Framboise Manor

an inventory of our herb seed

2012-03-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

although it is nowhere near time to start any seeds, i thought i would do an inventory of our seeds here on the blog for future reference and to get ready for starting our seeds in the next few weeks. jambaloney is going to build us an access database so that i can sort through and return report metrics on our seeds, but he has just been too busy with other stuff. however, we both realize that if we are going to do this "homestead" thing and try to grow as much of our own food as possible - then the happpy-go-lucky manner in which we used to garden back in the city will have to change. of course, i will keep hardcopies of our inventory as well!

oh and a nifty thing about the Manor? the previous owner appears to have been very interested in herbology - he left 3 big binders full of hand-written notes about different herbs, their use for a variety of ailments, and how best to take each one: tea, infusion, in food or topically. as i have been interested in herbology for years, i was quite pleased by this find! he also planted several herbs like chives and rosemary - both of which were thriving last summer. the only problem is that they self-seeded all over the front lawn!!! i, of course, saved seed from both herbs as the chives were to die for and the rosemary too! i will be digging up both from the lawn and moving them to a more appropriate place this spring. regardless, i have bags of saved seed from them to last several lifetimes!!!

in addition to that - we have naturally-occurring medicinal herbs growing wild and all over the place here - such as St. John's Wort, Heal All and Evening of Primrose!!! Can you believe that?!?!?! so of course, we have bags of dried flowers from all of these, as well as saved seeds from each.

for now i am inventorying our herb seed. a lot of these herbs will self-seed and come back once established, but i still think it is important to have extra seed on hand to share and trade. i think being able to grow your own food is an incredibly necessary skill to have if SHTF - but i think that it is an essential skill to be able to save seed from that food that you grow to be able to provide for yourself, and others, in the future, if S really does HTF!

oh and one last thing - all of our seeds are certified organic and GMO-free!

Herbs:

AMARANTH: hopi red dye, polish, elephant head

ANISE HYSSOP

BASIL: low growing lemon, purple ruffles, sweet, greek, italian large leef

BEE BALM: panorama

BORAGE: blue, white

CALENDULA

CATNIP

CHAMMOMILE: german

CHICORY

CHIVES: regular, and seed saved from the ones that were already growing here

CILANTRO/CORIANDER: calypso, confetti

CLOVER: red and naturally-occurring

COMFREY

CONEFLOWER: narrow-leaved and from seed saved 2 yrs ago

CORNFLOWER: persian

COWSLIP

CRYSANTHEMUM: edible shungiku

CUMIN: black

DANDELION: naturally-occurring

DILL

FENNEL: florence

FEVERFEW: flore pleno

FLAX: scarlet

FOXGLOVE: common, large yellow

GYPSYWORT

HEAL ALL: naturally-occuring

HOREHOUND

LAMB'S QUARTERS: good king henry and naturally-occurring

LAVENDER: hidcote blue, lady, butterflies

LEMON BALM: common and from seed saved 2yrs ago

LEMON GRASS

MARJORAM: sweet

MARSHMALLOW

MINT

MUSTARD: yellow

MYRRH

NASTURTIUM: strawberry cream, whirlybird, alaska, empress of india

OREGANO: vulare, greek

PARSLEY: champion curled, italian

POPPY: field

PRIMROSE

QUEEN ANNE'S LACE: naturally-occuring

ROSEMARY

SAGE: garden, white, painted

SAVOURY: summer, winter

STEVIA

ST. JOHN'S WORT

TARRAGON: russian

THISTLE: milk

THYME: summer, magic carpet, english

VALERIAN

VERVAIN

WOOD BETONY

YARROW: naturally-occurring

well that's the list of our herb seed. i am still on the lookout for bergamot, sumac and sorrel. i am going to ask jambaloney's mom to get me some sumac - it grows all over ontario but not here in cape breton.

next up will be an inventory of our vegetable and fruit seed.

potstickers, lunacy and snow angels

2012-03-01T10:24:00.005-04:00

the last week of february 2012 will, from now on, forever be remembered here at the Manor as the week of "potstickers". poor jambaloney!!! we both love all kinds of asian food and back in the city had access to a variety of asian markets and restaurants where we could have our fill. here in cape breton, the asian section at our grocery store is one little shelf with a few bags of rice on it!

anyway, jambaloney went into town last week to pick up some groceries and supplies. being the dutiful wife, i stayed at the Manor, tended to the animals (2 sleeping cats) and spring-cleaned the house from top to bottom. i am a good wife like that. NOT! i got on the internet and checked out my favourite daily read blogs which includes a few recipe blogs (i did my daily chores after my daily read - teehee!). one of the blogs had a recipe for potstickers. i started drooling looking at the pics of the crispy, gooey pile of potstickers. so i sent jambaloney an email to his phone and asked him to look for dumpling wrappers. he searched high and low and finally found a package of 40 dumpling wrappers (dumpling wrappers is not and has never been on our list of "preps" so we don't have any. as you read below, you will see that has since been addressed!).

i scoured the internet for a variety of recipes for the potsticker stuffing and then combined them into my own kind of stuffing. i used ground beef, cabbage, carrot and green onion. i cooked the ground beef although the traditional way to make them is to put the ground meat in raw. once the meat was cooked, i shredded the cabbage, green onion and carrot and added it to the meat. i also dumped a nice helping of soya sauce and sesame oil into the mixture. it sure tasted good! i also made a dipping sauce of soya sauce, sesame oil, honey, a splash of apple cider vinegar, garlic, ginger and green onion - that dipping sauce is divine!

when jambaloney got home with the dumpling wrappers we made the potstickers and really enjoyed them. it was about an hour later when the crack in my brain occurred. i wanted more potstickers!!! so we made more. i had 4 more, jambaloney only wanted 2. for our evening snack, i had 3 more.

the next morning, jambaloney asked me what i wanted for breakfast. you guessed it - potstickers!!! at this point we had eaten half of the package and jambaloney did not want any more. i plowed through the remaining 20 potstickers over the next 2 days. and then ran out of wrappers! but i still wanted potstickers?!?!?! what to do??? i had never made the little wraps from scratch and because they are so thin, i worried that i wouldn't be able to make them. back to the internet to do some research. gather some recipes, all of which were pretty much the same AND looked really easy and VOILA! i have enough dough made for 40 more! and when you make them from scratch they taste even better!!! and we have all of the ingredients for making potstickers from scratch in our preps - woohoo! and now i am an obsessed lunatic making 3 or 4 potstickers every 2 hours. and dipping their crispy, little gooeyness into that delicious dipping sauce!

poor jambaloney! he knows not what to do with me except to let me do my thing and make potstickers. he says that he will never eat another one. i was hurt because my potstickers are the best i have ever tasted! he agreed. he loved them. he just isn't ever going to eat another one! which actually just means more for me - woohoo!

i don't know when this obsession with potstickers will end. i plan on going and making some more in a few.

in other news, our friend Max left a comment on our last post about making snow angels. i told him that we would as soon as the snow stopped. it stopped in the early evening and i said "c'mon jambaloney - we gotta go make snow angels for Max". he said "oh for the love of pete!" and started putting on his mitts and boots and coat. so we went out and made the snow angels but of course my sucky little camera did not get a very good pic even though i took several pics. this is the best one. we held hands while we did the angels. yes, it was freezing out. Max, your welcome buddy!

off to make more potstickers!

free stuff!!

2012-02-27T15:50:00.009-04:00

jambaloney here!

in october, we pitched in to install new windows and re-side the framboise firehall - it was quite an adventure and i learned how to put up the type of plastic siding we have @ framboise manor. it was a great 3 days and we all felt good about it. (in the pic below i am the guy in the blue t-shirt leaning on the truck in the foreground - waiting my turn on the scaffolding ;-)

the firetruck on the right has since been sent for scrap - it no longer worked and the community has raised quite a bit so far for a new one, we should have it by this spring/summer.

as we were working on the outside, we also cleaned up the inside of old equipment etc. i was able to score some pretty useful "junk" !! i am a big advocate of free stuff ESPECIALLY stuff that is going to be tossed out - one person's trash is someone else's treasure! NOBODY can deny the magnificence of the following haul:

here is about 50 feet of chain, chain is expensive, not this!!

here are some high quality pipe fittings:

oh, this is just a big roll of rubber firehose, only a hundred and one uses for that ;-)))

MORE firehose...rubber for irrigation projects and the cloth stuff to uses as strapping, lumber cradles, a canoe cradle down at the river... there are another 5 rolls of cloth hose under that tarp!!

this old gurney has 5" wheels and the highest quality aluminum frame.... kymber wants to suntan on it while i wheel her around but i think it will make a fine garden trolly!

these 4 cinder blocks are now keeping our new washer off the basement floor:

these are 2 10 foot sections of large diameter rubber fire-hose. i have to put in a 'quick and dirty' culvert under the back road this spring, these will be perfect!!!

this is an old stretcher which has some great brackets and hardwood rails on it for later use, and some rubber and asbestos gloves!!

these window casements are about 2 1/2 feet high and 5 feet wides, the glass is thick and they have screens.... i smell a green house!!

these windows didn't come from the fire-hall, i got them during last years large garbage pickup week... i'll find more this spring and will take the whole load, sand them, re-glaze as needed, paint them all white and start a second hand greenhouse!! can't wait!!

that's a pretty good amount of free stuff. you will see it re-appear in future posts as i put it all to good use this coming year!!

cheers all!!

winter is finally here!

2012-02-26T08:55:00.006-04:00

well it seems that winter, true and proper winter, has finally hit the Manor! we have been having a real mixed bag of weather for the past few days - wind, rain, wind, snow, wind, sunny, wind and more wind!!! there is only a bit of snow left on the ground as although it has been windy, it hasn't been too cold. but the snow that is left out there right now will probably freeze tonight as our temps are going down to -7C (22F) - brrrrrrr! we are supposed to have a cold spell until Thursday and then the temps will return to normal. there will be lots of home-made broth being made and lots of indoor chores getting done over the next few days. and lots of banshee-screeching will be heard for miles every time i get in and out of the hottub. so Duke, Stephen, 45er and JUGM - if you hear any banshee-screeching leave your weapons holstered - it's just me getting in or out - bahahahahah!

anyway, in other news, it looks like somebody took a stroll across the river the other day!

because the ice/snow had been melting for a few days, we can't tell if it is coyote or bobcat tracks. we always walk around our land and down to the river looking for tracks.

we haven't really seen any tracks - a bear cut across our road last winter but we haven't seen him again. and we have have seen a few coyote tracks at our compost but jambaloney scared them off - otherwise known as peeing around the compost regularly. he also pees at the top and bottom of the driveway, the top and bottom of the road and all around the perimeter of our cleared area. for anyone who has coyote problems - this is a nifty trick! because the cats sometimes think they are dogs, they have seen jambaloney do this and follow suit. although cats tend to do that anyway.

and lastly, here is a sight that always makes me happy - laundry blowing in the wind!

some interesting links

2012-02-22T12:30:00.003-04:00

i received an email from a friend who was interested in the free, online canning course that ScifiChick and i took together a few years ago. both SciFiChick and i found the course very easy and informative and although she is a canning and dehydrating fool, i haven't really done much canning since getting to the Manor. i am hoping that will change during this year's harvest - fingers crossed!

so here is the link to the National Centre for Home Preservation. scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says: Preserving Food At Home: A Self Study and click the registration button. once you fill out the registration form, you will receive an email with a login and can begin your course.

the other great link that i would like to share is Instructables.com. this link takes you to a page where you can learn how to make a greenhouse out of windows. if you look on the right-hand side of the page you will see other related instructables. there are tons of instructables on the site related to pretty much anything. play around with the topics or search for something specific.

i hope that some of you will enjoy one, or both, of these links!

anyway, it's laundry day here at the Manor. and yes, i really love my new washing machine!

For Little Bit!

2012-02-19T19:08:00.004-04:00

Little Bit is turning 7 today - woohoo! Happy Birthday Little Bit! i hope that you have a wonderful day with Nana and Papa!

love always, from your friend,
kymber
xox

how awesome!?!?!?!?!

2012-02-19T03:51:00.002-04:00

we love our friend E's two boys - M and N! we met M(23) at our first dance at the community hall and then a few dances later we met N (just turned 16 today)!!!! they are both really good boys/young men!

last weekend when we attended the Valentine's Dance, we saw M at the dance - i ran over to give him a big hug and he picked me right up off of the floor. everyone saw how i reacted to him and how he reacted to me - everyone knows that i love him! i hugged him for a good 15 minutes and he did not mind at all. M and his brother N have a reputation for being little criminals around here but such good boys i have never met!!! at the dance we learned that M is interested in bow hunting and is in the process of making his own bow. of course, we told him that jambaloney has several bows and many practice arrows and we told him that jambaloney would give him a bow, some practice arrows, and teach him how to use them. he is also interested in joining the military, so every time we see him at a dance he is full of questions for me. we told him that we would have him over and spend some time with him.

we called M yesterday but he was in the city about an hour or so away. so we took turns talking to his brother N. N told us that it was his birthday today. we told him that since he must have plans already that we would have him over on another day. he assured us that he didn't have plans and would love to come for a visit - on his 16th birthday?!??!?!? so we got up this morning and tidied up the Manor. i wanted to have food pre-made but jambaloney thought it better to make the food in front of M and N to see if they were interested - he was soooo right!

we called M and N this morning and they sounded so excited to be coming for a visit. they showed up at about 2 this afternoon - and what an awesome day we all had!!!! they are such good boys and so interested in just about anything!!! we all yakked and talked about everything, sharing stories and the like. we gave N a card that jambaloney had laying around...and we put some money in it. he was blown away. i explained that since we didn't know it was his birthday until the day before, we didn't have time to get him a proper gift. he didn't seem to mind. i slipped some money into M's pocket and he was all "you don't have to do that" and i was all "it's gas money!" and he just smiled.

we all made home-made, fresh salsa together and they licked the big bowl of salsa clean. they had never had fresh salsa, they had never made it or seen how easy it was to make and they loved it. both of them said that they didn't like tomatoes - you should have seen them licking up that salsa!!! then i made fresh guacamole and some more salsa for our fajitas - jambaloney took M out to the BBQ and showed him how to properly BBQ a steak and a chicken breast. when the steak and chicken was done they piled their wraps with waaaay tooo much chicken, steak, salsa and guacamole that they couldn't close their tortillas. the whole time they were eating they just kept saying "nom nom nom yum yum yum".

i told them how honoured we were to have them as guests. and both of them took turns telling us how happy they were to be our guests. they are lovely young men and i just wanted to eat them! they look at jambaloney like he is some kind of god. jambaloney gave M an old bow and some arrows and he gave N some stuff for his bike. it made my heart swell watching them talk to jambaloney! upon their arrival they both kissed and hugged me in a way that most boys would be embarrassed of. they kissed me and hugged me even more beautifully when they were leaving.

they were supposed to be at home at 5pm as their Mom, E, was having family over for N's birthday. their Mom phoned at about 5:15pm. i told her that they were having a good time and didn't quite want to leave just yet. she told me i could keep them as long as i wanted. i told her i wanted to keep them forever. they stayed until about 10:30 and then we sent them packing with all of their goods.

it was wonderful to watch them hug and kiss jambaloney without any embarrassment - they really love him - especially after he had given them things that they both were so excited about. i love that they ate food that they were not familiar with, fresh and healthy food, and they ate it like a young man and a young boy would. i love that it was N's 16th birthday and he wanted to be with us. i love that they were so interested in everything that we had to say about growing your own food and eating healthy. i love that they both hugged me and kissed me with abandon and M lifted me right off the floor. they both told me that they loved me.

does life get better than this?

i may never be able to give jambaloney a proper baby or child...but i will find sons for him. daughters are coming soon. i couldn't believe how they hung on to jambaloney's every word. they sooo look up to him. and he loves them as much as me!!!

when i spoke to their mother this evening, she thanked me. and jambaloney. she thanked us for taking such an interest in her boys. i thanked her back. for being such a good mother and raising such beautiful boys.

we had such an awesome day. and cemented our friendship with 2 dear friends. i can't wait to have them over again. i can't wait to watch their awe-filled faces as jambaloney takes them fishing in the canoe. i can't wait to see jambaloney all lit up like that again. he loves them. and they love him. and i love them all.

i can't wait.

still no staying snow!

