Back To The Drawlyn

2009-09-17T13:25:00.000-04:00

Another step closer!

Well, we did it. We decluttered, fixed up, painted and prepped the house, and sold it! On Canada Day (July 1st), we moved all our worldly posessions down home to Saint John, New Brunswick.

This is a big step for us! It's something we've been wanting to do for a long time, and suddenly the stars and planets aligned:

I changed to a different team and started working from home
I got really, really tired of our crappy satellite internet connection for working at home ;-)
The housing market was hurting in Ottawa, but started an up-swing
I took the lawn tractor to a shop for some work and mentioned that I didn't want to spend much on it because I'd be giving it to whoever bought our house, and the owner of the shop turned out to be in the market for a house!
The buyers had already sold their home, and were motivated to downsize to a smaller house with land (our place fit the bill perfectly).

So now we're down home, with our stuff stored at Laura's parent's place and living at my Mom's place. Definitely a temporary situation. :-)

We figured it would be a perfect opportunity to build our dream home out at the Drawlyn, but after a bunch of research we've determined that it's not feaible at the moment to get any form of high-ish-speed internet out there. And I need that for my job. I made do with crappy satellite internet for too long at our place in Ottawa.

Since we can't get any real form of high-speed internet out at the Drawlyn, we're going to have an "urban interlude" in our plans. We've bought a house on the west side of Saint John (closes Oct 1st), and plan on gradually building a "cottage" out at the property on the Drawlyn.

Over time, we'll gradually improve the cottage (still plan on building an earthship design), and eventually a better Internet option will be available to us. At which point we'll move out to the homestead full-time and sell the west side house.

Things are going well.
Grant and Laura

2009-06-23T11:54:00.004-04:00

Yoghurt Making

I haven't made yoghurt for many years but last month I became really annoyed looking at all the containers in the recycle bin. Since we added yoghurt to our daily diet the soya milk cartons, soya yoghurt containers, and cow yoghurt containers started to add up at an alarming rate. So I did a bit research and found Bryanna Grogan's site on soya yoghurt making and haven't turned back. There are still the plastic bags off the soya beans and the cartons from the cow's milk but it has significantly reduced the packaging. Once we move I hope to buy milk in returnable containers and local soya beans in bulk until I'm able to grow my own.

The soya bean to yoghurt process isn't hard but it is a bit time consuming. This is some of the finished product the whiter stuff on the left is cow and the creamier coloured one on right is soya. This is also most of the basic equipment for making the soya yoghurt. But I have a soya milk maker in the mail! That will automate some of the process.

2009-04-19T13:31:00.013-04:00

Making progress on getting back to the Drawlyn

It's been a long time since we posted to the old blog. It's time to rectify that situation. :-)

For a long time we had not made any progress on our plan to get back to the Drawlyn. Grant's job situation didn't make it easy to work at home. With the transition to a different team, that has changed. Now, as long as he has an Internet connection, he can login to work.

So now it's time to get the plan to move down to Saint John, New Brunswick into high gear.

The first step was to start decluttering and getting rid of things we no longer needed/wanted (or well, didn't want too much). Now, we've moved on to fixing up the house so it shows well.

Recently we went down home and visited for a week, and looked at a few houses while there.

The plan is to move to Saint John to be with family, and start building the "dream home" on the property.

While we were there, we visited Laura's aunt and uncle, Pat and Jim, at their 'Camp' and Sugarbush operation. We had a great time. Here are a few pictures from the visit.

It was a gorgeous day for a walk in the woods, collecting sap.
The dog was running around like a crazy thing after being in town on a leash for all her walks. All the hills, woods and streams are Jordan heaven. Here she is posing on a mossy boulder.

Here you can see some sap being collected.

As I said, we've been making some progress on the house. We are just finishing up the kitchen and bathroom, and here are a few pictures of the progress and what's left to do.

The kitchen is almost done. We got rid of the extra pantry, painted and trimmed the walls, painted and replaced the hardware on the cupboards among other things.

Still to do: install a different set of hinges and hardware on the cupboard over the stove.

Here's a view of the dining room all set up and ready for poker:

The living room was a big job. It took a few coats of primer to cover up the previous color scheme. The new coat of paint and trim really dresses it up.

Within a week we should be ready for the all important dressing and staging of the place. New curtains throughout and art back on the walls and new furniture arrangement to show the place to its potential. It's been a great place to live so we want others to see that too.

Who knows, maybe the place will have hens again.

Cheers,
Grant and Laura

2007-10-01T10:44:00.000-04:00

Building a recumbent bike - part 3

This weekend Mike and I made some good progress on our bikes.

First up, we weren't happy with the alignment of the rear triangle on Mike's Marauder bike, so we cut it off, adjusted, aligned, cursed, tack welded, adjusted, and finally re-welded the rear triangle. Note the "sacrificial hub" in the back forks. We needed something to keep the forks aligned while welding, but couldn't have a whole wheel in there as it would get in the way and probably catch on fire from the heat of the welder. So we cut up a wheel and used the hub.

Then we built the seats. They're just plywood, jigsawed into the roughly-correct shape, and connected to each other with angle brackets and bolts. The seat angle is roughly 120 degrees, which gives a fairly comfortable riding position. Here's Mike's bike with the seat just sitting on the frame.

And of course you can't resist a "test ride".

We fabricated a couple of support tabs to get my seat up off the main bar, and to provide the correct angles.

And here it is with the seat actually attached to the tabs.

And of course a "test ride". Looks like the distance to the cranks will be correct.

Next up, we need to move on to the steering hardware. That should be interesting as it's "remote steering" using a couple of ball joints and a connecting rod. And we'll set the locations of the bottom bracket (the pedals) based on what is comfortable for the rider. But before we get to that, we need to source the foam for the seats, as the measurements will be changed by the extra inch or two of form padding in the seat. We plan on getting together once more this week to make some progress on it as we'll not be around next weekend -- we'll be down home for Thanksgiving.

And finally, after a hard day of work in the garage, there's nothing nicer than lounging on the couch with the dog, watching poker.

Cheers,
Grant

2007-09-26T15:33:00.000-04:00

Chickens are "processed"

This morning we put the new trailer-chicken-coop to use and delivered 36 chickens and two turkeys to be "processed" for us. The place is about 45 minutes away, which seemed like a long distance, but now that we know how to find it, it's not such a big deal.

