Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Snow and Sunshine

How Excited Can You Get For Sun?

It's been an interesting winter. We started out in November with a sunless month. December was slightly better and then January improved a bit more and now that we've hit February this first week has been great! The snow and temps have been higher than average with us even getting above freezing in January. Not nice, thanks Mother Nature.

Today we woke to the biggest snowfall we've had this year and the best part was the sunshine that we have to show it all off. Tricia loves the fresh snow out here in the bush. Before the plow went by she took some pics of the beauty of it all.



We don't get traffic to make the roads messy. 



We don't get sand or salt on our road which is nice on Tono's paws.



 The build up of the snow looks so picturesque



Our snowblower decided to give up a week or so ago and we had to find and order the parts and they came in just before the snow. Ed wasn't much of a mechanic before we came up here but his skills have improved out of necessity. He fixed the snowblower yesterday and will be getting to clearing his path to the outhouse quickly. Nothing says you've got work to do like trudging through the snow to get to the outhouse. And yes he uses it even when it's -30 as it was this morning.



You can see Ed has his work cut out for him in getting his outhouse path cleared.


Our solar set up is running great. We did have to use the generator during those bleak weeks. Every two or three days required us to run the generator to charge the batteries. Once again as necessity is the mother of invention Ed was getting tired of pulling that cord on the generator to get it started. Somedays it took the better part of half an hour and then once it got really cold... well let's just say it wasn't pretty to watch. Now, after watching some videos he has a drill and socket to start the genny. It can still take some time when it's cold but 5 minutes compared to 1/2 an hour makes him happy to have put that together. Now we have to watch the panels to be sure the snow is removed so we can get all the benefits the sun has to give. 


This new setup has meant we can do so much more than last year.


If you don't know us personally you wouldn't know that Tricia put old 'Goldy' (the 2000 Mazda B4000 4X4 pickup truck we bought to come up here) into the ditch (and if you have never been in the north a ditch is 4-6 feet deep up here) on January 3rd. No major injuries, in fact she has just started some physio this week as the aches and pains started up last week. So we spent some time looking for a new vehicle. We are now the proud owners of a 2008 Dodge Ram. Never would have 'picked' a red truck but when you live in the bush in a not so densely populated area you have to take what's available. It's much bigger than the Mazda and Tricia is taking her time getting used to driving it.


 And here it is! 

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