Our Lifestyle Blog as We Create a Homestead in Northern Ontario
Kenny received a drone for Christmas – this one is much larger and more stable than the cheap ones I’ve purchased in the past. It was a sunny day here, and pretty calm, so we decided to try it out. The quality of video isn’t very impressive, but it’s still fun all the same! We’ll … Read more
Since we moved, we only had one Christmas where we didn’t end up returning to Southern Ontario over the holiday, and between that and visiting the relatives here in Thunder Bay, we only put up a tree once. It was a bit of an adventure to harvest that one. Much like me, it looked most … Read more
For the past couple of years since Grandpa Oiva moved to the city, Kenny and I have been trying to walk up for the mail when it suited. Unfortunately, Dog Lake Road has lately been inundated with pulp and gravel trucks in ever increasing numbers. I understand that this is the price of progress and … Read more
So I had a large fire on the last afternoon in November and we opted for no evening fire, although it steadily ran through from 24, 23, 22, 21 and then I went to bed. I woke up on the first of December to this: We haven’t seen that temperature inside since. Not sure if … Read more
One thing we really wanted in our new sauna was a way to keep the cleaning process really contained. We felt that the quantities of water splashed about while washing up in the old sauna contributed to a number of boards with mildew stains on them and a generally icky feeling about how things were … Read more
N.B.: This post was suppose to have been published a few months back – not sure why the scheduler didn’t work, but I also didn’t notice it until now. So please understand that it is not seasonally accurate. Cheers! Several days ago on the way back from walking for the mail a little twitching movement … Read more
So when I removed the sauna stove and the insulation I had packed around it, it was interesting to see how well the beams of the wall had stood up to the heat:
Our sauna stove always seemed to have one fatal flaw – the fellow who welded it for us felt that he no longer wanted to weld regular steel to stainless steel. This meant that our stainless tank was just “hanging” off the back of the stove. There was about a 1/8″ gap between much of … Read more
So we found someone to build us a sauna that seemed to tick off lots of our boxes. We wanted to have a bit of a deck to walk on around the sauna, so I opted instead to build another platform similar to the extra deck I built in the spring off the cabin. First … Read more
Here’s the traditional photo of snow on the windscreen!