2012-02-17T14:23:00.002-04:00

it's February 17th and still no staying snow - can you say woohoooooo?!?!?!?! anyway, just wanted to share the pretty blue sky with my friends Jennifer, Helga and Linda (Practical Parsimony).

i hope that you all have a fantastic day!

jambaloney's V-day gift

2012-02-16T14:21:00.006-04:00

before we get to jambaloney's V-day gift, i need to give you a little history. right from the moment that we first started dating, we were constantly buying each other little gifts. i have a penchant for faeries and bumblebees so anytime he saw something with a faery or bumblebee he would get it for me. he has a penchant for anything with a fish on it so whenever i saw anything with a fish i would get it for him. for the first few years that we were together we did this all the time. we also got each other birthday gifts, christmas gifts, valentine's gifts, etc. at the time i guess you could say we were still heavy consumers and hadn't made the change over to more simple living.

anyway, i was working 12-14 hour days every day for a long time. and i totally missed his birthday. even though it is only 7 days after mine. but i was so tired and so stressed at work and a walking zombie at home that i missed his birthday. i got up at 4:30 am on the day of his birthday and realized that i hadn't remembered to pick up a card or a gift. what on earth was i going to do?!?!?! too early to go shopping and as i had to be at work for 8am there wasn't much time to make something. and if i tried to throw something together, he would know that i had forgotten. so i decided to bite the bullet and be honest.

because that is when i remembered that we both love laughing. and we laugh at similar things.

i am very sentimental and have kept lots of things from my past. i still have my catechism scribbler with pictures of Jesus wearing red and looking like Santa - thank goodness it was in the house, not the basement, during the flood or i would have lost it. i had cards from when i was a little girl, hundreds of them - sadly, those were lost in the flood. but back when i forgot jambaloney's birthday, i still had them.

i carefully went through them and picked out the best for jambaloney's birthday. the card said "Happy Easter to a 6 year old girl". it was perfect! i simply scratched out easter and wrote "birthday" and then put a line through "to a 6 year old girl". inside the card, i simply scratched out what my Aunt E and Uncle R had written, and then wrote to jambaloney on the other side.

next up, i got a brown paper bag and filled it with all kinds of delights - a stapler, a used matchbook, 3 tacks, some fishing line, a cotton ball, a hersheys kiss and a few cat treats. perfect! then i tied the top of the bag with some fancy ribbon and waited until 6am to wake my man up for his birthday surprise.

needless to say - we both killed ourselves laughing over the card! to this day, whenever we feel it is appropriate, we say to each other "happy easter to a 6 year old girl". no one ever knows what we are talking about and we like it that way. as he reached into the bag and retrieved each individual item - we laughed harder. we laughed and laughed and he understood that the days had just gone by too fast for me and that i had completely missed his birthday.

this was a good thing as that is the time that we talked about having enough "little gifts" and did we really need more. that is the time that we started to consider becoming less into consumerism and more into simple living. and it was from there that we began caring about what we ate, wanting to grow our own food, eventually finding Framboise Manor and then making the biggest decision of our life - leaving our jobs and retiring here. so it was a really good thing that i forgot jambaloney's birthday.

since then, we only buy each other a gift when we see something that we know that we want for the house. our new freezer and washer is each other's gift to each other - and they will cover our birthday gifts/Christmas gifts, etc. for all of last year and a few to come. those two appliances are true gifts to each other!

anyway, for some reason yesterday i decided to resurrect forgetting jambaloney's birthday. and made him a Valentine's gift. he loved it!

first up - the card. jambaloney recognized it as soon as he saw it. he bought it for me roughly 6 years ago. when he bought it he was tied between it and another card. he bought both of them and gave me the other one...and this card has been kicking around ever since.

here is the inside. it's a really pretty card. "fyg" stands for "forever your girl". i have signed every note, card, email whatever with "fyg".

here's what i wrote on the other side "baby - i'm writing this in pencil becuz, you know, i might have to re-use this card next year" - he roared when he read that!

here's the front of the envelope:

here's the gift, wrapped in a ripped open brown paper bag. another inside joke for us because i wrap gifts better than a professional wrapper!

here's the elastic band "ribbon" for the front of the gift:

and here it is in all of it's glory: THE GIFT! the box is from about 6 years ago - he got it for me as it has a bumblebee on it. and inside the box is some old, used lipbalm, a nail, a pretzel, a Q-tip, a quarter and 3 little chocolate eggs.

i know. i outdid myself. and we laughed until our stomachs hurt. and then went and got into the hottub.

ladies, if you are looking for Valentine's Day gifts for your men for next year, my services are free. your welcome.

it's February 14....but i prefer February 13!

2012-02-14T11:57:00.005-04:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

this is a very meaningful day to me and jambaloney. not because of today - but because of yesterday - February 13!

11 years ago on February 13, jambaloney told me he loved me for the first time! i near swooned and/or fainted. it was touch and go at the time with the knees all week and my stomach doing backflips - but somehow i managed to hold it together and tell him that i loved him, too. it was the first time i said it to his face but i had said that i loved him many millions of times by that point to just about anyone who would listen to me. we had only been dating since January 19, almost a month, but i knew the moment i looked at him that he was mine. plus there was a big, flashing sign on his head, put there by angels, that blinked "kymber - he's yours!!!" over and over.

i worked at my absolute favourite job at the time. i worked with some of the greatest colleagues and friends ever. i would walk into work, floating on air, and dead tired from another night of no sleep. jambaloney and i used to be phone hogs during the first few weeks of our dating, and we would stay on the phone all night talking during the work week. we fell asleep together so many times on the phone it's not funny! anyway i would float into work and as i approached my desk i would hear all of the little songbirds (my colleagues) singing - "kymber's in lerrrrrve!". i loved it! two of my friends, J and my boss V, would invite me into V's office for a full run-down on the previous evening's marathon phone session. and they would ooh and ahh with me. they always said that he sounded to good to be real, or true, for that matter! but when they met jambaloney they fell in love with him almost as much as me. i was fighting those women off until the time i left that job!

speaking of fighting off women - man oh man - i have been doing that since the first day i met him! needless to say, i am a pretty good fighter! naw, jes' teasin' wit' ya! but i have yet to encounter a woman that doesn't fall in love with him on sight. he is incredibly gorgeous, ya know? but when they see how kind and generous he is - they love him more! when they realize that he is a true and proper gentlemen (you did good, Liz!), they love him even more! when they find out that he can fix anything, lift anything, cook, clean and do laundry - that's when i have to get the boxing gloves out!

did i tell you that i won a chainsaw from the VFD raffle? no? well i did - woohoo for jambaloney! anyway, last saturday, at the Fourchu Spaghetti and Meatball Dinner, everyone was congratulating me on winning. one of the women said, "now kymber, you can take the chainsaw out in the woods and jambaloney can do the dishes"! at the exact same time, both jambaloney and i said that he always does the dishes. i then said that he cooks, cleans and does laundry, too! the next words out of her mouth were, "can he please come and live with me, then?". we all laughed. but trust me, she was dead serious. i might need to get the gloves back out soon. jeesh!

so today is happy love day and i have a stupid, little homemade love day gift for him. but yesterday was the important day for us. February 13 will always be my second favourite day of the year. January 19, the day i met him, will always be my first!

wanna see something goofy but fills me with incredible happiness, joy, awe, wonder and a feeling that someone so wonderful really loves me?

here's 2 pics from a summer day not too long ago. we were laying in the sun and jambaloney braided my hair and put flowers in the braids.

i hope he knows just how very much i love him. i know that he knows...but i don't think anyone other than me could ever really know just how much.

~you have no idea, babe~

hellhole #3 - foundation issues

2012-02-13T02:19:00.000-04:00

jambaloney here!

i would like to apologize for being absent for a while. i've been trying to get us ready for winter "on the fly" (it's febuary already ;-). we got behind and there was a lot to do, but i am happy that we finally feel a LOT safer and prepared than last winter. lots of milestones! some good pics!

however, this post is about a nice little discovery i made while reworking the basement for more insulation, appliances, general law and order etc.....

the beam that supports the joists for the 85 % of the upstairs floors is a bunch of 2x10s nailed together to make a big 6x10. this is supported on 2 concrete footings by a homemade, uh, thing. the end closest to the kitchen is pictured above. it is supported by a pair of 2x6s that go right to the floor and a single shim on a box that i think USED to touch the major beam. so this shim is the ONLY point of contact between the concrete and this half of the beam.

nice!

oh and below you can see how the "box" has been shifting and a space where there should be some contact in red, i immediately found a shim that fit and hammered it into the gap circled in red below :

this problem was finished true gonzo style with a 4x4 tapped in vertically to support the beam outside of the box:

here is another highlight, notice that the bottom fits nicely outside the "box", but resting on the section of 2x6 that is bolted to the concrete:

the 4x4 fit perfectly, not too snug as to move anything, but tight enough to spread more of the load. an hour later, i feel a bit better looking at the beam and it's extra support:

there is another load bearing wall at a right angle to this small wall. it is under some short joists that support the other 15% of the upstairs floor. the red circles below show places that have gaps between the wall and the joists:

yep, a whopping 6 out of 9 joists aren't in contact with the wall!! must make shims.....

because these are giving way...

to get the shims to fit, i used a 8 ton jack, a grinder stand, a metal sleeve and a 2x6 to raise each joist enough to get the shims in place, not too much creaking ;-)

the wall itself needed more support, so i added the 2x6s using the jack to raise the floor a touch... note the newly installed shims circled in red!

i added a total of three 2x6 supports in places where they would work best:

well, half of the upstairs floor is much better now... next post, the other side of the floor, here is a preview:

thanks for stopping by, cheers!!!

it's 4:30 in the morn...have you made it to bed yet?

2012-02-12T04:30:00.002-04:00

poor jambaloney has finally gone to bed. and has a post about our sagging floors and basement coming tomorrow. he'll probably sleep until noon or at least i hope so. he's as wiped out as i am! it's been a long, difficult several days of me being knocked out with the migraine and him having to run the household - and everything else that he has to take care of in a day.

today was the first day that my vision wasn't blurry, and although it was rainy, foggy and grey, it was still a little too bright. but i almost felt human. and we had the Fourchu Spaghetti and Meatball Supper to attend. we offered to help out at it several weeks ago and talked to our friend B this afternoon - but no, everything was kosher and they did not need our help. so we arrived at the supper, only to show our support for our neighbouring community. after the past several days both of us feel like we have been dragged behind Duke's truck as he is teaching the finer points of moving targets and such. we arrive at the supper right on time, expecting to sit, eat, and see some of our friends - at 4pm. and of course asked "is there anything we can do to help?". oh yes. start serving the people who are already seated. i swear that the Fourchu Community Centre has the brightest, fluorescent bulbs known to man. so we just kind of looked at each other, shrugged, started serving, found the salt and pepper shakers and tried to make sure that everyone had a good time. after the 4pm rush (16 guests maybe? we have a rain warning in effect and didn't expect too many to show), we were told to go and sit and eat our meals. i think that we are both so tired and because the adrenaline had to kick in to even show up, that we couldn't really relax.

that's probably because both of us knew that we had to attend the Framboise Community Centre Valentine's Dance at 9pm. but, we were able to see our Fourchu friends, a lot of whom wouldn't be attending the dance, and after helping clean up the Fourchu Hall, came home exhausted. jambaloney suggested a nap but i knew that if we napped - we would never make it to the dance. so we sat around chatting about the cold snap that is coming on monday, made our grocery list (we are now down to doing groceries once every 2-3 weeks!), talked about our spring garden and this year's harvest and watched the clock until it was time to get ready to go to the dance.

we had already forewarned a lot of people that we probably wouldn't stay long at the dance. most people already knew that i had just come out of a migraine due to my cancelling the scentsy party. so we showed up in the spilling rain, made our rounds, sat with our friends and left after about an hour or so. the people here are very understanding, and knew that i was feeling pretty crappy - we normally stay at the dances until they kick us out and we usually dance to almost every song. no dancing tonight. everyone understood.

we got home at about 11ish. drained. tired. but happy to have seen our friends - some of whom we haven't seen since the New Year's Party. but both of us were too wound from the past few days and today. it seems it doesn't matter how exhausted you are if the adrenaline kicks in to over drive. so we chatted some more and then watched a few Gordon Ramsay Kitchen Nightmare shows on Netflix. did i tell you that we got Netflix? we got it a few weeks ago and we love being able to watch movies and certain tv shows when we are in the mood. tonight was definitely one of those nights.

so the love of my life, my soul mate is finally in bed. please pray that he will stay down until noon. he has had a very tiring week. and he rocked at the supper tonight. i am so proud of him whenever we attend these events. makes my heart swell, he does!

sorry i haven't stopped in to your blogs for several days. i promise to catch up.

dang nabbit!

2012-02-09T17:27:00.004-04:00

i am supposed to be at something called a "scentsy" party in an hour. something about smelly candles and things. my friend S invited me. a party for just the girls. when she invited me she said "you HAAAVE to get away from him some of the time!!!"

no, i don't. i have been unwell for 4 full days now and the only thing that has kept me fed and hydrated is my jambaloney. i hate putting this kind of pressure on him - but he is the only person i trust when i am feeling so incapacitated.

i had to cancel going to the scentsy party. i am just not up for it. migraine sufferers usually have a problem with light, sound and...well...smells.

if you are interested, a gentleman who is also known as my friend Duke has an excellent post up about the importance of training with weapons, and not the kind of training where you go to the range on a saturday afternoon with your starbucks and golf buddies. i hope that any of you who are interested will read...and learn.

i gotta run. but thankfully the migraine is now just a headache. thank you for all of your well wishes. especially Matt and North. thanks buddies.

a migraine and a blog award (edited)

2012-02-07T00:03:00.007-04:00

i've got a monster migraine. for the past 2 days. it doesn't look like it is going anywhere soon.

i also got a blog award. from Lila. she wrote the sweetest post here. please be sure to read it. i think she speaks for a lot of us. and some of the people she names in that post are some of the nicest and bestest on the internet.

here is the award:

Below are the rules of the award:

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who gave you the award
3. Pick our five favorite blogs with less than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.
4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it on to five more blogs.

so here are my five blogs. a lot of the blogs that i would have chosen have already been chosen. so i am trying to find 5 blogs that haven't been chosen yet. and i hope that you check out each of them.

#1. my dear friend Jennifer at the Double Nickel Farm. a better friend could never be found. and she is wise. so very wise. and warm. and she is as smart as a whip. she has been there for me through thick and thin. and she is funny. and creative. and she has taught me so much.

#2. my new friend, Practical Parsimony/Linda. she has a great blog with many frugal tips and many funny stories. she has been ill recently, but has since healed up and i am very thankful for that. say a prayer or two for her, will you?

#3. Wendy. my heroe. she is homeschooling up in northern ontario and can dress a road-kill bear. i am trying to think of something that she can't do and i am coming up blank. she is so smart and awesome.

#4. Donna. her husband is a brave veteran and he and her family have suffered much due to his, and her, bravery. her family means the world to her. she is one of the sweetest people i have encountered on the net.

#5. Sue. my sweet friend Sue. she has been through much over the past year or so. but always maintains a positive attitude. and doesn't know how to eat stuffed peppers. she has always supported my every crazy endeavour.

and i am going to throw in a number 6, 7 and 8. it has been hard to only pick out 5, check my blogroll listed on the right. i would list every single blog there. but some have already been acknowledged by others. so i will leave off with these 3 others.

#6. JaneofVirginia. wow. what an amazing woman. if you are a prepper/survivalist then her blog is a must read. she has so much knowledge and experience it is mind blowing! i especially love this post of hers!

#7. my dear friend Felinae. she was the very first person that i ever told about Framboise Manor when we were first considering purchasing it. she, of course, supported us. and along with Fel, is her husband. the Catman is back. he was on hiatus for a while but he is back with a vengeance. i am really glad. no one puts out the kind of information that he does. patriots awaken!

#8. speaking of patriots, how can you use that word and not put Craig in the same sentence. oh can he rant. formerly known as Mayberry and is still ranting on. but he has a new purpose - PATCOM. all of my American friends should learn about PATCOM.

as i already said, i would nominate every person listed in our blogroll. but i am glad that some of them have already been nominated. i tried to nominate a variety of different bloggers. all of whom i call friends.

i truly hope that you will check them all out. just tell them that kymber sent you.

thank you very much for the nomination, Lila, i really appreciate it!

(edited to say thank you to my friend Rob. i call him buddy. anyone from the east coast of canada will know why. it turns out that he nominated me for a blog award too. holy crap...i need to stop cutting onions!)

(edited again to say thank you to my friend Matt. he also nominated us for this award. i call him buddy, too. you east coasters will understand. sheesh - there be a lot of nice people on the internets. thanks Matt, buddy.)

(oh crap - my friend Shepherd awarded us too. what can i say about Shepherd except that he had the good sense to marry The Queen. no really - he actually married The Queen! and is fostering a baby who needs good parents and he and The Queen are providing that. i love them for doing that.)

(and my old canning partner SciFiChick nominated us for a completely different award. she has been around since the very beginning for us. she's the one who told me not to be afraid of canning. her and her Mars have had a very similiar year to ours - they are out on their own land and not afraid of nothin'! i love my Sci!)

i hate to brag but...

2012-02-04T14:17:00.005-04:00

my washer and freezer arrived yesterday! woohoo! no more washing clothes in the bathtub! sorry for the blurry pic below.

but here is a close-up. hard to believe i left a huge and beautiful front-loading washer and dryer back in the city eh? oh well, this baby will do just fine!

we will only use it during the winter months as we really do enjoy doing laundry out in the backyard in bins. if you missed our previous laundry post, you can find it here.

oh and here is a shot of the inside of the washer...i am gonna put that baby to some serious use tomorrow - woohoo!

and now for the piece de resistance: my new freezer!

we have saved for over a year for these two appliances - having to save helps when it comes to prioritizing. have a look inside. four moving baskets - can you believe it?

we are hoping to use the freezer for storing locally-sourced meat and produce, as well as some of our own home-grown produce. home-grown produce is a bit premature right now - we haven't even started any seeds yet. but we will soon. and we will need somewhere to store that produce. until we have our own, we will fill that freezer with locally-sourced delicious cape breton meat, fish and produce. i am over the moon right now.

jambaloney has a post coming up about having to make room in the basement for both of these appliances. and propping up our sagging floors. and insulation. and a whole pile of other crap that he tends to around here. poor guy.

but for now - rejoice with me that i have a washer and a freezer - the two most important things on any girls wish list!

Stephen is home!

