Preparing to Sell and Sale

The real work has begun, we are making preparations for garage sales and finishing some unfinished editing of the house itself.

 

Okay here's a rough update

In our travels lately, I saw this hummingbird flying in the sky.

Okay so we have moved to a 'modest' house in a 'modest' community as we were unable to find a suitable acreage in the time we had - still in central Alberta. Our lease on the acreage expired Sept 30th and we could not wait to get away from that property. The water was absolutely disgusting, the safety of the house was questionable and - lets just say, the landlady wasn't the warm fuzzy type. It was a risk, having rented it sight unseen (except for a short video conference) from our place in the Gulf Islands of BC but it was clear from day 1 that we wouldn't be staying past our lease.

Brad's hammock

Our new place allows Brad to FINALLY hang the hammock we bought about 5 years ago. In all the places we've been, there just wasn't anywhere he could hang it... except the campground but those trees were for paying guests and our spot didn't have 2 trees in it.

Yes FG, there is a garden area in the back also. All things being equal we will put in some raised beds to add more growing space.    

Once the move was completed, we were exhausted and needed a few days to relax. I can't relax at home, there's waaaay too much to do all the time. 

Also, I have a wonky elbow that I injured getting into our old truck last October that I was too 'busy' to let heal and so I am doing that now that the move is done (golfer's elbow AND bursitis). The shoulder on my other arm is also giving me grief, so I'm a hot mess currently.

Off we went to Canmore, AB for 4 days, 3 nights. Canmore is the new Banff, the amount of tourists is just crazy.  But it was still a relaxing few days. Having lived there for 3 years many years ago, we didn't do much of the typical touristy stuff.

Lake Louise

Our beloved Robbie

Returned to the scene of the crime, 14 years on.

Evidence of the crime itself.

My other 'good son'

We had barely got the silverware put away and my youngest son (of 2) messaged to ask if he could stay with us for a few weeks while he did a job local to us. He is a Radiographer, and takes Xray pictures of pipeline welds and the like... this is oil country here in Alberta, after all. So he will be here for a while (gone home to his wife and 3 kids in Saskatchewan for Thanksgiving this weekend, but will return on Monday).

So once again, I apologize for my long absences. It has been a crazy year with the animals on the acreage and the massive garden we planted. Then finding a place to move to and then rehoming the chickens and sending the rabbits to freezer camp. Getting the packing, cleaning and move done with a wonky arm, and then eventually 2 wonky arms... it has been super tiring. We are settled now and I hope to be posting more often... assuming my blog keeps existing... (also, some part of that doesn't expire until spring, so..... no idea).

So the new page SHOULD be: www.theroguelesstravelled.blogspot.com - - at least in theory.

This town has a lot of activities. We had a drive in movie night, ladybug release, rubber duck race... we are hoping to start curling, have already joined the card playing club, there is a gym very close to the house, and I've made a friend already. No Pickleball as yet but one of the locals does play and so we will try to get something going for the winter.

So far, so good!

 

Rogue Acres Intro

Thank you to everyone who left condolences on the passing of my father. It's been a very difficult time the last few weeks. I appreciate your patience while I mourned the loss, not that I'm not still mourning but it is getting easier - though I still cry a bit each day.

We left the log house for our new acreage Sept. 27th. After a very long fist day of travel we got a room in Kelowna and finished the trip the following day.

Truck load of empty cardboard once everything was unpacked

When we arrived, Dad (or at least his ashes) had arrived ahead of us that day. That made for a nice welcoming, for sure.

Robbie waiting patiently while I unpack the kitchen

A brief sample of the gorgeous fall colours that surrounded us upon arrival. The majority of leaves have since fallen.

Back of house, Brad and Robbie playing their psycho game of tag.

Good size yard to run around in.

Yeah, so as you might imagine -- something always gets broken when you move. This time, it was the television. So we went out and replaced the 42" with a 50".  Actually has a really good picture (RCA).

I found a supplier for our laying hens, which arrive Oct 23rd (incidentally, my bday). I have ordered 15 brown laying hens, so we commenced preparing the coop. The coop was in quite a state, we had to clear it out, repair the leaking roof and sort out some roosts as there were none.

Laying hens coop - Before

Operational Supervisor in charge.

We went to a local farm supply and picked up a few chicken coop gadgets.

Brooder coop -- after

(for raising meat chickens)

Woodpecker just at the top right of the shadow across the tree. There was one on the left also, but I don't think I caught it in the pic.

Chicken coop roof  --before

Chicken coop roof -- after

Chicken coop - after

Roosts are in.

Squirrel in front of the pump house on upper right of tree.

Left: Dehydrated blueberries        Right: Freeze Dried Blueberries

In case you were confused :D

I've been looking everywhere, in person and online to find a decent display to put Dad's urn in and today we picked this curio cabinet up. Fits perfectly in that corner and has a light too. Still have to unpack some items for the lower shelves.