They people that do the slaughtering have a very clean, professional operation. We had an appointment scheduled for 10am, and they were ready for us. We came back at 1:30 and picked up the birds, all neatly cleaned and dressed.

As you can see, the two tractors are now empty:

And the fridges are full. The birds need to be chilled for a couple of days in the fridge before they can be put in the freezer.

Next up, these guys. We have six turkeys left and we've got an appointment for November 28th. We wanted to let them get a bit bigger before we took them in. Besides, I don't think they would have fit in the trailer!

Whew. It was a bit of work building the trailer box and running the birds back and forth, but it was definitely a lot nicer and easier than "processing" them ourselves.

Cheers,
Grant

2007-09-25T09:52:00.000-04:00

Recumbent bikes and chicken transporters

We put in a bit more work on the recumbent bikes over the weekend. On my bike we concentrated on getting the rear triangle set up. It was relatively straight-forward.

Here's the rear triangle being tacked into place.

Now that we've got everything tacked together and verified that it's all straight and true, it's time to weld it permanently in place.

It's finally starting to look like a bike!
Note that I've got my BionX electric-assist wheel on the back. Since this bike will be a commuter, it'll definitely have my electric-assist system on there.

Here's a "test fit". It's a bit uncomfortable right now as I'm sitting on a piece of plywood, leaning back against the boom that is still hot from the welder. And with no pedals or handlebars, it's very tippy.

Next up, getting the rear triangle setup on Mike's Marauder. This was a real challenge, as the forks had to be tacked into place in two parts and manually aligned. The design calls for chopping the forks off a donor bike and attaching them to the boom without any jig or supports to ensure correct alignment. We spent a LOT of time eyeballing it, adjusting, moving, cursing, breaking tacks and re-tacking. Finally we got it level with judicious use of a level, a long threaded rod to show any mis-alignments and a good amount of force applied to the forks.

Next up, the chickens. This year, we got enough meat birds to justify the cost and effort of taking them to a place to be slaughtered for us. Last year we did them all by hand, and proved that we know how to do it, and most importantly that we CAN do it. Now since we don't have anything to prove, we got 35 chickens and 8 turkeys. We're going to take them to a place about 45 minutes away to be processed for us.

Of course, this led to the challenge transportation. I just recently got a trailer hitch installed on the Jetta (we seem to be gradually turning our diesel sedan into a work truck). I borrowed my friend's Costco trailer (which I like a lot, because it's light enough that the trailer itself doesn't consume a huge portion of my car's admittedly small towing capacity). Then I used scrap lumber and sheeting we had laying around from other projects to build a "get the birds to market" trailer.

All four compartments are hinged for easy access to the birds. The front compartment is twice the height of the back, for transporting the turkeys. They're quite large these days.

Lots of stuff going on in the ol' Homestead.

Cheers,
Grant

2007-09-12T19:46:00.000-04:00

Building a recumbent bike - part 1

As I get more into e-biking and commuting on my bike, the more I realize how uncomfortable an upright bike is for long trips. Inefficient, too, when compared with recumbent bikes.

I've been riding to and from work 1 to 3 days per week, 60km per day on a "commuter-ized" Raleigh mountain bike. I've always been interested in recumbent bikes, so I decided to get one. They're quite expensive, and I've got a friend who is interested in recumbent bikes and knows a lot about welding and building things. So we decided we'd work together to build a couple of recumbent bikes for ourselves.

Initially I wanted to build a "Mach 2" using plans posted on www.recycledRecumbent.com, but my friend Mike convinced me to go with the Atomic Zombie Meridian, for several reasons.

Mike wants to build the Atomic Zombie Marauder, which is a low-racer style of recumbent. He wants it for the pure joy of speed that you can get from the low-racer design. I want mine to be a comfortable, stable, and reliable commuter that I don't mind putting on upwards of 300km per week. I also am willing to sacrifice some of that vaunted recumbent efficiency in the wind for better visibility in traffic, since my commute takes me through fairly busy car traffic. If I like it enough, I may get and install a WindWrap or Zzipper fairing to improve aerodynamics and help keep the weather off me in foul-weather riding.

We discussed our plans and designs, collected a few "donor" bikes for parts, and bought some 1 1/4 inch box steel. Then on a sunny Sunday we started cutting up donor bikes for the parts we needed. Here is a picture of the first cut-up donor bike.

Cutting up the bikes involved using a reciprocating saw and a couple of grinders (one with a cut-off wheel and another with a grinding wheel). Later we added yet another grinder with a cup-style wire wheel for cleanup work. Of course we made lots of pretty sparks.

Then on another sunny weekend day, we got started on cutting and shaping the box steel that would form the "spine" of the bike. The three parts are cut to specific lengths and specific angles (according to the design in Mike's copy of the Atomic Zombie book), then welded together. Here, Mike's cutting the main boom to length with the correct angle for the back-rest.

Next, welding the back-rest onto the main boom. Note the clamped jig that holds everything straight and true while you're working on it. That's why working with box tubing is so nice. It makes it easy to get everything aligned properly. If we were using round tubing, I think we'd still be setting up the jigs to get everything to align and stay in-plane.

With all welds you tack it in place first, verify that everything is straight and true and proper, then go around it again with the welder, completing the weld. Here's what the completed weld looks like before clean-up.

Next up, clean up the area around the weld with a wire wheel. You never want to weld or paint on a surface that hasn't been cleaned.

Here Mike is welding a gusset in place behind the seat back-rest. This provides additional strength.

And here's the start of one of our recumbent bikes! It mostly looks like a big steel hockey stick right now, but it'll look more like a bike soon.

We measured the angle for the head-set, according to the Atomic Zombie book, but it didn't look right to us. So we left it tacked in place, so we can easily remove it and change the angle if necessary.

Here's one of the bikes so far, with the headset tacked in place.

Double-checking the seat-back angle on the second bike.

And here's the result so far: two frames for our recumbent bikes! The different lengths are for the different heights of the riders.

Next up, sorting out the headset angle and adding more parts! Woo-hoo! This is exciting.

Cheers,
Grant

2007-06-01T09:50:00.000-04:00

The Commuter Challenge.

Next week is the Commuter Challenge. I've signed up and registered for the Oracle-Kanata workplace (30KM from home).

I encourage you to register for this great cause! Let's improve our air quality by re-thinking how we get to work!

I plan on e-biking to work and telecommuting from home next week.

Cheers,
Grant

2007-05-24T16:17:00.000-04:00

E-bike commuting and errand running.

