November

November kinda went by in a blur.

A blur of sugar, flour, raisins, cherries, sprinkles, vanilla, cocoa and spices that is!
Oh, and pounds and pounds of butter!!

The cookie business I mentioned the end of October did really well! One Saturday found me lugging 102 dozen cookies to Market!! I stopped counting after a bit, but I made, with the help of my Right-Hand-Gal, thousands of cookies!!

Dark Chocolate Candy Cane

The Molasses Gem - The Cookie that started it all. 

(which may be a blog unto itself sometime!)

Snickerdoodle in front - Russian Tea in back

White Chocolate Cherry

Chocolate Crinkle

Eggnog Cookie

The Classic Shortbread

Twix - Shortbread, Caramel, Chocolate - Brilliant! 

There were 15-16 different types of cookies. Sometimes making it too hard for shoppers to pick which kind they wanted. Basically we were the Tim Hortons of Cookies. You could pick what went in your dozen. For those who "froze" in the process of trying to decide I would suggest an assorted dozen so they could try one of everything. That usually "thawed" them out and they would be seen happily carrying out their special box. :)

We eventually expanded our product line to include Cupcakes, Caramel Popcorn, Magic Bits, Dog Biscuits, Christmas Pudding, Oreo Fudge and 13-14 types of Gluten Free Cookies!

It was such a successful first attempt that I hope to do it again next year. Since I will already have my sign, business cards, leftover boxes and addicted customers it'll be sure to get a move on faster the second time around! 

Also adding to the blur of November was Neela. She came when she was seven weeks old and for her first week here we basically got zero sleep. We were trying to crate train her, but she also had a UTI and it was hard going! With the help of a cranberry supplement and the "forgetting of the crate" (we just gated off the kitchen) she started to feel better and sleep at night. 

Sleep. Is. Wonderful.

She is a bright little gal for which we are so pleased and thankful! By 8-9 weeks old she was doing lots of tricks.  Sit, down, spin, shake, come, drop-it, go-get-it. At 3.5 months she can almost do "roll-over".  Barking (or more like a funny half-snort, gruff throat clearing) when she hears something unknown outside just started a few days ago. It'll be nice to have a real-live warning system in place. :)

She can be full of beans and does what I call "Crazy-Lady" once or twice a day. Tearing through the house pell-mell and you'd-better-try-to-keep-out-of-her-way-running-loops-around-everything kind of crazy. There are no more carpets in sight. She rarely has "accidents" but guaranteed when she did it was on a carpet. :/  She is really very calm the rest of the time, not getting into stuff in the kitchen (I am still lacking bottom cupboard doors) and when she does get restless grabbing a handful of treats and getting her to run through her tricks a few times settles her down.  It's quite easy to see she is a working breed and needs to be kept stimulated and have a purpose. 

Bagheera, the barn cat, is slowly accepting that this dog is here to stay. (The Youngest has done some dog-sitting and the cat was always happier when they went home) It is quite hilarious to watch the older-wiser feline, purposely tease the younger, gullible puppy into a tangled mess with her long line. Bagheera knows how to dart here and there while Neela chases him and before she knows it Neela is left with only a foot or two of line. haha. At which point the cat slows down to a saunter and struts his stuff just out of reach of the dog. 

I said for years that I was not a dog person. I always admire and enjoy other peoples dogs, but the three dogs we had when the children were small and we lived in a little house were always too much for me. So it has come as quite the surprise that I am enjoying having a puppy in my home. (and just generally being OK with messy floors, peed on stuff etc etc etc) One day last week I was watching Neela and thinking....."I can't believe this is my life and I am fine with it". I am fairly certain that it is because my youngest is fifteen (and doing most of the training and entertaining) and we have a large farm house with more space.  Whatever it is, Neela has brought more joy and laughter than I thought possible and I am glad for it. :) 

November the 20th was a life changing day for me.  

I had a job interview and was hired ten minutes into it!! 

Other than working at the Grain Elevator this past summer (which felt more like playing) I haven't worked for pay for many, many years. When I started to think about putting together a resume it seemed like it would look rather ridiculous so I wrote up a letter instead.  Since it's a bit fun to read I thought I would share it with you......after the date, address, "Dear So-n-So" etc......is.....

