( notice the regrowth on top of their dam), we see it has been abandoned and they have made an addition about 50 feet downstream. The next picture shows the new part.

You can see one end of their new home at the top right of the water. The fallen trees are from a bank that caved in recently but didn’t do any damage luckily. Haven’t had time to sit and watch for the homeowners but I do plan on clearing a pathway so we can watch their progress.

This is how wide the creek is naturally at this time of year. The beaver homes can hold back quite a bit of water. Upon checking an old site further downstream, there is lots of silt and I am wondering if it naturally settles amongst the pieces of wood they add to their dam. I can’t see beavers filling up their cheeks and spitting the stuff out…..

Here’s Andrew milling one of our poplar trees. We have a Husquavarna chainsaw with a mill attachment that allows us to cut boards & timbers from our own property. It’s not fast but it’s sure nice to be able to make something yourself, kind of like socks really. Hey, Andrew has the trees, where’s my sheep :)

This is our new driveway into the homesite. We had to do a bit of drainage where a couple of puddles formed on either side of the road. If they aren’t drained, the road stays soft and takes forever to dry. Hmmm, wouldn’t it be lovely to be "stuck" at home and have one of Connie’s well known spin days!

Five weeks after we arrive Andrew is setting up our wireless telephone here. We actually have a Calgary number and can call anyone in Calgary for free but have to pay to call our neighbors?! This is due to our provider being in Calgary. We will also be getting a 1-800 number for local calls since Andrew is the local computer repair/consultant in town.

With our present accomodations being temporary, we must pick up and moved to the homesite soon. Here’s Andrew preparing to put the Hopkins Battery Barn on the homemade skid he milled with the chainsaw in the previous pictures.

Here’s me cranking the comealong on the other side of the barn shed. He pushed the skid with the pry bar while I pulled it with the comealong and it slid into place nicely.

I’m not against hunting but….. We are in the middle of a very popular hunting area and are the first people to live on this section of land. That means hunters have used it freely for a long time without having to worry about people around. So the sign is to let them know we are here & shooting in the area is not a good thing now.

That’s me and one of our black labs sitting by the pitifully small woodpile. It will grow to about 3 times the size before winter as we want to make sure we don’t run out in a –30 something cold snap. This is all poplar that burns very hot compared to the spruce.

THE HOMESITE! We are about to start building our cabin, August 10^th, 2005.

Start of day 3 we have 2 box beams done and are starting on the 3^rd. These will be the foundation as we did not have time to make a proper concrete one. The cabin will be 20’x30’ when we are done. This will be another temporary home while we build the strawbale home, beginning next summer.