2012-02-03T20:21:00.001-04:00

Stephen is home. all of your prayers worked! and i thank you all from the bottom of my heart! so does he, his Sweet Wife and his Little Bit.

thank you all sooo much!

check in on Stephen here.

another one for Stephen

2012-02-02T09:09:00.002-04:00

Stephen has been posting at his blog for a few days now...which is a definite sign that he is improving! all of his blog friends have been dropping by, giving him support and praying for him to be released as soon as possible. please stop in and visit if you haven't already, he's nearly going out of his mind with boredom and i think that we are going to have to bust him out soon.

i tried to think of something that would put a giggle on his face:

jambaloney out on the ATV plowing snow!

(Russell1200 - this is our first "staying" snow. )

a beautiful sunset for Stephen

2012-01-30T02:58:00.005-04:00

we took these pics of the sunset this evening for our friend Stephen. Stephen is still in the hospital but apparently doing well, and we know this because our friend Duke has been updating us all regularly. we saw this beautiful sunset and thought that we should share it with everyone - it lifted our spirits and i hope it will lift yours, and i hope that Stephen gets to see these pics. and i hope that it will lift his spirits as well. please enjoy these pics of our beautiful sky...and please keep our friend Stephen in your thoughts and prayers, and pray that he will be released from the hospital soon.

these pics were taken over a half-hour period. the sunsets here are amazing! i could take pics of them (and bore you all to death) every day. i hope that these pics find everyone in good spirits.

we are thinking of you Stephen, Sweet Wife and Little Bit! and you, too, Duke!

our friend, Stephen (edited)

2012-01-28T03:03:00.003-04:00

our friend, Stephen, is in the hospital. we don't know much but at least we know that our friend Duke will be keeping us all updated. please keep Stephen in your thoughts and prayers. check in with Duke regularly as i know that Duke will do everything in his power to keep us updated and to make sure that Stephen is okay. please also keep Stephen's Sweet Wife and Little Bit in your prayers.

Stephen has been a friend of ours since we first started this blog...and we probably wouldn't have started a blog without his encouragement. i know that he is strong and a fighter, i know that he is a good man, i know how much he cares for his family - especially his granddaughter, Little Bit - so i am not too worried. i just don't want our friend to suffer uneccessarily.

please, let's all keep him in our prayers. he has helped so many people in his lifetime and it is now time for us to do the same for him.

thank you, Duke, dear friend, for keeping us updated.

EDIT: Duke has left an update for us all. please go here for an update. thank you so much Duke. i am not posting anything new until we know that Stephen is healing and safe at home. please keep him in your prayers.

for Mystic Mud

2012-01-26T12:22:00.003-04:00

my friend, Mystic Mud, left a really sweet comment on our last post in regards to our hottub. here is the comment she left:

"lol....I'd love to see a proper picture of your hot tub:) I was just thinking the other night - what would I wish for if I had three wishes, but I couldn't wish for more wishes....1) a long hot bath with a gin and tonic. 2) a full body massage. 3) a whole night alone with my man. But then I couldn't decide if that was really four wishes? And which one should I dump....I was really tempted to dump the gin and tonic, but I know that the bath would be so much better with it, so then I thought maybe the night with my man because by the time I had a bath and a massage I'd just want to lay down and go into a coma anyway....I don't know, I never did decide....I want it all and I tried to convince myself that the gin and tonic just naturally went with the bath, so it really only counted as one wish...lol...but then I felt like a cheater. You wouldn't think I would have this much extra time on my hands to OVER think things, now would you!?"

she and her hubby have 10 beautiful children and live on a mountain in Tennessee and are trying to live a more self-sustaining life together. she tells their incredible story here. go and check her out if you haven't already done so - their story is quite wonderful!

anyway, she asked for pics of the hottub so i went and took some.

here is the baby sitting on the back deck.

cover off. i love the colour of the hottub...the brown, blue and gold. it makes me think of our river and our ocean.

it is a 4person hottub but i like stretching out in it and taking up 2/3 of the room squashing poor jambaloney in a corner.

now here is the nifty thing. it lights up. no really - it really does. i love having it on at night - it is pitch black here at the Manor at night - no light pollution at all. so we go out with a flashlight and turn the lights on the hottub. it's beautiful. have a peak.

it changes colour every few seconds.

i tried to get shots of every colour but only got the ones you see.

it goes from blue, to green, to yellow, to pink, to purple - you get the idea. i could sit out there all night in that thing.

we consider this thing an investment - in our health and well-being. we are both water babies to begin with and our tub in the bathroom is only about 4 inches deep. so we use the hottub to relax sore muscles at the end of the day but we also use it for our mental well-being - there is just something so wonderful about starting and ending each day in the tub. we also plan and dream in that thing. everything seems possible when sitting in the hottub.

Mystic Mud, i hope that you enjoyed the pics. if you ever come to visit, i will make you as many gin and tonics as you want!

and just like that...

2012-01-24T12:39:00.004-04:00

...the snow came back!

it's so pretty eh?

but it is raining today and so all of the snow is getting washed away again. one of my favourite things about living in Framboise Manor is that we have a very temperate micro-climate here. other places in cape breton and especially the mainland get belted with storms that we never get. and our winters are much warmer than back in ontario!

we have 4 distinct seasons here at the Manor and i love that. i like having the different seasons to be able to see the landscape and the differences between each season. i used to hate winter back in the city - but then most winter days were -20C!!! and back in the city we basically had 3 straight months of freezing cold days, snow piled 9ft on the sides of the roads and it was always dirty looking. here at the Manor the snow is always white and pretty.

so far it has been a very nice winter. if we get enough snow, and the right kind, we'll build you all a snowman!

Happy 11th Anniversary!

2012-01-20T16:26:00.011-04:00

yesterday was our 11 year anniversary - can you believe it? we sure can't as we still run around like goofy kids together, acting like we are 11yr old best friends! we have often talked about how much fun we would have had together if we knew each other as kids. as kids, we both like doing similar things - climbing trees, swimming, fishing, collecting rocks, exploring - that kind of stuff. but we are very grateful to be able to have had the last 11 yrs together and the rest of our lives ahead of us!

we started the day in the hottub, of course. then we decided to make a big, grandiose meal for our anniversary dinner/supper. i know that most of you are thinking duck a l'orange, or venison medallions like 45er recently made, or chicken cordon bleu, or lobster tails in a white wine reduction. nope, not this time. this time we made one of our old favourites and one that we haven't had in a while. yep, you guessed it - Shepherd's Pie!!!! yummeh - we love shepherd's pie. we made a big casserole dish of it and ate it all day, all evening and all night.

after we put the pie in the oven, it was back to the hottub. we stayed out frolicking until the pie was ready. came in, stuffed our faces and back to the hottub. after another 30 mins or so, we came in and read our books sitting on the couch for a while. then more pie. then more hottub. by that time it was early evening and so we put on one of our favourite movies - entitled "The Other Guys" starring Will Farrel and Mark Wahlberg. we love that movie and have watched it at least 50 times. it's still as funny as ever. we have a few comedies that get both of us screeching and we have watched most of them about 50 times. we have a similar sense of humour and really enjoy laughing together. we also take key lines out of movies and use them in certain situations and no one ever gets our inside jokes. our own little special way of talking.

anyway, after the movie we went back out to the hottub. that was at midnight. the sky was a deep midnight blue and we lay in the tub looking at all of the stars. the sky is so clear here that you can see millions of stars. we stayed out for 2 hours yakking and talking and planning and dreaming - it was a wonderful end to our anniversary day!

today it was a balmy -2C (about 25F) so we decided to walk down to the river. i took some pics so that you all could be there with us - it was a gorgeous walk!

here's where we start, standing on the back deck looking into the backyard. notice that most of the snow is gone?

well, except for this little piece - teehee.

so let's head down the road:

around the turn in the road and almost halfway there:

there's the river up ahead:

and here's the river covered with a thin layer of ice. no skating on it yet!

and for all of you who think we aren't fashion-conscious here at the Manor, i give you jambaloney dressed like a hobo (with hair that has gone from Brit-pop, to hippy, to just plain waaaay too long, and he hasn't shaved in a week and a half):

he's still just drop-dead gorgeous though!

and here is me, wearing a ski-doo suit that my best friend Tobi gave me 20yrs ago - can you believe that thing?

oh those early 90's neon colours eh? make sure to notice my pink boots AND the fact that i cracked the ice - bahahahaha!

well that's about it for now. stay tuned as there are upcoming posts about our 2 throw-together-with-whatever-junk-is-on-hand sheds and we finally painted and tiled the horrible stairs between the kitchen and living room.

and jambaloney's got an upcoming post about the basement. ick. that basement sucks!

the last of the potatoes!

2012-01-16T13:49:00.007-04:00

our harvest this year was dismal. not a complete failure but pretty dismal. we started building raised beds in march, april was all about getting the seeds started indoors and june and july were filled with rainy, gray, overcast days. during august we were harvesting daily fruit and veg from the garden but there was no great harvest of produce to be canned or frozen. we have learned much for this coming spring/summer and we are hopeful that this year will be bountiful.

the one star this year was our potatoes. we have been growing potatoes in tires for 4 years now and they have always been our stars! the year before last, back in the city, we grew about 160lbs of 3 different kinds of potatoes - we eat a lot of potatoes around here! we planted them early and started harvesting baby potatoes in july. the potatoes lasted us right until the following april-may. growing your own potatoes can save you a lot of money!

this year, we planted 18 tires, 3 tires high, with 3 different kinds of potatoes. our harvest this year was about 120lbs of potatoes - not too bad for a horrible growing season! and today, jambaloney harvested the last of the potatoes as we are expecting a few days of well below freezing (that's the good thing about tires - you can harvest as needed until you start to get freezing temps that stay!). we have been eating our own potatoes since this past july and this last harvest yielded about 30lbs - those potatoes should last until the end of march. between april and july we will wait for potatoes as we try to eat as seasonally as possible. and when we run out of potatoes - we run out of them and will substitute turnip and/or cabbage in its place.

here is a pic of the tire gardens when we first planted the potatoes:

it looks pretty messy as we had not had a chance to properly clear the land at this point! and here is a pic taken about 3 weeks later, after we had hilled the potatoes, and then added another tire:

and here is a pic of the empty tires, all harvested now, and they will be stacked nicely to await use again this april. as you can see, we haven't stacked them nicely yet! but as you can see, we have finished clearing all of this side of the land.

(note: if you look closely to the right of the pic, you get a sneak peek at throw-together-shed-number-2. future upcoming posts on the tale of two sheds.)

and here is the last of the potatoe harvest 2011/2012. these are organic brown russets and organic red chieftains. we ate all of the goldrush potatoes already.

not too shabby! and these can get us through to the end of march and we will enjoy every delicious one of them!

the conclusion of the porch saga

2012-01-07T06:09:00.007-04:00

what can i say except that isn't she a real beauty?!?!?!

here it is in all of it's infinite glory! the porch wrapped in plastic! can anything be better? i think not!

the boots and shoes and mitts and gloves and work-clothes have now been moved from my tiny kitchen and that, in itself, is a glorious wonder!

one thing that we have learned since moving to Framboise Manor is that you gotta learn to make do. and that is what we are doing! the porch needs to be replaced and we will build an enclosed porch next fall. until then - this will just have to do. and i must say that i love it!

here is the side view (and my fingers!):

and the back:

it sure isn't much to look at and has become the talk of the town but hey - i will live with anything to get the coats and boots out of the kitchen!

not only does the porch take care of getting coats and boots out of the kitchen - it also holds our seeding tray! our seeding tray is a monster that jambaloney's stepdad built and gave to us. we have used it to start our seeds for several years now - last year using it sucked as it really is a monster and we had it in the tiny kitchen! but not this year - it now lives on the porch - woohoo!

i will post some inside pics of the porch as soon as it is tidied up - right now it looks like a bomb hit it as everything that has been laying around and getting underfoot is out there! we just need to sort, organize and then give everything a home - on the porch!

i told you that it would make MDR blush!

comments, doves and plastic

2012-01-06T12:40:00.005-04:00

hey guys and gals - i am sorry that i haven't responded to your comments on our last 2 posts! so sorry about that! we really appreciate it when you all leave comments - and they are always positive and funny and we just want you to know how much we appreciate your taking the time out of your busy days to stop in and visit with us!

i have tried to ensure that i made a stop by all of your blogs to wish you the very best in 2012. if i missed anyone - i am terribly sorry.

anyway - this is just a quick post as we are heading to our friends' C and B's for cabbage rolls - yummeh!

but have a peek at our gaggle of doves. they arrive several times a day to eat as do bluejays, goldfinches, junkos and chickadees. for any bird people out there - i read an interesting tidbit a few years ago that i have never forgotten. apparently birds have a harder time finding drinking and bathing water than they do trying to find food in the winter. so we always make sure that the birds have sufficient clean water for drinking and bathing. yes, our bird feeder is a falling-apart old coffee table!

and here's a sneak peek at the upcoming porch saga...yep - wrapped in plastic and tire inserts from our tire gardens used to make it less noisy. works like a charm!

i will go in and post responses to your comments on the last 2 posts later tonight (depending on how late we are out) or tomorrow! have a great day everyone!

oh what a night!

2012-01-03T00:46:00.003-04:00

we rang in the New Year and had such an awesome time with our friends! i had 4 glasses of wine in the fancy new glass that the bar bought for me - woohoo! no more bringing my own wine glass down to the hall!

oh where to start? during the day, jambaloney was out weather-proofing the porch (pics coming soon - i promise!). out of nowhere, M (22) and N (15), our neighbour E's sons, show up un-announced (they cut through the woods between our houses) with a delicious turkey meat pie! i was up to my eyeballs making bread to bring with the chili, jambaloney was dangling off of the roof and neither one of us had eaten yet. i took the meatpie and put it in the oven pronto and in 25 minutes we were eating like kings - how thoughtful!

after we finished eating, i called E to say thank you. she was very gracious as usual, we talked about meeting up at the dance that night...and then she invited us to her family get-together the next day - can you believe it? and that night, at the dance, all of her family knew that we were invited to the get-together - all of them! and they were excited that we were coming! it was such an awesome feeling!

we got down to the dance and hooked up with our favourite friends at the head table as usual...and then made the rounds around the hall. it took an hour to stop by and greet and hug and kiss everyone! when we were finally able to sit down with our usual crew, too many good songs were playing and so we had to dance with everyone. jambaloney looked incredibly delicious and all of the ladies enjoyed dancing with him. he makes my heart swell, he does.

we had such a great time with all of our friends. we danced all night. we didn't leave until 3am! the last hour was spent holding my friend S and E's hands as we talked about all of the things that we will do in 2012!

we have fallen so in love with these people here...and it seems that they have fallen in love with us - we really can't believe it!

the next day, i will admit, we were dragging our butts a bit. but we headed over to E's and a house full of her family. oh it was such fun! and she put on such a nice spread! and we spent time with all of her crazy family. and her Mother, V, who is the Matriarch of our community, made such a big deal about jambaloney's oatmeal cookies - but what can i say? his cookies really were to die for!!!

we have really become a real part of this community and in such a short time. we can't believe our good fortune?!?!?! we feel like the luckiest people on earth!

we rang in 2012 with a bang that night and a bang the next day. we have been flumping around for the past 2 days - we are really wore out!

and loving every minute of it!

we hope 2012 is going to be wonderful for all of you. it is only 3 days in to 2012 and yet we feel like we are living a dream - how lovely eh? we are so happy right now. we are so grateful and thankful. there is much to be done this year. and we are sooo up for the task!

2011 - a quick review

2011-12-31T00:48:00.004-04:00

2011...a year filled with many great things, surprises, prizes and great friends. let's review:

- i started the year in love with jambaloney. at the start of 2011 i thought that there was no way possible to love him more than i did. boy was i wrong!

- i started the year here at the Manor. my dream of moving home to my island came true!

- i don't remember the first 3 months of 2011 very well - just some blurred images of boiling snow to wash dishes, clothes and to flush the toilet; more blurred images of pipes busting and things breaking or blowing up, 4yrs worth of saved heirloom seeds being destroyed, trucks flipping - yep it is all a real blur!

- april and may was spent planting a ton of seeds and putting them in their trays to then plant outside in late may. but the weather was so awful that most of those seedlings didn't see the light of day until the middle of june! oh yes - and building raised beds and all that came with that! poor jambaloney must have shovelled 30 tons of dirt!

- jambaloney's parents visited in june. during the worst and grayest and rainiest 10 days that anyone has ever seen. we had planned to take them sight-seeing all over the island - they ended up digging trenches and planting tomatoes!

- july saw us hitting the local events and getting out and meeting people. they were so warm and inviting and we have made many great, lasting, long friendships!

- august to the end of september - more events - more meeting of fantastic people - how awesome! and we harvested our sad, little garden - our worst harvest ever. oh but we have learned for next year!

- in september we started our blog and met a whole crew of awesome people who may be thousands of miles away but we still count them as our friends. we have learned so much from all of you! thank you all sooo much!

- october was when the "incident" occurred. for long time readers, i don't have to go into details. for new readers - i simply won't go into details. you can check the blog posts from october.

- in november i turned 41 and jambaloney turned 46. we have been giggling ever since as we love our 40's together!

