ADVENTURES OF THE CANADIAN FAMILY ROBINSON

We had a day of celebration yesterday, our beautiful Ocean Jewel turned 6! She is such a joy to have in our family ! We went skating with family and friends then had nachos which is what Ocean wanted to do We put some photos together of her on her birthday each year and also some highlights from her 5th year! We look forward to all the adventures that her 6th year will bring! We love you Ocean xo

Happy to announce that Blackie and Snow are laying! We are getting two beautiful brown eggs a day now and hopefully the other 3 girls will start soon too! We put a light on to extend the hours of daylight and that was the trick! The roosters are gone and in the freezer now so until spring we will just have the girls, then we will get some a rooster so we can have chicks. We have a few broody hens right now and don’t want winter chicks because of the power it would take to keep them warm and healthy!

[View with PicLens]

Thank goodness for the cover over our 5th wheel!! There has been an INSANE AMOUNT of rain here over the past few weeks!! North Cowichan District (where we are), here on the island has been hit especially hard by flooding! They have declared a state of emergency here and 300 people have been evacuated from their homes due to the flooding of the Cowichan River. It sounds like the water is receding today and hopefully that will continue, though it has started to pour again! Hopefully no more homes will be damaged and people can return home soon! We are up on a hill where we are so we are dry.. When we built the greenhouse cover Curtis brought in drainage rock and also diverted the water away from us, thank goodness! We have a waterfront property now looking over the 50 acres of farm land flooded down the hill. Haven’t taken much for pictures lately with the rain but we will get some up soon!

I started writing a long post tonight but then I felt like I was stumbling on my words so that long post will come soon when my brain isn’t so tired and scrambled! We have been doing TONNES of reading and researching and that is why my brain is tired. We got our first set of drawings from Cindy and they look great. We still have changes to make so when they are done we will post them up here.

We are educating ourselves and reading lots on passive solar, thermal mass, insulation, greywater, heating and more. We are faced with lots of decisions.. We are trying to decide if we will pump our well (over 400 feet deep) out or run on rainwater completely, this decision is based  on if we can pass through our composting toilet, and save ourselves 30% of our water going down the toilet! We are trying to decide if we will go with metal or living roof, we are weighing all the pros and cons of both, the beautiful and organic living roof or the lighter long lasting metal roof.. We are trying to decide if we will tie into the grid or expand on our solar setup and add more batteries and a wind turbine or if we will do a grid intertie. We are trying to decide what percentage of wall space should be windows on the south wall, we want to design based on passive solar but there is no magic ‘work for every situation’ number.. And the list goes on

It is a good lesson in trust, trust that we will make the right decisions and if we don’t we will learn from the mistakes.. And a good lesson for me in just SLOWING DOWN and enjoying each step we make as a family in building ourselves a sustainable home. Soon I will post pictures!

In Love and Light.. Kim