 You are receiving this letter in lieu of a resume.

It's been over 28 years since I worked at a “real job”. In those years I raised and home schooled four children who all turned out to be decent, contributing citizens. At least I think they did! :)  

But let me tell you about myself so that you may determine if I am someone who would add value to your team......

·        I have great people skills and am gifted with children.

·        I ran a successful day care business for years in Ontario

·        I am a good cook and can manage a kitchen well

·        I have common sense and a sense of humor

·        I learn fast and if I don't understand something I am not afraid to ask questions.

·        I believe in giving 110% in all I do and take pride in a job well done.

·        I am organized and punctual (except in cases of snow or sleet..... ;)

·        I am honest, kind and customer oriented

·        I'm a team player and work well with others (even the difficult ones! ;)

·        I have passed the Food Safety Course and First Aid/CPR

·        and above all I am humble. :) haha.

So writing this blog today is ..... A-brand-spanking-new.....Short Order Cook.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!! That's now a wish of mine!  The cafeteria I will be flipping burgers at is located at Ski Wentworth. It's a twenty minute drive and The Man-Son is working his second season at the Rental Shop which hopefully means we'll be able to car-pool sometimes. I am happy for the seasonal aspect of it. I have plans in the works for a spring-summer business (the spa) and the cookie business (Nov-Dec) So having something fill in while the farm sits dormant for winter and the Grain Elevator is closed is ideal!!

Well, there's November's high-lights for ya.  Lots of other little things were tucked in around the big stuff. But we all have stuff both big and little don't we?

It's life.

We just happen to be doing ours out here in Nova Scotia, on a farm, in an old, drafty farmhouse, with a puppy, a barn-cat and a bunny rabbit. :P    It's already border line "Funny Farm" around here but Wingin'-It-Farms will be a "full blown" Funny Farm by Spring most likely. It's then we plan to add Guinea fowl and chickens to the craziness!! :)

So stay tuned.....until then.... see you in January where you'll hear about December.
(which might be kinda boring cause it was mostly about cookies as well!! LOL )

Cheers!

** Credit for the cookie photos goes to The Man-Son and were a big help to the success of my business!! Makes them look kinda edible eh? :)

October

October found us doing a bit of harvesting. We hadn't planted a very big garden this year, mostly because we have a patch of swamp grass that needs dealing with and is right where the garden is supposed to go. To rid oneself of swamp grass (or quack grass as it's called here) you must plow and plow and plow again.It doesn't spread only by seed but by root as well so the roots need multiple breaking up. Of course we don't own the expensive but capable tractor to do such a job but will be hiring our neighbour who does. Hopefully he'll get one plow in before the ground freezes for the winter. It has been a dry fall and clay soil becomes like concrete so we are hoping for some rain to soften the ground first.

With the little bit of planting we did do, here and there, among old flower beds and in one patch Geoff rototillered up, we did pretty good! Almost felt like farmers we did! haha

Tomatoes LOVE clay soil. The patch they were in was too far from the house to do much watering, the hose isn't quite long enough and lugging pails gets old real fast! :)  But that's one of the pro's of clay, it holds water and nutrients well. We ended up with more tomatoes than we could have imagined during what ended up being a very dry summer! And there is no tomato like a home-grown, fresh-from-the-garden-tomato!!

I once read that if you are living on a new bit of land and are unsure of how the sun reaches all the parts of the garden, that you should plant inexpensive, sun-loving petunias all over. The ones that thrive are getting good sun exposure and those which languish poor sun exposure. Equipped with this knowledge you can confidently place more expensive plants in areas best suited for their growing preferences. 

I tried this here but used leeks instead

They grew, but they were the saddest leeks you ever did see. It took all six leeks to make any kind of difference in the chili. So now I know one place that doesn't get enough light to grow sun lovers!

The best thing about growing your own food is seeing the multiplication wonder that God started all those years ago in the Garden of Eden. You put little things in, you get lots out. A small bag of seed potatoes and even in our thick-like-cement-soil and lacking-in-rain-summer, we ended up with lots of yummy potatoes. (here is one place we failed, we didn't weigh the potato harvest) but we have been happily sampling it! Delish!