Have I mentioned how cool my e-bike is? ;-)

This week I rode to work and back on a couple of occasions (it's just shy of 60KM round-trip). It's amazing to me how quickly I'm making progress. On each trip I get a little faster, and yet feel less tired when I arrive.

I have to use level 3 assist on the way to work, as it's more uphill. All the hills are relatively gradual, but the dirt roads have been graded recently, which makes them soft and tricky as well as power-robbing. I can use level 4 (max assist) on the way home as it's more downhill. This is nice because I can arrive home and not be completely bagged. I still feel like doing things in the evening.

When I bought my bike, I let the salesman talk me into a mountain bike style. I had big plans for hitting the trails and doing real "serious" mountain biking. Turns out, I was just kidding myself -- I did about 5 technical rides in 10 years.

So I finally decided that what I really needed was a bike that I was comfortable going relatively long distances on - in short, a commuter. So I set about "commuter-ing" my mountain bike. Off came the knobby tires and on went semi-slicks. It got fenders, a more-upright handlebar, a rear-view mirror, the BionX assist kit (which I love), lights, kickstand, rack and pannier baskets. In short, all the things it needed to make the bike USEFUL.

Today's ride home from work included a side-trip to the grocery store. It makes me so happy to be able to pick up some stuff on the way home. :-)

Here's what my useful bike looks like:

Here I am after a 30K+ ride in 30C+ temperatures:

And one final shot of Jordan getting some lovin' with flower petals in her fur.

Ahhhhhhh. :-)

Grant

2007-05-24T15:46:00.000-04:00

Early Morning Walks and Not-Forgotten Kitties

Here is Angel watching the birds happy to be laying in the soft Spring grass of the backyard. She still knows all the cute kitten tricks like the silent meow and the eye blink. They are never wear out. She is starting to take to the dog and has started napping on top of the dogs crate.

Velvet doesn't pay the dog anymore attention than she does Angel. Though it does seem the dog is forming a common bond between the two of them. Heard a yelp yesterday and looked out to see the cats had the dog pinned in the corner of the deck. Both were working completely in unison like lionesses trapping a wildebeest.

This is Jordan in her element, our morning walks. We usually hit the gravel around 6am and take random paths through our neighbour's land. This is one of my favourite places, an old laneway that used to end at an old pioneer farmhouse. Here she is waiting for the slowpoke.

This is how the off leash part of our walk starts - pyschopuppy! That's what my neighbour calls it. The condition's symptoms are an arched tail, ears back and wild bounding leaps. I wish she had been a little closer but it is hard to catch her with the camera when she's in that state. This was a glorious morning; dew on the ground and clear bright sky.

2007-05-24T13:30:00.000-04:00

A few more Spring flowers and the turkeys in the new tractor.

The Antoinette are quite different now a week later. I'm really enjoying them so I think I'll pick up more bulbs this Fall.

I also planted more Narcissus large yellow ones, pale yellow with darker yellow trumpets, an all white one where the sepals grow away from the trumpet, and white ones with tiny trumpets that have an orange ring. This is the all white ones, they are very elegant slender flowers.

Here is the "Pheasants Eye" Narcissus (Narcissus poeticus). They are in the herb garden, you can see the rhubarb in the background covering the early yellow Daffs.

The crab apple is glorious this year. I didn't think it was going to survive the winter. The bark is a mess and riddled with woodpecker holes. Speaking of which there is a little Downy Woodpecker at the sunflower seed feeder.

One last plant picture. Here is the Solomons Seal that Chris's and Tracy's Mother Joyce gave me a year before she died. It has really filled in from the three skinny stalks it started as.

I'll sneak in this picture of Charlotte Bronte Turken. Once I was past her bare neck, I found she was a wonderful bird.

So here are the poults in their tractor. They've settled in well and are already quite the fliers. I think they are finding the heat lamp too hot now and seemed happy with just the little "tent."

Jordan doesn't pay the chickens much mind any more but will whine when I'm in fussing over the turkeys. She started doing that from the beginning especially when I made them peep in alarm by picking them up to do daily health checks (e.i. looking at their little bums - it always comes down to poo).

2007-05-16T15:40:00.000-04:00

Spring flowers and Anxious Puppies.

First some of the new tulips which I planted last Fall. This is "New Design". The bulbs were a good size so the flowers were quite large for their first Spring. Click on it to see the full image.

This is "Antoinette", it has a multi-flowered stems and it changes colour as it ages. Becoming a orangey-pink before it fades.

This is a scented double tulip called "Angelique". It starts out with just a tinge of pink that darkens slightly as it becomes fully open.

Here is Jordan butting into view as I was taking a shot of a little group of narcissus and a bunch of wild blue violets.
She follows me everywhere and I'm trying to wean her of separation anxiety using a comfy crate. She will use it on her own to rest especially if I'm sitting here at my computer. Today I learned a tip for making the crate more enjoyable by tying her "crate" toys to it.

The crate is a short term solution. Once she is free of her separation anxiety she'll have free reign of the house excepting the bedroom and basement which we'll leave as cat only zones during long days alone together. Keep your fingers crossed that she'll settle quickly.

2007-05-10T18:17:00.000-04:00

This was Jordan's second full day with us and we've shared a few new experiences including:

A bath to wash away the stinky shelter life. It wasn't the greatest job but it helped. She's still damp in this picture. Her nails are getting a bit long too, so I think I may buck the country dog thing and take her to the groomers for a proper bath and nail clip. I want her registered and vet checked before we go.

Yesterday, I introduced her to a frisbee and it's her new favourite thing. I had to wait until Grant was home today to get some shots of her with it. I like this action shot. There is a guy on youtube that does training videos for disk dog. I'm going to watch a few more of them. I wish the bugs weren't so bad! They are making an itchy mess of her poor bare belly and "I've-had-babies" teats. I think the coating of vaseline I put on before she goes on walks is helping a bit.

We also manage to introduce her to her crate successfully enough that she will actually choose to sleep in it. We have not yet closed the door to contain her. We've been using the spare room for nights, until I can trust her free in the house. The crate will still be needed once we start in dog sports.

Her house manners seem really good so far. Yesterday, she spent the day with the end of her leash on my belt, so I could give her corrections as soon as she stepped out of bounds. Such things like too much interest in the cats or the garbage can. I tested her this morning after our walk without the leash in the house and so far she has passed muster. We have also had her off leash in our fenced (well mostly since our east fence is in very bad shape) yard under supervision. I still tie her when I have to duck into the chicken coop. The black flies and mosquitoes are so bad right now that we only go out to check on the chickens, play frisbee, or go for walks.

