Measure Twice, Cut Once

I have been wanting to post here for some time now on some of the ways in which God has and is changing my life, he has really transformed it. I should have knowing he would do this for he tells us so in the bible, at first I wasn’t sure how he would do it. I now know he makes use of everything and anything to open my eyes to the fact that he loves me and that I love him. One of the ways he is changing me is through my children I think of my girls as Gods little helpers. I believe that God teaches us about himself and how he wants us to live and deal with others around us in much the same way a parent teachs their children. After all God is the first parent and as with all loving parents he loves his children and ours more then we will ever know. I think of God as my Heavenly Father and I long for him to reveal himself to me, and it never ceases to amaze me in all the ways he does it, if only I keep my eye on him. I thank God in Jesus for the little blessings he has given me to parent and to try to be more like Jesus each day, God sets a very good witness, all we have to do is follow.

Summer is gone and with it the warm weather, we have been keeping a fire in the stove pretty much every day that we are home. We are just finishing up some contract work in the city so we have been staying with Jennifer’s Grandparents. But we should soon have that done and can get back to work on the house, and get a water well dug, we did get the road all finished thanks to our good neighbor Al. We are now just gathering up things for the well and the house and will soon decide where to dig the well. I’m thinking of putting it in the greenhouse that I will be building on the South side of the house it will be and old cast hand pump. We have been working up the two garden spots, as we have been told that a sure way to kill quack grass it to freeze the roots, last night it got down to -8 Celsius. The cows are needing a bit of hay, the fall pasture is all but gone now, we really need to do some more fencing to get the cows in the bush around the North and East side of the yard to eat all the grass. I have made a list of all the post and wire needed now to put it into the budget and hopefully get a start on it in the spring.

I’m a bit late with this photo but it is true the seasons are a turning here on the homestead, the other day we watched a few thousand sand hill cranes fly over. The girls where very happy and waved and told them all to come back in the spring. No pictures of the cranes, sorry I’m in need of a new camera the old one doesn’t take good pictures of things far away.

I never planned to be a homesteader, it just happened and so I have been trying to make the best of it ever since. Along the way I have learned some very interesting things, but I would have to say that the most important thing that I have learned is to have a well-laid plan and stick to it. For you will save allot time, money and grief as you begin your homesteading adventurer. Now that winter is fast approaching and the time for outside work is just about over, I find myself looking at adding on to our house over the winter. This is something that a well-laid plan might have avoided, for it will be a challenge to say the least.
Over the winter I plan to write a serious of posts on setting out a well-laid plan and things that I have learned, in hopes that someone might be helped by some of my mistakes. But for now its back to the grindstone to get a few more things done before the ground freezes as hard as a rock.

Two very busy days and the solar panels now have a new home, and from the voltage meter we will have allot more power. Due to the house getting a new roof  I had the to move the panel which where on the roof. Now with the help of my two little helpers the panel can be pointed into the sun as it cuts across the sky.

Here it is before we load it up with the panels, testing to see if it will turn with some weight on it , we still need to slide it up to the top of the post.

Now we are ready to wire it up and slide it to the top of the post.

All wired up and putting out 49 volts DC back to the battery pack.

All ready for more of those sunny Alberta days.

Frost has hit the homestead and so we dug our potatoes and picked our squash. A very small crop but it is our first crop and with all the grass sod in the garden I‘m very happy with it. My girls came out with their Gator to help their old Pa to bring in the crop and we had a wonderful time looking at all the shapes that potatoes come in and carrying the winter squash to the house.

Things are going slow but we are making sawdust and lots of noise, and a few things are starting to take shape. Here we have the new gable wall taking shape, we are going from the straw over to stick frame. Stick frame is very fast compared to the straw clay building method. As we go along you will begin to see the roof outline and notice that the South side of the house will have a very long slope. This is part of the passive solar collector part of the house. As we are buildingthe house to be a big solar collector that we just happen to live in, with the end goal to be a self heating  house.

A few days later and we have the panel board going up, we have scaffolding up to help makes things a  bit safer. We had to stop here and build a solar rack to move the panel to as they where on the other side of the new wall and mostly in the shade.

Busy as Beavers

Here on the homestead fall is in the air I saw a couple flocks of Canada geese go over the other day and that will get me into the fall work mind set. So I have decided to add a little more room on to our house, with a new baby and all it is time for an upgrade also on a few things.

One thing will be the drilling of a water well, I have found a little company in Texas that sells a do it yourself water well drilling kit. So that is in the mail and as soon as it get here we will be drilling or trying to drill. I will be posting on how that goes with lots of pictures.

The big change will be the house and I have some pictures of that project underway, I will keep the blog up to date on that project as well.

The other thing we did this fall is get a new bull for our growing herd of Dexter’s, he doesn’t have any papers but he is a full blood and we have named him Sampson.

I’m always in awe of all the wonders God has given his children, flowers are truly one of the most amazing ways that God has created to produce seeds. Man in all his science and knowledge has never be able to come even close, we can only copy an image of this most beautiful gift from our loving Father.