Putting in the wood

Winter is coming with big nasty teeth, biting winds, and a deep frigid grip. The cost of filling our heating oil is $700 CA a tankful and it is estimated that if we were to run only oil, keep the house at a comfy 20C (68F) it would take a tank a month starting in December. So that translates to $4200 total for oil to see us through the winter from December to May. That is a heck of a lot of money, and I cannot believe that oil is not going to go up in price over the next several months.

We have thought a great deal about alternatives to the use of oil heat and forced air, and looked in to the use of a wood stove or a pellet stove on the first floor of the house. We ran into a couple of problems when with these two alternatives. First and foremost, we are renting the house, and anything we put into the house will stay when we leave. The second problem was one of cost. You see, in order to put in a wood stove it would require a chimney through the house to the roof. We cannot use the chimney that already exists since putting a wood fire above an oil furnace risks a backdraft and potential explosion (bad idea). The pellet stove would not require so much work on a chimney as it could vent right out of the wall of the house, but the cost of the pellet stove would equal the cost of the wood with chimney.

So given these costly alternatives to the oil, we decided to look into the use of the wood furnace in the basement. This has several advantages, not the least of which is that wood is much less expensive than oil. It does mean that you must work a bit harder to make the heat work, start the fire, tend the fire, tote of the ash, but the heat is more constant than the oil since the fan runs as long as the wood is burning to dissipate the heat. Oil comes on and off as the temperature fluctuates and thus it often feels cold before you have the furnace kick in again.

Well, if we want to burn wood, and that seems like the best choice, then we need to get wood. I contacted a local gentleman (Paul Smallman who is a great local Entrepreneur, more in future blogs) and he said he would get things arranged. Our neighbors, who had lived in the house until recently, told us to expect to burn seven cords of wood if we used wood exclusively, and so that is what I ordered form Mr Smallman. The cost of hardwood is more than soft wood, and to have it cut, blocked, and split runs $174/cord which translated into $1218 a darn site better than the $4K plus of oil alone.

Mr Smallman dropped 3.5 cords off several days ago, and we commenced to putting it away. Now, in order to understand what this entails, take a look at the wood pile in front of the house. Just under the window in on the house is the trap door that leads to the basement which means that the wood must be moved from point A outside to point B in the basement and the stacked. To say that the process was an undertaking would be putting it mildly. It was a royal pain in the arse. You see, you have to toss the wood down, separate it into the sizes and then stack according to size. This gives you the chance to handle each piece several times. We asked one of our friends if her sone wanted to earn some money, he did of course, and so he helped me move the wood today. He started his work in the basement, and after about 45 minutes realized that he needed a break. I took over and we worked for another 4 hours stacking the wood.

Now, before you think that it was no big deal, you must understand that our basement is not finished, and there are only one or two places where a grown man taller than 5’8” can stand upright without hitting his head. I spent most of my time in the crouch as I sorted and stacked the wood for our furnace. Believe me, as I stacked the wood the thought of a pellet stove on the first floor looked better and better. I am hoping that Mr Smallman was pulling my leg when he told me it was only half the wood, because I really do not know where we will but another 3.5 cords if we have that coming our way.

So, tonight Nancy and started talking about building a house on the island, and the first thing I mentioned was geothermal heat, pellet furnace, and no basement. Ah the lessons just keep coming.

If you are interested in where the horses are now living, check out the link to the right titled Wild Wind Stables.

My First Trip to Halifax....

Or, what are we doing in Dartmoth? Aren’t we are supposed to be in Halifax? Or, wait a minute, what is my philosophy for living and why did I move to Canada? Holy Cow!

-By Nancy Grimes

Realizing I would not be prepared for the winter riding season, I quickly came to the conclusion I needed to prepare for the colder months with a heavier riding coat, insulated paddock boots, and warm breeches. Our local tack store did not carry what I sought, so I thought “hey, perfect time for a trip to Halifax”. They have a couple of fairly large tack stores, and even more important, they have a Starbucks. It has been since we left the U.S. since I have had Starbucks and I have gone through serious withdrawals. How could I possibly go wrong, getting to see Nova Scotia for the first time, visiting two tack stores, and getting a Starbucks fix. It just doesn’t get a whole lot better than that.