- and december was about sharing time with all of our different friends - who have all become our new family! we have such great friends here...and we are soo happy!

what will 2012 bring for us here at the Manor? well...it isn't 2012 yet but i am fairly confident that i will enter the new year loving that man more than i did last year. i love him soooo much! i also am fairly certain that after all of the trials and tribulations of this past year - that just about everything will be a little easier this year! i also expect new obstacles to come that we will have to find our way around...but such is the challenge and life of living in the middle of nowhere!

i am looking forward to a quiet, relaxing winter...one that will be filled with oops! woops! and oh - didn't plan for that! this spring we will hit the ground running with our garden! this summer is going to be filled with river days, beach days, swimming and dips! this fall will be filled with harvesting, canning, dehydrating and preserving. and hopefully this coming winter will be a time to look back and realize that we are living our dream. all of it spent wearing as little clothes as possible!

we are making miniature dinner rolls all morning to bring with our controversial chili to the dance tomorrow! and then we are off to the New Year's Dance. if i haven't made it to your blog to wish you and yours a Happy New Year...give me a day or two...i will get there!

2012 is going to be interesting for sure. and none of us knows what will happen or what's to come. but my heart is filled with happiness and hope!

and i wish all of you all of the best for 2012! Happy New Year my friends!

it's another windy day!

2011-12-30T12:39:00.005-04:00

yesterday we had crazy wind again - 80-90km/phr (40-50mph)! the whole Manor shook all night Wednesday night, all day Thursday, all night last night and is finally down to just a dull roar now. but we didn't lose our power at all - thanks Nova Scotia Power!

yesterday we had a "flumping" day - we read, watched some movies, ate, napped, snacked and napped some more. it was way too windy to do any outdoor chores and although there are a ton of indoor chores to be done, we decided to say screw it and "flump" around together.

today we spent the day making approximately 8 quarts of chili to bring to the New Year's Dance tomorrow night. we made yummy-stick-to-your-ribs-full-of-meat chili...made with crushed tomatoes, whole tomatoes, kidney beans, navy beans, 2lbs of hamburger, half a pound of bacon and mushrooms. i also snuck in some vinegar with the mother in it, a large dollop of honey and several cloves of garlic. and a bucketload of chili powder. i am bound and determined to get these people here to eat more healthily!

tomorrow we will make 40 miniature dinner rolls to serve with the chili. i have recently found an awesome dinner roll recipe...the rolls come out all buttery, fluffy and light. if anyone is interested i will post the recipe on our recipe blog.

i have been trying to stay on top of everyone's blogs over the holidays...if for some reason i have missed any of your posts or haven't stopped by your blog in a while - leave a holler in the comment section here and i will skedaddle right on over.

i promise pics of the porch coming soon - it's just been too windy this past few days.

we'll be heading off to the New Year's Dance tomorrow. if we don't get a chance before then to wish you all a Happy New Year's Day...then we will do so now. Happy 2012! 2012 is sure going to be interesting...and we look forward to hanging out with you all through all of it. there is still much to be done here at the Manor, and we look forward to sharing it with you.

here's a pic of one of our beautiful sunsets from the other night...it's wonderful isn't it?

off to dinner!

2011-12-28T13:23:00.004-04:00

we are off to our other friends' house this evening for dinner...it is supposed to be a buffet so we are looking forward to stuffing our gills all evening. this time we are going to our friends S and D's house. they have 2 girls aged 7 and 12. it should be a really nice time! we are bringing home-made dinner rolls, cranberry-pear-ginger sauce and plain oatmeal cookies.

we have finally gotten the porch finished and to be honest - it doesn't look half as bad as i thought it would. we have a little finishing to do, give us a day or two and i will get some pics up. i can't believe that i finally have a porch!

anyway, we hope that everyone has enjoyed this past few days since Christmas Day. we have, and we are looking forward to stuffing our faces again tonight, and the New Years Dance on saturday. that should be a real hoot!

happy holidays to everyone!

a Framboise Manor Christmas!

2011-12-26T13:02:00.005-04:00

first off - i hope that every one of you had a Christmas Day as wonderful as ours! the pic above is our Christmas tree - beautiful isn't it? we have so many beautiful trees on our land that it was hard to pick just one. and since they all come already decorated in tinsel, you have to be really selective! that's why we chose this group of 3 trees! we can see them from the kitchen window. we love that group of trees!

anyway - what an awesome Christmas Day we had! we were invited to our friends' C and B's house. we arrived at noon, were greeted at the door with hugs from our friends and their two children (18 and 19). the whole house smelled divine! we brought some home-made dinner rolls, some cranberry-ginger-pear sauce and some cranberry-walnut-oatmeal cookies. we also brought a 40 of rhum for C and B (people around here like their alcohol!). for their daughter, who loves butterflies, i dug through some of my jewelry and found a beautiful silver butterfly necklace that she just loved! i also gave her a really cool butterfly belt.

we found out last week that their son had busted his i-pod. jambaloney had recently done the same thing and because he is so good with computers and electronic stuff, he was able to find a kit on ebay to fix it. so their son got a home-made coupon from jamie to pay for the kit and then fix the i-pod when the kit arrives. he was over the moon and told everyone about it! his parents were pleased that we brought their children some little gifts that weren't store-bought and meant something to each of them. they have really sweet kids and we like them alot!

now on to the food! oh my oh my! C and B put on a spread like nobody's business. a 20lb turkey cooked to perfection, stuffing, gravey, potatoes, turnips, carrots, corn and two kinds of cheesecake! then all kinds of snacks for the rest of the day and evening. jambaloney is still stuffed to the gills! i ate a ton too - try four servings of mashed potatoes and gravey! i love mashed potatoes and gravey!

C and B got jambaloney a fancy flashlight for his key-chain --- something i have been telling him he needs forever! and they got me my brand of red wine and a box of expensive chocolates. no one here drinks wine - only me - they all think it is kind of funny! so she found out from our other friends what the name of my wine was so that she could get it for me - sooo awesome!

different people dropped in throughout the day - C's nephew, wife and baby, B's sister and mother, their daughter's boyfriend. we spent the whole day eating, snacking, talking, drinking tea, sipping wine for me, drinking beer for the rest - we never left the kitchen as the kitchen is the heart of the home here - and the hours just passed. we felt like we were with family and were just so comfortable. and warm. and laughing. and enjoying each others company.

then all of the sudden it was 9pm! we had promised to stop in at B's brother's house which is right next door to B's. we thought it was too late to stop in but B and C insisted that we couldn't leave without stopping by or they would get accused of "hogging" us to themselves. so we all bundled up and trudged through the backyard to D and R's house. thank goodness it is only a quick jaunt across the yard as it was super cold last night!

here's a pic of D's house and super awesome lobster boat. i love that boat!

so we went over to D and R's - their house was full as both of their children were home for the holidays and had brought their babies with them. we could tell that everyone had had a full day, R looked happy but tired, and the babies were going to bed. so we headed out to D's smoke shack - a little shack in the backyard where he goes to smoke when its cold. he's not allowed to smoke in the house. but there is a woodstove out there and many stashed bottles of various alcohol and needless to say a party ensued! D's son and girlfriend, and his daughter and her boyfriend, and C and B and their 2 kids and me and jambaloney all hung out laughing and telling stories until 1am in the morning! we left with C and B but the rest of them stayed and might still be there right now!

we went back to C and B's and they proceeded to fill garbage bags full of leftovers and snacks and forced us to take them home. we hugged them and thanked them and B said that we were now family - which is huge here as they take family very seriously. and they are very humble. i just called C and told her that we really appreciated all of the food and how much fun we had and she replied "Jesus Christ how many effin times do you people gotta thank someone for some dinner?!?!"

ya they curse alot here too. she then went on to say how happy they were to have us and how much fun they had as well.

these people welcomed us into their home, with their children, and shared Christmas Day with us. they made this Christmas very special. it was not about big, fancy gifts or any of that shenanigans - it was about the true spirit of Christmas - family, good food, friendship and love.

what a great way to spring into 2012.

jambaloney and i hope you all had a wonderful Christmas Day. and we wish the best for all of you in the coming year.

to all of our friends!

2011-12-23T10:32:00.004-04:00

from both of us, to all of you, we thank you for your friendship, support and advice over the past few months.

we also wish you all a wonderful, warm and very Merry Christmas! we hope that you all enjoy this time with family, loved ones and friends.

joyeux noel mes amis!

crazy porch saga - Part Deux

2011-12-22T09:58:00.004-04:00

so here we are still working on the porch! we framed out the front and back and put in some doors. ya - it's a clooge job but as we are just going to be relying on this thing for the winter and spring - it'll do!

so here is the front door framed out:

and here is the back door (both doors were salvaged out of other people's garbage!):

i wanted the back door at the front because it is prettier. but this is the stronger of the two doors and as we get winds howling up our road that hit this side of the house the most, the stronger door had to go on the back.

and here's another look at the side with the doors framed in:

well, it will be a porch that only a mother could love! but if i can get the boots and shoes out of the kitchen, the laundry rack out of the middle of the living room, 18L water jugs out of the bathroom AND still have room for other stuff - PLUS have a place for the ginormic seeding tray that Ted built - then i will be happy! and we will have time next year to decide whether we want to re-build it properly, or add an extension on to the kitchen, or add an extension off of the living room - whatever - we'll figure it all out then!

for now - just wait until you see what we did on the cheap to enclose this thing - teeeheee!

the Framboise Manor crazy porch saga - Part 1

2011-12-20T09:22:00.003-04:00

first off - sorry we haven't posted in a week, nor read, nor commented on your blogs. it has been a bit of a busy week, we've been winterizing, digging trenches and working on our porch! plus we had a kitchen party on saturday night (awesome fun!) and bingo on sunday (5 and a half hours of wanting to die - bahahaha!).

anyway, back to the porch. we have a 18 X 8ft deck/step on the side of our house. if it was enclosed, it would make a great addition to our tiny house. right now, when you walk into our house, you enter directly into the middle of our cramped, tiny kitchen! if we enclose the deck, it would provide us with a mudroom as well as a place to start our seeds in the spring. here's a pic:

notice all of the trellising? that was the first to go.

some of the boards on the porch were rotten and needed to be replaced.

other spots needed some quick re-enforcement. several spots on the floor had to be jacked up as well.

then we did some framing all around the porch.

and framed two doors to put one in at each end. wait until you see what we are planning to do for the rest. it's going to be pretty interesting and we are doing it on the cheap which is always a good thing!

i'll be stopping by everyone's blogs and catching up on your posts this afternoon.

the Framboise Manor monster bed!

2011-12-13T08:08:00.001-04:00

we have a confession to make...we are bed hogs. like hogs. it is almost sinful!

however, when we first got together almost 11 yrs ago (our 11 yr anniversary is Jan 19!), i was 30 and jambaloney was 36. we had both spent our adult lives up to that point sleeping in large beds - by ourselves!!! prior to living together, jambaloney had a queen-sized futon and i had a king-sized waterbed.

when we moved in to our first place together, we tried for over a year to learn to sleep together in a king-sized bed. neither of us was getting any proper rest. i roll around in bed all night long and often end up sideways or upside down when i wake. jambaloney doesn't roll around so much...but he does have a thing about having blankets and with me rolling around so much i tend to steal the blankets. so we sat down one day and had a frank conversation - we needed 2 beds!!!

it was the smartest thing that we have ever done! we each got a queen-sized platform bed and mattress, pushed the two beds together in the middle of the room and have slept happily that way for the last 8+yrs. we each have our own bedding as well so there is no chance of someone waking up shivering all the time - teehee!

anyway - here at the Manor we only have 2 small bedrooms. and we gave away one of our beds and mattresses before we left the city. for the first few months of being at the Manor we were sleeping together on one queen-sized mattress on the floor. but at least we had our own duvets. because of the shock of getting here, near freezing to death and all of the other craziness that happened last winter - our bedroom was not at the top of the list of things to worry about.

but we eventually got around to dealing with the "bed" problem and created a ton of extra storage in the process! i told you that we are bed hogs so don't be surprised to see this:

here's a bit of a better shot:

yep - that's a hand-built platform bed that spans the width of the room. on jambaloney's side (window side) is a queen mattress and mine is a double. but as he is not a roller, we often wake up with him squashed against the window and me laying sideways across the two beds - it's awesome! we love our "bed" room....pun intended. yep it is a room full of bed! and it is also an awesome place to go and flop during the day and yak and make plans. you can find us sprawled on that monster at just about any time.

the great news about building your own platform bed is that you can choose the materials and build storage space into it - something we are severely lacking at the Manor. have a peak:

we built the base of the bed using 2 X 12s, like rafters, and then covered them with 1 X 8 slats about a half inch apart. the bed is 9ft wide and 7ft long. underneath the bed there are 8 compartments - 2 small ones of 4 inches wide on each end of the bed, and then 6 compartments that are 12 inches high, 14 inches wide and 7ft long. you can stuff a lot of stuff in a 7ft long compartment...and the compartments are big enough for me and jambaloney to climb under to retrieve stuff.

this is an excellent place to store preps! and because we don't want to broadcast our preps to the world, i cleared our preps out from under the bed, and just put some stuff there to show the height and what you can store and whatnot. we have plastic bins and buckets with lids and can store much stuff in those and put them under the bed.

yep - a monster bed and an excellent, hidden place for preps! what could be better?

(we also plan to build a headboard with shelving and shelves all around the room. we just haven't gotten to it yet!)

Happy One Year Anniversary, Framboise Manor!

2011-12-12T08:17:00.003-04:00

...well, we are few days late. our one year anniversary here at the Manor was actually on December 4! oh well - we are always a few days or weeks late for everything around here! so we will celebrate our anniversary today with many trips to the hottub, building a frame on our porch so that we can enclose it (wait until you see what we have been up to - it's awesome and so redneck it will make MDR blush!), putting fresh sheets on our huge bed (still need to share our home-made bed with tons of storage underneath), reading our books and a nap.

there will also be much gazing at the beautiful Framboise sky.

if you get the chance at some point today - raise a glass for us. coffee, juice, tea, soda, bourbon or scotch will all work well. we can't believe that we have been here a year already - it has been an awesome adventure and we look forward to the coming adventures!

Happy Anniversary Framboise Manor!

maybe jumped the gun a little...

2011-12-09T12:11:00.003-04:00

oh man! the shaking, rattling and rolling...and raining began again about a half hour after i posted my last message. by 11:30pm - the power was out again! dang nabbit! but as the power had been on for several hours and the fridge, freezer, sump-pump, etc. were all fine - we weren't too worried. however, when we called NS Power and they told us that the power wouldn't be back on until 2pm today (it is 12pm right now) - jambaloney went out and got the generator set up, brought up our kerosene heater and lamps, i quickly grabbed some food out of the fridge and we set up the hotplate. we were going to wait and see how long the power would really be out before worrying about the fridge/freezer.

so there we were huddled together on the couch with blankets wearing 3 layers of clothes, talking and laughing together in the middle of the night. he had a rhum and coke, i had a glass of red wine. and then we started talking about all of our preparations for the storm and how we could handle them better next time.

jambaloney has several different sized Ryobi battery-powered flashlights and several batteries which we always keep charged. we keep a drawer filled with emergency candles, lighters and matches. we have a triple-tap RV generator extension cord that we can plug any 120v appliance into, if need be. we have our hotplate for cooking, as well as our propane bbq - the bbq also has a single burner that can be used for cooking. we always have 4 18l jugs of water on hand...and with 2 Berkey Filtration Systems and two rainbarrels - water is never an issue. we have a 2300btu kerosene heater and two oil lamps - although i don't like the kerosene heater nor the oil lamps - both put out an amazing amount of heat very quickly. last but not least - we have about 15 different places that we can go to between our two villages in the event of the power outage lasting longer than just a few days. Fourchu is on a different grid line than our town so if it came down to it we could go there, or people there could come here. and if it ever got really bad - we have friends in several other places on the island - some about an hour away - some almost 2 hours away.

some things that we thought of and talked about to better prepare us were mostly related to food. as we knew about the weather bomb ahead of time, and when a storm hits its hard not to notice - one of the things that we will do in the future is take 2-3 days worth of food out of the refrigerator and put that food in a cooler down in the basement. as well, we will be sure to put frozen freezer packs in the fridge and freezer before a storm for just in case measures. yesterday and last night all i wanted was fresh veggies because we could not open the fridge/freezer - isn't that always the way? we always keep a bowl of fruit on top of the fridge so we had fruit but of course - i wanted what i couldn't have! we have tons of canned food and whatnot but it just wasn't what i wanted.

another thing that we thought of was when we think we can potentially lose power, jack the heat up in every room so that the ambient heat lasts longer. we certainly didn't freeze or anything but we were chilled and that is not fun. the ambient heat of the house lasted for several hours last night but started to cool quickly by early morning. that's when we got our blankets out and cuddled - cuddling helps!

we always have seasonal BOBs in the house and a large bin in the back of the truck that stores additional stuff like extra coats and mitts, socks, blankets, first aid kit, food, candles, etc - the usual stuff. if it came right down to it - we could have gone out in the truck and started it and gotten warm. and there is always the Vandura (we really need to stop using it as a shed!). when not full of crap - the Vandura has it's own propane furnace and stove, as well as a sink, a fridge and a composting toilet. it is currently filled with crap but also contains blankets, food, first aid kit, etc.

all in all - the storm wasn't too bad. Craig and Stephen joked about the winds not being as bad as in hurricane country, but they were the worst winds we have experienced so far! add to that that we are right on top of a hill, with a 1000ft road for the wind to come barreling up and belt this little cottage and we sure are glad that we don't live in hurricane country!

anyway - we stayed up all night because neither of us could sleep, talked, laughed, joked, had some serious discussions, checked back with NS Power several times and did the dance of the sugar plum faeries when the power came back on at 7:42am. the crying started at 7:44am when the power went back out again! i called NS Power and the automated message said that power had been restored to our area. i transferred to a live person and as they called up our address, they could see that our power had not been restored. they said that in their best estimate we would get our power back at 2pm today. again, true to form, our power was back on at 9:45am.

back in the city, we had solar-powered hot water and rarely pulled from the city's water. we have planned since we got here to get a full solar/wind-powered set up here. we have planned to implement the first stage of that set-up this spring. there is a company here in cape breton that does free estimates and has several different payment options. being that we are on a cleared hill, we get beautiful sun most days but always have wind. we are looking very much forward to getting a full solar/wind set-up and will provide all of the details as it happens.

then we won't have to worry about power outages ever again!

shake, rattle and roll

2011-12-08T18:49:00.003-04:00

and that's what we've been doing ...all day! we experienced a serious weather-bomb today - as did all of the Atlantic provinces. these were the worst winds we have ever experienced - we got gusts up to 100km (60m) for several hours - it really felt like hurricane country and i don't even know what hurricane country feels like!!!

we lost our power at about 1pm...called in to Nova Scotia Power and made a report...called back for an update about 15 mins later and were told that the power should be back on by 6:30pm. and true to form, we had our power back at about 5:15. we really hope that someone at Nova Scotia Power reads this blog, as we would like to give them a big shout out! Thanks Nova Scotia Power!

the Manor shook, rattled and rolled all afternoon, all while being pelted with sheets of rain. we climbed on the couch with flashlights and read our books - we needed flashlights as it was very overcast and gray. then we went for a nap.

anyway - we had just put in a chicken casserole at 20 to 1pm and hoped that by leaving it in the oven until 2 that it might have cooked. no go! so it was sandwiches all day! since the power is back - we have another chicken casserole in the oven - we can't wait to sink our teeth into this one!

it rained a lot as well but the basement didn't flood and the sump pump is now going at a full-tilt boogie. i will try to make my rounds to everyone's blogs this evening and if not, then definitely tomorrow. i hope that everyone is well.

because all is well that ends well!

a different kind of hellhole - a trench!

