Happy Thanksgiving

to Farm School’s American friends. Tomorrow is a regular work and school day here, and while our turkeys get to survive the day, it’s only until next week, since they’re destined for customers’ Christmas tables…

(all photos by Davy)

And this lucky fellow, a Buff Orpington-Red Rock Cross rooster we raised, gets to stick around for a good long time. Happy Thanksgiving!

Basement walls, part I

We postponed pouring concrete until yesterday — last week’s highs were in the -20s C but they started to warm up on the weekend, with daily highs just under freezing. Much easier on the people, not to mention the concrete. It was an all-day project, from about 10 to 5, and then checking on the heaters and tarps.

All photos by Davy with his new camera (the old one had spots on the lens from within somehow), which explains why he’s not in any of them.

One of the concrete trucks arriving Monday morning. All together, three trucks came with a total of six loads,

Laura and Daniel,

Daniel in the chute helping to clear it out,

The concrete starting to dry,

Laura in the turret section,

Davy took this under the tarps and between the forms and excavation,

Covering the concrete with insulated tarps,

Icicles

It’s been bloody cold here this past week, in the low -20s without wind chill, which has been considerable. And lots of snow and ice. We made a hair-raising trip to Edmonton last weekend for building supplies, more or less skating the entire way. Not nearly enough sanding trucks on the road, and too many vehicles spun out or slid into the medians and ditches.

These icicles, however, are purely decorative and lovely.

“Icicle Splendor” arrangement by Julie Mulligan; photo by Julie Mulligan from her blog, Petal Talk

I found the idea last December on a flower blog I read, Julie Mulligan’s Petal Talk, and Pinned it, and shockingly it’s one of my most popular pins, passing 300. The arrangement is supposed to be for New Year’s, but it’s a beautiful winter idea, especially if winter comes early in your part of the world. Julie calls it “Icicle Splendor”, and says,

I absolutely love the way it looks when the bare tree branches of winter become covered with ice. You can easily create that same dramatic look in your home using birch branches and acrylic icicles. First, I filled the cylinder with a strand of clear lights and pinecones, before I inserted the branches, which gives this arrangement even more impact.

I have the clear glass vase, the birch branches, pinecones, and clear lights (warm white, since I can’t stand the bluish cool white ones), but the icicle ornaments have been harder to get my hands on in this part of the world. We have a trip to the big city in about 10 days to the orthodontist for braces installation, so am thinking a Michael’s store might be the way to go.

I’d love to know if any of the 300+ pinners have made their own versions of this, and what it looks like.

Science songs, updated

I just had a comment from Monty Harper on an old post about science songs. The original post was about his 2010 Kickstarter science music CD, “Songs from the Science Music Frontier”. Monty wrote yesterday that he’s recording a follow-up science CD for kids, “More Songs from the Science Frontier”, and is running another Kickstarter campaign to fund it, now through December 13th. As Monty writes, “A pledge of $5 or more will get you an immediate download of the first CD!” You can also find Monty on YouTube to hear his songs.

That 2010 post also mentioned the early sixties six-LP “Ballads for the Age of Science” series by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer (covering space, energy and motion, experiments, weather, and nature), which we loved when the kids were little. You can read about the songs here. The original online link we used is now unavailable, though you can find it through the Wayback Machine. Not sure if the music files are still available there, though.

I imagine the link was taken down because because the albums have all been re-released, likely due to the popularity online thanks to nostalgia buffs and home schoolers among other, on iTunes and, since last month, as a CD set (at Amazon here), thanks to Argosy Music (headed by Hy Zaret’s son Robert), Harbinger Records, and Naxos. According to Argosy’s website, “These albums and their songs are available for sale as meticulous digital restorations, done by Irwin Chusid, of the original 1961 recordings in all their monophonic glory. One happy listener of these new restorations asked ‘How did you get such amazing quality on the iTunes songs?’.” There’s a nice, long (two-page) article here at Broadway World, from which,

For the first time in over fifty years, Harbinger Records will release “Ballads for the Age of Science,” the most successful educational recordings of all time, as a six-CD box set.

Featuring more than four dozen original songs written by Hy Zaret, co-author of the iconic popular song “Unchained Melody,” and Lou Singer between 1959 and 1961, the albums introduced scientific concepts and terms using catchy, easy-to-learn lyrics and music to grade school students across America in the early 1960s.

The CD box will be available in stores nationwide on Tuesday, October 15, 2013. The albums are available from Harbinger Records and through downloads on iTunes. They are distributed by Naxos USA.

The article has more biographical information on the late great Hy Zaret and Lou Singer.

Yet more forms

Preparations for pouring the concrete for the basement walls are underway, with lots of form building all week through today. Tomorrow we’re off to the city for concrete ties and rebar (and olive oil, golden raisins, nuts, and lovely round loaves at the Italian Centre supermarket), to be ready for pouring the concrete early next week.

