Almost Spring!

Pilger waits in the ice of Picton Harbour. I had forgotten to bring my trusty camera on the day it snowed, hence I missed the shot of coyote tracks going up to the stern and leaving a wee yellow spot. Judging by the other sets of prints, some two-legged boot-wearer came for a close up.

The second picture is of a coyote in our back yard, he/she was just standing there, waiting for Robbie to come out to "play". Quite a big dog.

Anyhow, we are spending our days doing all kinds of interesting things. In our garden musings, for t'is the season, we have decided to see if a Seedy Saturday would take hold in Picton. Seedy Saturday is the brain-child of an organization called Seeds of Diversity, see www.seeds.ca . They promote home gardening and seeds saving. The website is a great one one, full of info on cultivars, heritage varieties, gardening info and , of course, a full listing of Seedy Events near you! At a SS you would bring seeds you have saved from your own garden, or one that you helped along, and swap some of yours for someone elses of a different variety. Being our first year, most attendees will not have any of their own seeds, so they may help themselves to some some of ours, to get the ball rolling for nest year. There will be a talks given by the Pro's, addressing certain gardening topics, including composting, actual seed saving and possible treatments of certain species, say some who knows a whole lot about every variety of tomato known to mankind. More updates later!

We have gathered an interested crowd to help and possibly take charge in the coming years. We do believe that as many as are able should grow food for themselves. The quality and nutrition level of home-grown veggies has simply got to be better than stuff shipped from afar. If you save your own seeds, you will be protected from possible rising costs of foodstuffs.

The time is also right for a knitting club in Picton. How does "Wednesday nights at RoseHaven Farm Store, 7pm" sound? Maybe every other Wed. night.

Some things you can't Prorogue!

Snow. Sunrise. Dogs Who Pee. You can't stop any of these things. Can't bend the sun to fit your will. Can't fire snow. And if ya try to deny a dog his morning whizz, you'll find a wet spot in the house. But if you are just a power-hungry, sweep-whatever-under-the-rug kinda guy, you could try. I think those that lived with you would notice, though. The wet spot would start to smell. We would notice you chanting at the sun and snow, and think you were up to something.
Maybe you would say to yourself, "Maybe those I live with won't care. Maybe the wet spot will be 'under their radar' ". Do you really think they won't notice?
Mr. Harper, do you really think we don't care about what the Geneva Convention states regarding the treatment of prisoners? Are we supposed to forget all about how they were hauled off to face torture simply because you have shut-down shop for a while?? I'm afraid March won't be far enough away to strip our memories of the few but important statements made by Richard Colvin. And shame on you for saying that we don't care. Now you are hiding out in The House. God only knows what you will actually get up to.
I don't often rant on about politics, it rarely gets all up-in-your-face. This time, the Right Honorable Prime Minister has lied about what we canadians think of the Afghan Detainee mistreatment and is trying to sweep it under the rug. I say it's time to air the rugs and find out what is really going on in that great big House.
Find the Email address to you local MP and tell that MP how you feel!
In the meantime, I hope you have a happy New Year, enjoy those around you and make big plans!

The Good Life

The weather has been lovely this past week, with continuing lovely for three more days. Maybe another week. Calling for rain on Friday, but you never know, the forecast seems to change all the time. Except right now. It is decidedly lovely. The sunrises and sunsets have been spectacular. I saw a beautiful shawl I would like to knit in yesterday's sunrise. Maybe I should learn to handpaint yarn, like some uber-cool people I know. I am wearing a sweater that my mum created over 25 years ago. She carded teal & undyed white roving, then knitted it into a sea of moving colour. It might as well be handpainted yarn! The Seven Siblings are pretty lucky to be swaddled in such knitted garments.

I am currently knitting away at some Christmas goodies, and seeing how my kids don't read this blog, I could tell you what's on the needles. But that would be presumptuous. Last year, I gave Renee a dark-coloured cowl with matching wrist-lets. Perhaps I designed the cowl to be a bit too deep set, as you couldn't see her face when she tried it on. When her colleages at work saw her approaching, there was a low "Ooh, here comes Death!"

So, yes, The Good Life! Lots of sun means lots of electricity, which means we can use our bread-maker. I love the bread-maker! Uses less power than an oven, no dough-bowl to clean up. Heck, I don't even wash the measuring cups, I dust them out then put them away. Lots of sun means a warm house with no wood fire. So I fill up my solar heated shower bag and wash my hair. Takes less than a half hour to dry it in the sun. Lots of sun helps with many things, especially our moods. And lettuce! Jim is growing some Grand Rapids leaf lettuce in a big old planter we scooped from the dump.

They say that little things amuse little minds, and I guess They are right. I am a simple person, or at least I hope I am. I live on a very, very small amount of money, especially when our annual paycheck starts to run thin in November, but that makes life simple too. We see just as many chickadees as anyone else. Even more when Robbie flushes them out to play a game of tag.

