Moving Day

September 12th – 14th (Saturday – Monday)

Lots more time was spent working on our woodpile.  On the weekend we finally got all of the rounds that we had stored in the shed, split and stacked. 

Monday morning was a major time for us, as it was moving day.  We spent a few hours packing up some things from the boat, and then headed to move into the house.  We did not want to move too much into the house before we had done more cleaning and some painting, but we needed to have everything there that we would want in the near future. 

Then in the afternoon we went out to gather more rounds of wood.  We wanted to get as many rounds as we could, and we managed to get two full truckloads brought back to the house.  

The tree that we were working on was hard to access for getting the pieces out.  The tree was a yellow cedar windfall that had ripped the roots right out of the ground when it fell.  It was lying off of the ground, supported by the attached root structure and also resting on criss-crossed old deadfalls that lay mostly buried under the growing shrubs.  Jason made his way back along the tree, cutting off one large round at a time, and the further back he got the thinner the rounds got so that they would not be too heavy for us to carry out.  We used the criss-crossed old deadfalls as supports and rolled the largest rounds along them as far as we could, then we would transfer the rounds onto another deadfall that was going in the direction we wanted to go in, and rolled the rounds on further.  

The tree was up on the top of a bank, so when we got the rounds to the edge of the bank we would roll them off.  We had to be careful where we rolled them however, as we had to make sure that they landed in an area behind a large rock, otherwise it would have been easy for them to continue rolling into a ditch that was full of water.  We managed to get all of the rounds to land in the perfect area, and none of our wood got wet. 

Once the rounds were down the bank, we climbed down and carried all of the them out from behind the rock, across the ditch, up the other side, to the road, and then into the truck.  It was tiring work, and we were happy to be done the second load and back to the house by around 18:30.  It was a late evening of working before starting back onto another 8-day shift at work the next day.  

On one of our drives out to get wood, as we crossed one of the bridges, we noticed a bunch of fish in a stream.  We stopped to look, and realized that they were small, about 10” long, but mature land-locked Kokanee salmon, and they were spawning.  It was a perfect sandy gravel spot for them, and we could see the bright red colours from up on the bridge.  

In the evening when we were done wood, we came “home” into the house instead of the boat.  It was a very weird feeling.  As we cooked dinner in our large open kitchen, ate dinner at the dining room table with full height ceilings and large windows, it felt more like we were visiting someone who was out for the evening.  As we climbed into the bed to go to sleep it felt like we were in a hotel.  None of it felt fully real, but the space sure was nice.  Having a stand-up, full-sized fridge was a luxury.  It was nice to be able to open the door and see everything that was inside the fridge rather than looking in our chest style fridge on the boat.  Living in a house will take a bit of time to fully get used to, and it sure highlights the many luxuries that most people take for granted, but it will be very nice.  

The house that we will call home for the winter.