Sunday, July 29, 2007

July 26-29 Family & Sun


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Here's someone (Kevin?) taking a little break on the top of the mule, which has also been working as the scaffolding for the power tower. New pix have been added to the powertower album & you can see lots of pictures of the beginning of the foundations in the photos.

This weekends heros:
Sean who brought the powertower to new heights, Doug who came out for the day to kick ass on the footings, Kevin N who was a sawing machine, my homegirl Patricia who came all the way from hawait to free me from the kitchen & her honey Bill who hauled concrete, Miles, our levelfetcher & mule driver, our friend Cath who first introduced us to Gambier and sent us up a yummy care package of spaghetti and cookies and last but not least, Bonnie & Andrew who've been our bargain hunters and grocery shoppers in the city.

Wildlife report: deers (check out sean's great pic in the album for this weekend) eagle, vulture, garter snake, hummingbirds, ravens, seals. Thankfully no sign of either the cougar or the bear which have been spotted in the area.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Sweating in the rain....

Thank you SUPER TROOPERS who braved the rain, the slugs and the reports of a cougar spotted on a nearby ranch to show up and dig holes, hold measuring tapes, power wash and build our very first footing for the foundation.

Photos I wish we'd taken....Rohini & Doug with plastic bags in their shoes....Miles pretending to be a tyranosaurus rex, Matty right after she smacked her finger with a pick-axe...Sean playing guitar and trying to get us all to sing along to Delilah.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Power Tower Foundation

The foundation for the solar "power tower" is finally finished!
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Sunday, July 15, 2007

Early July

Concrete and excavation days after the approval of the building permit. Big milestones, big sighs of relief all around.

Kevin calls watching the work of the excavator "awesome and heart-breaking." Even though we have already transplanted many of the little trees that were going to be right in the middle of the build site, it is somewhat unsettling to see how quickly machines like this can transform a landscape. The excavator is being used to find bedrock for 23 posts which the house will be built on. In actual fact, the way we are building the house (raised on posts) was one of of the most minimally invasive ways we could build on this site.

More milling done on Friday, our fattest log yet. Are going to experiment with using the dremel to sharpen the saw blade, which has to be sharpened every other cut. We think the little portable solar power pack which Kevin built from battieres, solar panel and dolly (hence portable), will do the trick nicely. Thanks Dave for giving us those batteries!

Also thanks to Waylon and Amanda for had work and photo-documentation. Double thanks to Maddy who keeps coming back for more and is the first person to take advantage of our "name a building" project. Come help out and we'll name something after you! The tent platform Maddy's working on is being called the "Maddyshack." We tried to talk Waylon into a "Waylon wall" but he was skeptical. Maddy also worked hard for her concrete handprint in the PowerTower base. You can add cement tamping to your resume girl!

Two of the seven L's lured me down a dangerous path this past week as i purchased a multi-functional "sleeping system" which converted from one sleeping bag into three at Costco. Trying to figure out this system had me and Amanda in hysterics. Six seperate zippers with no colour coding or labelling and an instruction manual that was virtually incomprehensible.



Good wildlife viewing:
Deer (plenty including fawn) hawk, eagle, lizard, squirrels, snake, yellow bird that likes to rip up the foxglove, swallows, woodpecker, teeny little brown birds, slugs and spiders.




Great wildlife weekend

a blog about 1 cabin and 7 ideas

local / logical / lots of uses / long lasting / low impact / low cost /loveable

Big thanks to everyone!

Help Gambier Island

Gambier Island is facing numerous environmental threats at the moment when we are seeing a rebirth of wildlife. Wolves, whales, owls and more, all around us we see evidence of an eco-system on the rebound. But that resurgence is threatened by plans to allow clear-cutting, develop LNG plants, sink warships.