Basil, thyme and sage plants grew into small trees. Cool.  Perennials took. So we'll have herbal plants we can harvest from in the next few years. Lavender, Peonies, Evening of Primrose, Mugwort, May Apples, Echinacea, Citronella, Lemon Balm and Calendula.

The sunflower patch The Youngest seeded was impressive! Most of them towered so far above me I wasn't sure how we would harvest them! The blue jays notified us to their readiness. :)

We harvested from the abundant patches of Yarrow that we were so pleased to find on the property and made a batch of what is supposed to the best insect-repellent going. Being it's mostly vodka and chopped yarrow, we joke that should we be "pulled over" while wearing our bug-spray we hope the police officer believes us when we tell him why we smell like we do. ;) (Here's hoping we don't have hic-cups at the same time)

Well, writing this has been good for me. All summer I felt like we hadn't accomplished anything in the garden, but looks like we actually did get more done than I thought.

We are pleased to inform you that October was also the month that we started our Worm Farm!!

Yay eh?! :)  Worm What?!

I am not going to give you the low-down here, but here is a link if you are interested in knowing more!  It'll be a way we can produce some of the best-compost-going during the winter while we don't have chickens or pigs to feed our scraps to and have them turn it into fertilizer. :) 

The Whole30 Diet has been a game changer for me. I have decided to make it The WholeLife Diet. I am feeling so much better physically, mentally and emotionally that I have no interest in "going back to my old eating habits". I will not be eating it 100% of the time, but I am already discovering that when I do veer off and eat something from the ta-boo list I pay for it! It's not fun "paying-for-it" so I will do that as infrequently as possible. I highly recommend that anyone looking eat healthier or get a handle on a budding health issue (or even an old, persistent one) look into this lifestyle change.

October was also the month Geoff and I celebrated 28 years of marriage and 27 years of being parents! We thank God for each other and the many, many blessings He has given us over the years!

Here's where I will have to exercise self-control. October found us looking at a litter of puppies and picking one out for ourselves. (that same puppy is laying at my feet as I type this, but that is next months blog, not this one, so you'll have to wait!)  I put out on the Village Facebook page that we were looking for a "Heinz 57" puppy. We wanted to avoid the many health issues that pure-breds seem to be (sadly) endowed with. We also weren't interested in the price-tag often attached to said pure-breds either. What we needed was a mutt. I don't know exactly what I was excepting from my ad? But less than 24hrs later we were looking at a writhing, yipping, fluffy, mass of puppy-cuteness! We had to pick one out right then, the puppies were only three weeks old but they were being spoken for fast, we had to act now or miss out.  Well, that was a bit sudden for my liking but we picked one and returned home to get prepared.  The best part of all this was her breeds, the ones that she is a mix off, are all excellent farm dogs.  Border Collie, Great Pyrenees and Australian Shepard.  Hopefully she'll grow to be a working dog that contributes to the farm. Scaring off deer and other garden destroyers. Guarding the other animals that are here (and the house and her people too). Notifying us about things she can hear that we can't. You know...dog stuff.   I can tell you her name as that was picked out before November.....Neela. (N-eeee-la....like la, la, la singing la)

Sorry but there are no pictures today.  Another thing that happened before the month ended is I discovered I would be starting up a Christmas Cookie Business for the months of November and December. I baked like a crazy-lady last week of October and tried out the Farmers Market. It was a success! Now every day I have a schedule....bake three types of cookies, starting with freezer friendly ones Monday -Wednesday, Gluten-Free on Thursday and delicate non-freezer and finishing touches on Friday. And then Saturday morning...."This Little Piggy goes to Market!"
Needless to say doing that on top of home schooling, eating from-scratch meals and now a puppy I have more than a full time job!!

So although things like blog pictures have to go....I am having that much fun I am glad God supplied the idea, the skills, the start up money and ingredients. This is going to be a busy couple of festive months around here! Thankfully I successfully slayed the "Sugar-Dragon" and although I enjoy the smell of spices and sweetness baking I have no desire to eat the product! The same can't be said for my poor room-mates.  If it wasn't for the "tasters and wasters" that baking produces I might have a mutiny on my hands. :)

Well, the time has come to start the day! This blog began in the wee hours of the morning as the puppy, bless-her-yipping-little-heart, needed some company and I wanted the family to get some sleep. No need of us all being sleep -deprived and grumpy! But now the sun is up and the family is roused and either I will begin to do the laundry (it is Monday after all) or start the days baking.....or...... I may take a nap since the shift change has happened. :)

Happy November blessings to you! 