2011-12-04T10:44:00.000-04:00

jambaloney here!

our basement (which you don't get the privilege of viewing until later ;-) leaks like a sieve. part of the problem is the fact that the concrete foundation is crap and part of he problem is the ground around the manor slopes TOWARDS the basement. in addition, the ground here is very dense, full of rocks and hard packed. so all of the water that can get into the basement, does. oh yeah, it's a moist climate we have here, and lots of rain!!!

we have a sump pump that does it's job well. last winter the pipe outside froze when the cold weather hit, i woke up one morning and the poor pump was grinding away, but not moving any water, so i bought a flexible hose to replace it and would go down to the basement every night, unattach the hose from the pump, blow the water out of the hose and unplug the sump pump...i know, i know... not a great use of time or nerves.

when my step-dad ted was here in june, i was relaying my woes to him and telling him that i hated relying on the sump pump because when the power goes out, it's usually crap weather so the basement fills with water, up to a foot + at times. i hate power outages, i am constantly checking the basement. our generator is hooked up now so i am not so worried, but is is a pain all round.

he suggested that i could dig down below the footing of the foundation and run a 3" pvc drain pipe out to drop off at the front where our driveway is. this would provide permanent, passive drainage.

unsupervised one morning, ted started the task at hand. we had a busy summer/fall so i never got back to it... now i am getting back to it. a couple of weeks ago i went out to start again, you can see the beginnings in the pic below.

ted dug down about 2 1/2 feet. my plan is to get a drainage trench dug to his level before the ground freezes for good, i should have until Jan 01. here are the tools: rock rake from my grandmother's, trenching tool that ted brought the head for with him in his visit, small shovel, pick, large shovel

i first ran a line about halfway and then began to go further, about 3 " deep:

here is another view. the hose on the left is the sump pump hose that i lengthened for the summer (previous owner left TONS of flexible pvc behind), the one on the right is our gray water outflow (which i also lengthened, it used to spill into the front yard and smelled terrific after several days of dishes, now it goes to the ditch on the road)

here they are going downhill past my first pass:

and finally down the slope of the hill at the front:

this is our driveway, you can see that the hill is pretty steep:

i went out one more day to make another pass, then it snowed 10 inches. after a couple of warm days a melting, i went back at 'er last week.

the drag about this project is the trench will be over 50' long - here is a better view:

looking down our driveway, the end of the trench will be the red circle:

back to work, fist step, pickaxe about a 10 foot swath, 3" deep:

next, use the trenching tool to gather it all up in a pile:

this tool is awesome, like an indestructible ice cream scoop with a handle. ted got it at Lee Vally Tools :

i dig the loose dirt out with the big shovel and move on down the line:

by now i have realized that the trench needs to be a bit wider than the large shovel for this to work properly, so the trench needs to be wider, it's nice and straight though!!

back at the ranch, the hoses come out of the foundation in one hot mess (that blanket is insulation, when i get this all working properly, i am going to build up the soil around the foundation, for now, it's ghetto):

i at LEAST, diverted the sump hose into the trench to get it running downhill, no more blowing out the hose this year!!!

i disconnected some of the gray water hose and put it into the trench too, when i am not working on the trench, running water will help me along:

here is a different view of the diverted hoses:

and here is a view of the overall progress so far:

not bad, but a long way to go, both out and down. this is heavy work! at least by the time the ground is frozen, all water will run downhill and no more freezing. next year i will complete the trench and install a permanent pipe that will drain the basement without a sump pump forever. stay tuned for updates!!!

cheers!

People, Food and Bookcovers or Something - an insightful, inspiring post by my friend Humble Wife

2011-12-01T14:43:00.003-04:00

*i have the permission of the author to put up this post*

my friend, Jennifer, Humble Wife, from Double Nickel Farm, has been there almost right from the beginning when we made the switch to try and live simpler lives and become more self-sufficient. her blog was a great find for us and we learned so much from her, her family and the way that they live their lives. she leaves inspiring, uplifting, funny and wisdom-filled comments on all of the blogs she visits. she has been a beacon of light for me during several dark times - some of which she knows about, some of which she doesn't.

i would like for all of you to visit her blog. specifically, this post called "People, Food and Bookcovers or Something" - she hits on so many levels of so many things that i keep re-reading it because every time i read it, different ideas pop into my head. she writes like that all of the time. and shares her life and her family with her readers. she has insight and wisdom - and if you do read her post - please take the time to check out her archives - she has been blogging for many years!

if you are interested in reading what an intelligent, Christian, homesteading, homeschooling and wonderful helpmate/wife is willing to share about trying to be a good wife and mother while living a simple, self-sufficient life - you will love her blog. and even if you are not interested in all of that - please read this one post. as jambaloney says - she uses pre-conceived notions of vegetables in order to describe how people become boxed into stereotypes.

i really loved this post. i hope that you will check it out.

thanks Jennifer! for everything!

the bathroom that Jimmy and Barb built

2011-11-29T07:39:00.006-04:00

remember the gawd-awful bathroom at the Manor? if not - here's a few pics to refresh your memories....the vanity:

to the left of the vanity (our bathroom is L-shaped) - remember those duck curtains?

the shower, held up by construction tape and the jiggling shower head:

well, our friends Jimmy and Barb, their son, some of Jimmy and Barb's friends and some of their son's friends all had a really fun time ripping that entire bathroom out and rebuilding it from scratch - NOT!

but they did rebuild it for us so that when we got to the Manor we had a nice bathroom. and we really appreciated all of their hard work. Jimmy said that he must have pulled out 9 million nails - and i believe it to be true as every single job that we have done around here first involves pulling out 9 million nails!!! Jimmy et al ripped out all of the walls and after rebuilding the walls, put in a brand new vanity, sink, toilet and tub/shower insert. they also put down a new floor for us and replaced the bathroom window. we added an over the toilet stand and built shelving along the back wall. here is the Framboise Manor bathroom as it is today:

vanity has been moved to a more functional location, i.e., NOT under the window. and did you notice the beautiful new window?

here is the new toilet and over the toilet cabinet....notice the new floor?

the curtain on the right-side of the bathroom has a cubby hole behind it with storage for towels/linen, etc.

here is the new shower/tub insert with new shower head - no red construction tape!!!

this pic is of the vanity taken from the opposite side of the room:

and here is the additional shelving that jambaloney and i built:

it's a wonderful thing to have a completed room in this house. the only thing left to do here is to paint the vanity a darker brown to match all of the rest of the dark brown. we love the vanity as is, but were unable to find an over the toilet cabinet in that shade of light-ish brown. so we will paint it and it will all come together quite nicely, i think.

anyway - our tastes are simple and i know that there are much fancier bathrooms out there - but we love the bathroom that Jimmy and Barb built!

(Edited to add: i will be around to everyone's blogs this afternoon. i haven't been on the computer much in the past few days - but don't worry - i will catch up on all of the backposts that i have missed!)

a "SciFiChick kinda' Thanksgiving Dinner"

2011-11-26T14:31:00.008-04:00

oh man...i was sooo looking forward to yesterday. that's when we celebrated American Thanksgiving Day. as we had missed Canadian Thanksgiving Day - we were thrilled to be able to celebrate yesterday!

jambaloney had gone into town a few days prior to pick up whatever we didn't already have. and i planned out our traditional menu. our day started off pretty gloriously, slept in a little, all the snow was melting, and we drank our coffee and tea in the hottub.

what started out as a glorious day very quickly turned into a "SciFiChick kinda' Thanksgiving Dinner"! oh SciFi - i had good intentions too! wrong!

our menu was simple and one that we have been making for years! with great success!

turkey, stuffing, gravey, mashed potatoes, honeyed carrots, maple syrup turnip mash, brussel sprouts with bacon, and ginger/pear cranberry sauce. although it may seem like a lot of complicated items, with proper preparation and timing - i can do this menu in my sleep!!!

have a look at our 2009 Thanksgiving Dinner (we didn't do Thanksgiving Dinner in 2010 as that's when we were showing our house for sale):

that's my famous stuffing - this stuff is so full of flavour and goodness and the croutons are home-made! next up - my now Cape Breton famous ginger-pear-cranberry sauce.

look at this beautiful turkey-drippings gravey!

and here is the spread that we put on that year for just ourselves. and yes - those are edible nasturtiums decorating the bowls.

honestly - i have made this Dinner so many times and have never screwed it up! but i guess the gods conspired against me yesterday or something! or, i guess SciFiChick and i really are sisters from another mother! because she royally messed up her dinner yesterday as did jambaloney and i. and after reading her post about messing it all up, and laughing, not at her but with her, and seeing how honest she was about screwing up their first Thanksgiving - i had to come here and be brutally honest, too. oh ya - we royally messed up our favourite holiday and our first Thanksgiving dinner here at the Manor in grand style.

first up - the stuffing. i was sure that we still had wild rice. we made several prep run purchases when we first got here and one of those preps was a 5lb bag of wild rice. i guess we ate it all up since then and haven't gotten around to replacing it. and what i thought was a container of wild rice turned out to be korean sticky rice - which is not so good for stuffing. no prob - we'll just leave the rice out! i normally use dried cranberries in the stuffing but because we have so many fresh ones, i tried using fresh ones in the stuffing - not a good idea! they made the hard-as-rock-homemade-croutons, that normally retain their texture, a big mushy blob! adding very healthy hemp-seed hearts, in place of wild rice, just contributed to the mushiness! woops - forgot to pick up celery (the celery that we grew this summer was a total bust)! all in all the stuffing just sucked! and we wasted those delicious giblets when we could have made giblet soup - arghghghgh!

moving right along - we thought that using frozen brussel sprouts would work just like fresh ones. wrong again. i steamed those babies for only a minute or two and they came out soggy as crap. oh well - they will firm up when i fry them in bacon grease. nadda chance. those were crap too!

because we have such a tiny stove we had to pull out our hotplate. and cooked the bacon on it. or tried. the bacon just went watery and we ended up adding additional bacon grease, from our stash, to it. the hotplate took forever to heat up, but when it finally did - it went into overdrive. we went from cooking bacon for almost a half hour to it burning our honeyed carrots in minutes. so both of those were dismal failures as well!

at this point we have dirtied every pot and pan in the house - jambaloney is washing pots and pans in the sink AND in the bathtub (look - ya gotta get creative when you live in the middle of nowhere and don't have any counterspace!) - and that's when we realized we couldn't bake the potatoes - because the turkey was in the oven - so we would have to boil them. and because we had planned on baking them - we dug up russet browns. they are great for baking first and then mashing - they are delicious! but they suck when steamed. but at this point we were going for broke to just try and finish and have a nice meal. but they came out like soggy, whipped with too much cream, potatoes.

the turnip was steamed for almost 45 minutes before i said enough is enough and pulled it out to mash. into hard little chunks. not even the butter, maple syrup or cream could save it. it tasted good but what was supposed to be a nice mash turned into nice, maple-syrup coated little hard balls of turnip. oh man!

the gravey....well....the drippings just didn't seem strong enough. or turkey enough. so i took one of those packets of turkey gravey and added it to the drippings. suddenly it became very dark brown - not unappetizing looking - just very dark brown. something was wrong. i took the packet out of the garbage and realized i had added a packet of ROAST gravey....oh someone kill me now!

on the plus side the turkey came out beautifully moist and browned and delicious! so that is our saving grace - we can still cook a turkey!

all throughout this mess of a dinner - jambaloney kept saying "it's okay babe, we'll enjoy it anyway". he has a way of doing that and keeping me calm when i want to climb the walls.

so after cooking all day (from about 10am until 5pm) - and we had to cook all day in batches as our stove and oven are sooo small, and although our stove has 4 elements, you can only use 2 at a time - unless you are using smurf pots. and there is no counter space in the kitchen - we had dishes everywhere for the whole day and were taking turns keeping the dishes being washed and dried and used again - well, after all of that - we took the time to lay out a spread and have our dinner at our dining room table.

here's a pic of the spread (nice and blurry eh?):

and here's a pic of the dining room table:

we set up our plates and sat down to what was not a very enjoyable meal. jambaloney kept saying, "oh the brussel sprouts aren't that soggy" or "well - the turkey is really good"...and then we just laughed and talked and gave thanks for all of the things we are happy for...and picked at the stuff we liked best - for me, the turkey, the potatoes (i'll eat any kind of potatoes!) and the roast/turkey gravey. for jambaloney - it was the turkey, the cranberry sauce and the turnip mash. both of us stayed away from the burned carrots and the soggy brussel sprouts.

afterwords, we gathered up the last of the dishes and got 'em all washed and sorted. then we took our glass of wine and did what any self-respecting cooks would do when they royally screwed up a meal - we got in the hottub!

all is well that ends well. and we did spend two days remembering and sharing all of the things that we were/are thankful for on our first Thanksgiving Day at Framboise Manor. we had lots of things to be thankful for. but not that dinner!

we pray that next year will be less SciFiChick and more Gordon Ramsay. no offense Sci!

(make sure to go and read her post! it's hilarious!)

averaging 10 inches of snow and Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T14:01:00.006-04:00

boy we sure didn't expect this when we woke up this morning! we have so much to do INSIDE of the house that we can't be worried about all the snow OUTSIDE of the house. oh well, we bit the bullet, did some shoveling and then got in the hottub. as my Uncle Gerald says.....oh man!

here's the side deck. poor cats couldn't even get out the catdoor although one tried at some point in the night.

here's looking out front. it's pretty but it is a ton of work to clear and we just aren't ready for this. what else is new?

another shot of the front of the house:

here's the front deck covered!

here's the back deck and backyard. again - it's so beautiful. we just don't need snow today!

the side deck and truckdura. poor truckdura is buried on all sides.

because this snow storm came out of nowhere, and because we should be seeing average temps again for the next few weeks - we said screw it. we'll see how much melts in the next few days. then we'll worry about plowing. it should all melt as we are supposed to get clearing sunny skies this afternoon and rain tomorrow. that should take care of it.

but we did get the ATV plow set up yesterday so if need be, we'll plow and shovel tomorrow or the next day.

for today - we completely re-arranged our living room. it looks much more open and spacious and we are very happy with our work.

for all of my American friends, i thank you for all of your uplifting comments on our last post. that means the world to us. you are all in our thoughts and thanks for today - although we are celebrating Thanksgiving proper - tomorrow! time to run and prep for tomorrow's dinner.

we wish you all a wonderful and warm Happy Thanksgiving Day!

The Framboise Manor American Thanksgiving Day Menu!