This simple life started when we, Jim and I, decided to maintain the lifestyle of cruising sailors that we began three years ago. Three years with no fridge, no mortgage and no credit debt. God has seen fit to keep us healthy, although I just recuperated from the dreaded H1N1 virus, I did OK. I'll have you know that the ale Jim brews keeps at a decent 66 degrees while being aged in our Secret Beer Locker (under the bed, sitting on the cement floor), and Chardonnay tastes great at this temperature as well! The only thing I miss is having ice cream in the house. But if that's the only thing, then having a reduced carbon footprint is most certainly worth it.

For those interested in how the wind-generator is doing, it seems to work just fine, although we thought we had stronger prevailing breezes that what we are actually getting. My advice is to get/borrow a wind speed measuring device and measure your prevailing breeze. The package instructions say that it will start generate power at 6 moiles/hour, but we have found that it is closer to 10. Also, we installed lighter guage wire that what was called for, so that could be impairing the output. Anyone got 50 feet of wire greater than 10/3?

Is That a Nose-Cone, Or Are Yuh Happy To See Me?!

After a rather dull November last year, we decided that we needed a bit more juice to have more light after 4:30 in the long winter evenings. So here's our solution: a funny hat party!
Good thing he didn't try this party-trick with the cookstove!
Seriously, we went to Canadian Tire and bought the wind generator we scoped out last year. 400 watts! We then went to Rona and found some fence-post and "fixin's", some 10/3 wire and some guy-wire. The previous day we chopped down a handy-looking juniper. We put it all together,

Plugged it in...

And Tah-Dah! Installed us a wind generator!

We spent most of this morning smushed up against the front-door window, gazing at our newest thing. Arms around each other's waists, we gloated in the prospects of possibly hosting SAD light parties, perhaps even get our own mirror-ball for those awkward silences at dinner parties. We'd be the life of the whole county! Then we'd open up the electrical closet door, thus smushing even smushier, and watch the digital display of juice coming in...neat-o! This will certainly help us through the short solar days, as we can now power-up both day and night, as long as the wind blows.

..and Speaking of Big Steel Things!

This is our Waterford Stanley Cookstove. May I add a couple of !!!! to that? Our friends, The Family Atkinson of Merrickville, had this puppy in their old Ontario farmhouse. They had come to visit our Mini House this summer and as Papa was looking around he mused out loud how well the wee cookstove would function in the wee house. Only being slow on some things, I said "Yes, Please!".

So on the way home from another fantastic Thanksgiving meal chez Danielle in Ottawa, we stopped by the Atkinsons and shoved the thing in! If you look closely, you can see all the air squeezed out of the foam in the back seat! We learned from the website that it weighs 500lbs! I could smell something burning as we stopped to pull Robbie out of the corner he jammed himself into. But the Atkinson's said a prayer (a rather serious one, as I recall) for a safe journey home, so nous violas!

We went to visit a welder here in the County, said making up some skoocum legs wouldn't be a problem. Jim had retrieved two beatiful cast steel BBQ grates from our local Walmart (the dump), so he cut them to size and they look great! One pot of stove-blacking went a long way, and one tub of fire-box cement will help. Won't be able to fire it up until we install the legs, so I'll letcha know ASAP.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on the feasters!

We are recuperating from turkey, mashed potatoes, baked squash, cranberry sauce and dressing made with Hot Italian Sausage. Go Danielle!

Here we go again!

We found Pilger in Iroquois Boatyard, with thanks to Gratton Sheely. She needed her lid put on, her new bronze ports installed, some rot at the prop/shaft area attended to and various other things done to get her sea-worthy. Not being absolute perfectionists, we thought we would do the interior later. So you get no pictures of her interior! No, we thought we would...

finish painting her and just drop her right in!

Ta dah!

She didn't seem to mind!

Up went the masts,


On went the sails (only took three days for that!) By the way, this is our new friend Kate helping to hoist the fore sail. And yes, Pilger is a Chinese Junk Rig. Also called lug rig by the Brits, but the Asians got them first. Designed by a Mr. Colvin, her model name is a Gazelle.





Piled in the dog and away we went!

So! We have another boat! To make a long story short, we came, we saw, we bought. No one has ever needed more of an explanation! We took four beautiful days to drive her to Picton Harbour via Kingston, Deadman's Cove and Prenyear's Cove. Day One we made average 6 knots over the ground with main & fore sails. Wow! Day two we ran wing and wing (or wing and wong, as dubbed by Annie Hill, fellow junk-rig enthusiast) over flat water and still averaged 4.5-5 knots. Wow! Came into kingston in very light wind and still made pretty good way. I love this rig! Quick to get the sails up, the sails tack by themselves, no reefs to tie when the wind pipes up, you merely drop a panel. The only difficult thing about her is that it was hard to decide to not keep going!

Robin and Kate joined us for this trip, very helpful and able crew. They taught us more about Vegan cuisine and I taught Kate to crotchet! They are staying at our place for a few days, our first Couch-Surfers, and it's been fun showing them around Picton.

So we have decided to stay home for the winter and make plans to cruise in the spring. Out the St. Lawrence maybe.

Now I'm going home to sleep!

How Does One "Chill" in August?

Chill at the beach, get a breeze in your hair or sit in a shady garden. All of my favorite sports!