Kristen’s Chickens and Farming Ventures

[BlueBaby]

Good Afternoon Bob!

Taking a quick lunch break before afternoon chicken chores then back to the shovel, sledgehammer, and pry bar here!

Looking forward to a hatch update from @BlueBaby soon poke, poke ?
Though she’s probably got her hands full of Littles and eggs right now

I only had the 4 that hatched from my NN flock (3 white, and one grayish-brown one that I thought was black until it dried). The 12 shipped egg's from @Compost King that made it to lock-down haven't started hatching yet. My DH need's to make a chick starter feed run for me. I emptied out the last of my batch of it into that chick feeder in the brooder so that's full.

 

[Kris5902]

I only had the 4 that hatched from my NN flock (3 white, and one grayish-brown one that I thought was black until it dried). The 12 shipped egg's from @Compost King that made it to lock-down haven't started hatching yet. My DH need's to make a chick starter feed run for me. I emptied out the last of my batch of it into that chick feeder in the brooder so that's full.

Nice!

 

[Kris5902]

Well, today has been long... I dropped one of Chickie Hawk’s daughter’s eggs, another nice olive one, and it survived the fall. It didn’t survive the immediate assault of Mrs. B and my little pack of rehab girls that follow me around the trailer like puppies. I’m ok with that though.

I’m hoping to be done the form stripping tomorrow, the final leveling will have to wait until Andrew is available Friday evening or more likesly Saturday, as he’s the only person I trust to operate the tractor that close to our forms/crawlspace walls. Today brought some frustration and disappointment as I realized just How far off FIL was with the house placement. I have no idea how much fill is going to be required for the level wheelchair accessible entries on the East wall. I’m going to have to put in a retaining wall for sure. It dawned on me as I was exiting the crawlspace through the exterior access FIL insists on and looked up to where the doors will be there’s about a meter change in the grade along the wall over 5m of length. I do not want to be bringing in wood daily up a flight of stairs! Shoveling wet, sandy fill for the better part of 8 hours didn’t help my mood any on this, I admit. We will figure all that out once the walls are up. So here’s where I’m at on day 3 of filling and leveling, stripping forms, and cursing FIL almost as much as my helper/ guy who knows way more about this part of the building process than I do. It’s a good thing we both swear alike

Behold... Concrete! (Finally)

This board was EVIL! But I triumphed over it, after about an hour of stabbing, prying, digging, swearing, and hitting it with multiple hammers.

And to stay kinda poultry based, these are either the girl Turkeys (and all their babies fed the eagles) or maybe new younger turkeys? Any thoughts? I’m thinking they are the (not very good at this) mamas because they seemed quite comfortable hanging out at the General store.

And finally, tonight’s evening sky towards the east/soon to be house! At quitting time (4:30ish) before it gets too dark out to gather the eggs and put up the chickens.

 

[Ribh]

I am really happy to see this [ for you as well as me!] because, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what *forms* were. [& yes, I could have asked ] The man is a brickie by trade so I have seen more foundations than I care to remember but never anything like this! The traditional Queenslander goes up on stilts. The brick veneer gets cement poured into a trench anchored with wire mesh & up here cyclone rods & neither looks anything like what you have done! All is now explained. Thank you.

 

[Kris5902]

I am really happy to see this [ for you as well as me!] because, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what *forms* were. [& yes, I could have asked ] The man is a brickie by trade so I have seen more foundations than I care to remember but never anything like this! The traditional Queenslander goes up on stilts. The brick veneer gets cement poured into a trench anchored with wire mesh & up here cyclone rods & neither looks anything like what you have done! All is now explained. Thank you.

There’s a wider footing at the bottom, then basically a 8” wide concrete wall reinforced with rebar. The vertical rebar ties the wall into the footing which gets buried 18” deep. There will be a board that is held down by the threaded bolts you see at the top of the wall, that’s what the wooden walls attatch to. The inside blocks will get posts to hold the beams which will support the floor joists. I’ll throw in some more pics as we go along...

Stilts and hurricane protection makes sense where you’re located. We are lucky that Vancouver Island is between us and the whole of the Pacific Ocean, though we do get heavy wind storms, they are a little less threatening here. Earthquakes are the primary concern for us, and in most of Canada it’s “frost heave” that’s the big issue when the ground freezes deeply enough to force a shallowly buried footing up or such.

We are also building about 200 feet above sea level (I checked for canning purposes) with a fairly vertical drop to the water. What I find most entertaining is what the geotechnical engineer had to do (in the rockfall simulator) to get a rock to fall on our house. In the less than 2% chance of a serious seismic event (above 7 on the Richter scale) there is then a less than 2% chance of a rock hitting our house. For it to happen the “rock” needs to be 30 cubic meters in size! Otherwise they can’t get close enough to hit it.

Another slight delay... my help has to work another job tomorrow, as they didn’t get it all finished today. So I’m going to spend another day plugging away at it on my own...

 

[Ribh]

Thanks for the explanation, Kris. One of the quirks of international friendships are these odd cross cultural happenings. Frost heave is a thing? I can't wait to tell the man that one!

 

[Kris5902]

Thanks for the explanation, Kris. One of the quirks of international friendships are these odd cross cultural happenings. Frost heave is a thing? I can't wait to tell the man that one!

Anytime, I’m learning more than I wanted about this stage in construction myself! As for frost heave, it’s not really a thing where I live, or in the greater Vancouver area... but yes, it plagues most of our country. It’s scarily amazing what can happen to cement at -20 Celsius (Way too cold for me!)

 

[rjohns39]

Good morning Kris

I loved the pics You're definitely getting there...

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Anytime, I’m learning more than I wanted about this stage in construction myself! As for frost heave, it’s not really a thing where I live, or in the greater Vancouver area... but yes, it plagues most of our country. It’s scarily amazing what can happen to cement at -20 Celsius (Way too cold for me!)

Hi Kris. It's so good to see some progress going on with your home. I can't wait to see it "dried in." Yes, frost heave is a problem for the colder regions of the lower 48's and Alaska. Frequent victims are fence posts and poorly done retaining walls. However, I've seen cracked foundations in quite a few homes as well.

 

[BY Bob]

Hi Kris. It's so good to see some progress going on with your home. I can't wait to see it "dried in." Yes, frost heave is a problem for the colder regions of the lower 48's and Alaska. Frequent victims are fence posts and poorly done retaining walls. However, I've seen cracked foundations in quite a few homes as well.

Frost heave is an issue as far south as Pennsylvania. The vinyl fence you see in the photos of my backyard was put in by me after the pool in 2002. My neighbor also put in a pool and vinyl fence the following year.

Now I live on a hilltop. There is about 12 inches of topsoil (if you can call it that) on top of limestone. The frost line is somewhere around 24 inches here. To prevent frost heave you have to get your post hole below 24 inches (61 cm). That meant I had to jackhammer 32 post holes to get below 24 inches. My neighbors did not. They went down as far as was "easy" and set their post. This summer they had to replace their entire fence. It was a mess. Posts were all different heights and panels were crooked.