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.