September

A lot is happening in a short span of time....or in other words it seems like the months are flying by. I think since finding time to blog is challenging I will just focus on writing one a month and sum up the highlights, using pictures when I can :)

So we had a wonderful time at our eldest daughters wedding......we were gone from the farm for 12 days and fit in a lot of miles (we drove) and many (but not enough) visits. It was good to see friends and family again. The wedding was lovely. The weather behaved perfectly and all the details that were planned out in advance came together smoothly. I told the Newly-Weds "They threw a great party!"

Mom and Maid-Of-Honor! 

Isn't the bride B-E-A-U-T-iful!!! 

Couple of good-lookin' young men right there!!

The handsome groom.

Groom's father did a wonderful job officiating. 

Lakeside. Beautiful! 

All seven of us! 

Also joining the farm in September was Wesley. Our first rabbit. Wesley will be the buck that hopefully helps produce lots and lots of  "wittle wabbits" so that we can begin to process some of our own meat from the property. This is a plan that sounds good in theory but has to play out to a successful result. We still need a couple does. Also Wesley is only 13 weeks old and must grow up first. To work around the fact that we will one day be eating cute, little bunnies....The Youngest consoles herself with the thought that the parent rabbits will be her pets (that will never ever land on a plate) and that when "market day" rolls around she will not be available to help.  Come to think of it, I think I am busy that day as well!!  Then we shall see if this cook can make something edible with rabbit meat that will actually get eaten.....stay tuned, or not tuned depending on your tolerance of how cute food should be prior to putting it in the pot. :P  The hope is to be as self-sufficient as possible using our 48 acres. Rabbits will turn grass and veggies into meat. We will use them for a protein source for ourselves and other "meat-eaters" on the property....cat, dog, chickens etc. How primal of us eh?!

He is such a cutie! 

A bit ago I shared that I attempted to get off sugar. I'm sure it adds to health issues I have. (minor ones, but still annoying). I tried unsuccessfully to do so in January. Cutting out sugar cold turkey is TOUGH!  Well, I've tried again and this time it worked, without much agony!  A friend shared with me that she had found The Whole30 plan/diet/lifestyle and it had helped her considerably.  I ordered the books and got set to try.  I'm on Day 21 but the first few days were without the horrible withdrawal symptoms like one would usually expect when cutting out sugar, dairy and grains all at once. I can't say that I have felt huge improvements in the list of aliments I am hoping this will help, but again I am only on day 21. My clothes are fitting better, my energy levels remain more consistent and I am not having to snack all day to keep fueled-up like was my habit for years. I am thinking that once the 30 days are over (and I slowly re-introduce the missing food "groups" back to see if any disagree with me) I will find I feel better without some and will continue to eat Whole30 for much longer. Or like maybe for the rest of my life?
I think it's true that most of us know that the Western diet is the cause of all the illness that is so prevalent in our society but it takes a lot of work and determination to eat differently. I attended two pot-lucks in the last two weeks, while on these restrictions, and I will tell you there wasn't anything there that I could eat! I had brought my own food since I knew that would be the case. But to be "different" in the "food department" means you have to "go against the flooding current" and that it is a very, very difficult undertaking. So between that, the PILES of dishes (cause it's all from scratch) and the time commitment it takes to cook all of your own food (and sauces/dressings) is the reason why more people don't do it.
It's work (and weirdness) to eat healthy.

Those of you on Facebook already know this....but The Teal Kangaroo Day-Care has closed it's doors. There wasn't enough kids to keep it going. I needed four full-time kids to make it worth while and in the three months that we blasted ads, had friends sharing and recommending I only ended up with three VERY part-time children.  Oh well, I gave it a go. Next I turned my energies into selling  the stuff I had gathered and had a toy sale at the Grain Elevator during it's last two Saturdays of the season.  That was fun and I recouped some of my costs.  Turns out I probably would have made more money if I had opened a toy store instead of a day care! There isn't one in the village and all I needed to do was make trips to the towns and cities with thrift stores and mark up the prices.

