Cooling off at Big Fish Lake

After a long day of hard work out back in the hot, hot sun, we all (including Mr. Reiche, who helped us out for the day) headed down to Big Fish lake in the evening for a relaxing swim for some of us and a sit by the lake for the rest;)

It was a beautiful evening only getting a little bit cool at the end of our swim.

Faith enjoyed walking along the wooded trails next to the Lake.

I am not quite sure what this is supposed to be, Moose antlers or a drowning fish with goggles? What do you think it looks like? (In reality I think we just caught Josh as he was adjusting his goggles, resulting in a hilarious picture.)


Watching the swimmers, or drowners depending who you are talking about.

Brrrr! the water feels really cold at first.

Help he's drowning, or is it just his back stroke?

Mr Reiche drove Josiah's remote control boat, and Josiah had fun trying to dive underneath it.

Happy swimmers. In all we had a wonderful relaxing time, and no one came too close to drowning.

~Chs

Backyard Makeover Episode 2: Toppling Trees and Burning Brush

Alright, so glad you all joined me for Episode 2 of Backyard Makeover. Our next object after we had dug the holes and cemented the poles, was to cut down the remaining dead, or deadish trees in a faster, safer and more efficient manner than the way that you saw in the "Backyard Makeover Update"

So our good friend Mr. Reiche came over with his handy saw and spent most of the day out back sawing away at the trees.

"Timber"!! This is the leaning tree of Sauve.

While Mr. Rieche worked on the trees, Josiah took our faithful Lawn Mower and went back and forth, back and forth along the path, sometimes chopping sometimes just flattening the grass.

Havin' lots of fun!!

After dispatching the trees, Mr. Reiche proceeded to clear the brush and branches away.


The beautiful horizon, free of dead trees.

Here I am sitting on the remains of our largest tree.


At the end of the day we had a nice pile of fire wood for our camp fire...


...plus lots of brush and grass that we burned right away.
We are very thankful to God for keeping us safe so far and blessing our efforts as we fix up our back acre.
Now don't hold your breath for the following post, because the next project will be digging the pond and I have a feeling that its going to take a while to get to that point.

~until then this is Chs signing off from the Backyard Makeover.

Update on our backyard work.

One of the things that desperately needed to be done out back was the chopping down of the dead ash trees that were still standing there. So Josh trudged out back one fine afternoon with our semi sharp ax to execute one of the said trees. Unfortunately though, due to the ax being only semi sharp, the ax bounced off the tree through his rubber boot and into his foot.

Don't worry everyone the cut really wasn't as bad as the sock makes it look. Blood spreads remember. The wound turned out to be rather small though a bit deep. It does look dramatic though doesn't it?

Despite the painful start Josh and Josiah did manage to fell the stubborn tree, much to their satisfaction.

That is all so far folks, and I promise to keep you up to date.
Ta Ta for now. Chs

Backyard Makeover. Episode 1

For a year or more now, Grace (as well as the rest of the family) has had great and exciting plans for the first half of our back acre, which is at the moment in a swampy condition. Some of her plans include an Arbor, picket fence and gate, for a better access to the back. Then there is the board walk, stream bed and pond. So in essence we want to give the grassy muddy swampy section of our yard a complete makeover.

We started with the gate and arbor. Here are all the tools collected and just waiting with baited breath to be used;)

The view through a quickrete tube.

Here's where we ran into some trouble. Well you see, our water table is high, very high! So after digging a little less than three feet down water started seeping into our hole, and the tube that we needed to put in the hole was four feet long!!


As you can see in the picture, the soil below the single inch of dirt, consisted of very moist sand. Dirty sand, but sand none the less. After a lot of effort we finally got it deep enough and shoved the tube quickly down the gaping tunnel.

The next job was filling the "dirt" (sand) back around the tube, then mixing the cement and feeding it down the throat of the tube, and for that you needed a very special tool. The "Post", which was actually the part of the fence which Dad sawed off to make room for the arbor.


Josiah and the "Post" hard at work.


Grace was the organizer and supervisor, though she did get her hands a little dirty later on.

The hot weary worker. Mother set to work clearing the grass in anticipation of being able to dig our pond and stream.

Off we go into the wild green yonder...

Despite the cement being quite a bit too wet, due to the added ground water, Dad and Josh were able to get the brackets in then after leaving it a day or so to dry, secure the posts. They then attached the top wood bracket. This is of course only the back half of the arbor, the front section is still in progress.

As soon as they had finished screwing with not much loss of time, Grace went right ahead and began to paint. I think it looks quite nice don't you?!

This is Chs signing off with a promise to bring you the next episode of the "Backyard Makeover" asap (aka: when ever I have time to type it up)