2011-11-23T12:52:00.010-04:00

wow! that sure was a mouthful!

well, seeing as how we missed Canadian Thanksgiving Day (October 10) - how did we do that? by never really knowing what day it is around here! we often start our mornings at the kitchen table asking each other - "is it Thursday?" - "no, it's Wednesday" - "are you sure?" - "ya, remember, we had darts last night" - "oh, right, okay, then it must be Wednesday".

so ya - we completely missed Canadian Thanksgiving Day and didn't figure it out until a few days later. and Thanksgiving is one of our favourite holidays. and we have sooooo much to be thankful for this year. so we are glad that the country to the south of us has a different date for their Thanksgiving Day Holiday. Thank You United States of America!

so we will be celebrating Thanksgiving with our American friends. for the past 10 years we have put on ginormic spreads of food - all of our favourite things! even though there has only ever been the 2 of us. except for one year when we had my friend over. we love to celebrate Thanksgiving with just the 2 of us - it is almost like our anniversary or something. and we always overdo it on the food. a big giant turkey, 80lbs of mashed potatoes, enough stuffing to feed 96 or 97 people.....for three weeks! you get the idea! but we love the left-overs and will happily eat them for the next month!

we have been trying to learn to claw back a little - but it isn't easy. we spend the whole morning cooking everything up, then we set an elaborate table (we don't use candles on the table anymore since i set our hanging lamp on fire last year - oops - my bad!), and then we stuff ourselves until we can't eat anymore. we're usually done in 20 minutes. the kitchen will look like a disaster pit and we go and climb on the couch. and the only thing that can get us off the couch is to go and have a "tax" - a tax being a piece of turkey or a spoonful of stuffing.

anyway - we are pretty traditional with our Thanksgiving Day meal. we don't like to change it up at all. we have the same thing every year. we love it!

so without further ado - i present the Framboise Manor American Thanksgiving Day Menu:

1. a big honking turkey. after thoroughly rinsing the turkey, i rub a fresh lemon all over the outside and inside, squeezing the lemon as i rub. then i rub the outside with a mixture of olive oil and butter. then i generously sprinkle with sea salt. fresh sage leafs under the skin of the breast. for the first half of the cooking time, i cook the turkey breast-side down. halfway through cooking, i flip it to breast side up. this keeps the breast so moist. basically, during the first half of the cooking gravity is pulling all of the juices down to the breast. then when you flip it, most of the juices stay in the breast (i have cooked turkeys and chickens breast side up before. they are never as moist and full of juice as when you start them breast-side down).

2. giblet/fresh cranberry/apple/celery/walnut/wild-rice stuffing. made from home-made croutons. i let my home-made bread sit out for 2-3 days, cut into 1-inch pieces. then i brush all of the pieces with some olive oil and sprinkle fresh chopped sage all over them. bake them in the oven for about 12-15 mins until golden and crunchy. these make a great snack if you like savoury and crispy snacks. set these aside in a large bowl.

cook your diced up giblets (neck, heart, kidney, liver) in a pan with butter. get the pan all nice and browned on the bottom. when giblets are cooked, add 2 cups of last Easter's turkey broth. scrape up all the nice browned bits. remove the neck from the pan and give it to jambaloney to snack on - then add the giblets to your to your croutons and one cup of giblet broth. add your cooked wild rice. add a nice handful of fresh cranberries, a chopped up apple, chopped up celery and your chopped walnuts. mix it all together and add more broth if need be. spoon stuffing into the chest cavity and body all the way to the neck and legs. tuck your legs.

3. smashed potatoes - i always make too much of this but we eat tons. scrub your potatoes but don't peel them. pierce them all over with a fork. rub olive oil all over the skins and then liberally salt with sea salt. bake them in the oven for about an hour. remove. split each potatoe down the middle. scoop out that delicious baked potatoe goodness. add a ton of butter and cream - heat until the butter melts and the cream heats. this is the only way we make mashed potatoes - no boiling! baking them first makes them absolutely mouth watering!

4. minted-honeyed carrots. peel and clean your carrots. cut them into 1-inch sections and then cut each section in half. cook them in hot butter on each side for almost 10 minutes each. once cooked, pour a large dollop of honey over them and mix it in well until the honey is heated. add fresh chopped mint.

5. maple-syrup turnip mash. chop up your turnip into 1-inch pieces and steam them until soft and mash-able. add butter. add cream. don't skip the cream! then add a big dollop of maple syrup. these are delicious!

6. brussel sprouts with bacon. steam your brussel sprouts for only about 6 minutes - you want them to still be crisp. cook as much bacon as you like -we make alot! remove the bacon and some of the bacon grease. add the brussel sprouts to the pan, coat them with the bacon grease. cook for about 3 minutes or until nicely-browned.

7. fresh cranberry/pear/ginger/cinnamon/clove sauce. sort through your fresh cranberries (see my beautiful cranberries below!), about 2 cups. chop up pears to equal a little over 1 cup. make sure to use a nonreactive saucepan! heat 3/4 cup of water, 1 cup of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of salt until sugar is dissolved, stirring often. once at a boil, add 1 and 1/2 cups of the cranberries - save half a cup of them for later. once the cranberries have returned to a boil, reduce heat to a nice simmer. keep stirring. after two-thirds of the cranberries have popped (about 5 mins), remove from heat. add the chopped pears. add a 1-inch piece of fresh crushed ginger. add 1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground cloves. add the 1/2 cup of uncooked cranberries. stir it all together. if planning to serve hot, put a lid on and quickly re-heat before serving. if planning to serve cold, let the sauce come to room temperature and then put in the fridge. this keeps well in the fridge for over a week. and is great canned. and is delicious as a traditional cranberry sauce, or can be used as a jam on bread or toast and tastes amazing on vanilla ice-cream.

8. and i saved the best for last - GRAAAAAAVEY!!! i love turkey-dripping gravey and sometimes gross jambaloney out with how my dinner is floating on my plate and looks like gravey soup! everyone already has their own favourite way of preparing gravey - i use all of the drippings without skimming them. before i put the turkey in the roaster, i pour some olive oil in the bottom of the roaster and add chopped onion, celery, carrot, cabbage, parsley and sage. once the turkey is cooked and removed from the roaster, i add a spoonful stuffing and then some dark meat. i heat all of that, strain it and then make a slurry with half a cup of the drippings and 6-7 tablespoons of flour. stir the slurry back in to the drippings until your desired thickness is reached. for the next few days as you are re-heating the gravey - add some of your reserved giblet broth.

anyway - everyone here knows that we love cranberries. and people have been picking tons for us. i made the cranberry-pear sauce for a function recently and everyone loved it and wanted the recipe. and that's when we started getting bags and buckets of cranberries from various folks. one of my friends is having out-of-town family over this weekend and asked if i would make the cranberry sauce for her. her husband's sisters picked these cranberries for the sauce. aren't they beautiful cranberries?

\

so i have this tub of cranberries and two 2lb bags of fresh cranberries. time to make some home-made cranberry juice. yummy!

we are planning on having our Thanksgiving Day Dinner on friday. ya - we're sneaky like that!

what starts with an "F" and rhymes with truck?( hint it's not "dang" or "golly gee whizz")

2011-11-20T15:27:00.018-04:00

'cuz that's what came outta my mouth when i crawled outta the above!!

our anniversary is jan 19th. last year, after just arriving to the Manor in December, i went into town on jan 18th to do some banking and get a pile of groceries and things we needed (and some preps). it was a loooong day and that was the day the flaky sump pump really didn't work right. i had a feeling it would happen, but even though it was raining that day over a bit of ice, we had experienced worse, so i rolled the dice. when i got back, i brought all the anniversary food (we were gonna cook up a storm) and then went to check the basement - it flooded to the max, read more here on "Ted's Seeds".

in the back of the truck was a new sump pump. not technically ironic, just a case of a day late, a dollar short. picture me in flooded boots., 2 and 1 half feet of COLD water holding the new sump pump in my arms until it emptied the basement, kymber on the porch sorting wet treasures...

the flood was bad enough, next day - happy anniversary. it was our 10 year anniverary and we spent it trying to dry out what we could. that was thursday... sunday it got so cold that we turned on the tap and nothing came out... hmmm. at this point, i didn't know a lot about a rural infrastructure... we waited and waited... no water. it got warmer...still no water.

so on a drastic hunch, i went down to look at the jet pump and noticed the cast iron casing had a crack... split because it froze. there was long project after that involving insulation, a kerosene heater and trips to the basement every couple of hours in an *^)^&*^*(^%^!! day to make sure that temps were above zero.

oh yeah, the day of the flood, our phone crapped out. two days AFTER we lost water (tuesday) , and then we lost our power. while we were huddled in our bed BEFORE the power came on, BEFORE we got a generator and a kerosene heater... the phone guy showed up and fixed the wiring by using the blue and white instead of the brown and red. buddy (my polite name for the previous owner of fm) had put in his own phone line which went to the basement and was BURIED IN THE DIRT!! frost heave had caused a short. the technician was classic cape breton, ignored my lunatic look, fixed the problem and left me enough free wire to make a new line... i have wired cat 5 for networks many times, i fixed that mess later...

ANYWAY... after all that i went to Landry on thursday , one of my local saviors.. it they don't have it, they can get it!! never have i got help and service like i have from them!! best supplier ever, that's cape breton for you!! i brought the broken pump and they ordered a new one. based on my description of the well situation, they upgraded from 1/2 hp to 3/4 hp.

so i waited and Landry called the next week - pump is in!! now, i don't know how to install a new one, but step one, go get it. at this point, kymber and i are still in shock since, well, we got here, but we are determined to succeed, off i go.

by now, i have 100 hours total driving under my belt. the day is perfect driving weather. snow MOSTLY cleared, temp at exactly zero, a bit of fluff melting on the road, no salt yet... and i am in a complete daze from it all....

as i get to a small town on the way.. (pop: 10-15 ??) and round the first corner... the truck veers a bit, i try to correct, it goes the other way... etc. i have two choices, 15 feet down or a snowbank... (sorry duke, only 1/2 of a "not so good")... i chose the snowbank - THAT part was lucky:

- i have a cab on the truck, prevented full roll
- there was snow on the side of the road
- the ground wasn't frozen, just wet mossy stuff

there i sat, looking out the windshield sideways, dazed but not confused to realize - "F*(&()&& - i just had an accident!!

i ALWAYS wear a seatbelt and was going no more than 30-40 km an hour (18-24 miles an hour) when i bailed, i was okay, but i couldn't open the driver's seat door - i had to go out the passenger door (do you know how heavy an f-150 door is when you have to push it up??) .

i jumped on the road, two feet apart on solid ground, and called kymber on my iphone (was very handy when i was cap't computer in ottawa) .........

uh, i forgot, no signal at this crash site , so much for the iphone being any good, the camera worked though - small blessing!

i stood there, dressed light for the occasion, listening to crows, waiting for ... ???

after about 10 mins, the woman who drives the local school bus came along and stopped, radioed in my predicament to her dispatch and had them get a tow truck and call kymber. kymber was on the phone at the time and missed the call, BUT, Richmond Transmissions & Towing got the call and after an hour and two other logging trucks who stopped to make sure i was okay, my saviour did arrive:

lowering the boom...

hooking up the truck..

you can see the wire...

over she goes!!!

after the truck was righted, there was a nice dent, the wheels were misaligned and one back tire was almost flat. the driver recommended i drive it back home as opposed to him towing it away. i did and came in the door white-faced, kymber all happy to get the new pump... had to burst THAT bubble. "dang" ;-) ;-)

after a bit of discussion, we called Jimmy who came and took me to Landry and then replaced our pump and helped fix all the burst pipes. what a friend!!

i managed to pump up the tire and get the truck into the dealer in and got it fixed without insurance for a price that would have been triple in the city. Truckdura was none the worse for wear... it did have a chunck of frozen ground struck in the front that i removed a month later, but all's well that ends well!!

it was that kind of a winter, behold Vandura !!!

&%*(^&% happens!!! ;-0 ;-)

the road that Jimmy built!

2011-11-19T12:25:00.014-04:00

i have mentioned our friends Jimmy and Barb a few times on this blog. they are the great people who took care of the Manor for us while we were still living back in the city - and they did a ton of work for us! one of the best selling points about the Manor was it came with alm0st 10 acres and 200ft of riverfront - we always knew that when we left the city we had to be on waterfront.

when i first contacted the real estate agent, she let me know right off the top that no human being had ever seen our "waterfront". at some point in mankind's history, someone had cleared about 20 ft just at the back of the house; however that was many moons ago and it had all grown over again. with wild raspberry bushes. it's not called Framboise for nothing. anyway - the rest of the 1000ft hike to the "waterfront" was pure, virgin, overgrown forest.

that threw us for a bit of a loop and we re-considered. but because the acreage came with a house, telephone, electricity, well, septic system, etc., and because it was located in the exact rural area that we wanted to be in...we bit the bullet and decided that we would have to budget for a road to be built down to the river at some point in the future.

after we bought the place, sight-unseen, we took a vacation to the Manor to finally see our property. we were so excited! running around the cottage and the yard like giggling fools. and then decided to go and check out our "waterfront". here is a pic of what we encountered at the beginning of our hike.

it sure doesn't look as bad as it was. we spent almost an hour tripping, falling, squeezing between trees, getting scratches everywhere, falling down some more and crying. it was only 1000ft. and we have both hiked and whatnot but this was densely-packed forest. however, once we saw the river we knew that we had made the right decision. our only problem was - who on earth could build us such a long road. and how much was it going to cost?!?!?!?!?

enter A and C, stage left. C is Jimmy and Barb's daughter, A is her boyfriend. because the hike to the river was so gawd-awful, we decided to go to the beautiful private beach nearby. A and C were set up in a camper trailer down at the beach. as soon as we pulled up, their gorgeous pit-bull jumped right into my unrolled window and proceeded to lick my whole face. then jumped in the backseat. then chased his tail. then jumped in the front seat and licked jambaloney's whole face. then back into the back seat. this proceeded for many minutes with both A and C, embarrassed, leaning in the car, trying to get that rambunctious little/big guy out of there - it was funny to say the least! and that poor little dog recently got hit by a car and had one of his front paws removed right up to the shoulder!!! but that hasn't stopped him. C told me he was dragging her up the road at lightening speed on his 3rd day out of the hospital. and for anyone concerned - he has really adjusted. and still jumps in strangers' cars i am sure.

continuing on, we went a ways up the beach and set up our towels then ran into the water. we were splashing around in the freezing ocean for about an hour - laughing and laughing! we are water babies. once we got out and were properly dried-off, A walked down and asked us if we would like to join them for a beer. so we went up to where they had parked their trailer and sat and chatted. they are really nice kids in their early 20's. they told us that C's mom and dad, Jimmy and Barb, had just gone off to get some firewood and would be back shortly. we enjoyed chatting with them and playing with the dog.

enter big, black, beaten up Chevy Silverado, stage right. loaded to the gills with firewood. and when i say firewood - i mean entire trees! and when i say entire trees - i mean entire trees, about a foot and a half in diameter, that he had pulled out of the ground - no chainsaw, no hatchet - no anything. just pulled them out of the ground - bahahahaha! oh he's a character is our Jimmy! imagine a 6'2, 220lb Cape Breton guy who claims he got his Grade 12 - cuz he repeated Grade 6 before quitting school! he is friendly, always smiling and is glad to help anyone out with anything that he can.

Barb's quite the character herself and the exact opposite of Jimmy - in some ways. she is tiny like a faery, complete with a faery-smile and has a huge heart of gold (i wish she had a "pot" of gold!). but don't get her started or you are in for it - she could easily take on 3 or 4 guys Jimmy's size and she would be the ONLY one walking away.

anyway - there we are having one of the best afternoons of our life - yakking with our new-found friends and swimming. i'll never forget the way Jimmy kept saying, "welcome home, buddy. welcome home". he was making me teary-eyed!

we probably stayed at the beach until about 10:30 that night and left after much hugging and promises to return the following morning for breakfast. we came back to the cottage and spent the night on a mouldy, old mattress but slept like kings! we woke up late and went back to the beach where Jimmy, Barb, A and C had already had breakfast and had passed A and C on the road as they were heading home - about an hour and a half away. when we got down to the beach there was more hugs and welcomes and then more chatting.

at some point we explained our situation with not being able to get down to the river. and that's when Jimmy told us he's a certified heavy equipment operator. one year he laid fibre-optic cable 6,000km from British Columbia to Halifax, Nova Scotia. THAT is the entire distance across our country! he built airports in Nunavut AND the Northwest Territories. and he was an ice-road truck driver for years! there is not a piece of heavy equipment that he is not trained to use. he spent this past summer dredging Sydney harbour (a fair-sized harbour) to make it deeper. the man has been everywhere and done everything!

and very casually told us that he would come take a look and let us know if it would be a problem to build us a road! VERY CASUALLY?!?!?!?!?

they came up - Jimmy walked around, said he could clear all around our house, could build the road to the river and it would not be a problem - WHAT?!?!?! oh and he would also re-grade our driveway?!?!?!

they stayed with us a few more hours. we exchanged all of our details. gave them the keys to the Manor. they had to leave to go home. lots of hugging and kissing! we had to leave the next day to come back to the city. we called them when we arrived back in the city. Jimmy told us he would have all of the work at the Manor done by November as he first had to finish another contract. November?!?!?!!? we couldn't believe our incredible luck! and we weren't even planning on moving to the Manor for another several years. but with Jimmy getting that work on the driveway, yard and road done for us - it meant that we could visit the Manor and be able to enjoy our waterfront - can you even believe this story?!?!?!

as it turns out, Barb and Jimmy took care of the Manor for us for a year and a half. Barb painted the entire Manor, and both Jimmy and Barb, their kids, and friends also helped put the Manor together for us. i have previously mentioned putting in a beautiful new window in the living room, a new one in the bathroom, gutting the entire bathroom and re-building it from scratch, putting in a new water heater, new sump-pump, building us a deck - i can't even remember all that they did for us!

anyway - back to the road that Jimmy built. have a look-see for yourselves...here is a pic of the Manor before:

pretty overgrown, eh? and here is a pic of the front yard before:

here's what Jimmy did - amazing isn't it?

remember the gawd-awful driveway?

here's what Jimmy did:

here is a pic of the full driveway:

remember how the back of the house used to look?

here's what Jimmy did. notice that he saved the trees!

and i know. this post is about the road that Jimmy built. here ya go, have at 'er:

you can actually see the river now! and he cleared an area for us down at the river!

he did all of this work for us and charged us only the rental for the equipment. he charged us nothing for labour. and he was at the Manor working his butt off and it was slow-moving because of the horrible weather! and he charged us not a dime for his labour.

on top of that - he happened to stumble across some old farming equipment that a farmer was throwing out. asked if he could have it. farmer said sure. so he dragged that stuff up to the Manor and then painted it red. how did he know of my love of red? i don't know the answer to that question.

here is a pic of our friend, Jimmy. we love him! more than he will ever know.

i look out my kitchen window everyday and see that hand-painted, red,old farm equipment. and Jimmy is always smiling and waving, with his beer in hand in my mind.

from both of us, Jimmy, to you and Barb - thank you!

hellhole - the final chapter!!