Well, now that a third of October is well under way.......I hope you all are having a great beginning of Autumn and had a lovely Thanksgiving as well.

We are enjoying the colours that are creeping (or more like BURSTING) over our woods and the view looking across the pastures is really something. When I walk I feel almost like there is a poet inside me just begging to be released.....but when I get back to the house it is usually a dishcloth and not a pen that fills my hand :)
So for now...I will not be publishing any "Poems and Deep Thoughts" by Christine Harris.

See you later, in October. Or if I follow this route you'll hear about our October in November! :)

Blessings and love to you all!

One Year Later

And we are outta here!

It's back to Ontario we go.

Not to worry, it's just for our daughter's wedding.

Kinda funny how that worked out though. We are leaving one year to the day that we arrived in NS. We sure got a lot done in that year! A house that had been sorely neglected and abused is now a lovely family home and even safe enough and pleasant too for a day care. There was more crossed off our list then remains. At least for the first year of our five year plan. But the remaining list is still none too little.

Still to do.....
- remove old brick chimney
- patch roof where chimney was
- dry-wall, mud, sand, paint guest room
- finishing touches to where new chimney was installed
- build new or make existing master bedroom closet, practical
- replace two windows upstairs
- remove water damaged plaster in upstairs hall-way and check for leak (it only became wet once in the whole year, but guess it needs looking at)
- replace six windows on main level
- find/replace screen door on sliding door
- build a deck or stairs (or screened in sun-room?!) off living room/sliding door exit
- finish giving all the lower kitchen cupboards doors.
- build a pantry
- build another set of shelves for permanently placing some electrical kitchen gadgets
- replace mud room and add laundry sink and washing machine
- remove defunct furnace and oil tank from basement
- install sump pump in basement
- work out some kind of air exchange system to prevent mold etc.
- scrape and paint wooden siding and window trim
- replace antique front door

That's all that's left on the "first year" list hahahahaha.....we have nine days to get 'er done Boys!! (as of me writing this on Aug 23) And that list hasn't one build-us-a-farm item on it.

But like I said, it's still a shorter list compared to what we accomplished in the last twelve months.

But I have this feeling I just became the "plumber's wife" you know that poor soul whose husband works so hard on everyone else's plumbing he doesn't have time to fix his own leaky tap? Geoff just started a handy-man business. It was at the neighbours suggestion actually. They kept mentioning that there is little to no reliable men in the area that you can count on to do a decent or even complete job, and as they watched this house transform they knew Geoff had the skills to handle most anything house related.

So I put an ad up on the village Facebook page and in the first two days he had three calls! Two of the jobs are for a fair bit of work! So guess who packs up his lunch box and water cooler every day now?
Let's hope that with more ads, posters in town and word of mouth he'll be kept just busy enough to bring home some dough but still have time and energy to keep getting stuff done around here!

My daycare is slowly growing.  Three families bring their little people one, two, or three days a week. It will have to pick up or it's not really worth doing. On the days I only have one child, (which is more often than not) it's a long 8-9 hour day keeping a little person entertained and only for $25-30. I would make more money in a shorter time at Foodland. :/  I've had a couple more interviews in the last while so we shall see, but I am seeing a pattern emerge and that is not many parents here would need me Monday-Friday full time.

I have also been working at the Grain Elevator. And what a lovely experience that has been!! I started out serving at the Sleepless Goat Cafe (read here to understand the quirky name) where the menu is crepes, assorted baking and specialty coffees (Surprisingly I got the job even though I don't like coffee!!) But as I grew to love the place and since I have the ability to be everywhere at once, people got to know me and other vendors have been hiring me to watch their booths too. It means we are there almost every weekend. It is open Friday - Sunday for the months of May - October.

This is a historic picture of the G.E. popular in the prairie provinces but the only one in the East. It's celebrating it's 60th birthday in October thanks to it's owner who bought it a few years back to prevent it from being torn down. And we are so glad he did!! The inside has been converted to a bunch of shops and it is the loveliest place to work and visit!! 

