beachcombers

Well we fought and pryed and struggled to get a big chunk of yellow cedar off the beach. But by high tide me and Liam were proudly towing our trophy around. Just another day at "ons tweede huis."

June 28th

Our weekend was spent working/helping the Vanderheides move into there new house. Lots of fun hanging out with the whole community. Potlucks dinners after a hard days work. Saturday was a all about moving heavy objects..washer,dryer, three freezers, four beds, bunk beds, TV's, fuel barrels, tables, chairs, piano, book shelves, whole extra set of kitchen cupboards, spare sink, you name it we moved it. Lots of guys..makes the work easy. In the process of moving I managed to steal a few items when Ben wasn't looking…mostly a set of oars for our skiff (because I broke one)…some solar panels (that came off a sailboat that sunk…any guesses if they will work after being submerged..nobody has tested them yet)… and a dry box for our old pickup.

Sunday we had to start sheeting some interior walls and hooking up all the appliances. Must have been about 10 people scurrying about their house hard at work. A modern day barn raising.

Monday morning I snuck back to the house for a couple more hours. Just wanted to finish sheeting the kids bedrooms..by 11 we ran out of material. So they are gonna have to live with 80% sheeted walls. They hope to be sleeping there tomorrow.

After lunch it was back too our cabin. I brought over a boat load of lumber. We are hopping to hook the kitchen sink to the septic tank this week. But rather than bury the sewage line (too much work) I am building boardwalk over top of it. Should be just dandy. We also had some kayak visitors who braved the west coast weather too check out our building progress.

One story of note (sorry no pictures) which we will refer to as the "crane incident". Also happened over the weekend. Along our trail to town there seems to be a spot frequented by sandhill cranes. Actually quite big birds when viewed from six feet away. Jana was walking alone with the kids when the incident happened. The crane ran towards her with wings extended in an obvious aggressive intent. Jana ran back down the trail. The crane gave up chasing her. But when she tried to return it came back at her. Not to be deterred (jana really wanted to go to town) she grabbed a big stick and advanced. The crane tried to intimidate but she wouldn't have anything to do with it. She yelled..screamed and swung her stick valiantly. Apparently the crane feeling he had met his match allowed her to pass. So anyone visiting beware.

burn it all

Today was the day to burn our brush pile. Jana has been asking for weeks to burn it up. But there hasn't been any rain in a long time. It rained a bit last night and was nice and calm today..no wind. A perfect day to burn. (Jana mentioned something about a burn ban she heard on the radio) In my defence I never heard anything at all. Anyways it burned up great. Now Jana can kick her garden plans in full gear. We also were getting tired of eating on the floor. So we finally built a kitchen table. So nice to have a proper meal for once.

pink

Yup that's the new colour of our cabin..pink. I was hoping for at least blue or maybe even yellow. But we are going to have to settle for pink. We have been busy tacking sheets of styrofoam all over our cabin. Jana is on a mission to plug every little drafty mouse hole she can find. We also got some benches made. Is very nice to finally have somewhere to sit comfortably. Now to build the kitchen table. Better start looking for some funky driftwood. Power has been out for a few days here in Oona River. Doesn't effect us too much. But I have been hoping to borrow a table saw....they don't work to good without power. Still hasn't rained more than a few drops in the past week. Normally I wouldn't complain..but I really want to test my new gutter system. I did do a little work to the gravity feed water system Opa Seinen setup. I managed to get some water flowing..but hardly any pressure..as soon as you lift the line 2 feet up it dies. Guess we need more water line higher up the creek.

Summer Solstice Party

What a better way to spend the longest day of the year. Than a bonfire on the beach. With fresh crab and disgusting strawberry cheesecake. We had lots of fun dancing around the fire and encourging our inner child. Lots of laughing and playing on the driftwood. Sad too think the days get shorter now.

father's day

as I sit here in my new father's day hoodie. I am thinking what a great day it was. It all started at 6:15am. That's when I snuck out of the cabin. Went to the beach and sat reading my book for 20 minutes while watching the sun rise and burn off the fog. The Vanderheide family roared around the corner in there speedboat..already for some halibut fishing. Off too the "deep freeze"..local fishing spot. As we pulled in behind Jermeys boat..he held up his first 25 pound halibut. Thats when the fun started. Within an hour we had caught 7 nice plumb juicy halbut. Double headers..broke some gear off on big ones...a few pulled in with handline. A very fun and exciting 60 minutes..then home for breakfast. We also checked the crab traps....39 crabs..another record. Apparently the bait (frozen salmon carcass left from Josh Wimbush's fish) did the trick. We could barely lift the traps. We now have enough food to stay another month. It all happened so fast. By 9am we were all back home..wondering what to do with the rest of the day. That didn't last long..Ben and Shannon have to be moved out in a couple weeks. So off we went to help them. Jana looked after all the kids and made us dinner. The rest of us planed/sanded/cut/lifted/hauled/dropped/carried 6x4 spruce T&G beams. These were set up in there living room as the loft floor/ceiling. They look great. They definetly add a lot to there house. They now have a spectacular living room. The vaulted ceiling looks great. You can sit at their dinner table and look up through the sky lights at the stars. I look forward to a few meals there. For now we had to settle for plates full of fresh halibut cheeks..mmmmmm. Does a fathers' day get any better.

septic day

Spent the morning building a water collection system...now we are ready for rain. Hope this bright hot sunny weather goes away soon. So we can test the new system. Liam and Sydney spent most of the day naked..swimming in the new pool and ocean. Liam came to test out the new septic tank and drain field. Now we just have too hook up the sink and see if it works. Went fishing after dinner. Rowed out in the skiff. Caught 11 perch and one little cod. Lots of fish..almost every cast. Everyone is going halibut fishing early tomorrow morning. Jermey caught 3 halibut yesterday..and threw more back so we are all pumped to try first thing. They are gonna pick me up on my beach at 6:30. Wish us luck.

