Month: May 2014

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Moving Forward

I thought I’d give a status update, an indication of where my head is in terms of Haven and future travel plans in response to some comments I’ve received.

Let’s start with Haven. My goal with this property is to develop it slowly over time so that when Miranda is no longer liveable, I will have a paid for home to move into. So converting the grainery into a liveable house is a long-term plan for me, but there are immediate things that need to be done to ensure that the structure does not deteriorate.

As for the property itself, I want it to be very, very low maintenance. I intend to be away from Haven during the winter months from now on and eventually take even longer trips that could see me away for years and do not want my neighbours to be stuck with the sight of a neglected property, nor responsible for doing my maintenance (it’s not like I can hire a landscaping company out here!)

So I am researching xeriscaping and beginning to collect hardscaping materials so that I can start pulling weeds and sod and replace them with plants that won’t grow out of control and/or inorganic materials.

I’m therefore spending a lot of money, time, and effort on Haven this summer because I am going away soon, and for a long while, and I don’t want to be overwhelmed when I get back.

Going away?

I had a thought for last winter that was too late to pull together after Neelix died unexpectedly. That thought was to drive to Mexico in my truck and rent an apartment for the winter.

I’ve come to realise that the only big bucket list item right now that is overwhelming anything else is the wish to live in another country for a while, one where the main language is something other than English or French, and with a different culture. Mexico is within reach right now and would definitely satisfy that itch.

RVing to Mexico is just too daunting a prospect, what with two vehicles and two borders. Plus, staying in RV parks wouldn’t really be living in another country, but rather living with a group of like-minded ex-pats. Renting an apartment in Mexico in a Mexican community is much more what I have in mind.

A few weeks ago, a blog reader sent me some information on apartment rentals in an area she goes to every winter, as well as leads on what would be the perfect apartment for me. I’m not quite ready to contact the owner of the place yet and make arrangements to rent (the size of the apartment being so small that there’s little fear of it disappearing), but I’ve started my research and am committed to leaving for Mexico in October!!!

So the cat’s out of the bag and you can all breathe easy now that you know that my nomadic tendencies are alive and well. 😉

There is a lot to think about, especially banking and internet matters.

I know that Scotia Bank exists in Mexico, so I will go to a branch in Moose Jaw and Regina to see about opening up a secondary account with them so that I don’t have all my money in one bank and so I can get help locally if needed.

Internet is going to be extra important now that I have my new amazing client that requires tons and tons and tons and tons of bandwidth a month. So I have to make sure that I can get in Mexico the 40 to 60GB of bandwidth a month I will need, reliably and without going bankrupt. And, please, no suggesting that I find a place with a WiFi hotspot I can tap into as I am not a thief. 😉

I am so excited about the winter ahead, even if the thought of leaving Miranda behind for eight months is more than a little daunting! But she has taken me where I needed to go and it’s time to continue my traveling adventures with Moya. I am so looking forward to an easy drive straight south through Wyoming and Colorado without worrying about taking a huge rig through all those mountain passes.

Eight months? Thereabouts. I’d like to tag a month in the States on both sides of the trip. There’s no problem taking my truck out of the province that long and a letter to SK Health will ensure continuity of my health coverage. I’ll have been in Haven eighteen months when I leave in October. I don’t think an eight month absence will be excessive, but rather a much needed mental health break. 🙂

So all that to say, I’m pretty sure my travels with Miranda are over. I want to continue blogging, but I don’t know yet if it will still be on this blog or if I’m going to start a new one. I’m not in a rush to make that decision since I am still living in an RV and will continue to write about RV life.

Right now, I’m about five years ahead of where I thought I would be today, but in an even better place than expected. Having a property I own outright never factored into the new life plan I put together in 2008. How secure this place makes me feel is incalculable. It makes me comfortable taking risks, making big plans, and continuing to live as I am determined to. This place is true financial security.

That my RV travels lasted five years instead of ten does not feel like a failure to me, but more like a triumph and a reminder that when I set goals, I move forward doggedly, obstacles be damned. And I’m most definitely in the market for a little travel trailer. Probably not this year, but likely the next. Maybe it’ll be the Miranda II. With me, who knows? 🙂

There’s lots of good stuff coming down the pipeline. So just remember that every post that has me expending energy into my property is a reminder that I am thinking of pulling out, not that I am getting rooted. Much as I love this place, and I do, it is a port of call, not a final destination.