Today's view :) 

We found out about this place because The Man-Son's Ski Hill Boss, is Manger of the G.E. (she is in a picture, with The Youngest, further down) and she hired him to do some painting to prepare for Spring opening. When he came home from this job he said "Mom, you gotta come check this place out, it's NICE!" When a young man says something is nice you go to check it out!!!  I had to agree.  

Here is a glimpse inside. 

The cafe is behind the black window frame (middle right). Some Saturdays it's been estimated that over 2000 people come though the doors!!

 

The Cafe Sign above and booth below.

It's one of my favorite places! 

If I had of known my picture was being taken I would have showed it by a big smile!! :)

The Youngest has wanted to learn to spin ever since we moved here. Well, she got a job spinning........just not sheep's wool....Cotton Candy! And she spins like a boss too! 

Just give her $3 and she'll make you a pink or blue cloud of sugar on a stick!!

Once she moved out of the "training" corner and was set up by the big entrance doors, crowds will gather and watch mesmerized as she spins magical fluff! As her mom I think the magic is in the little girl who grew up wanting to farm but can still handle crowds watching her work with grace and nerves-of-steel. She also makes crepes for the Cafe and having people watch you "flip their crepe" is another test of your endurance. ;) 

And here is a prayer request.....

See this cute little spot?

This wee store front, located in the G.E. could be my space come May!!! 

 I'm thinking of running a little spa type place where I will offer Aromatouch Technique, hand and foot wax treatments and natural products for home and body and much more!! Please pray for God's leading and blessing. The plans are well under way, wax has already arrived, business cards are ordered and an artistic friend is working on my sign. We just don't know if this will be my spot or if another corner of the building will get set aside for it. We haven't had a chance to see if my massage table will fit yet. After several days of mulling over names, I finally settled on something simple.....

The Little Spa Shop

Short and practical enough but still reveals what I offer. Spa services. Plus I think it's cute too. It'll match the little spot I'll be set up in! 

Well, this is done up a few days before posting. The last week and a half were filled with day care, work, visitors and packing for our trip. But I couldn't let our first year anniversary go by without a blog to commemorate.

Thanks for your interest, following the blog, encouraging comments, love and prayers. We may be far from most who read these words-of-mine, but we feel all the good wishes and it keeps us going!!

Here's to our second year ahead! May as many, or more, tasks get crossed off the to-do list during the next 12 months than the last!!

Someone please second that toast!! :)

Since You Were Too Polite to Ask.

The time has come to reveal the dirty truth.

The truth behind our potty that is.

I've hinted at it in other blogs, but now I am going to come right out and tell you about it.

We have a saw-dust compost toilet.

You may have heard about composting toilets before. They are often large units that require two stories to set up properly. It turns and dries the contents without much assistance from you until months later at which time you empty it and the "stuff" has only a pleasant earthy smell. Of course such a device comes with a pretty price tag.

This is not the kind of composting toilet we have.

We have a five gallon pail. Eight pails actually, since there are four of us using it daily.

The Youngest has observed people as I've explained our "toilet situation". And she figured from some flickers of concern and possibly from some uncomfortable moves in their body language that I was leaving important information out when I stopped at "five gallon pail".  Don't worry, we do not have to perch precariously on the painful edge of a pail to do our business. No, the handy-man that is my husband built a lovely wooden box and we even splurged and bought a bamboo toilet seat for it.

I read about this system while living in Ontario.  If done properly it is the most environmentally friendly way of dealing with human waste.  The word "waste" should be reserved for things that are beyond use, that have little to no value left for anything. Poop is not waste.  It may gross many of you out to hear this, but for all it's stinky properties, there is still much good left in our poop. If handled with care and wisdom it can be recycled back into service to help things grow and thrive.

Ok, Have I lost some of you? (laughter)

I don't think I blogged about "the reason" why we up and left a good job and friends and family to come out here to try this crazy thing. It's too long to add here, but in a nut shell we want to become stewards of land, doing the best that we can at not taking more then we need and giving thought and care to growing our own food...and one of the things we felt would help us in this vision was to use a compost toilet.  When we looked at this house and the bathroom was a complete wreck, we added that to the list of reasons why this was a good house for us.  Had we bought something nicer, we would have been hesitant to remove a functioning flush toilet to replace with a pail. When the bathroom here was a "gutter" we were like "Bonus!"

