a big thank you and a bunch of other stuff!

first up - the obligatory sky pic!

 

it sure is pretty eh? next up - a big giant thank you to all of you who helped my friend, mmpaints. i call her my "driveway chive". you can read more about why i call her a driveway chive here. now have a look at my beautiful driveway chive:

 

that chive needed a little love and a little pot. just like my friend. so many of you were so generous to my friend, at a time that she really needed it, and i thank you from the bottom of my heart. you can check on her project progress here. and you can get an update on how she is doing emotionally at her blog here. she is sounding pretty upbeat despite the crappy situation she is in. i think it is because of all the love and support she has been shown. she's a trooper and i just know that she will get her commercial kitchen up and running.

to all of you who showed her love and support, either through donations, leaving her comments of support on her blog, and posting about her situation on your personal blogs - i can't thank you enough!

next up - my friend W is always inquiring about Frankie Blue Eyes. so for W, i present Frankie, Frankly, Mankly, Stankly, Stankly Patoonch in a box:



W is the person that called Frankie "scrutty". he is so right! Frankie always looks scrutty. and jambaloney and i have a new word that we use regularly between ourselves - bahahahahah! poor little Frankly - he really IS scrutty!

i know that you are all wondering about my baby frogs. here's a pic:

they are doing so well and growing so big - soon i'll have two thousand baby frogs...all of whom will be named frog. stay tuned for pics of the frog houses i will be building.

here's some pretty daffodils blowing in the wind:

and here's where the fighting for the trouts start. our dear friends, Sweet Sandy and Pioneer Preppy will have to duke it out. my money's on Sandy!

how about some yummy bruschetta?

or a tiny shepherd's pie? i say tiny cuz we made it in a small pan.

want a really filling and delicious pasta salad? try making it with apple, green onion, tuna, mayonnaise and get ready for it - WASABI! oh it has kick, let me tell you! but so delicious!

our sister community, Fourchu, had their annual crab leg supper. it was awesome. for $12 you got 2 big scoops of potatoe salad, coleslaw, a fresh bun and a whole crab. plus pie for desert! because we helped with the cleaning up, they gave us a ton of crab to bring home - yummeh! here's some quinoa salad and crab legs - deelish!

how about some delicious vegetable shish kebabs with rice and pineapple? i marinated these veggies for hours in olive oil, garlic, turmeric, cumin and cayenne. they melted in your mouth. especially the mushrooms!

and some more grilled vegetables on another day. we george forman-ed these - they were tasty but not as tasty as on the bbq!

well that's my update for now. stay tuned for an update on the garden. my garlic is gone mad, the tomatoes are in their tires and flowering, the peppers are flowering, we have our bug net tent up and things are going well overall. we've been eaten alive by black flies and the deer flies are already out - 2months early!!!! arghghghghghghghgh!!!!

a friend needs help!

a pretty pic of some beautiful apple blossoms for my friend!

i have a friend who is in dire straits right now. some of you probably already know her and follow her blog, she is mmpaints from the blog, Self Sustained Living.

some background on her - she has been living a self-sustained life since 1995. she grows her own freakin tobacco!!! she loves her goats and although i have never eaten her cheese - i have it on fine authority that her cheese is to die for!

she and i were involved in the early days of the American Preppers Network and the Canadian Preppers Network. she put in many hours helping the networks out as well as providing all of her experience and knowledge, for free, for any person in the world to learn from! she has been blogging at her blog since 2008 and she is one of the people who always encouraged us when we first started taking prepping and self-sufficiency seriously. we had never grown our own food before and were idiot newbies. she was one of the ones who not only talked the talk and walked the walk - but she never made us feel silly or new. she encouraged people from all over the world to get out there and try - to make mistakes, but not feel bad about your mistakes, and then keep going. she is like a prepping cheerleader. curses like a sailor, has a few strong opinions, but a cheerleader none the less.

she is tough as nails, and in all honesty there is nothing that she can't do! she has managed to survive through a whole ugly pile of life....kind of like this little chive growing in our driveway. jambaloney must have driven over this little chive a million times. we only noticed it the other day. thriving and surviving, without much notice or attention. kind of like my friend.

 

i appreciated all of her help and advice. and now i want to return the favour to her. she is in a bad situation. a domestic violence situation. you can read more from her about the situation here. it is bad. and she may lose her farm. we can not let that happen!

even after all she has been through in the past few days, she has come up with a business plan on how, with some serious hard work on her part, she can save the farm and continue babying her goats and other animals. you can read more about her plan here. and donate.

she needs help. she needs support. she needs to know that all of her hard work has not been for not. she needs people to appreciate her willingness to share her knowledge. she needs people to corral around her and show her it has not all been in vain.

yes - she needs money. even if you can only donate a dollar - that would help. but if you can not afford to donate, but can share her situation with your friends on your blog, twitter or facebook accounts - you will be doing a wonderful thing for her. in my mind, if you share her situation with other people who can afford to donate - well, that is worth a million bucks!

if nothing else, i ask our friends here to just go and check out her blog if you don't already have her on your "must read" list. there is a ton of valuable information there. you can learn more about her situation there. you can leave her a comment of support - she will appreciate that.

we saved the little "driveway" chive, and potted him up. he lives here now. he is so tough, he has already gone to flower and will be providing next year's seeds soon. he is like my friend. tough, and keeps on giving!