Here is a close-up of her crazy eyes. I can't understand why this dog was left tied in front of the SPCA.

2007-05-08T21:25:00.000-04:00

Welcome Home, Jordan.

Well, we've finally done it. After years of thinking about it, discussing it and planning how we'll handle it, we finally took the plunge.

We got a dog.

Now, to most people this isn't that big of a deal. But to the Totten/Taylor household, it's a very big deal. Mostly because we're very committed to being good dog owners. We studied our Dog Whisperer, we read dog books, we did pretty much everything we could to prepare ourselves.

Today we drove down to the Kingston Humane Society and visited with "Muppet". We took her for a walk and talked with the staff, who just loved her. We discussed it and decided to go ahead and bring her home. We weren't really planning on taking her home on the first visit -- we figured we'd visit her, then go home and discuss it, then most likely pick her up on the weekend. But we decided we'd go ahead and take her home, since we were sure we wanted her.

We've decided to call her Jordan. She's named after Jordan Mountain in New Brunswick, where Laura's father grew up. As a child, her father had old type collie farm dogs, and when Laura first saw the picture, she thought of them. So that's why she's called Jordan.

Here are some pictures of her. We'll take some better ones tomorrow so you can see her crazy half blue half brown eyes. She's a bit thin and still has mommy tummy from having had a litter of pups before she was abandoned at the shelter. If she needs a little fattening she come to the right household. :P

Welcome home, Jordan.

Cheers,
Grant and Laura

2007-05-07T13:08:00.000-04:00

I Survived the Tour Nortel!

(And I got a t-shirt)

Yesterday I biked the 70 kilometer (45.5 mile) route at the Tour Nortel. I raised $240 for the CHEO Foundation, and had a great time!

The weather was gorgeous - nice and sunny, with a cool breeze. The route was good - no gravel paths, no struggling with traffic, lots of volunteers to point the way and cheer you on, plenty of rest stops and so on.

I did it in 3.5 hours with my BionX PL-350 on level 1 or minimum assist. The battery lasted all the way to the end, which I was very impressed with. The BionX manual says that on level 1, you should be able to make it 62 miles (99 kilometers), but I think their test environment was a 100lb rider in a completely flat, smooth and windless environment. Not exactly "real world".

I should have rested a bit more at the turn-around spot -- I just got some water and an orange slice and took off. The last couple of KMs were a bit tough, but I made it.

There was one hill about 7 KM from the turn-around that was just BRUTAL. It was a long and steep one. As I pedaled along, I gradually kept gearing down until I was way down in 1st gear. Barely crawling along. But I made it up the hill. I briefly considered boosting the assist up to level 2 or even 3, but I knew that if I did that, I wouldn't have enough charge to help me the rest of the way. So I just ground my way up the hill. When I made it to the top, I paused to catch my breath and drink some water and enjoy the view.

That hill was MUCH more fun riding down. I hit 52km/h without pedaling. Wheee!

Thanks to all that sponsored me for this ride. I was happy to be able to do it. Now I know what it feels like to ride 70K in a day. Whew! ;-)

Cheers,
Grant

2007-05-03T09:57:00.000-04:00

E-bike commuting

Well, today is a banner day. Today I rode the full 30.6KM to work from home on my electric-assist bike! I'm very happy. A little tired, but happy. ;-)

The route is pretty good - click here for an overview. It avoids the heaviest traffic areas and is relatively efficient. There might be a few slight optimizations I can do, but I think this is pretty good.

I made it in 1 hour and 20 minutes, which is probably quite slow for "serious" cyclists, but pretty good for me. I'll be improving that time over the summer, I'm sure.

The battery was pretty much 100% drained by the trip. I started out on max assist (level 4 on the BionX system), and then cut it down to level 3 assist at around Stittsville, so I'd have some juice left for the rest of the journey.

The weather was cool and crisp, blue sky and sunny - excellent riding weather.

One thing I'm quite proud of is that I pedaled the entire way - I didn't wimp out and just hold down the throttle and cruise. Good thing I didn't, too -- I certainly wouldn't have had enough battery power to make it.

I'm looking forward to the ride home. It'll be warmer out, so I've brought some cycling shorts with me.

When I was leaving this morning, Laura set me up with a water bottle in a handlebar bag that really saved my bacon. At various points on the trip I got a nice drink of water, which really improved the experience. Thanks, babe!

I consider this trip to be training for my Tour Nortel 70K ride on Sunday. If you've not sponsored me yet, please consider doing so. It's for a good cause and apparently you get tax receipts.

I would have liked to have had a few more training rides, but the schedule just hasn't worked out. So, I'm sure the ride on Sunday will be a real challenge. I'm quite tired after riding under HALF the total kilometers, so I expect to be wiped when I finish on Sunday afternoon.

Whew...
Grant

2007-04-25T13:49:00.000-04:00

Priscilla's new apron.

Today Laura made an apron for poor little Priscilla, our silkie hen. Her beau, Elvis, has a serious case of spring fever, and her wings were getting quite damaged from being jumped on all the time.

So Laura whipped her up an apron!

Isn't she the cutest?

Cheers,
Grant

2007-04-22T18:18:00.000-04:00

Fixed up the chicken gates

Today we enhanced the gates to our chicken run. We took a quick video of the action, and played with putting it up on Youtube. Here's our first attempt.

Cheers,
Grant

2007-04-19T14:04:00.000-04:00

Energy efficiency around the house

Over the last couple of years, we've been gradually taking measures to improve our energy efficiency around the homestead. We've replaced most of our lights with compact fluorescents, we turn stuff off when we're not in the room, etc.

Hydro Ottawa has a nice graphical web site where you can get a plot of your energy consumption over time, which has been quite nice because it has shown the results of our efforts.

Here's what our daily usage graph looks like:

As you can see, we've cut down our usage, but leveled off the improvements. Also, we're still using WAY more energy than we'd have available on a daily basis if we lived off-grid. I'd really like to get the usage down to an off-grid consumption, so we'll be in practice for our eventual move Back To The Drawlyn.

Here's a brief run-down of the home improvements we plan on doing in order to cut down on our energy consumption.