Very happy with this curio cabinet.

The statuette below was Dad's also. A reminder of his parents who bet on the races regularly.

We are also planning to raise rabbits but Brad has never tried rabbit before so I took to FaceBook and found a local supplier of a sample meal. I've had rabbit before many years ago and I recall that it tastes like chicken and that is what everyone is telling us also. 

I had planned for us to have it for supper tonight (Saturday) but time got away from us. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so it will be a few days before we get to sample the rabbit after all.

Back to 'normal' ? !

Not that anyone ever knew what normal was, and now this year 'normal' has a whole new meaning and absolutely No One knows what it is....

We however have moved in to our new rental house on Gabriola Island. Moving day was Saturday, we stayed here Saturday and Sunday nights because the old spot is 2 ferry rides away and we were exhausted anyway from having to clean the house before we could move anything in. The first load was put away by Sunday evening and we even managed a trip to Nanaimo for some shopping.

The house has a cistern, I do not like this concept personally, although I know its a thing and people have used them for ages... its just not my preference. So while I don't mind washing in it and cleaning with it, neither of us wants to drink it - so off to Canadian Tire for a water cooler, also the whole house was surrounded in overgrown grass/weeds so Brad picked himself out a weed wacker extraordinaire.

Robbie's water is cistern tap water which is being run through the Berkey water filter. The Berkey isn't big enough to serve all 3 of us so this is how we decided to do it. #SpoiledPuppy.

Monday we went back to the site and packed the rest of our things in to the truck and dropped the rig off in Nanaimo at a storage facility before heading back to our new home. Once home, we didn't even unload the truck we were so exhausted.

Tuesday we unloaded the truck and put most of it in to its new designated spots and Brad even managed to do a small amount of weed wacking before we called it a night from exhaustion again.

Wednesday Brad had an MRI in Victoria (military injury stuff) so I was up at 4:30am afraid to oversleep, we rushed out at 7am to get the 7:20am ferry and just made it in the line up about 3 cars from having to wait for the next ferry... whew! Clearly summer and the country are back online so plenty of time will be required to make a ferry nowadays.

Brad managed to get some more done on the weeds.

Wood storage shed cleared of brush

Formerly known as a peach tree but the others in front of house and grapevine are visible.

A lot of brush cleared along driveway

East side of house

What a difference

West side of house, yet to be done

The whole house looked like this beforehand

Well, most everything is now put away, 2 boxes and the dehumidifier left on the livingroom floor - tomorrow's job.

I'm one of those OCD people who has everything done day 1 -when I move, everything is cleaned, organized and done before dinner -- every time... however, due to my recent brush with death I have taken the slow road on this one. I would just like my family to note that this is Day 6 and I still have boxes to sort away!! Likely someone won a bet and I want a dinner out of it...

We have 3 peach trees in front of the house and a grape vine crawling up to the upper deck. There are lots of different herbs along the side of the house also.

Peach

Different peach

Grapevine

To my knowledge we have nothing else pending for the remainder of the month, and we will need every day of it to recover from this move. I am almost back to 'normal' (there's that word again) but I do still tire eventually and I am able to feel it coming which is handy although the charlie horse cramping all over my body has disappeared finally.

I have put on so much weight through this - first 'typical winter weight', then 'sick and didn't want to go to the doctor and everyone is on lockdown so you can't even walk much due to a pandemic' weight happened and now I'm suffering from 'thyroid recovery time' weight. SOOOO done with it!

Good news is the local Pickleball group has been reignited, they are playing for the 3rd time sincer restarting on Thursday(21st) and while I have not been yet, they do know I'm here and I'm coming as soon as I can. 

I need to do some serious walking and get myself into shape enough to play Pickleball and the added advantage is that they can sort out the bugs of pandemic protocols so I don't have to be kerfuffled by changing rules for weeks on end. I intend to get back to playing at the beginning of June.

Amongst the trees

We went by the other day and got some pictures of our new spot. It is smaller than we're used to but certainly bigger than some and we're excited to put our touch on it. Spoke to the new landlord this morning and he has been busy getting some last minute details ready for us.

My Dad called yesterday to say that he is coming for Xmas, woohoo! He has booked in at a local resort in the area of our new site as he likes to have his own space.

Not even mid October yet and already planning for Xmas... yikes, but exciting.

Well now, that was a day!

We woke up this morning with nothing to do... then remembered that the slide topper guy was supposed to be coming today. Brad was going to run into Quartzsite and do something or other while I still had to get myself put together, then the topper guy called. He was at the front entrance to the LTVA... where were we? Cutting a long story short, we were happy with the result of the topper guy's visit. He will return on Wednesday (not happy about that as we were hoping to go somewhere else soon) and the cost of the repair will be $169.78US. Not great but atleast its not crazy expensive.