 

can you help my friend? can you visit her blog and leave her a comment of support? please do. just tell her kymber and jambaloney sent you.

thank you.

the greenhouse is finished....for now

finally...after another rainy, grey week we finally got the sun and the blue sky back. obligatory sky pic for my sweet sis!



being that is has been so rainy and we can't finish the greenhouse properly, we are calling it done. have a look-see:



she's a real beauty eh? oh i love my greenhouse! the area in the centre with the osb on it is there because the window that filled that space broke! but jambaloney was able to finnagle another window in it's place. i'm pointing this out because his original plan had the whole front be all windows.

anyway - here's the back - woohoo!



as you can see, due to all of the rain we have been having jambaloney decided to finish off the back with plastic. it works like a charm! we will wait for the less rainy days and jambaloney will continue working on the greenhouse. but we have other jobs that are catching up to us around the homestead so this will work for us until we have the time to get back to it.

with all the rainy, grey days we have been having, i felt like some stick-to-your-ribs steak and kidney stew - yummeh!

and on a lighter note, a dinner of vermicelli, apple, cucumber, shrimp and chives with a hot, sweet, salty, tart chili lime dressing. so spicey!

here's one side of the greenhouse. i moved all of my tomatoes off of the porch in order to be able to get the peppers out of the house and onto the porch! these tomatoes will be put in the ground as soon as i am sure of 3 straight days of sun. no worries tho, they are thriving in the greeenhouse!

here's some more tomatoes.

and here's all the rest!

as you can see, i am slowly decorating the greenhouse with my little bits of stuff. once the tomatoes are in the ground, jambaloney is going to build me a whole pile of shelves on the front and back of the greenhouse. i plan on putting the peppers in the greenhouse and leaving them there all season. we have several windows that open, one on each side of the greenhouse as well as automatic venting window things. the peppers will love the heat and humidity out there.

it's been a lot of work but that greenhouse is going to pay off in spades for extending our growing season. oh and sitting out there in the winter, bathing naked in the sun, is not the least of it's uses. i love my greenhouse!

Greenhouse roofing

jambaloney here!!

hey helga here is a nice pic for you!! this is grand river early in march

this was gonna be two posts but much work has been done since so i slammed it all into one... first off, you need glass for your roof - these are some choice bits...

and here is some more - these sliding glass windows have thick panes - great for roof glass. the big window is a large double paned windows that leaks - gonna split that sucker in two! (kymber washed ALL the glass for the roof - bless her heart and poor sore wrists! )

slider clips  off the panes...

many many slider clips - they will be handy for something!!

okay back to the double - paned window - it is big so we have to be careful..

actually, i'm not taking it apart right now, but i need to remove some frame to measure the exact size of the glass....... ( for a how-to i already posted about how to get a tempered double-paned window apart)

so i chipped out some frame - to measure - measure what?? - the size of the new frame of course!! that's what the raw 2x2 is for!!

and here is a finished frame!!

it's not really a frame, i opted to skip framing the stuff for the roof. i was going to cut a groove in wood and sit the glass in the groove, but that would require some real fine cutting  (i don't have a chop saw) and a lot of time... as the glass will be resting on the roof, i opted to build things for the glass to 'sit' on, relying on gravity and silicone to keep the glass in place - so the form is more like a bed... sounds crazy?? probably but what the heck - all in or bust!!!

so i made two..

and kymber painted them while i played with power tools!! these go on either end of the roof!!

now how to get them up?? i bought 10 foot 2x6 pt lumber - saves on paint times ;-)

we are STILL running out of time - let's cheat!!! these are simpson h1 hurricane ties..

which i used to put up the rafters without making birdsmouth cuts - sorry w! i will stuff some wedges in the gaps later - right now we need a roof!!

here are two rafters...

here is a window pane on a frame (or bed?)... sealed with silicone...

and here it is screwed in place!!!

now for the rest of the roof - we have these 1x2 rails - kymber painted them all!! i put all the screws in ahead of time...

for the front, i measured 7 inches in..

and then squared off the rail - screw in...

now the back...

and the middle..

to give a rafter/beam that has a rail one each side...

the weather was good so i put a whole pile up, but here is how it was done... last one!

glass that kymber cleaned - thank you baby !!!

bottom brace with two screws to hold the first pane of glass...

secured into place between railed rafters..

automagic caulking gun - i HATE caulking!!!!! silicone and roofing nails....

it is hard to see in this pic... i ran outta white silicone - this stuff is clear... there is a bead of silicone on both rails and the rafters!!!

first window in place, sitting on the rail, the screws keep it from sliding down..

next pane - if you look carefully, you can see the roofing nails providing a gap between panes of glass - this is to give some play for freezing/thawing , wind, etc. the silicone seals and seats the glass - gravity will do the rest (i HOPE!)

the rest of the glass goes in like that.. then i make 1x2 cross braces, that get dabbed with silicone...

and pressed into place - a bead of silicone goes all the way around on top...

finally these cross braces get further brace by pt 2x2s... cut and sealed...

and screwed in from the bottom - special added bonus!!! lateral bracing for the whole roof!!

all done - nearly killed me up, down, seal repeat - works well, a bit unorthodox, but hey!!!

pioneer preppy..
sandy...

you will have to fight over who gets what... virtually of course, we ate these last thursday ;-)))

cheers all thanks for dropping in more greenhouse to come!!