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Ridiculously Happy About Having a Clothesline

I’ve missed having an easy way to dry clothes these last many years on the road. Dryers ruin clothes and, if at a laundromat, are very expensive. Hanging clothes about the rig makes my home feel like a sauna and also for tight quarters. Having the chance to string out a clothesline or put out a drying rack outside has always been a luxury.

Last year, my first at Haven, I ran a line between a post and Miranda, to get a few dozen feet of line, but it wasn’t enough and it was saggy. This summer, a proper clothes line was a priority project. As it turns out, a proper clothesline doesn’t have to be a permanent one. I have no intention of living with my current setup for the rest of my life, but for now, it is going to do very nicely!!!

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What I did was simply install eye hooks along the sides of each grainery and then I pulled 200′ of clothesline through the eye hooks and across to the next building, back and forth, until I ran out of line. I tied the ends off with inexpensive clothesline fasteners. Total cost: $5 for the line (purchased at the thrift store last year), $2 for the fasteners (of which I have several left), $5 for the eye hooks, for a total of $12.

Laura is convinced that the weight of the clothes will pull out the eye hooks, but so far so good with a heavy load that had lots of jeans. I doubt I’ll ever use all the lines at once except to spread heavy blankets across them, so I’m optimistic that this set up will last me until I’m ready to reclad the buildings. That that point, I’ll do the digging, cement, and post thing.

Tomorrow, I am hoping to pick up a table that will allow me to set up a laundry station outside. What a luxury that will be! I washed this load at my neighbour’s since I was getting backed up and didn’t feel like spending my evenings kneeling in the shower.

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Cleaning the Larger Grainery

One of the many projects on my list for the weekend was cleaning out the larger grainery so that I can use it for storage. It was a good weekend for doing it as the weather was clement and C&C were out of town so I could borrow tools without inconveniencing them.

I did not bother doing the smaller grainery that will be a shed because it’s much too open. I won’t touch it until Charles has time to help me block the existing entrance, put in a new door, and we get a roof on it. The larger grainery has some access points, but is reasonably weather tight.

Before I started cleaning, I had to be able to walk around the grainery safely, which was hard to do as there were lots of wires holding heavy pieces of metal hanging from the walls and ceiling (which is where I confess that I have a nice bruise on my forehead from walking into one…). The wires were to keep the walls straight and true against the pressure of all the grain being stored.

Charles had thought to offer me bolt cutters, so I was able to deal with wires, a job that wasn’t too difficult on the ground where I had leverage, but was a little more perilous up a ladder. His bolt cutters are sharp!

Once the grainery was safe, the fun began.

Cleaning was tedious and had many steps. The first was dousing the entire structure in a bleach solution. This is because there was mouse poop everywhere and mouse poop carries the deadly hantavirus. I was advised by Charles, our local pest control officer, to wear a mask and gloves and to get rid of as much of the poop while it was wet as possible, seeing as the virus gets released into the when the waste is disturbed. The wetness holds it down.

Once the bleach was applied, using a handheld sprayer (picture below), I swept as much as I could and then I used my shop vac. I kicked myself at every stage for having forgotten to borrow C&C’s much larger one, but my one-gallon model was good for doing the top of the walls since I could lift it.

During this stage, I found two dead mice and at least two live ones. Needless to say, I didn’t hesitate to put down mouse poison as it would be stupid to do all this work only to have mice move back in!

Next step was pressure washing, twice. Both times, I wound up with more huge piles of mouse poop on the floor, blasted from every nook and cranny! I knew that I was never going to get the place 100% clean, so after the second pressure washing, I did another pass with bleach on the ceiling, rafters, and walls.

Then, I shop vacced the floor, gave it a final pressure wash, and let it dry. Once dry, I swept and shop vacced again, then did a final pass with the bleach.

That done, I moved in some pallets on which to rest stuff, moved all the crap out of my yard into the building, draped a tarp over what I didn’t want to get wet as there was rain in the forecast for Saturday night, and added a lock to the door for show.

Whew!