First off, we realize that our air conditioner is the largest chunk of our energy usage. Here's what we want to do to extend the season in which the AC doesn't need to turn on:

More attic insulation. We need to re-do the roof on the south-east side of our house this spring. While we've got the top off, we're going to blow in a few more inches of insulation. This should help cut down on heat infiltration.
More attic venting. A couple of additional vents installed in the new area should help get the cross-breezes going and let the roof expel excess heat.
Install a house fan. We want to cut a hole in our ceiling in the sun room (the hottest room in the house, by far) and install a fan. Our neighbor Terry has suggested putting in a duct and an inline duct fan, and venting it out the soffit. This has the advantage of putting the noise of the fan as far away from the living space as possible. By running this fan, we should be able to extract quite a bit of heat from the house, thus alleviating the need for the air conditioning.
Installing custom awnings over the sun room windows. Our sun room, not surprisingly, gets a lot of sun. It gets strong direct sunlight that is very nice in the winter but problematic in the summer. To help cut down on the thermal gain, we're going to install some aesthetically-pleasing custom-made awnings over each of the 5 south-facing windows. A friend of ours is very good with metal fabrication and has agreed to make the custom brackets. And we plan to make custom cedar slats, stained to match our deck for the sun-shade part. It'll be quite a bit of work, but it'll really add value to the house (looks nice and cuts down on cooling costs).
We'll install a screen door on the front of the house, so we can open the front and back doors for a nice cross-breeze without letting in a ton of bugs.

Other things we plan on doing include more compact fluorescent bulbs, maybe getting a more-efficient fridge, and putting our "phantom loads" on a power bar.

Lots to do, lots to do...

Cheers,
Grant

2007-04-19T13:13:00.000-04:00

Le Tour Nortel

Every year, there's a bicycle tour called the Tour Nortel, which raises funds for CHEO and other good causes.

Each year, I've told myself I should do the tour and raise some money for the cause. Each year, I find some lame excuse for not doing it.

Well, now that I have a fancy-schmancy BionX PL-350 on my bike, I'm doing it! I signed up for the 70K tour. It should be challenging. ;-)

Please consider sponsoring me for this worthy cause.

Cheers,
Grant

2007-04-19T12:22:00.000-04:00

This weekend is the annual Eco-Stewardship Fair in Ottawa. Juergen Weichert will be showing off his e-bikes.

Everyone in the area should drop by and check it out. Here are the details from the web site:

Saturday April 21st, 2007
10:00 am – 4:00 pm
RA Centre – 2451 Riverside Drive (Curling Rink)

Cheers,
Grant

2007-04-19T11:19:00.000-04:00

Ebikes are fun!

Yeah, I know it's been a long time since we posted to the blog. Sorry about that. Now that spring is (finally) here, it's time to dust off the old blog and add some sustainable-living, eco-minded content.

Lately I've been obsessed with electric-assist bikes. My plan has been to upgrade my Raleigh mountain bike by turning it into a commuting hybrid-style bike, with an assistance motor. The motor and battery are a BionX PL-350, sold and installed by a great guy, Juergen Weichert at Acclivity Solutions.

Today is a very happy day for me -- I rode to work for the first time on my electric-assist bike! I got 30 minutes of exercise, covering a route from Stittsville to the Oracle Kanata office.

The weather was excellent. The carefully-selected route minimized the amount of time I have to spend in heavy traffic, and was relatively efficient. It was nice to be out in the springtime air.

As I was pedaling along, I saw another cyclist (and he looked like he knew what he was doing), so I followed him. Good thing I did -- he showed me a better route for part of my journey. It was through a nice quiet sub-division, and away from the very busy main road I as expecting to take.

I feel great! I've always had a hard time convincing myself to get exercise for exercise's sake, so this is a great option. I can get exercise as part of my daily commute to work.

The plan is to increase the length of my route once I get strong enough, but I don't want to push it too hard at first. Laura will be the first one to say that I have a real tendency to overdo my exercise at first. ;-)

I'll post a few pics of the bike once I get it cleaned up (I got it very muddy riding around in the rain the last few days).

Cheers,
Grant

2006-08-08T15:58:00.000-04:00

Humming Along.

It's been a while since we updated the old blog. Quite a bit has been happening but we've not taken the time to note it all down Here's an attempt to recitfy that situation.

Things that have happened since the last blog update:

We visited family and friends in New Brunswick, and attended Laura's brother's wedding. It went well and was a very good time.

While there we walked a lot on the scenic path by the harbour. We found a strange sign to send to ZeFrank.

Came home and finished building the tractor for the meat birds and moved them into it. We've been dragging it around the yard a little bit every day.

(note the fancy skids!)

(Another view with the meat birds)

The place is definitely starting to look more rural. And that's a good thing!

We made good progress on putting in raised beds for the garden. There's still more to do, but the important stuff is planted and the beds will be set for next year.

Our cousin Jim put together a custom panorama head for our tripod and camera. Very soon we'll post a cool panorama picture or two, so you can get the feel for "being there". :-)

Shortly after our last posting about the eggs we were getting from Priscilla, she decided to go broody. :-( So of course she wasn't laying at all, and we had to pull her out of the coop each day to get her to have some food and water and move around. She seems to have finally come out of her broody-ness. She's out and about with the rest of the birds, so maybe she'll start laying again soon.

I did a minor tune-up on our Airens lawn tractor. This doesn't sound like much, but it's a big deal to me because I've never been much of a mechanic. Usually I'm of the "break it and pay to have it fixed" school, so this was a revelation for me. :-)

A while ago we had our neighbour come over with his tractor and dig a big hole, which was to become a fishpond. Once we looked into it, we decided it would just be too damn expensive to make, so he came over and filled the hole in. ;-) I'm going to rake it a bit more flat and throw some grass seed on it, and eventually you'll never know it was there.

We've had rainbarrels for a quite while now and I've been meaning to install taps into them so we can more easily fill the watering cans and stuff. I finally started doing that, as you can see here. I've still got one more to install and then I need to build stands for the barrels, so they'll be up in the air a bit.

Last fall I chopped down some crappy scrub trees in the side yard. A couple of weekends ago I helped my neighbour use a big wood chipper on a bunch of branches and trees on his property. As a payment, be brought the chipper over and chipped up the stuff I had cut. We dumped it onto a tarp, and I'll drag that over to the garden, to be used as mulch between the rows.