Yesterday was the planned launch date, so in the Suburban, with a full tank of gas, and along with my friend Shelley McLellan, the adventure began. Speaking of full tank – I stopped at the gas station just down the street from where we live and the nice man who works there, whom I have chatted with on numerous occasions, was there yesterday morning when I fueled for the trip. I explained that it was an exciting day because I was making my first trip to Halifax. “Oh, Halifax” he said, “yes, easy to get to, straight forward, piece of cake.” I should have known at that point that the trip was jinxed. It was destined at that moment to NOT be easy to get to, NOT be straight forward, and NOT be a piece of cake.

Now, as most of you know, Gil and I just got a Chevy Aveo for the primary reason that it gets great gas mileage. I was going to take that since Halifax is about 4 hours from us, but Gil thought it would be better to take the Suburban, even with the lousy gas mileage, because we have On Star, so if I get lost, I can call On Star and get directions. Better than On Star, however, is our Garmin, which was a lovely and extremely useful gift from Alli and Jesse before we left from Texas to come to PEI. However, we discovered while stopping over in New Hampshire at Alli and Jesse’s that even though Alli got the disk and loaded the Canada info on the Garmin, it was in fact, not there. So, Gil spoke with the Garmin folks and finally figured out Alli had been given the wrong disk, and we needed another one. The disk had just made it to Katy G’s (Gil’s mom) in Midland, but alas it had not yet made it to PEI. So, the next best thing… On Star. Right.

In addition to the On Star backup, I had also Googled the address of the first tack store we were heading to and got a nice set of directions, or so I thought. We headed out, directions in hand, south to Nova Scotia. All went well for over ¾ of the trip as there weren’t many turns onto different roads and there is a whole lot of nothing after crossing the Confederation Bridge which is the link between PEI and New Brunswick. Once we were into Nova Scotia and we got to where civilization started, that is where our troubles began.

Now, let me digress for a second to give you a couple of pieces of information that should give you great insight (assuming you have that to begin with – if you don’t, sorry, I can’t help you there) into what was to follow. I have been here, what, for 2 months and Shelley has been here 7 months, having moved from British Columbia, and while at least she is from Canada, if you are unfamiliar with Canadian geography, she is from the other side of Canada. Neither of us had been to Nova Scotia. The second piece of information that is helpful to know that I am an INTJ and Shelley is an ENTP. Anyone at this point wondering why I am using random letters in the alphabet to describe Shelley and myself, might want to click on the link I will provide that talks about Myers Briggs Personality Types.

Okay, so we are going along rather well, headed into what was obviously a city, and we thought we were headed into Halifax. Wrong. It was so simple, we were supposed to be looking for 102 South and just a bit down 102 South, we were to take exit 4B. Not complicated. We came to a biforcation in the freeway which had a sign above each choice – 102. That’s it. Not 102, south, north, up, or down. Just 102. Crap. So we pretty much did the ennie minnie minney mo thing, and chose left. After being fully committed to the left fork in the road, we saw a sign way down on the road that was the right side of the biforcation – Halifax. Shit, shit, shit. Why did it say Halifax down there, we were looking at a big downtown area in front of us which had to be Halifax, but here were NO SIGNS to let us know where the hell we were. As we were driving, we were looking at the exit numbers… 7, 6, 5 … excellent, 4 should be next. Yeah, it went from 5 to 12, to 13, and back to 12. Oh my God, where is 4, and where are we?

Naturally, I said we should just take an exit, turn round, and get back to the part of the freeway that biforcated and go right instead of left. So, that is what we did. This is where our 2 hour nightmare began. I wish I could tell you everwhere we went. We ended up on strangly laid out and winding roads that didn’t lead back to where we thought and when we got back to a “freeway”, it was not the original one we were on. What the heck freeway is this? Well, at least it is a freeway, so that had to be good. We had no idea what freeway we were on and there wasn’t an over abundance of signs to inform you of your precise location, but the exit numbers looked promising, so we decicded to go with it. We still couldn’t find 4B and took more exits and got even more lost, if that is possible.

By this time, we had been like a rat in a maze, making wrong choices that led to places we obviously didn’t want to go, and had completed drastic and dangerous freeway manovers which included instantaneously cutting across 3 or 4 lanes of traffic in order to take a direction Shelley would point to and say “oh quick, I think we need to be over there, punch it and I think you can make it”, and in the process cutting off several Nova Scotians, but making it!! I figured they would see the Texas plates (if their eyes could follow that quickly) and figure if my plates said Texas and I was in Nova Scotia, I must be really lost.