When I went in the grainery this morning, it was nice and dry despite the overnight rain, and while I can’t say it smelled nice, it was definitely fresher in there!

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Rethinking the Boardwalk

Last year, I used pallets to make a boardwalk from the door of the RV to the truck. I intended to do the same thing this year, but soon realised that it was a waste of yard space.

I couldn’t figure out a cozy corner for my friend L’s Marshmallow and then clued in that if I removed the pallets, smoothed out the gravel in front of Miranda, and trimmed some sucker growth, I could have a really nice landing spot for smaller RVs (I have room on grass for bigger ones!). It would also be pretty much the spot where L parked last year, which he found very satisfactory.

So between work spurts today, I hauled and raked gravel to make a level surface along the back of the passenger side of the RV and then hauled the super heavy pallets with almost no space between the boards to make a deck.

I think I earned the biscuits and stew I have prepared for dinner. 🙂

 

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Haven With Buildings

It’s been a day and a half, but Haven has buildings! Again, they are fir-framed storage sheds once used to store grain. They are normally constructed on skids to make them easy to move.

The guy who moves graineries, J, has done hundreds of these. In a best case scenario, which is about 95% of the time, he just winches the graineries up, slides a dolly onto the rear of the side skids, attaches a hitch to the middle skid, hooks the hitch up to his truck, and away he goes. Average time from arrival on site to departure: 20 minutes.

My graineries were in the 5% that do not go smoothly.

The smaller one, which will be a shed, was not attached to its skids. J and Charles were shocked since they had come out recently to scout out the buildings and this completely escaped them.

Followed hours of trying to get the building attached securely to the skids, including a run back to Charles’ place for parts. We had arrived on site around 9:30 and didn’t get on the road with the first grainery till almost 1:30. I had complete faith in J by this point. He’s a bit of a loud mouth, but there was no cockiness here, just expertise.

It was slow going through a pasture and up a rutty private road to a gravel road, and then it was smooth going all the way to Haven.

When we got on site in the morning, I expected the buildings to be smaller than I remembered. They were bigger! I had this vision of Haven being completely crowded so I was relieved when the smaller building rolled into Haven and I saw that both would fit comfortably and still leave room for a clothesline, garden, guest RV parking spot, and Moya parking spot.

I had originally planned to stick both buildings together, but tree stumps and overhead lines nixed that plan. The shed wound up at the southwest corner of the property, near the street. Right now, its opening is right on the street, but Charles will make me a door on the side and the existing hole will be covered.

Having the first building in place, I could see where the other one would go and I hope it would be far enough south to clear my office window. My clothesline plans changed when I realised that instead of putting in posts, I could just string the clothesline between the two buildings!

It took a bit of time to get the first grainery settled and reasonably parallel to the curb. We had something to drink and set off to get the other one.

The larger grainery was on skids, but the middle skid, the one the hitch is supposed to attach to, was too wide! J got under there with a chainsaw and shaved the extra width off! After that, it was fairly quick going to get it loaded. I could tell that J and Charles fading fast.

It was much slower going bringing the larger grainery back to Haven as it is much heavier. It was a bit of work to back it in because the ground is so soft. I was really disappointed when J dropped it the first time as it was right between the RV and the neighbour’s shed, meaning a very closed in view from the office window. But after repositioning his truck, he was able to get it back just far enough for me to be happy with the positioning.

I don’t deserve any credit for all the hard work today. I documented the whole event and occasionally fetched parts, but mostly stayed out of the way. Charles and J are my heroes! I can’t believe how hard they worked today.

J originally quoted me $500, but because of the extra time, he asked for another $200. He hadn’t expected me to have the $500 today, so he said the extra can wait until I see him on the wagon train in a couple of months. $700 to get these two buildings on site is a bargain! Remember, the buildings themselves cost me nothing!

Charles and I started to work out a plan of attack for the buildings, but that will be the subject of a future post. They’re on site now and the rest can wait for a bit. The only thing I am going to try really hard for is to scrape the money to put a tin roof on them this year. We shall see.

There is short video after the pictures.

This video is worth watching for the last couple of seconds. Listen to what I say and see if you can catch it.

I said, “Is it supposed to be baloting like that?” I meant wobbling or teetering, but I apparently lose my English and resort to French when I’m excited and tired and hungry. 🙂