Echo's Birthday: The Big Deuce

Today, December 28 is my Big Deuce. Daddy made me a cake. It even had candles. Daddy is the Cake Boss of dog cake making.

- Echo -

B&B Room Renovation

First day of demolition. Removing baseboards, doors and trim.

Adding screws to the sub-floor to remove squeaks.

Pulling down all the bad tape joints.

Adding screws to the drywall. The main reason why the tape joints are failing. In the pursuit of saving $20 in screws the drywaller caused me a lot of work fixing a bad drywall job.

Removed the stiple ceiling for replacement with California Knock Down.

New drywall the the walk-in closet. Easier to put new drywall up versus fixing the old.

The bracket for the wall mounted television. Relocating the power and cable TV outlets so that no cords are dangling down the wall.

Removed the old barely functioning mirror closet door. Reframed for a normal door.

Christmas Blizzard

First we recieved snow for a whole day and then we got the 60 Km/H winds. Visibility was less than 1/4 mile at most times during the day. Our Christmas dinner guest couldn't even get out of his neighbourhood to come to our place. I had to use the tractor 3 times to clear all the snow and drifts.

Water Water Water = Ice Ice Ice

The latest make work project here on the farm. The skating rink is 25 feet wide by 50 feet long. Made in the front vegatable garden. It has dirt burms that I made with the tractor. Next was 3000 gallons of water. We trucked the water from the farmer tap about 6 miles away. A farmer tap is a water well where farmers get water for animals and spray equipment. During our Christmas get together some people braved the cold (-26C) to skate...well at least for 10 minutes.

Fall Weather

Spray Foam!

Wine!

The bunches of grapes. The grapes froze so this will be ice wine.

The harvest.

The grape mash. Ready to start making ice wine.

General Update

The newly relocated hot water tank with streamlined plumbing.

Continuation of the framing. Almost done.

One lazy dog.

Jalapeno pepper harvest. One whole shopping bag of peppers cut up and pickled. They are HOT!

Great Big Update

Dana's big double carrot. The joke is that it looks like a pair of legs.

The start of the basement framing. Progress is at about 1/3 done.

Where the corn stood tall only this morning. The racoons had pulled most of it down to eat.

The new shed to put the tractors in.

The wood pile all ready to go for this winter.

New Sign

This is the new sign I made for the bed & breakfast. It is installed at the end of the driveway.

Echo...The Beach Hound!

Echo wadding in the water at St. Ambroise Beach. She did swim out further. She did very well for her first time swimming.

New Tiller is here!

The new 60" tiller arrived today. Our tractor setup is complete...until the next implement purchase. The first tiller we had was on loan while our tiller was back-ordered. She is a beauty and works so smoothly.

Yard & Garden

Section 1 of the garden. Carrots, lettuce, beans, peas, beets, etc.

Section 2 of the garden. Tomatoes, onions, potatoes, etc.

The new grass seed growing in where the tree stump was removed. This grass seed was only put in not even 2 weeks ago and it is almost filled in already.

New baby is here!

The new Bobcat CT230 tractor. Shown here still on the trailer from its journey home. The green tiller on the back end is only a loaner as ours is still on order. Ours will be a bit wider and black in colour. A 2500 lbs trailer along with a 3500 lbs tractor made the old Dodge truck work for its food!

New baby on the way!

Introducing our newest baby...the Bobcat CT230 tractor with Front-End Loader and tiller. Purchased today for a tidy little fortune. This photo is just a stock photo. Will replace with a real photo when available. We should have it here by mid-week.

No brown crunchie grass here!

Raining since last night and total for the last 24 hours...1.5 inches of rain. This rain just started our climb towards 2 inches!

***UPDATE***

2.1 inches of rain now in the rain gauge.

Echo's summer training sled.

A big maple tree log with some wheels and a pulling ring attached to it. Summer sled dog training at its finest.

Echo...The Cool Dog!

Eating a delicious Creamsicle!

Echo...The Hot Dog!

Hot and tired from our busy weekend. Just chilling in the bathroom!

Pool Table

The pool table is getting its new felt cloth. Almost all done, just two more rails to recover and then final assembly. The new 'Camel' colour is much more coordinated with our room than the old standard green cloth.

Tree Stump GONE!

DONE! Not feasible without our little tractor that we had on demo this weekend. I pulled the stump out of the ground, brought in 3 buckets of dirt from the back field and levelled the soil. Total time with the tractor...about 1.5 hours. This is after about 4 days of trying to dig the stump out by hand and attempting to pull it with my truck.

Tractor Demo Days

This is a Case Farmall 31 tractor. We had it this weekend to try out. We are looking at purchasing a tractor identical to this but used. This is on demo from the dealer. Proved very useful in removing the tree stump. Four days of digging, chopping and sawing got us no where but the tractor pulled the stump up and out in an hour. I did many other jobs with ease and saved myself alot of labour and time. Life here without a tractor like this is getting to be very difficult. Especially now with our tree farm.

Front Stair Railing

This was a project for my day off work. About $60 of steel and a borrowed welder and Voila...a wrought iron stair railing. Not bad for out of my head while welding on the fly!