Now this is where the Myers Briggs personality types come in handy. What would you suppose was happening in the Suburban? Shelley was laughing saying it was a great adventure, I was not. My stress level was way way over the top, my blood pressure was close behind, and my brain was close to the melting point. I love adventure as well as the next, but CONTROLLED adventure, PLANNED adventure. The last 2 hours most definitely did not fall into either category.

So, we still didn’t have a frekin’ clue as to where we were, so finally I said we are pulling over and we are calling the tack shop. Shelley called the store, and when she described, as best as she could, where we were, they said “ooooooh, yeah, you guys are really lost, you are in Dartmoth”. Dartmoth??? Yes, as it turns out, we had been doing the rat in a maze thing in Dartmoth which is about 10 miles from Halifax. They gave us directions to the store and we headed out again. We managed to make it out of Dartmoth and then we got lost again.

So, we stopped again to call the tack store for further clarification and I thought I should probablycall Gil. I told him I would call when we made it to Halifax which should have been around 1:00 and it was now almost 3:00. When I reached Gil and explained (with hand gestures and explatives!) the situation of how lost we had been for the last 2 hours, he said, did you call On Star? Isn’t that the reason you took that vehicle? Oh… yeah… I completely forgot about On Star. Shah. So, I called On Star and got directions to the tack store and we made it there without further difficulties. Thank you Jesus, or maybe I should say thank you Gil.

We had a nice time shopping in the Greenhawk tack store and I found some of the winter things I needed, including a medium weight blanket for Ophelia. Now, by this point my brain was pretty much full, actually over full, when it came to anything new, different, complicated, or difficult. Not to mention my blood sugar was getting low, so my ability to focus and concentrate was quickly deminishing. They had to order the blanket for Ophelia, as they didn’t have her size in stock. The lady asked me if, when the blanket came in, I wanted them to put it on the bus? On what? Put the blanket on the what? The bus? I am pretty sure I was looking at her like I have been freshly pithed for at least a full 60 seconds. Finally, I managed to jump start my brain enough to ask – “what on earth are you talking about?” Apparently, it is common here to purchase things in Halifax and put them “on the bus” to be brought down to either Charlottetown or Summerside rather than mail them. Alright.

So, we actally made it from Greenhawk to the other tack store, but not without 3 stops to clarify directions, and then on to the Starbucks. Heavenly. Never was a Starbucks so welcome, so needed. I got the largest size of my ol’ standby – peppermint, java chip, frapachino and got 2 bags of breakfast blend ground for french press for Gil. We left the Starbucks, filled up the Suburban, and… before we pulled out of the parking lot... called On Star for directions home.

We made it back to Wildwind without a hitch and our adventure was over. I make buckets of moistened beet pulp/alfalfa cubes for the horses whenever I go out and so I had 3 buckets in the back of the Suburban to give them when we got back that evening. So, I gave them their treats, kissed noses and left for 83 Lewis Road.

I was thinking on the way home… yes, I was extremely tired, yes, the day definitely had its stressful moments… but secretly, I had a great time, a great adventure, and would I do it any different if I could? I think experiences like these where most everything is new and unfamiliar, even with how difficult they can be, are so good for us, and beneath it all – they are exciting. I think in some respects it is the way we experienced things as a child. When you are a child, you have had so few experiences, that most everything is a new experience, most everything is a stretch (to some degree), and it is faciniting and exciting. When you are an adult, you have gained lots of knowledge and had many experiences (hence the phrase “been there, done that, got the t-shirt”) so that fewer and fewer things are truly new, and by extension, they lack this type of new experience excitement.

Stepping completely out of what you know, is like stepping back in time and becoming that child again, and not only taking great joy and excitement from the newness of things, but in addition allowing our imaginations to venture freely into fantastic, exciting, and unknown relms creating even more worlds in which to delve experiencing all there is to experience. I love J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and if I were a kid at this point, I guarantee I would have my Hermoine Granger wand in my pocket everwhere I went. But let’s face it, it just doesn’t look cool for a 46 year old woman to be going about the house with a Hermine Granger wand at the ready! I think many of us miss all these aspects of being a child and we just don’t realize it. So, as an adult, we have to go about it differently. I would like to say, though, that those of you with children are lucky because you can have the cool toys and play with them under the auspice of “playing with your kids”. Right.