I learned the proper techniques for slaughtering and preparing a chicken. One of our turkens wasn't doing well (it had leg problems, and was having a hard time getting to the water and food), so we decided to cull him. Thanks to our neighbour, the process went smoothly and I learned the right things to do. We now have a small chicken in our fridge, ready for the BBQ. Now I feel I'm prepared for the bulk processing of the rest of the meat birds in the fall.

Again, thanks to my neighbour, we now have a universal string head installed on our weed-whacker. The bump-n-go systems never really work well, and I had lost the reel part that contains the string. So I bought a universal head from Lee Valley and Terry showed me how it all comes apart and goes together. It was very educational. The only downside is that now I don't have an excuse to avoid doing the weed-whacking. ;-)

Started a new flower bed at the end of our laneway. The plan is to put in a few plants and shrubs, and a tree (or two?) that will eventually provide a bit of shade for the house, which gets very hot in the summer. (We'll do a posting on energy efficiency soon, where we'll talk about the house's total disregard for the huge number of BTUs being pumped into it by the sun in the summer).

Things we have planned for the near future:

Put the landscaping cloth on the raised beds. I've been cutting up clothes hangers with my angle grinder, to be used as landscaping cloth pins. We might even be able to plant a few late-season things. I'll leave that part to Laura. ;-)
Finish tapping the rain barrels and building their stands. This will make watering the various things easier.
Rent a trencher and bury 200ft of garden hose, out to the chicken coop and garden. The coop has an auto-waterer (what a wonderful invention) and we've just got the hose laying across the driveway. I want to clean that up by burying the hose. While we have the trencher, I want to run a line out to the garden, so watering it isn't such a huge chore.
We're going to expand our chicken coop and run a little bit, to give us a bit more room to segregate the birds for breeding purposes.

Things we plan on doing in the medium future:

Hang a new screen door on the front of the house, to encourage cross-breezes.
Paint the garage door.
Sand and stain the deck and railings.
After it cools off a bit, re-roof the south-east side of the house. We did the south-west side a couple of summers ago, and now it's time to do the other side. The whole north side is fine, though.

2006-06-08T09:11:00.000-04:00

First eggs

Priscilla started to lay last week and managed an beautiful hard-shelled little cream-coloured a day until yesterday. These wonderful little eggs are mostly a yolk the same size as a small standard chicken egg. The yolks a a brilliant orange.

Here they are shown with large brown store bought eggs.

It was such a surprise to find them. I had stopped checking for any and on a day last week I went in to clean and fill the indoor waterer and there were four eggs sitting tidily at the door in a shallow nest.

Elvis is now crowing regularly in the morning. He's a handsome boy. The iridescence is developing on his check jowls.

Here is Rembrandt our 7wk old Welsummer cockeral. He's turning out quite handsome too. Currently Horus is winning the dominance thing I think but soon Rem will out weigh him by quite a bit.

Here are two of the Black Stars looking for treats at my feet. The on on my feet has the most gold and one of her sisters in the back is showing an increasing irridescence in her feathers. They're 8wks now.

Here are Isis and immediately behind her Nephthys. I'm hoping that Nephthys is her sister because 'she' is nearly as red in the comb as the two known roos. It won't be long before we know for sure. It'll be quite a disappointment if she is.

2006-05-20T18:48:00.000-04:00

Chick Watching

I was just sitting out in the coop, which is currently divided nearly in two with chicken wire. The silkies and me on one side and my three and four week olds on the other. Their personalities (and maybe breed atributes) are more obvious than ever.

The three Ameraucanas are very active and are frequently seen chasing each other other around. It almost always is one of them that will run off with a peice of sod and the others will chase. Horus (for he has the eye of Ra) the little roo was brazen from the start and continues to be, but he seems good natured so far. Isis has lost the ladybug marking on her back now that she is mostly feathered out, but the little tiara-like glyph on her head is still discernable.

Day, the ISA Brown, was the first to be the most curious about me and now the little brown Ameraucana, Nephthys, also steps right up as soon as my hand appears. You can see Day and the make-shift feeder in the foreground. The two Welsummers are in the back.

I think I can now distinguish between the male and female Welsummers. The male I think has the bigger comb and his feathers have developed an almost partridge look to them. By contrast the other's body is now nearly uniformly brown and has just a hint of a comb. She tends to be a little shier and he is usually part of the crush trying to get to oatmeal from my palm.

The Black Stars are all now decidely hen like, but it's the little Buff Orp, Charlotte (after Miss Lucas who went into Kent) who has learned first to sleep with her head under her wing.

2006-05-13T20:27:00.000-04:00

The chicks at four and five weeks

I've meaning to post chick pics quite a while, but life been busy. Still it's no excuse for forgetting my mom's birthday. Sorry Mom!

Here are the chicks as they were on the 11th. Notice the bronze breast feathers on the Black Star in the middleground. That's the Buff Orpington in the fore and Horus the Ameraucana roo-to-be in the background. The light Ameraucana hen-to-be is on the end with the Cleopatra eye.

This is a pic for comparison of the light Amerauraca and Horus at 5 days or so old. I like the ladybug on her back and the glyph on her head.

Here is another size comparison group, a Welsummer at five das or so and at about two weeks. I've spread her wing to show the feather growth. Both pics are a bit blurry.

This is Day (short for Daylight as my littlest nieghbour named their matching swap NightLight) at four weeks. She's looking quite ratty at the moment with her brown feathers coming in all patchy. And this was her at 12 days.

This is one of the Black Stars. She's now bigger than a Starling, but not quite Crow sized. This is one of the smaller of the five. She is just getting her first bronze feathers.

Here is the brown Ameraucana. You can really see the fluffy cheeks. In the last day or two longer fluffy neck feathers have developed one the light coloured one.

More chick pics will happen on Friday when we get our batch of roo chicks we're raising as meat birds.

2006-05-12T11:31:00.000-04:00

More coop construction

The coop is looking pretty good now. The chickens are in and seem to be living comfortably, and we've been working on building a run for them. Initially Laura had built a temporary run out of a few posts and some chicken wire, so she could work inside the coop without disturbing Elvis and Priscilla.

First off, here's a picture of the construction site. The weather has really warmed up, which is nice but it brings hordes of black flies with it.

I asked our neighbour Terry to come over with his tractor and post-hole auger, which made life much easier. We put in posts for two gates and the corners of the chicken run. I also dug a trench so the wire fencing can be buried a few inches.