When we arrived one of the first things Geoff built, was the box, fitted to the pickle pails we brought from The Man-Son's Penetang job at the "World Famous Dock Lunch".

We were all set. Almost.

We only needed saw-dust. That shouldn't be a problem, we live in a land of logging and saw-mills! But it seemed all the folks we talked too would shake their head and tell us that the mills they knew of where shut down. To be honest I began to panic a little. Here I thought this would be a good idea, all my research PROMISED that covering your "deposits" would leave virtually no smell and having a pail like such in the house was possible. I really wanted to give it a try! But if we couldn't find saw-dust we would have to invest thousands of dollars into getting a new septic tank (we are pretty sure the one that was here no longer exists and we aren't really sure where our shower water goes?) and besides we had our hearts set on being the "weirdest people" we knew.

Then we spoke to the right person. The East neighbour.

"Sawdust?! You want sawdust!!? My brother (West Neighbour) has a mill and the sawdust is getting out of hand over there, we were just trying to figure out what to do with it all!!"

And right there in the middle of all the weirdness that is me, and this crazy need I have to be WAY different then my culture, God assured my heart we were in the right place.

A mountain of sawdust is less then a two minute drive from the pail that needs it! Praise God!

And so 11.5 months later and we aren't sorry that we use 8 pails to deal with our "waste". It truly doesn't stink, most of the time. And the times it does, are no different than at your house when you chide a family member for the fumes coming out of the bathroom and start attacking the air with air freshener!  :)

So, this is how it goes.
A clean and empty pail goes in the box and a few scoops of sawdust are thrown over the bottom.
You make your "deposits" and cover them with sawdust from the old-feed bag that is standing near-by.  Now feed-bags aren't known for being beautiful, but I turn the writing toward the wall and it's not so bad. Once the pail gets full and sawdust is dangerously close to your behind (I refuse to blog about the time I decided that the pail could be used "just one more time" hahaha) you lift it out, carefully, snap the lid on and put a fresh pail in. Ta-da. Just like that!
It takes 1.5 days for four people to fill a five gallon bucket. But what goes in....must come out.....once a week Geoff and I empty them. He has built a large compost box just for our potty contents. He dumps (the pile is getting high and those pails are heavy), I hose out the pails (Summer is a bit easier, all winter I had to fill four milk jugs with water) we cover the new stuff with hay (that's why we were happy about the old bale left across the road), allow the clean pails to air-dry and Bob's your Uncle (he really is in my case!) you are ready for another week of "Number 1 and 2"!

"Does is smell bad when you are emptying them?"
Yeah, it's kinda gross. But not gag me gross and it only takes 20 minutes to do. Not the end of the world. It mostly just smells like there are animals in the barn. It is a farm after all.

To help with the composting process the pile should be hosed down occasionally. The goal is to get the temperatures up to or over 120 degrees.  If you can get it that hot, all the pathogens that are concerning in human (meat-eaters) poop are destroyed and it is safe to use in gardens. If you don't get it that hot, you need to either let it sit for a couple years, or only use it for fertilizing fruit trees or flower beds.  We didn't get it the right temperature , I'm thinking we didn't wet it enough this winter. We will either let it sit awhile longer or re-do it with more layers of hay and lots of water. The decaying process is what causes the temperatures to rise.

So far our guests have been quite gracious about using it. One of my day-care kids thinks it's really something, but when I watched her once at her home, she took special care to make sure I saw what a flush toilet was. Haha!!

I've mentioned a couple times when explaining how to use our unusual toilet to someone new.......

"Just be thankful that we are only asking you to use it and not empty it."

Which quickly helps them realize that things could be much, much worse.  :)

Well, I hadn't blogged in a long while so I thought I would give you a book today.
It has been a very busy summer with a lot of visitors and work. Not just work on the property or house, but actual paying work, for which we are thankful.  Maybe I'll share those details another day.

At least you know what to expect when you come to our house. We do realize it's not something that most people can do. But since we can we see it as our little part towards being kind to this earth God gave us for a home. I'm betting that you might think of us occasionally when you push down on your toilet's flush lever .....months later I still sometimes look for the phantom lever that isn't here.

Old habits are hard to break I guess!