6 days logging = shopping trip to Prince Rupert

Well we are glad to be back in sunny Oona River. I think we have officially decided that cities even ones as small as Prince Rupert aren't for us. We are all glad to be back here. Especially since we came loaded with tons of food and building materials. Mostly styrofoam to cover most of the inside and under the floor. Plus a huge amount of plumbing stuff so hopefully we can get some sort of water system working. Stay tuned for progress reports. Tomorrow we start by building cedar eavestophing to catch water for our system. Should be a sunny day..perfect for working under the drip.

These photo's show some of the logging I was doing. The big log is worth about $1400 it will be made into cedar shingles and shakes. Very heavy..no way the excavator could lift it up. Just one side. The power grapple is the machine I have been running. If you look close in the dock picture you can see Liam sleeping amongst our stuff. He fell asleep on the boat and we carried him out like that. Where he continued sleeping. Ben and Shannon came around in there "big skiff" and helped us un load. thanks Vanderheides. When we were in Rupert we spent an afternoon eating ice cream watching the freaking huge cruise ship come in. We thought about trying to sneak on and use the waterslides..but we forgot bathing suits. Next time!

the ground breakers

I have been wanting for some time to add some photos from past building trips. The year before I made numerous trips with a plethora of people. Each time we add some more to the foundation that made it possible to get some far in our progress this spring. Stay tuned for more pics. Couldn't find all the ones I wanted to post.

busy life

The blog is suffering...I agree...hardly any posts...no great pics. The reason is work. It gets in the way of all good things. I have been working 12 hours days this past week. Does not leave much time for extra curricular activities. By the time you get home. Chop wood...haul water...bath kids...kill dinner. The day is shot. But now work is done. Let the fun begin again. We are currently in Prince Rupert. We flew in this morning with Shannon and her kids. Our final total was 70 days at Oona River. Even the locals are impressed with that stretch. Today is cruise ship day in town. More people than normal strolling everywhere in Prince Rupert. Sydney is wide eyed kid. I don't think she remembered what the "real world is like". This is still a small town. Within three hours of being here we bumped into Shannon and kids three times. We finally settled down and finished a whole well deserved tub of Oreo Ice Cream in the park. Good fun. Tastes very good after 70 days without. Tomorrow afternoon we take a boat back to Oona River. So this is purely a shopping trip.....me and Jana have long lists to fill up. Going to be fun to return and keep the progress on the cabin going. Stay tuned for pics.

Weekend Fun

Well the weekend is over. Lots of fun and lots of rain. All kinds of new people in Oona this weekend for the wedding. We had a great time. Even though rain hit us pretty hard a few times. The sun came out for a great wedding ceremony on the heli-pad. Dinner in the old red school house was cool..by 8 our kids we due to be in bed so we didn't quite make it till 2am like the rest of the dancers. We had lots of visitors on Sunday. Two groups hiked over to check out the cabin. We sure do enjoy sharing this space with people. The more visitors the better. We got to finish the kitchen table so we can start really entertaining. With the storms and low tides there has been some cool beach combing. Lots of interesting starfish washing up on our sand flats. Our stove is running wide open just to keep kids clothes drying. Jana is the ultimate washing machine. Building a cabin is the easy part....keeping the crew clean and fed is the hard part.

First storm

As I sit here writing this the rain is starting. Today was a drizzly wet windy day. And it looks like tonight could be a storm. Could be interesting. Jana burnt all the firewood I set out plus more today trying to keep everyone warm. They are all doing fine living the wild life. I came home to Jana bathing two kids in a tote beside the fire...stay tuned for pics. The highlights of there day involved kite flying...followed by Liam being distracted by potential pinching crab hiding spots....dropping the kite.... then watching the kite get hung up in a tree near Opa's cabin. It is still there. That will be tomorrow's project. We also had to change our first bottle of propane in our new stove. Not bad..Jana used the oven numerous times baking breading and heating stuff up. We got almost a week out of it. Now too see how long the fridge bottle lasts.

I have just finished three days of logging. My job has been hoe chucking. Moving lots of cedar, hemlock, cyprus and spruce wood. Nothing to huge yet..excepts some big ugly cedar snags. Kinda fun running a power grapple. I took my GPS too work today to figure out where exactly I was working. We are 1km from the Salt Lagoon..which is off the end of Porcher Narrows..in case any one has a map. We hope to build road too it. Now I get the weekend off...there is a wedding in Oona River this weekend. The school yard is decorated and lots of visitors. Gonna be fun...supposed to rain 40mils and blow...should be interesting. Still fun though.

settling in

Well the folks left today. It was fun hanging out with them. Fishing and eating on the beach. Was awesome that they brought rudy (our dog) along. We were starting to miss him. Sydney sure got excited to see him. But sadly they had to leave. Sooner or later the holiday must end and everybody needs to get back to reality again. We are adjusting quite well to our second home. While I started my first day of logging here(i got a job..a real one with paychecks). Jana had a lot of fun. All alone with kids all day at the cabin. Nudity seems to be the common element for the day. From bathing to eating to showering on the beach. The wildlife has also moved back in now that Rudy is gone. Mice are rampant..squirrels and crows chatter non stop. Another issue we have to adjust to is Internet availability. The beach is the best place for a strong signal. That's ok for now..but not if it is raining. The new kitchen shelves definitely make it easier to deal with life in the cabin. Now to build a table and benches.