2011-11-16T13:30:00.012-04:00

okay - this is the LAST chapter in the hellhole saga - sorry to disappoint (really, you are probably sick of this by now - i sure am! - for what it's worth, this was completed a month ago, just posting it now).

we left off at "hellhole - part 3: there has to be a better way!!!" in which i installed an attic ladder. now we need a floor, what better way to begin that a 14 amp circular saw:

and some 1/2 " osb:

which needs to be cut into bite-sized chunks (2x4 each piece, i used 5 4x8 boards in total):

whoops, we are not worthy, i mean ready:

well, i got the first load up the ladder and then covered the ladder to minimize the blown insulation that would leak into the kitchen, yes, that is my foot:

i put the first load of boards down willy-nilly, but at least i have a place to put the tools now:

some gonzo electrical work. there were no plates on the junction boxes and i wasn't about to dick around with the power - thank god for duct tape!! before:

after:

i NEED to stand here!!!

up off the floor......

anchor as best i can

now the first part of the floor goes down where the ladder opens up to...some success here:

at the wall where the old and new cottages meet, i have to lay some 2x4 supports:

now i can floor this area properly:

down to the end of the ladder:

and around - awesome!!!

now i cut more sections of osb and bring them up:

and start the first long corridor along the load-bearing wall in the middle of the first cottage:

then over to the other side of the load-bearing wall:

the wiring was a pain, buddy just tossed the wires across the trusses, no stapling, nothing. you will see a few boards that he laid in, i didn't bother removing them. i had to cut notches here and there to go over/around the original wiring, cost a LOT of time!

but it's worth it!

when i was done with the flooring, i stapled plastic barriers to keep the blown insulation from creeping into the floored area, it worked better than i thought it would!

i extended the flooring on the second row to go out a second truss support, we'll put bags of clothes and lighter things there:

here is the additional storage in all it's glory. keep in mind, max head clearance is 5 feet, but with some effort, ingenuity and a sore back, i was able to kluge together a suitable storage space. i t is now about 1/2 full and will accommodate the rest of the things that need to go there. we were able to empty our storage locker in town - a milestone!!

so after all that, i deserve this!! :

yeah, it's a camo beer, close as i will get to hunting this year ;-) don't fret over the end of hellhole, wait till you see the basement!!!

cheers!

in da HOT-TUB!

2011-11-16T11:49:00.005-04:00

okay - well i don't have any pics of us actually IN da hot-tub (we can't find our bathing suits as we don't need them here - we think they are in one of the attics. as soon as we find them, i'll post a pic of us in da HOT-TUB!)

however, i do have pics OF da hot-tub. here's a pic showing where the hot-tub lives - it's awesome!

and here is a pic of only half of the cover removed. this is a 4-person hot-tub and it is soooo roomy. back in the city we had a 2-person hot-tub. the difference is amazing. we can stretch right out in this one. oh and the jets are to die for.

and here is a pic without the jets on. we love this thing. the little thing floating on the bottom right of the pic is our bobbing water thermometer. that weird string thing on the left - i have no idea??? i think it is the reflection of something or????

so there it is. we have been in and out of it several times over the past two days. the hot-tub is extremely therapeutic and if used regularly, can really help out with a variety of aches and pains. the only problem is that when you first start using it - aches and pains that you might not have been aware of very quickly identify themselves! it takes a couple of weeks of using the hot-tub before you start actually enjoying it. right now - the two of us are moaning and groaning about pains and aches that we didn't know about. and that's on top of the pains and aches that we do know about. but slowly the hydrotherapy will work out all of our aches and pains.

for anyone interested, this is a Softub model. when empty, it only weighs 70lbs...so you can move it anywhere you want. we had a Softub in the city for 2yrs and then gave it to our step-dad. he is enjoying the crap out of that thing. we never experienced any problems with it and neither has our step-dad. i really recommend that if you consider getting a hot-tub, that you check out Softub!

as crazy as this may sound - this is an investment in our health. and well worth the money! besides the hydrotherapy that it provides, it also provides us with a place to start the day and a place to end the day. whenever we are in the hot-tub we chat, we talk about plans for tomorrow, we talk about short-term goals, long-term goals, our ideas and our dreams. the hot-tub is a very soothing way to start and end the day. it helps to relieve stress, tension, muscle aches and pains - and it is a wonderful place to sit and enjoy a glass of wine (me) or a beer (jambaloney) at the end of a day and look back at what we have accomplished.

we love the hot-tub. and recommend that all of our friends look into getting one - the physical, mental and emotional health benefits are great. but getting in da HOT-TUB whenever you want - that's the best part!

TKO'd!

2011-11-13T14:20:00.003-04:00

Totally Knocked Out! sick as a dog! we went to the Volunteer Fire Department meeting on Wednesday night. when we got there the hall was freezing. i have been feeling cold and shivery ever since jambaloney got sucker-punched. i lay on the road with him for about 30 minutes wearing nothing more than a sheer skirt, no socks, sandals on my feet and a light top. then i lay on the freezing cold hall floor with him. nothing was worse than the hospital - it was colder in there than it was outside!!! and i realized that i have been shivering and holding my upper body in a hunched position since then.

sitting in that position at the VFD meeting and shivering again for another hour and a half - i think my body just gave in. i am pretty run-down and not afraid to admit it. i woke up in the middle of the night and ran to the bathroom, calling for jambaloney. i had interesting things happening at both ends. it was not pretty, nor enjoyable.

thursday morning saw me praying for death. and more interesting expel-ations from both ends. couldn't hold down any food - not even water. there would be no Remembrance Day celebrations for me. but at least i could watch the national Remebrance Day Ceremony streaming from CBC - but no - not a chance! we were experiencing 50-80km winds and sheets of rain that day and lost power! arghghghghgh! i would have made myself stay up for the whole ceremony, but the truth is, i fell asleep right after we did our 2 minutes of silence. and slept the rest of the day leaving jambaloney alone.

when i got up later that evening, we were still without power but jambaloney had set up the generator and the basement had not flooded. as true to form as they are, Nova Scotia Power had us up and running in under 12 hours and we are truly in the middle of nowhere. we experience better services here than when we lived in the city!!!

anyway - our birthday/Christmas gift to each other arrived the next day and not a minute too soon! i have been out of commission since thursday morning, but our hot-tub arrived and jambaloney re-did a bunch of wiring in order to put it, and our sump-pump, on their own breaker. we spent today filling the tub. and we forgot to take pictures of the process because i was sick and he was so focused. but i will put up a pic of the finished product once it heats up and we clean up the deck - AGAIN! Operation Hot-tub starts now! it will take a full day to heat up, but my aching muscles and joints can't wait!

my friend Donna just went through a bout of what she called "the plague". i might have gotten this from her. make sure to go and check her out. but try not to catch the plague!

holy crap! i just went to link to Donna's blog and saw her Veteran's Day post. and couldn't help myself reading it. Donna's husband Rick is a veteran who has sacrificed much so that you and i can be free. Donna has also been through hell and back and very eloquently reminds us that this day of remembering is not only about the soldiers and the veterans - it is about all that their families must sacrifice, deal with, and live with too! and in her very aware manner, she remembers all of the other countries that have served beside the US soldiers and thanks them too!

thank you Donna! thank you Rick! please make sure to stop by and read her beautiful, honest and very sad, yet uplifting, post!

we will be dropping in to everyone's blogs shortly. i can't wait to see what some of you posted for Remembrance Day/Veteran's Day. but when i miss a few days on people's blogs, i always go back and re-read all of the new posts.

thank you all for your beautiful comments on my last post. i promise to respond to them all! just maybe not right now. head is spinning and need to lay down. but i promise to get to your blogs soon okay?

until then - thank you all for all of the comments that you left on all of my Remembrance Day/Veteran's Day posts - i really appreciated every single one of them!

A Pittance of Time

2011-11-11T00:33:00.004-04:00

Terry Kelly is another extraordinary Canadian who supports our troops - all of our troops and veterans. You can visit his website here.

The following is copied from his website and appears in quotes:

" On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a drug store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store’s PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us.

Terry was impressed with the store’s leadership role in adopting the Legion’s “two minutes of silence” initiative. He felt that the store’s contribution of educating the public to the importance of remembering was commendable.

When eleven o’clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.

Terry’s anger towards the father for trying to engage the store’s clerk in conversation and for setting a bad example for his child was channeled into a beautiful piece of work called, “A Pittance of Time”. Terry later recorded “A Pittance of Time” and included it on his full-length music CD, “The Power of the Dream”.

The following lyrics will have you bawling. Be ready and have many tissues!

A Pittance of Time Lyrics:

A Pittance of Time
Written by Terry Kelly
Published by Jefter Publishing

They fought and some died for their homeland
They fought and some died now it’s our land
Look at his little child, there’s no fear in her eyes
Could he not show respect for other dads who have died?

Take two minutes, would you mind?
It’s a pittance of time
For the boys and the girls who went over
In peace may they rest, may we never forget why they died.
It’s a pittance of time

God forgive me for wanting to strike him
Give me strength so as not to be like him
My heart pounds in my breast, fingers pressed to my lips
My throat wants to bawl out, my tongue barely resists

But two minutes I will bide
It’s a pittance of time
For the boys and the girls who went over
In peace may they rest, may we never forget why they died.
It’s a pittance of time

Read the letters and poems of the heroes at home
They have casualties, battles, and fears of their own
There’s a price to be paid if you go, if you stay
Freedom is fought for and won in numerous ways

Take two minutes would you mind?
It’s a pittance of time
For the boys and the girls all over
May we never forget our young become vets
At the end of the line it’s a pittance of time

It takes courage to fight in your own war
It takes courage to fight someone else’s war
Our peacekeepers tell of their own living hell
They bring hope to foreign lands that the hatemongers can’t kill.

Take two minutes, would you mind?
It’s a pittance of time
For the boys and the girls who go over
In peacetime our best still don battle dress
And lay their lives on the line.
It’s a pittance of time

In Peace may they rest, lest we forget why they died.
Take a pittance of time.

And now the actual song and video. Please note the participation of actual veterans from the Royal Canadian Legion Todmorden Branch #10 and Woodbine Height Branch #2 in the video.

A Pittance of Time

Standing Strong and True

2011-11-10T01:21:00.000-04:00

"Standing Strong and True (For Tomorrow)," is an all-star Canadian country single dedicated to fallen Canadian soldiers and their families. All proceeds from the song go to the Canadian Military Families Fund.

I hope that you will all take a moment and listen to this beautiful song - it's another tearjerker! But i think that you will enjoy it. Here are the lyrics in quotes, with the video following afterwards:

"I hear the guns, I feel the fire,
with my last breath my spirit flies
And I see the faces of my friends,
fighting till the end
So many fearless hearts.

I feel their courage and their pain,
their lives should never be in vain.
From heavens gate a perfect view
a plain and simple truth - Is lighting up the dark

Love one another that stranger is your brother
Leave a footprint, everywhere you go
Keep yesterday for giving, today just for living
Say a prayer every night for tomorrow

I pray the past can teach us all,
before another hero falls
Before another mother cries,
forever asking why (Why oh why)

Can't we love one another that stranger is your brother
Leave a footprint everywhere you go (everywhere you go)
Keep yesterday for giving, today just for living
Say a prayer every night for tomorrow

Standing strong and true,
on guard for me and you
Standing strong and true,
on guard for me and you

So we can love one another that stranger is your brother
Leave a footprint everywhere you go
Keep yesterday for giving
Today just for living
Say a prayer every night for tomorrow

Bless the true believers
Who stand and fight for freedom
So we can live in peace right here at home
Live in peace at home
Keep yesterday for giving, today just for living
Say a prayer every night for tomorrow
Say a prayer every night for tomorrow"

Please take the time to watch the video and listen to the beautiful lyrics. My favourite part is "Standing strong and true, on guard for me and you". It is a play on the words from our national anthem "Oh Canada, we stand on guard for you". And that is what our military does. They stand strong and true, on guard for me and you.

And here is the actual video and song. I hope that you will take a few minutes of your time and listen to a beautiful song written for our heroes, some of whom I have met, worked with and known. Some of whom are no longer with us. And for that, my heart breaks.

Standing Strong and True (For Tomorrow)

And if you are interested, you can learn more about the song, the video and the Canadian Military Families Fund here: www.wesaluteourheroes.com

Thank a Soldier

2011-11-07T04:17:00.000-04:00

Thank a Soldier is an amazing website doing amazing things for soldiers all over the world. I hope that you all take the time to check out the site, and read about how you can help.

I have copied this from the Thank a Soldier's homepage - I hope that you enjoy!

(the Copied information, with the permission of Dave Murphy, the site owner, appears in quotes below)

"The Thank A Soldier cause was launched at the end of December 2008, and its Facebook group now has over 4.1 Million members (see our facebook instructions to join). Put simply, our goal is to encourage people from all over the world to say "Thank You" when you cross paths with a member of our military. Whether you do so in person, or through one of the options listed below, send messages of thanks to our men & women serving on operations throughout the world.

Show our military and veterans that we appreciate them and the sacrifices they give to keep us free, whether they are from Canada, USA, Britain, or any member of the UN Coalition. Whether you support what they are doing or not, keep in mind these brave men and women leave their families at home and make the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

We would also like to remind everyone to be sure to thank a veteran whenever possible, as without them who knows what language you might be reading this site, in or even if you would be permitted to read it at all.

Thank you to all the men and women who serve and protect our rights and freedoms. Our Thoughts go out to you all and your families who support you while you are on your missions. Our Thoughts go out to those who have lost loved ones who have served and made the ultimate sacrifice for us.

This site has been and will always continue to be ad & banner free. We do not charge membership fees, or take monetary donations. We are dedicated to showing all members of the UN Coalition our thanks and respect for their service, not to make a profit. We welcome tributes and submissions from all over the world, related to any branch of the military.

Thank you for taking the time to view this site.

Another part of Thankasoldier.net is "The Thank A Soldier Monthly"(tasmonthly.blogspot.com) which allows members to send write ups and allows everyone to have a voice within the military community."

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Please take a few minutes and visit the Thank a Soldier site. I promise it will be well worth your time. And be certain to read Dave Murphy's About Me section. He is a typical, average, outstanding Canadian who cares. He is someone to admire and respect. And I admire and respect everything that he has done! Kudos to you, Dave!

The Canadian Hero Fund/The Highway of Heroes Song

2011-11-06T14:10:00.000-04:00

The Trews are a great band from Nova Scotia. They wrote a song called "The Highway of Heroes" after one of their friends, from their home town, was killed in Afghanistan.

All proceeds from the sale of their song go to the Canadian Hero Fund, an organization that helps military members and their families.

It is a beautiful song. I hope that you will enjoy it.

Go here to listen to it. Have many tissues handy.

The Canadian Highway of Heroes

2011-11-05T05:59:00.000-03:00

This post comes from the Canadian Preppers Network, which I used to write for. You can read the post in its entirety, with all associated comments here. This post was written by Team Hall, the original head of the CPN, on February 20, 2009. I think the post is beautiful and I have copied it in it's entirety. Please check out the CPN if you are Canadian and a prepper. And for my American friends, please check out the American Preppers Network. The CPN and the APN are great sources of information for all preppers/survivalists.

(The entire original post from the CPN follows in quotes)

"The Canadian Highway of Heroes

Ordinary Canadians care.

We are preparing for something unimaginable...something we don't want to happen. While we prepare for calamity and catastrophe, we need to remember the free world is resisting the horror of terrorists and their plans to disrupt our peaceful lives.

This shows how Canadians have spontaneously honoured, with pride and sorrow, the 108 heroes who have died for us all in Afghanistan.

"The whole purpose of the Highway of Heroes is that the families of our fallen soldiers understand they are not making the long drive with their deceased loved one alone. The entire country is shoulder to shoulder behind them. They never pass under a bridge without seeing throngs of people and flags all in honour of their loved one's sacrifice."
quote from awilliamson 7, toronto Feb 6/09

Please take a few minutes to watch this....

The Highway of Heroes

Our American friends have made a request for their own Highway of Heroes.

God Bless"
----------

I hope that you enjoyed The Highway of Heroes above. Please watch it. And make sure that you have several tissues on hand. The video of The Highway of Heroes above is a real tear-jerker.

Every single one of our Canadian heroes travels that route home. And all 50 overpasses are always filled with throngs of people, honouring our heroes.

And lastly, here is a link of Tom Brokaw's explanation of the long-standing relationship between Canada and the United States of America, which was recorded during the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Games held in Vancouver, British Columbia. Please take the time to listen to it, too.