For the record the topper guy is Ron Butts with Shade Pro RV Awnings. Nice guy and sounds like he knows his stuff.

After this we figured we go to Quartzsite and do a bit of laundry, fully intending to bring it home wet and hang it on some contraption that Brad has planned and I know no details of.

And we did - go to Quartzsite and do a bit of laundry, that is. It was a cool, cloudy day today so we left Robbie at home and the two of us drove in. He dropped me off at a new laundromat the Palm Plaza Laundromat since I was so thoroughly unimpressed with the last one. I loved it. It was clean, quiet, the other users were friendly and the price was great. $2/wash and .25 for 7 min on the dryer I put it in for 45min and it was dry when it finished. Not sopping wet. Well worth the price. So a huge thank you to the management of that place, we will be back.

Our Laundry Hamper

Saw this notice of the upcoming Farmers Market and I'm excited to check it out on Tuesday.

While I was doing laundry, Brad went to go have a chat with the solar boys again. We've been finding that its not keeping up with our energy usage, so he wanted to see what we could have done to it to correct the problem... perhaps another panel and upgrade the controller... the boys suggested tilting the panels and they could fit us in right away. So he came back to the laundromat to pick me up.

We rushed home and packed up the rig for moving and off we went. Dropped her off at Discount Solar yet again for the boys to fix her up. They removed all the panels, put tilting feet on them and replaced them moving one into a better position. We are not able to tilt them for a few days (5 apparently) to allow time for the lap sealant to set up well before the wind hits them. $482US for today's little add-on but apparently it will give us the 20% extra we seem to be missing.

Kendon on the roof of Ace once again

Obviously we also need to cut down on our power usage. We'll have to limit ourselves to a morning and late afternoon charge of all the gadgets on generator power until we are able to tilt these babies. Even after that we will be watching our energy usage much closer, killing the Keurig will go a long way towards that. Brad drinks about 8 cups of coffee a day... yes, I've told him - he doesn't care. So when we were watching Moving Forward the other night and they were showing their Presto MyJo K-cup coffee maker, we knew we just had to get one. THIS alone will save us enough power over the course of a day to send Armstrong to the moon and back. I ordered him one the very next morning along with a new collapsible kettle for both of us.

After returning to our campsite, having dumped the black/gray tanks and reloaded the fresh water we set the rig to better orient her for her new solar setup. Brad promptly began patching the holes left by the atrocious placement of the panels by Woody's RV in Red Deer. He is none too happy with them at the moment and I try to remind him that they are Dealers not Solar guys but he is mad at the hack job they did to our roof and thinks they shouldn't be doing solar if they don't know what they're doing. We have A LOT of patches up there now with the original 4 that came from the previous owners satellite dish, 14 now. 

He managed to get 4 of them patched and sealed today but has 6 more to do in the morning. We specifically told the guys at Discount Solar we would do them ourselves so that we can be absolutely sure they are done correctly given the high number of them. All this patching will undoubtedly affect any future sale should we choose to upgrade and we will likely have to replace the entire roof. Long time readers will remember we have some experience with this. Somewhere in all of this we also order 4 new tires for the Jeep ($914US) Gulp!!!

By this time it was 5:30pm and the steaks we had out for supper while tempting were not enough to entice the effort required to cook them from either of us so out for dinner we went. Remembering that someone (sorry don't remember who) recommended Mountain Quail Cafe, that was where we went.

Mountain Quail Cafe

Well, let me tell you - I'm no Gordon Ramsey but I hope that wasn't how you remember it. Not anymore anyway, the business is for sale and while the atmosphere was clean, quiet and the staff were very friendly and happy, the food - well there was some of it that even Brad couldn't eat (he ate in ditches in the Army). He also didn't drink the coffee. I had chicken fingers and when I couldn't rip them apart I picked up my knife and fork but couldn't cut them with those either. It was bad. Just bad.

I've become quite the critic lately. Not sure I like it, but I have been writing quite a few Yelp! reviews. Most of them are good experiences so I guess that balances things out but when we have an experience like we had at the laundromat last week and today's dinner, I just think its important to let people know. Not just potential Customers of these establishments but the Owner/Managers as well. If they don't know there is a problem, they can not be expected to fix it... this is my view on this. Feel free to correct me if you feel different, because I don't like writing bad reviews but...

Well tonight when I was reviewing today's laundromat a Google something something popped up asking me to become a 'Local Guide' doing reviews of the places we experience. I have taken it on, mostly because I can take it off if I should choose to.

I sure wish I used these reviews myself, I must get better at it. Usually when we are going for dinner we just go and see what we see, we don't Google to find out what other people's experiences are at a place. I need to do this more - at all actually.

Generally it was a good and productive day that just ended badly but tomorrow is another so...

Onward and Upward my friends, Onward and Upward.