Hope you enjoyed Christmas. We got a Christmas present early this year: Running water!

It had been thawing out for a week, so, Mom and Dad went up to take a look at the intake. I went up to check on them, and found them tapping the exposed pipe running from the overflow box.

What they did was drilled a small hole in the pipe, and tapped until the hole squirted water. After about two hours, they had worked the pipe to the end of the exposed pipe. They were tapping the pipe when there was the sound of ice moving, and the holes stopped squirting water as water was replaced by a vacuum.

When we came back to the house, the outside faucet was pouring water! We got a hose set up to prevent the pipes from freezing, and got our water system set back up.

This thaw also proved the area is a flood plain. There are puddles everywhere, and the whole area is muddy. I guess that's good for the farming.

Arrg. Too late for the water.

After we fixed the water pipes, the water never flowed right. The water was just a trickle, and by the next day, there was no water flow at all. The water was flowing through the box okay, but there must be a ice plug somewhere in the pipe going to the house.

Where would it be? Bets are at the start of the pipe, at the box. But, it could be anywhere, and any length. The entire pipe is covered in about 4 feet of dirt, not even enougth for protection from the frost line (Dad says the best depth for water pipe is as deep as you can go). We were told the old farmer had a group of idle gas-line excavators dig the trench, so why didn't he have them go all the way with the pipes?

This water system is really mickey mouse. I would think a farm that was in a family for close to 100 years would have a decent water system...

Oh well. Onto plan B: Call the well drillers

The well drillers know the place (They did our nieghbor a couple of years ago, and know all about our problem... Oooookay.) But cannot get to our place till the first of January.

So, looks like Plan C: Hauling water.

No problem. We just borrowed a fire water tank from the mill (Nice when dad has a job there), so we can suck water out of the creek and pump it into our house.

What a lovely job. We have to take the tank in a middle of a chinook, when everything is covered in ice. Heh, you gotta do what you gotta do. I'm starting to smell. :-)

On Sunday, the water intake pipes froze, the third time this winter. It is kind of frustrating when they keep freezing, no matter how much insulation you throw on them.

The temperature right now is about -10, but it feels more like -20, especially when combined with a wind. When we work up there, if there is a film of water anywhere, it freezes. Pronto.

The intake is in really rough territory. There is a rough outline of a road up there, made by the old farmer's International TD-18 bulldozer (It's clutch gave out during this and the "Road" was never completed) before he died. This area is accessible with a quad, but a 4x4 truck will have a little trouble going up it.

The intake is fairly straight-forward. A dam collects water which flows from a pipe to a "Overflow" box. The box keeps water moving while a pipe at the bottom of the box takes the water to the house and irrigation system.

We had some problems with it before, as in the fall, a irrigation valve broke, and drained the system. This caused the old tarp liner in the box to come loose, so when the valve was fixed, and the tank started filling, the tarp covered the intake pipe, preventing any water from entering the system. We had to change the liner out, and it's not a pretty job when the temperature's dropping and you are soaking wet.

The first time the pipes froze, the pipes going to the box were 3-inch plastic sewer pipes (which is strange. I guess they were cheap) so, we chopped them out and replaced it with a length of aluminum irrigation pipe. That only lasted one day, as the next morning, the pipes where yet again frozen solid.

So, we grabbed all the 7-foot sections of 4-inch water pipe we had, and replaced the entire length of pipe to the box. We grabbed a bunch of tarps and wrapped it around the pipe as a form of insulation.

The tarps made a small difference, as they lasted for about a week.

this time, the entire pipe was frozen solid. We worked the pipes apart, and towed them back to the house, where we spent a hour thawing the ice out of them (4-inch-wide "Pipecicles", anyone?)

After the pipes were clear, we hauled them back up, reassembled them, and lined the pipes with garbage bags fill with Fiberglas insulation.

Lets hope that's enough for the winter!

Welcome! This is a bit of a journal covering the modernization of a 140-acre farm.

My name is Chris. I am currently 18 years old and live with my parents and brother. I share an interest with my Dad on old tractors. Dad is interested in the Crawlers (bulldozers) while I would like to have a couple of wheel tractors. I recently finished a refurbishing of a Massey Ferguson 202 that had been in our family for close to 40 years.

It all started in March of 2005. We were enjoying the last few hours of a visit from our Aunt and Uncle when Dad got a call from an old work buddy. "I happen to know where a old Cat Thirty is," He said, "Come over to my place in Yahk, and I'll take you over to see it" Dad, who had a hobby of collecting old bulldozers, naturally wanted to take a look at it.

So, on a clear, sunny day (spring came really early; In February) Mom, Dad, Me and my brother Nic, headed on over to Yahk, B.C. for a look at it. A stop at his place and I met Bill, a retired boss of a construction outfit in Cranbrook. We had a nice chat about the Massey Harris in his shed, and then we got into our trucks and went up the highway. We turned up a gravel road we passed on the way to Bill's place. It was about a kilometer long, and we stopped at a turnaround. There was an old farmhouse on top of a small hill, surrounded with trees, and looking very old and somewhat dilapidated. We parked our trucks here and walked over to the near corner of the west field.

Sitting in a nest of small trees, amongst a pile of other junk, was what we later identified as a 1930 Caterpillar Thirty. It had decent tracks, and a nearly worn-out Willamette Winch. While me, Nic and Dad were looking at various points on the tractor, Mom told Bill that, since Dad already had 9 other Cats in our 5-acre lot, and the neighbors were starting to dislike them, if he got another Cat that we should get a bigger chunk of land for them.

"Really?" said Bill, "Well, this farm is for sale."

I guess this is when we lost interest on the Cat, and started to love the farm! We debated quite heavily on the subject of should we move.

I mean, consider this question: Would you move from a cozy house built in 1976 to an old house built in 1932 that would have no insulation for the winter and require heavy repairs? Would this place be a retirement home for Mom and Dad?

Apparently, the answer to those questions was "yes", and we purchased the place in July 2005.

It was a beautiful place. The spot must have been a lake at one time, with two mountains separating you from the other neighbors. The soil is very good, at least for potatoes. We planted a garden a few days before we bought it, and the potatoes literally jumped out of the ground!

First plan of action to fix a farm up: Make the house livable. In September, after a month of planning, we ripped the roof off. The roof had a 45-degree with a ceiling height of 3-feet. For 3 men of 6 feet high, this is a bit cramped. After the roof is off, we would add "Pony walls"- Walls that would raise the roof four extra feet. We would then top off the roof with a tin roof.

One interesting thing about this house: Plywood was not commonly used on houses until the 1950's because it was so expensive to produce. This house used old "Channel lock" lumber siding (an old style of lumber that is not common anymore. It has mating sides that can be fitted together) for everything. Ceilings, walls and floors, it did not matter, and it was all Larch wood. You should have seen some of the bonfires we had when we were burning the stuff. They were quite big.

When winter rolled in, we realized our wood heater was not quite to snuff for a house with no insulation (Any that was added was chewed up by the rats). We were piling on the bedcovers, and I could see my breath at night! We finally installed in the basement a large RSF wood furnace that we brought over from Cranbrook. (We constantly say that it's a thermonuclear reactor compared to the one in the kitchen). This made things way more bearable in the house, especially when we run it full-bore.

That brings us to now. We are almost done putting up the last sheet of tin on the roof, and once the tin roof is done, we are gearing up to attack the walls. We say by the time we're done with the house, only the frame and foundation is going to be left of what was built in 1932!