Next up, Mom helped me put up the posts for the gates and corners. We had some pressure treated 6x6 posts left over after building our deck, so we just used them.

Then Laura and I put up the fencing.

While Laura filled in the trench, I built the front and back gates.

And here's a picture of Elvis and Priscilla in their new home!

2006-05-05T09:31:00.000-04:00

Elvis and Priscilla are in their new home!

Over the last few days, we've made good progress on the coop:
* put up the rest of the interior sheeting
* built a rooster box and closed it in
* built the chicken ramps and the human door, including hinges and latches
* covered a broken window (d'oh!)
* tacked down plastic on the foor

and last but not least,

* Brought Elvis and Priscilla over to their new home!

We got the coop "done enough" late last night (we had to bring out a light for the last work items -- good thing we ran a heavy-duty extension cord out there). Then we emptied the wheelbarrow and dug out our big cat carrier. Then off we trundled to our neighbour's house for a late-night chicken abduction. ;-)

We put down the bedding, got the food and water ready, then opened the carrier. The chickens showed absolutely no interest in getting out of the carrier! So we just lef them there.

This morning we peeked in on them and they were strutting around like they owned the place.

Today Laura plans on putting in some fencing, so Elvis and Priscilla can go outside. We also have a few pictures, so we'll put up another blog posting later.

Grant

2006-05-01T09:01:00.000-04:00

More chicken coop progress.

But not enough!

Sunday was a "good progress" day. I started working on the chicken coop at about 10:30. I put screening in over the windows and then installed the windows on hinges. I tried to put insulation in the ceiling, but that's a two-person job. So I started building the door. I also drilled a hole for the extension cord, for the lights/heat lamp.

We're getting there! A couple more evenings and we'll be done! Laura and I finished putting the insulation in the roof and put the vapour barrier up. Then we started putting up the sheeting inside, until it got so dark that we couldn't see to nail anymore. ;-)

I took some pictures but they're still in the camera. I'll put them up in a day or so.

Tonight is the first game of the Nortel Golf League! I'm very excited, but in a way I wish it didn't start till next week. I want to finish the coop as fast as possible because Laura wants to get Elvis and Priscilla out of the neighbour's coop/horse stall, and I want to get the chick brooder out of the spare room (they're really starting to stink).

I think it'll be a couple of days and then we'll be able to get the chickens in their new home. What's left to do:

finish the interior sheeting,

build the door and chicken ramps,

then hang the brooder boxes and a few roosts, and finally

put up the fencing.

Once that's all done, we should be able to bring over Elvis and Priscilla, and hopefully put the brooder out there as well.

The chicks are getting bigger and the spend less time huddled under the heat lamp now. We picked up another small batch of 6 chicks on Friday. They're various types. I'll leave the description of the chicks for Laura in another post.

Grant

2006-04-21T18:10:00.000-04:00

Our neighbour's chick coop

The first chick has already been named, introducing Nightlight and her ISA Brown coopmates.

This is the namer with a Brown chick. I like the jaunty black marks on their heads.

This is the best coop. This used playpen previously served as a sheltie crate before it turned coop last year for a batch of 25 Cornish crosses. I really like the fact that it folds up and there aren't any rough or hard edges near the chicks.

2006-04-21T15:07:00.000-04:00

The first batch of chicks are here!

They're five Black Stars (Black Sex Links) and one ISA Brown. The last was because my neighbour and I swapped a chick, so she has 11 Browns with a Black Star. She looked very cute amongst the yellow fluff. I'll have to get a picture of them too.

They ended up all together for the first few hours as we didn't get the chick coop together in time. An hour or so later I had it finished, then went and collected my group.

They are very active just crashing for little power naps here and there. I've uploaded a short video in raw mov format.

2006-04-17T08:57:00.000-04:00

Chicken coop progress

This Easter weekend was a busy one. We made good progress on the chicken coop, and had a bunch of people over for a BBQ party. The weather was gorgeous -- warm but not too hot, sunny, and NO bugs!

On Friday, I got the windows framed in and the back wall plywood put up before the people starting arriving for the party.

Then we had a BBQ party. It was the perfect time of year - the bugs weren't bad and it was warm enough to spend a lot of time on the deck.

Saturday was spent picking up materials and things, so no progress was made on the coop.

On Sunday, we put the remainder of the wall sheeting up:

And then the roof went on:

Here's the chicken-cam view:

Laura working on the roof:

And the roof is on and the tools are being put away:

So all in all, it was a great Easter weekend. We had fun, made good progress on the coop, and got some exercise and fresh air.

Here's another neat thing I've been meaning to mention for some time. Laura's Mom was once in a movie called "In Her Defense" as a courtroom artist. This movie didn't do well at the box office, and it's been very hard to find. Laura and I wanted to get the movie just to see her Mom on the screen. So thanks be to the Internet, we finally got the movie. Here's proof:

< class="MsoNormal">Of course, it wouldn't be a "proper" blog posting without cute pictures of the cat, so...

2006-04-11T10:40:00.000-04:00

So, what is the Drawlyn anyway?

The Drawlyn is a mountain (more of a hill, really) in rural New Brunswick, Canada. It's where my family (the Tottens) hail from. There are various spellings of the name, but we've settled on this one for our blog and web site.

The nearest "community" to my family property would be Hardingville. According to the "Community Place Names in New Brunswick, Canada: Robert F. Fellows", it is a:

Settlement, 5 mi. S of Upham and 4 mi. SE of Barnesville, on road to Barnesville: Saint Martins Parish, Saint John County: first called Ryan Settlement for John, Thomas and Michael Ryan who were settlers: renamed when post office was created: PO Hardingville 1878-1909 with V. Harding as postmaster: in 1898 Hardingville was a farming and lumbering settlement with 1 post office, 1 store, 2 sawmills, 1 church and a population of 150: today it is a dispersed community.

Note the "dispersed community" comment. There's pretty much nothing there now.

If you use Google Earth (extremely cool program, by the way), then you can load this KMZ file. It will show you were Hardingville, the Red Bridge and the ruins of the Hardingville church are. Unfortunately it's in a low-resolution area, but at least it gives you a basic idea of where the property is.

There used to be a railway called the St Martins and Upham railway. It ran until 1940. I emailed with someone a couple of years ago who had made a scale model train setup that preserved that piece of history. I can't find him online, but I suspect he's a member of the Saint John Society of Model Railroaders. Note: If this describes you, please get in touch with me -- I'd like to meet up with you and take a look at your layout!