TB's explanation of the long-standing relationship between Canada and the US.

I hope that you all have enjoyed these videos. And I thank everyone, both Canadian and American, for their service. God Bless.

Remembrance Day/Veteran's Day

2011-11-05T02:40:00.000-03:00

Remembrance Day/Veteran's Day is fast approaching. It was always a day that we cherished when I was a child growing up. We wore our beautiful red poppy pins on our coat lapels for a few weeks before the actual day, and, on the actual day, all participated in a parade that ended at the legion. More about the legion in a bit.

My elementary and junior high school was called John Bernard Croak, Victoria Cross Memorial school. You can read more about John Bernard Croak here. And I hope that you will. Although he was born in Newfoundland, an island near Cape Breton Island, his family moved to Cape Breton Island when he was two. He was raised in the same town I was raised. The legion in that home town is also named in his honour.

The Victoria Cross was the highest reward received from the British Commonwealth for "gallantry in the face of the enemy". Please read his story here. His Wikipedia entry is not very long, although I wish it was longer.

Several times during my 10yrs of service in the Canadian Forces I served cenotaph duty at several Remembrance Day ceremonies. Cenotaph duty requires the soldier to stand at attention, head pointing down, hands resting flat on the butt of your weapon, barrel resting on the toe of the boot. And you don't move or blink. And you stay that way for the entire ceremony - whether it is an hour long or three hours long. And it is not easy to stay in that position without wavering. And you cry. When you see WWI vets placing their wreathes, you cry. And when you peak out of the corner of your eye and see WWII vets placing their wreathes, you cry. And when you see vets from the Korean, Vietnamese, Somalia, Serbia-Croatia, Gulf War I, etc. lay their wreathes, you cry. And when you see family members of fallen comrades lay their wreathes, you cry. And when you peak at big, strong soldiers in the crowd crying, you cry. In fact, I think that must be what cenotaph duty is about.

Anyway, I will be posting several Remembrance Day posts over the next few days up to November 11. Remembrance Day was important as a child and it was important as a soldier. It is still important as a veteran. It is important to all Canadians.

To all of those serving, or who have served, we will never forget. To all of my Canadian comrades, both serving, have served, living or dead, I salute you.

I have a few American veterans who read this blog. And I would like to dedicate this post to them. For being such good friends. And for serving. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for your service.

good eats (GEs) - supper series 1

2011-11-04T06:05:00.000-03:00

yummy. chicken vegetable pasta for supper. that's some good supper eats right there.

you start with left-over grilled locally-sourced chicken. grilled on the barbie because that is the best way to eat chicken.

you chop it into bite-sized bits.

and add some bow-tie pasta as they soak up the home-made ranch dressing the best. and they are pretty! cook the pasta according to package instructions - we always cook our pasta al dente and as soon as it is cooked we run cold water over it to stop the cooking process. plus, this is a cold chicken-pasta salad so you want the pasta cold when it is ready to be mixed in.

next up - chop up your fresh, locally-sourced asparagus into bite-sized pieces.

steam your asparagus (NO BOILING EVER!) for approximately 3 minutes - you want it to maintain a crisp texture and bite. once steamed - run the asparagus under cold water to stop the cooking process. see below.

and do you see all of that beautiful, delicious asparagus water? use it to water your house plants - they will love you for it! and you re-use your water and not waste it. waste not, want not.

next up is getting the locally-sourced celery ready. you can't have a proper pasta salad without celery!!!

and your own home-grown radishes - so spicey!

our home-grown carrots, julienned and then chopped.

wild garlic that a friend of jambaloney's gave us. i love wild garlic!

some home-grown green onions - yummeh!

locally-sourced red cabbage.

here's all the veggies getting ready to go into the pasta.

here's the pasta and chicken being mixed with our home-made ranch dressing. recipe to follow.

and here is all of the veggies being added. more ranch dressing will be recquired. i like the salad to be pretty goopy with the dressing.

and here it all is mixed together. sorry i didn't take pics of the salad on the plate. we love this kind of salad. full of cooked, steamed, raw and fermented food. we eat this as a supper meal with home-made bread, slathered with butter on the side.

that's some good supper eats right there. oh and tastes even better the next day for lunch!

my queer-*ssed recipe for homemade ranch dressing:

1 cup of mayonnaise (i like to make my own but sometimes have to use store-bought)
1/2 cup of sour cream
a handfull of chopped up, fresh-from-the-garden chives
a handfull of fresh parsley
a small handfull of fresh dill weed or flowers
1 tblspoon of fresh garlic
1 tblspoon of fresh ginger
1 tblspoon of cider vinegar WITH the mother
a dollop of honey
a dollop of dijon mustard
half a teaspoon of onion powder
a few drips of worcestershire sauce
a ton of sea salt and fresh-cracked pepper

1. mix all of the ingredients in a bowl, cover and chill for at least an hour. it is deelish!

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and because this isn't a recipe blog, and because we have some cranky preppers, survivalists, homesteaders and gunlovers here who don't want a recipe every third post - i have decided to start a new blog for recipes and Good Eats. you can find it under the pic of the Manor on the right, or you can go here. it's called *Framboise Manor* Good Eats. and it will be a place for me to record our eating habits and our recipes.

please don't feel compelled to follow it and add it to your bloglist. i mean, i follow all of your blogs and have added you to my bloglist...but that's just because i am a nice person - bahahahahah! no honestly - if reading recipes and crap is not your thing - then don't worry about checking it out. i just didn't want to clog this blog up with recipes and such. this blog is for our daily doings, fixer-uppings and how and what we are doing. but i realized that i needed a separate place for our recipes.

you are all welcome to come and enjoy the new blog. but if it isn't your thing - i completely understand!

water, water everywhere - and that's a good thing!

2011-11-03T12:06:00.000-03:00

here at Framboise Manor we are fortunate to live on a beautiful, clean river/estuary (empties into the ocean) that is fed by 6 mountain streams. being that we are 5 minutes from the ocean - we have water everywhere!

most of the members of our two communities (Framboise/Fourchu) have spent the money to have springs and wells dug. thankfully the Manor came with an already dug 4-crock concrete well. although it is safe to drink - it is full of minerals and a lovely shade of brown - not too enticing-looking in a glass! although all of our plants appreciate the mineral-laden water! and although all of our community members have offered us the use of their springs - we have no need. we have our own special, little set-up that we have been using for years now. we used this set-up back in the city and although a lot of people tell us that it seems complicated and would take a lot of time - we say back - heck - we wash our own clothes by hand for the love of cheeze whiz! and boiled snow to flush our toilet all winter! we love a little work!

we use our rainbarrels to collect delicious, salt-filled, mostly un-polluted cape breton rainwater and then run that water through our two Berkeys. if you have never heard of a Berkey Water Filtration System - go look it up and then get yourself one. or two. they are the absolute best water filtration system out there as far as i am concerned! and i have left probably 2,000 comments all over the net about the Berkey's and ya know what - it's probably high-time that they started paying me for all of this free advertising! naw ', 'jes teasin' witchya'!

we LOVE our Berkeys. we have used them for over 4 years now and they have never failed us! we also stocked up on a life-time supply of filters. not a purchase that we made all at once, mind you, but that is what prepping is about - planning and budgeting for your preps.

anway - we collect rainwater, something we are never short of here, and run it through the Berkeys. then we pour the filtered water into 5 gallon standard water jugs and place a jug in our water cooler dispenser. easy as pie. and delicious!

here's a pic of our high-tech set-up (jambaloney was an IT specialist, remember!). we put in a brand new gutter-system all around our roof, collect the water in this rainbarrel and fill the top of the Berkeys with it. in about 2 hours, the water is filtered, and then we put it in the 5-gallon jug hidden underneath the green towel. the green towel is our high-tech way of preventing algae from ever growing.

it takes 2 days to fill a 5-gallon jug as we only do this once in the morning. if we did it twice a day - we could fill a 5-gallon jug in a day. anyway, once the jug is full, we move it to the dark area of the basement until it is ready to be used. we have three 5-gallon jugs always at the ready, at any moment. when we run out of water in our cooler - we just haul up a jug from the basement. here's the water cooler - it works pretty good too!

it is just a standard, ordinary water cooler - no fancy gadgets, no ice-making machine, it doesn't make hot water. we don't need hot water from our water cooler. one nice feature though is that one button provides freezing cold water, whereas the other button provides room temperature water. so we don't have to use a lot of electricity to keep the whole jug kept at a freezing temperature - just the water in the reservoir is kept freezing.

and here is a pic of our little well. that little well pumps water 150ft away from the house at a 30ft elevation - that little thing works wonders! we always have water as soon as you turn on a tap - well except for last winter when all of our un-insulated pipes froze. but we have rectified that situation!!!! and that was not the well's fault!

this spring, we plan to begin installing a solar/wind system. but, being that we have those 2 beautiful Berkeys - we can run river water, ocean water, melt snow, marsh water, pond water and even puddle water through it - so at this point - we don't need to store water which makes more room for food storage and seeds.

we understand how fortunate we are to be surrounded by a variety of water sources - and that is a very good thing!

hellhole - part 3: there has to be a better way!!!

2011-11-02T09:51:00.000-03:00

INTO the hellhole.... jambaloney here, i'll cut to the chase - sometimes ya just gotta buy pre-made - here is a brand-new attic ladder and my feet:

(model #LP-42055 from LITE ladders)

of course the ladder itself is pre-made, the place to put it.... that's the fun stuff! if you have read hellhole - part 2: lighting up attic #1 , you might remeber we left off the pic below called "site of former kitchen light", now renamed "site of new attic ladder if it kills me!"

okay back into the hellhole, you see the need for a better way, yes?

the plywood that spans the trusses at the top of this next pic is over top the "site of former kitchen light".... nice shovel, eh? need it to move around all the blown insulation, good thing it is plastic, as you can see, you never know where the wires are in the hellhole!

here i measure the width between the trusses.... need 22"...JUST GONNA FIT!!!! (these are "homemade trusses, not always the same span - challenges make us better, right??

okay now, the length....47 1/2 ".... from the, wait... see the 1x3 boards that are here and there under the trusses? that is what the kitchen ceiling has been attached to, they are here and there and..... anyway... i DON"t have to gut the one at the "site of former kitchen light" thank god! especially because at the other end is a bunch of wiring, i really only have JUST enough space lengthwise.

i put a nail and then a nicely colored piece of string to mark the first corner:

which rapidly becomes just nails, 5 more and i know where to cut from below, and from above, then a bit more below..

but mostly from below with a a plastic "catcher" to minimize crap in the kitchen, kymber appreciated this effort the most i think!!

here is a shot of 2/3 of the hole being cut out so far....

at this point i kinda got up some steam and laid the camera down for a while. in the pic below you can see the 2x6 cross beams i put between the trusses for extra stability, various pieces of wood of various thicknesses that i had to add to the trusses to frame it out, and finally, the attic ladder in the attic supported above it's final resting place. i horfed that thing in there above my head in one go, determined at this point am i:

the tricky part is installing two end pieces that the ladder frame/sill sits on, but not the door. i refused to let kymber in the hell hole so i put a third in the middle, just in case i blew it and carefully removed the supporting boards above and lowered the attic/ladder/stairs/whatever in place:

i measured correctly - success!!! i then went up the original hole and shimmed and anchored the crap out of the frame using a variety of wood as the spacing was never the same in any place, i did a good job though!

acid test.....

thar she opens!!!!

factory legs a little long...

set the last bit on milk crates, kymber to the rescue to help "measure twice, cut once, measure RIGHT, measure again, cut once....

and WE HAVE LIFTOFF!!

it works perfectly and has made a major improvement to the hellhole.. next step - a floor! i felt a rather high measure of success!

cheers!

good eats (GEs) - dinner (lunch) series 1

2011-11-01T11:54:00.000-03:00

yummy. pasta with fresh sauce made from homegrown tomatoes and chives. grilled shrimp and fried grean beans. that's some good dinner eats right there! (we call it dinner and not lunch. but i know a lot of people refer to it as lunch)

fresh tomatoe pasta sauce (for two people with a little left over to snack on):

4-6 nice-sized roma tomatoes - fresh off the vine if possible
1 tblspn of apple cider vinegar WITH the mother
3 tblspns of cold-pressed virgin olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
one dollop of honey
one quarter of a lemon
a tiny piece of fresh ginger, crushed
as much fresh oregano as you can stand - we like tons!
one handfull of fresh-chopped chives
a sprinkle of parmesan
sea salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste
pasta - as much as you like

1. boil water and cook your pasta according to the package. for this particular meal we used spaghettini which only takes 3-4 mins to cook.

2. while your pasta is cooking, chop up the tomatoes as big or as small as you like. for this particular meal, i chopped the tomatoes really fine - but sometimes we prefer them to be in bigger chunks.

3. drain pasta and add olive oil to your pasta pan. next add vinegar, lemon, garlic, ginger, honey and sea salt and cracked black pepper. then add tomatoes. stir and squish the tomatoes if you want a runnier-type sauce. cook on medium heat until tomatoes are heated through. right before serving throw in the fresh-chopped chives.

4. pour tomatoe sauce over pasta, sprinkle on some fresh-grated parmesan and enjoy!

shrimps on the barbie:

as many shrimp as you want
1-3 tblspns of cold-pressed virgin olive oil, for brushing on the shrimp
sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste

1. peel shrimp down to the tail, and de-vein, if so inclined. brush the shrimp on all sides with olive oil. salt and pepper the shrimp to taste

2. skewer the shrimps on either a wooden or metal skewar (if using wood, make sure to soak the wood first).

3. plop the skewers on the barbie and leave for 2-3 minutes, each side, until they lose their translucent colour.

4. serve on skewers or remove from skewers. enjoy!

fried green beans in bacon grease:

as many green beans as you want, ends trimmed
one dollop of bacon grease
sea salt and fresh-cracked black pepper to taste

1. heat bacon grease in a pan (we save all of our bacon grease in a mason jar. and use it to cook just about everything!).

2. toss in the green beans. stir to make sure all beans are coated with the bacon grease. cook for 1-2 minutes until the beans start to get brown edges. don't overcook - you want them to still be pretty crisp. salt and pepper to taste.

3. serve and enjoy.

a very easy meal to prepare and very healthy. anyone who considers bacon grease to be unhealthy can stop reading right now. bacon grease is a pure lard unlike whatever the heck is in that spray stuff - which we won't touch with a ten-foot pole!

i hope that you enjoyed the GEs - dinner series. up later will be a GE's supper series and then we'll be back to breakfast.

Halloween party in Fourchu - one of the best dances yet!!!

2011-10-31T15:35:00.000-03:00

first off - there were no out-of-towners!!! we now understand why the people who live here full-time do not like the "cottagers" or "out-of-towners"...they usually come up here to the "country" to blow off steam. and that translates into drinking and causing trouble.

and it's worse when someone "lends" their cottage to someone - we never know who these people are...and they always end up at our dances.

but anyway - none of that happened at the Fourchu dance. it was tons of fun. jambaloney and i told everyone that we would attend - they all were so worried about him - but that we wouldn't dress up. everyone understood. they just wanted to see us - just to make sure that we were ok.

but on saturday afternoon, jambaloney said - "let's dress up as tourists". we have heard from people around here that some summers they have seen the strangest tourists end up here having no idea where they are - or how they got here! so we put on stupid-looking-touristy-type clothes and made little name-tag thingies. jambaloney made them on the computer, printed them and then we taped plastic all around them. they looked really tacky.

they had a nice clipart border (teehee) and they said " Discount Bus Tours". and then we signed our names to them like you see when there is a bus load of tourists. we also carried maps of cape breton with the Framboise/Fourchu area circled. jambaloney wrote on his map "WTF? where are we?". i wrote on my map- "Where is Halifax? maybe ask the locals...".

here's a couple of pics...first jambaloney:

and here's me:

everyone loved our dumb, improvised costumes and loved that we turned up. we made stupid jokes about being dropped off in Halifax and that the bus had pulled out without us. everyone laughed.

anyway - i don't take pics of the events cuz alot of people here are afraid of having their pics on the internet and i can respect that.

but we had a really good time. we planned on making an appearance and then leaving after an hour. first we went to our friend Blair and Cathy's house and the house must have held 30 people all in costume - all our friends. and we were able to spend a good hour there before the party with some of our closest friends, assuring them that jambaloney was okay - showing everyone his stitches, his black and blue face and his swollen green and purple elbow.

then we all went off to the dance and had a blast. we couldn't believe how much fun we were having. everyone was having a really good time. everyone danced and danced. i danced 59 songs in a row - i swear. and i got to dance with just about everyone there. slow songs are always saved for jambaloney. but it was 1:30 am before we knew it. and we had had such a good time with our friends.

they cheered us up, we cheered them up, a lot of stress and pressure was relieved and we all just had a really good time. to be honest - it was the best dance so far - and that is saying something!

today we actually did some work around the Manor and got some stuff up into the attic which frees up space for us around the house. tomorrow we plan to do some more and put some more stuff in the attic. then i have to take out jambaloney's stitches - is anyone interested in pics? cuz i will take some if you want. then we have darts at 7:30 - do you believe that these people hood-winked me into playing darts?!?!??!?

anyway - just wanted to let you all know how the party went. i am off now to do my rounds of checking everyone's blogs. i hope you all had a fantastic Halloween weekend. we sure did!

*Framboise Manor*