As many differences as we have, I think that a major commonality that Gil and I share is the love of experiencing life like that, from the perspective of a child – where you are experiencing all aspects of living for the first time, fully and completely, not just glossing over the day taking in a quarter of what you experience because you’ve seen it so many times, your senses natually filter out a majority of what is there before you. I think that is ultimately why we made the move we did and I can say, without a doubt, we have not been disapointed. This is not to say, however, that you have to move away to be able to live life in this way. I think it is easier for obvious reasons, but there is no reason you can’t do it from where you are, it is just harder to reprogam your senses to stop glossing over and start paying attention and experiencing life fully and completely!

Having said all that, you must know that this experience was not easy for me. This was a “stretch skill”, as it were, for me. Gil will be the first to tell you, that I would have NEVER ventured out to Halifax without him even a year ago and yesterday I did it. Wow! As uncomfortable as it is, if you don’t stretch, you really miss out on the vast and rich rewards those experiences offer. Would I trade this Halifax experience for a nice serene day of safely sitting on my front porch back in Texas in a rocking chair where I know what there is to know and have things well within control? Or, would I go backward in time, say three rotations of the time turner, to relive the day so that I had precise directions and went directly there without a hitch?


Not on your Hermoine Granger wand!!

Signs of Fall

The Lobster boats are out of the water and the potatoes are coming out of the field, these are sure signs that fall is in full swing on Prince Edward Island (PEI). It seems that every day the colors on the trees become deeper and the air is cooling off. The drive to and from work are some of the best times of the day to look at the color. The low angle light in the morning and the evening really bring out the colors in the trees which makes it more difficult to keep focused on the road as I drive. Likewise, if you were behind me watching you might think that I had a bit of a ‘tic’ as you watch my head swivel left and right trying to see everything. Everyone tells me to enjoy the colors because they are not long for the island and in a very short time the winds of winter will blow and all the color will carpet the lawn announcing the beginning of the hard cold winter.

Since PEI is such a small island you end up living very close to the land. Just down the road the lobster man has pulled out his boat and his lobster traps in preparation for winter. Our neighbor across the street has not pulled his boat yet, he still has some work this year. He is a fisherman, he fishes oysters in the early fall both wild and raised, then mussels in November, mackerel in December, and then the boat comes out of the water. He has his cultured oysters across the road from us in the bay, and he works them quite a bit right now. He starts by situating floating columns (called the clutch) over the oyster bed and as the oysters reproduce, the small larvae eventually seek a strong firm surface upon which to cling where they spend their first year on the clutch. In the fall he scrapes down the clutch so the maturing oysters fall into the bed where they continue to grow until they are two or more inches long (usually two years). In the fall, he scrapes down the clutch, and then uses the oyster tongs to harvest the oysters from the bottom. For any of the small oysters they get tossed back and only the big ones are kept. It is hard work, and when the wind is blowing, the rain is falling; it becomes very apparent that the fisherman is a tough fellow. There are two types of oyster fishermen for oysters, those that have a lease can harvest from one spot where they have enriched the supply. For others, they harvest form the wild. They find a spot, and work it all day, then move to another spot. On the first day of the season you can see many folks in one space harvesting the wild oysters, but after day one, the ‘Oyster Farmers’ head to their lease while the wild oystermen continue their work.

The fall harvest does not just contain the lobster and the oyster, it also contains the root crops-carrots and potatoes. We have a small potato field behind the house and we have been waiting for them to harvest the field. You see, when a field is harvested there are many potatoes that get left behind, and once the harvesters are out of the field, these leftover potatoes are free for the taking. They harvested the potatoes yesterday and so this morning Nancy was out in the field gathering the free potatoes. You have to get out there early so that you can get them before they start to turn green, and you have to be careful to pick those potatoes that are not cut or otherwise damaged. We picked up potatoes for the morning and have them spread out in the garage drying before we bag them into paper sacks and place them in the basement for winter storage. It is an island tradition, and the fresh potatoes are very good. The farmers harvest their potatoes, knock most of the dirt off of them, and then store them in a potato shed. These sheds remind me of barracks from the Marine Corps and they are filled floor to ceiling with potatoes. It is an interesting sight to see folks loading these sheds with potatoes. The farmers work morning till night and the days are often 18 hours long. The goal is to get the harvest in before the weather turns ugly and the rains come (effectively ruining the crop in the field). Just like the fishermen, the farmers work from before sun up until after sunset and so whenever I see them in the emergency room, it is usually either very early or very late.

If you have not taken a look at the photo pages lately, take a click on the slide show and enjoy the photos of fall as well as photos of the harvest and the local farmers market (where we are buying as much as we can). Stay tuned for a guest blog in the very near future.