When it graced our "guest room" while waiting for the bathroom to be finished.

Stage of the Game.

Being I haven't posted in awhile you may be wondering...........

"What stage of the game are they at now?"

We aren't sure ourselves.

Geoff borrowed a tall ladder from the West Neighbour a bit ago to use when taking the chimney down. Before he got around to it, the neighbour, unbeknownst to us, borrowed it back, then returned it while I was out working on the gazebo.

"Do you still need it?" he called out from his truck.

"We haven't used it yet and I am not sure when we will" was my reply. "When you have three thousand, four hundred, twenty nine things on your to-do list you are never sure what is next on the agenda!"

But seriously we are getting stuff crossed off the list everyday.

Some things were so small they weren't actually written down and yet it's great when they get done. Like the antique door knob that was missing from one side of the living room door. How do you find a replacement without spending hours in thrift stores?  But turns out when the locked tight, key-less and also very old front door was forced open it had a matching knob on the outside. Being it is an outside door we were replacing the existing knobs to have a lockable version. And TA-DA, the living room door has two knobs once more!

The bathroom was up and running a bit ago. Well, half of it was. Tub and vanity graced two walls and we could shower on site and stopped brushing our teeth in the kitchen. Yay! But the wall with the window was waiting, stripped down to the lathe, for decent weather so that the window might be removed and replaced. That day arrived yesterday. Window is out! Tarp is up. New window going in either today or Friday. (we may need wood picked up on Thursday's trip to town)

The dining room is looking like a dining room at last. Wedges had to be put under the furniture to make it all level, but unless you are looking for them you wouldn't notice. :)  That means our living room is just that. A living room and not a multi-purpose room like it was for months. That's kinda nice and easier to clean too!

The hallway will be finished today. Working on the hall has been kinda tedious. There was so much to do for such a non-room!  A wooden-hide-away-box that hid the plumbing for the up-stairs Jacuzzi tub had to get torn out and re-dry-walled. That was done thanks to the Man-Son and his friend visiting from Penentang. (they also removed the massive tub itself, making the room twice the size it was) Oh, and I can't forget they tore out duct-work that took up a corner outside the bathroom. I wanted that space used for a closet, since the duct-work was useless with no working furnace. Will we regret that one day? Maybe. But for now the closet is wonderful. We managed to find a small, under-sized door for it. It was on a top shelf at Kent and had been there so long it was grey with dust. When the employee tried scanning the bar code he discovered that it had been removed from the system, guess they thought it was never going to be sold. Then we came along.......

Also in the hallway was a large, LARGE hole in the drywall (don't know the story behind that one) that needed patching plus the door that needed convincing that it must open despite it's age and key-less-ness.  Then after all the mudding and sanding and mudding and sanding and mudding and sanding, like for real......then came the priming, painting and then trim painting. Besides the typical seven inch wide baseboards found in old homes, there are SIX door-frames and five doors that need painting in this said hallway. Count 'em! One, two, three, four, five, SIX!  AGH!! I am so glad that today will mark the end of the endless trim and white paint.

Well, my time is up. I gotta get back to work! We have set a date for when the day-care will begin and we have flyers going out inviting prospective parents to an Open-House June 30th. Meaning we have sixteen days to get this place ship-shape.

In those sixteen days we only have the kitchen floor to put down, the bathroom window to install, bathroom to mud, sand and paint, the stairs and up-stairs hallway to paint (need a nice few days for that, it's oil based paint and we'll need all the doors and windows open). The gazebo to repair, paint, screen and door. (that one doesn't sound like an emergency, but we already started and now it looks like a mess) Some cupboard doors on the lower kitchen cupboards would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. Some footings poured to hold up the front "bay" window, but mostly so the holes the boys dug for them can be filled in again, the tractor tire half buried for a play item in the yard, finish painting my sign for the road and I'm probably missing something but I think that's about it!

And three of those sixteen days I'll be working at my new, very part-time summer job. I'll be serving coffee and crepes at the Sleepless Goat Cafe in the village. Should be fun and also a way to get my "name out" since I can advertise my day-care while there.

So there you have it Ladies and Gentlemen, you now know as much as we do about what stage we're at in this game we're playing.

Not always an enjoyable game, but it's an interesting one at least!! :)