We've been into researching family history for quite a while. Laura has even put up a Tottens On The Drawlyn family-history site. Feel free to check it out.

I'll save the question of "Why do we want to get back to the Drawlyn?" for another posting.

2006-04-10T21:10:00.000-04:00

Building a home for the hens.

As Laura mentioned in a previous post, we're starting small. We're getting a few chickens and are now building homes for them. The coop is going to be for the layers, and we'll be building an "ark" or "tractor" for the meat birds. Researching on the internet, we learned that there seems to be a million designs for these buildings. It's going to be a basic coop with a couple of windows for light and ventilation, and insulated with straw. Having never built anything more fancy than railings for our deck, this has been a fun challenge.

Each construction project has to start with some serious quality time with coffee and the cats on the deck.

First, we built a basic platform in the yard.

And Angel helped.

We then cleared the site and gave it a stable patio-stone base. As you can see, we will also need to do some roofing work this year. The poor old shed is slowly sinking into the ground.

After much measuring, cutting, nailing and cursing, we've got a basic structure up. Well, actually not a lot of measuring.

Next up: pick up a few windows from a friend and frame them in. Once the windows are in, we can finish the framing, put a roof on it, insulated walls and make a door. The weather is supposed to be nice this week, so we hope to make lots of progress in the evenings after I get home from work.

After we get the coop finished, we need to get moving on building the tractor for the meat birds.

Maybe something like this:
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/Teacher Help.htm
Or something a bit smaller and easier to move: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/Chicken Tractors2.htm

or http://www2.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/fowl/tractor.htm

Here's a nice little how-to page: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~nfantasi/ChickenTractorproj.htm

Kablooie!!!

2006-04-01T12:49:00.000-05:00

Seedlings! Already little green bits are poking through starter mix. This is Russian Tarragon on the right. It’s taste has grown on me the last few years. I’ve already a well-established bunch in the herb garden but it’s not enough to keep up with the demand. Last year was the first time I hadn’t supplemented it with a pot of the French variety (an annual in my climate).

Beside it is one of the decorative grasses, Purple Majesty Millet, that I thought I’d try this year. I’m putting it on the south side of the deck along with some Pampas Grass. It’ll be a nice pretty addition there during the fall and winter.

Also sprouting but not above the surface yet are the Yard Long Beans I bought last year. I was very happy to see they were still viable.

Other new things being sprouted include, Dwarf Marigolds for companion planting and artichokes.

2006-03-31T15:15:00.000-05:00

It is continuing to be weird weather wise around here (thus the crocuses are already in full bloom) so it's likely the coop will be up this weekend provided it doesn't rain the whole weekend. That is if I don't change the plans for it yet again. I so wanted a strawbale coop with an earthen floor! But since we have to build it so early in the spring I'm just happy that we have enough scrap wood that we didn't need to buy many things for it.

Also last weekend my dear man finished the seedling stand I had hoped to have up and in use before this. It's not too pretty but it is serving well not only for it's original purpose but also as a kitty bed (For more Angelkitten cuteness go to the Early Spring Flowers post at Coffeeshop Correspondent.) I still need to trim the plastic sheeting but that should be accomplished today.

2006-03-22T12:23:00.000-05:00

Starting Small

Well we had to start somewhere and chickens are usually the recommended starting livestock, so last week we ordered our first laying hens, Black Stars (Black Sex Links). They’ll be arriving on the 21^st of April. We originally thought we would hold off on animals until we finally moved home, but as that now looks further off than we had hoped we decided that we’d do some training so that we would be ready for a larger operation once we make it back to the Drawlyn.

Our neighbours across the way decided to try chickens last year. They started with summering a flock of 25 meat birds and did very well with them. We decided to follow suit this year but wanted to leap into layers as well. I still have misgivings about these hybrid neat birds though. I can’t help but think it’s fundamentally wrong to create a creature that will be helpless in it’s maturity even if it is destined for slaughter. So I have to admit that it’s likely we won't be getting the hybrids like I planned and getting a slower growing bird for a fall slaughter.

Ethics are a good reason to change plans, but is cuteness?

This is Elvis and Priscilla a Silkie pair we bought at the McDonald Corners auction last weekend. We hadn’t intended to buy anything just wanted to experience a small livestock auction., then I fell prey to the cuteness of a pair of Sultans. Unfortunately the Sultans and Silkies were going over the price I was willing to pay. Then in one of the last lots was a pair of Silkies and since the place was emptying out they went for a good price.

The two are quite charming and silly. The little roo struts like a rockstar despite his foofy silky coat and his red bubble hat. He has quite the groupie in Priscilla as she follows him everywhere. She isn’t put off by his dirty head feathers (I’m waiting until they’ve settled a bit before stressing him out by cleaning them.

This is Priscilla scratching with her feathery feet. She’s quite a bit braver than Elvis and will happily take greens from my hands until the roo gets agitated, then she runs back to coo over him. He’s a quite spoiled by her.

They are currently residing in an empty pony stall across the street in our neighbour’s stable. There their nights are warmed a bit by quarter horse and a pony. They will be tenanting there a while since the coop isn’t built yet and we still have frozen ground topped by a half foot of snow. This wasn’t originally a problem as of main layers were ordered as chicks and they won’t be here until the end of April. We were just going to use the tractor until we had the garden reading then we had planned to build the permanent layer coop. Cuteness foiled this plan. So yesterday I hacked together a new coop plan and hopefully the warm weather we had all winter will come back to us and we can get started.

These are the other small stable residents, Sunshine and Lucky, bought buy our neighbours at the same auction for their two girls.

2006-03-20T11:25:00.000-05:00

Posted by: Grant

Hello and welcome to our blog. I guess a brief introduction would be in order. We (Grant and Laura) are interested in sustainable living, homesteading and eventually moving back to the family property in New Brunswick. It's up a small mountain (large hill, really) called The Drawlyn.

The property is 160 acres of scrub land out at the end of a barely-navigable road with no services. We used to have a camp there back when I was a kid. Note the use of the word "camp", rather than "cottage". ;-) It was pretty rough. I'll ask Mom if she has any pictures of the camp (of course, it's long gone now) and we'll put them up.

Anyway, the idea is to use this blog as a place to put down our thoughts and plans, to explore the sustainable lifestyle, and to determine if we could really make a go of it out there in the woods. :-)

We'll post more, shortly.

Grant