The round structure is the tower — we’re building a Victorian style farmhouse with a turret (which beyond the basement will run through the living room on the first floor and the master bedroom on the second floor), and Tom is using parts of an old grainery for the turret’s forms. With any luck, next Christmas the house will be finished and the Christmas tree will go in the living room’s turret space…

The turret area (below) before the forms were set up,

In between the forms,

In between more forms,

Turret forms moving into place,

Welding the seams for the turret forms,

My father-in-law, a retired builder, at top left supervising,

The sun sets before 4:30 now, which is why the following shots look rather dark,

Footings and more forms

Pouring concrete for the footings last week,

The forms, with braces, for the basement walls; looking to the east,

Same view, a tad closer,

Looking to the south,

Beginning the basement

This past weekend Tom and crew, including the kids, prepared the forms for pouring concrete on Tuesday,

The bump-out, above at left, is the dining room. We’ve decided, based on our recent addition, that we prefer a dining room with windows on three sides — lots of light and lots to see. On the second floor, the bump-out will be our bathroom. The smaller rectangle at the bottom of the picture is part of the garage where our cold storage and three large plastic tanks/cisterns for rainwater collection will go, under the garage’s main floor.

The orange insulated tarps were for the cold weather and snow expected, and received, on Saturday night and Sunday,

We needed more tarps, and when Tom couldn’t reach the local fellow who rents insulated tarps in time, Daniel found a deal on some tarps on Kijiji (Canadian Craigslist) and we made a quick, unexpected trip to the city Monday afternoon.

Tom was well pleased with his deal, and at least until it got dark, I was able to start reading Natasha Solomon’s latest, The Gallery of Vanished Husbands. I finally read her The Novel in the Viola (published as The House at Tyneford in the US) over the summer and enjoyed it very much — I have a weakness for stories about Vienna, and about England between and during the wars. The kids were happy because the tarp location was near the Cabela’s store, so we stopped in on the way home and somehow a pop-up ice fishing shelter ended up in our cart. We’re considering it an early Christmas present for them…

Speaking of the holidays to come, just received an email that Lee Valley is offering free shipping from today, Nov. 7th, to the 14th, in Canada and the US, on orders of at least $40.

Shift in focus

The one or two people who are still checking in here from time to time will know that with life getting busier and also a shift in priorities (kids getting older, with fuller schedules, among other things), there hasn’t been much blogging around here for several years.

But we have a new project and a new shift in focus for our family, which I’m planning to document on the blog; just as well, I suppose, since my youngest will be 13 before the end of the month and our home schooling is on the downward swing. We’re building a new house on the farm, which has been in the plans since we first married 19 years ago. We’d hoped to get started several years ago, the spring after my father died, but between being away from home and then my mother dying, and spending more time than any of us could have thought possible looking after estate and business matters, there wasn’t enough time or energy. We’re starting now and over the moon to finally be able to do this. Tom is a builder so we’re building it ourselves. The kids are helping, and the past month or so, since finishing harvest, we’ve been moving trees (fruit trees and shelterbelt trees) out of the way, stripping top soil from the site (which until now has been an alfalfa field) and hauling it away. Yesterday Davy hauled 40 loads of soil excavated by the backhoe. So this will definitely be a home school project — very hands on! Speaking of which, one book we’ve been using over the years and highly recommend is Math to Build On: A Book for Those Who Build by Johnny and Margaret Hamilton.

The other week Tom laid out 2×4’s on the ground so we could get an idea of what the floorplan would look like. Two days ago the backhoe arrived, and yesterday the excavating finished and forms preparation, for the concrete. We’ll be working on the house while Tom looks after project for clients, so it’ll be about a year for construction, but we want to get the concrete done before winter settles in.

My lovely new hole in the ground,

The backhoe and operator were hired, the dump truck is ours is being driven by Davy,

And our new driveway (in this picture, leading toward the house),

Tom in the Case, and Daniel (age 14) in the yellow loader at right,

Driveway between the vehicles,

The digging turned up another digger, this Northern Pocket Gopher. The kids took him to safety, but he turned up again yesterday afternoon while they were working on the forms. Apparently he likes company. Northern Pocket Gophers, unlike Richardson’s Ground Squirrels (which around here are colloquially called gophers), don’t hibernate over the winter.

There are no words for how excited I am finally to start. The new house will be only the second I’ve ever lived in (third if you include my parents’ house in the West Indies where we stayed for eight months 10 years ago), and will likely be the only house I’ll be involved in building. I’ve dreamed of houses for about 40 years, and when I left for college, I took my binder of shelter magazines with me. I still have some of those pages, and can’t wait to see them come to life.

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Book recommendations for those thinking about building a house:

Designing Your Dream Home: Every Question to Ask, Every Detail to Consider, and Everything to Know Before You Build or Remodel by Susan Lang

Home Plan Doctor: The Essential Companion for Anyone Buying a Home Design Plan by Larry W. Garnett

Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid by Marianne Cusato and Ben Pentreath, with Richard Simmons and Leon Crier

Creating a New Old House: Yesterday’s Character for Today’s Home by Russell Versaci