Two Steps Forward...No Looking Back

When my wife & I dreamed of what it would be like living off grid...we can honestly say we were naive, whimsical, and love struck with the idea of what it would be like. We anticipated hardships and joy, struggle balanced with success...but nothing could possibly prepare us for the past two months. I keep saying how there is no place else we'd rather be, but that is only a cliched phrase that I coin all too often to describe this life as a whole.

After leaving my family once again to head back to work in the city after a week long break, I'm saddened to leave behind our new life to go back to city life fighting through traffic. Today I was told I'll be working the full week, which means 5 days away from my wife & kids. The place I work at is filled to the brim with great people to work with, and compared to rush hour in San Diego, Vancouver, Chicago, or even Calgary, the traffic ain't that bad, but I don't feel like I belong to that city life anymore. It's funny because when I was a child, I couldn't wait to leave the farm and head to the bright lights...now I can't wait to get away from them.

When I wrote above about being naive, whimiscal, and love struck...I wasn't talking about not understanding the hardships we'd go through in the process. We knew it was going to be a hell of a job getting to this point the first time we hit 50 mph winds for week straight. Jesus says, "A man doesn't build a house without first counting the costs". And its true, we knew building 2nd hand and unconventional would be labourous and painstakingly slow. We definately underestimated our time line, but we need to balance a working life to put food on our table too. What we couldn't possibly imagine though was the overwhelmingly thick blanket of peace and contentment that comes when you watch your wife find purpose in life caring for baby chicks. Or when your children stand in wonderment and awe watching a 10 minute summer storm pour down from the sky with tons of marble size "snow" in it and watching them in anticipation for it to stop so they can go out and taste the hail that has formed a large pile at the bottom of the down spout. To wake up at 6 O'clock in the morning to the sound of the wind turbine shutting down because the battery banks are full. To be humble enough to realize that even though you can't touch or see the wind...it is producing all of our electrical needs at this point...clean, free power...and that is a gift from God. To bless your children as they sleep and to lay your head down at night holding your wife as you drift asleep to the poetic songs of a million crickets, and to awake in the morning to the sounds of birds, hungry kittens, and giggling boys, we really did underestimate all of this. Don't get me wrong. I'd hate to disappoint anyone by thinking we live in a fairy tale...There are a lot of things that really suck on a daily, sometimes hourly basis (like applying stucco), but once again, I'm led back to my old cliched phrase...There is no place else I'd rather be. God Bless!

Although this little stinker looks cute, the fact he ate two baby chicks with us not even 50 feet away meant he unfortunately wasn't going to see his next birthday. Nature is cute where nature belongs. We don't enjoy the cost of feeding the local wildlife.

Grinding Audreys concrete counter top to expose the agregate.

This is what we are after in removing the surface cream from the cement.

Next a coffee coloured acid stain is applied then rinsed off with ammonia and water to neutralize the acid. A food safe water based acrylic gloss sealer is then applied to protect the counter from spills and stains. Finally, a paste wax is applied and buffed for a final leathery look and feel.

Audrey's kitchen is finally taking shape. We are absolutely sold on Concrete counter tops.

Audrey grinding grain for the chickens.

Good bye Garage...

...and hello guest house!

A 10 minute summer storm left a large amount of marble sized hail throughout the area. A lot of crops were damaged...including Audrey's garden.

Slate tile goes down in the entrance area where the wood stove is...more pics to come!

The daunting, slow, messy, horrible task of applying stucco...did I happen to mention it's not my favorite thing to do in all this construction?

It's a humbling site to have our turbine up flying again. The 35' pole is made from 1/4 " thick 8" tubing with 1/4" guy wires. The pole hinges and counter-balances in the middle so we can raise or lower it without the use of gin poles, vehicles, or large amounts of muscle. It just got a taste of Craik wind the other day with 23 mph winds gusting over 30...Even running an aircompressor (13 amps) and the stucco mixer (11 amps) all afternoon, we still produced too much power for our needs.

Our boys are in the habit now of reading before bed. Our youngest son Joshuah was just a little more than tired out from the day on this evening. Audrey couldn't resist getting a pic.