RV WINDOW SHADES

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

One thing we’ve been working on is to create some insulating window shades for the RV. The ones that came with it are difficult to pull up and down, and don’t provide much insulation for the single-pane windows, which are quite drafty. Tim and I have been working on creating an insulating shade that we can roll up when not in use, to retain the heat within the RV and keep the cold out. We also don’t really like the clunky valences that came installed in the RV, which block out a lot of the sunshine and the view, besides not really being our style. 

​

This is our living area, and Tim’s new “office”.

This process has been going on for quite a while. When we are at home (Wellington), we work on the design, come up with a prototype, then we take it to the RV to try it out. We started with one, made with inexpensive materials, and when we thought we had a winner, we made a more permanent shade. Tim works on the wood, I work on the fabric.

At this point it looks like this (without stain and finishing touches).

Unfortunately, it hasn’t been working as well as expected. The shade is made with two layers of fabric (blackout drapery liner), filled with a layer of Reflectix. It does the job well as far as insulating, however it just isn’t rolling up well, and bunches at the bottom, making it even more difficult to roll up and down, and each time we roll it, it seems to get worse. So, we’re “back to the drawing board” trying to perfect this thing before we make more of them. We also may try to come up with a better way of rolling it up and down; there is a dowel running through the top for us to wind up, but it doesn’t go so easy.

 

I spent the day today coming up with something I hope will work better for the shade.  We won’t know until we roll it up and down several times to see how well it holds up. Last weekend we decided we won’t do the roll-up style for the smaller windows. For those I’m just making a flat piece we can put on with velcro (oh, oops, “hook & loop) tabs on the corners. We’ll have to find a place to put each one when we take them down, but we can handle that.

In addition to these shades, over the weekend we covered all the windows with the plastic film that’s taped on and blown with a hair dryer to tighten. Even that seemed to make a big difference, as the next morning was 3 degrees outside, and it seemed warmer inside. (The previous morning had been 11 degrees.)

WELL, WELL, WELL

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

One thing we’re working on at this time has been our well. Even though we aren’t on the property full time, it’ll sure be nice not to have to haul water every time we visit. Also, as soon as we get the well in we can begin the process of applying for a permit and moving forward with a septic system. So much to do!

DOWSER
After acquiring the property, we knew that one of the first things we would need to do was to get our well. Curious as to where it might be drilled, early on we had a “dowser” (also known as a “witcher”) come out to determine where there may be water. One of the local well drillers highly recommended this process, and said that they are 80% effective in locating a spot for a well. It was very interesting watching this guy walk around the property–his willow stick took a dive here and there, and he determined that the best spot would be where two underground streams appeared to intersect. We each took a turn walking around with the willow stick, and sure enough, it just goes down on its own when it finds water! Amazing. Science apparently can’t explain this. I got to thinking that perhaps God created this phenomena to allow people to get the water they need for sustenance. It seems like something He would do.

Our lot was purchased as two 20-acre lots to make the 40-acre lot we have. In order to get what’s called a “domestic” well, which may be used for watering livestock and a garden, the State of Colorado requires a lot of 35 acres or more. So, shortly after acquiring the property we had the lots consolidated to meet the requirement. As soon as that was completed we submitted our request for a well permit. We received it just before the Thanksgiving weekend, so first thing Monday morning we began calling well drillers to ask for estimates, etc.

One of the well drillers we spoke with wanted to send someone out to do a site assessment as part of the estimate process, and fortunately he was able to come before we left Monday afternoon. These folks don’t pay much attention to the dowsers, but look more at the geology instead. The spot he thought would be best is very close to the spot that the dowser had chosen. He also said that the dowser’s prime spot would probably work just as well, but since his recommendation was closer to the electricity and the house, and easier for the rig to get to, we’ll probably stick with that spot. This driller said that he’s always found water in the locations he’s chosen.

We were able to get on the schedule, so probably sometime in February they’ll be able to come drill. Yay!

WINTER CHALLENGES

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

We had a chance to visit the property for the Thanksgiving weekend. It was nice to be there and enjoy some sunny weather, as well as get several things done. It’s funny…when we plan a trip to Guffey, I think I will have plenty of time to read, catch up on posts, etc. NOT! It usually seems like we’re busier there than we are at home!  Now that we’re back in Wellington, I’ll have to try to do some catching up. We did manage to get our weather station up and running (it turned out that the computer had crashed), so if you wish to see our current weather conditions, look to the right.

Visiting the RV, without living in it full time has its challenges! We’ve been prepared for this, and don’t plan to visit quite as frequently in the winter. One thing we need to do at this point is haul our water, since we don’t yet have a well. We got a couple of 300 gallon water tanks, so soon as we unpack the truck, Tim takes one of these tanks to Guffey (about 7 miles from us), to fill it up at the fire station, where the water is free. He brings it back, fills the RV (100 gals), then fills our other tank (near the horses’ pen) with the remainder, so we can water the horses. It’s kind of a drag, but do-able, and we’re getting used to the routine.

Since it is winter and we are not at the RV full time, we need to winterize it each time we leave. This means draining all the water, not leaving anything in the cupboards that may freeze, etc. We did all that the last time we left, however it was VERY cold for a few days (below zero overnight and never above freezing during the day). When we returned on Friday, filled the tank and turned on the water pump, we found that a couple of the plumbing parts had frozen and cracked. We had quite a bit of water to mop up in a hurry. Tim managed to remove the cracked water filter and accumulator and bypass them so we could have water, but the pressure was quite low, and the pump didn’t seem to be working properly. After spending a good deal of time Friday on this, we had to spend half our day Saturday driving to Canon City to the nearest RV parts store, an hour away. We were able to get the parts we needed and learned some more things about winterizing. This included the purchase of some food-grade antifreeze we can put in the system as part of the winterization process. So, now we believe we’re set.

The last time we left Guffey, I had guessed that maybe things wouldn’t freeze if I left them inside the refrigerator, which was turned off. I thought that it would insulate things from freezing, so I left a few things in it. Well, it was so cold, that the things in the refrigerator did freeze. Fortunately, there wasn’t much, and the only things damaged were a couple of cans of soda. Now I know that if cold enough, the refrigerator does not insulate against freezing. This trip, I only left things in the refrigerator that will survive if frozen.

The other thing we found upon returning to Guffey was some mouse puckies. We knew there was a possibility mice might find their way in to the RV and had thought about getting some ultrasonic mouse repellers, which we’ve heard work well. We didn’t get them previously, because we wouldn’t have known whether they worked or if there were just no mice getting in. Now that we know they are finding their way in, we purchased some of these ultrasonic devices, and left them plugged in, so hopefully next time we won’t see evidence of mice.

PHOTOS OF OUR NEW PROPERTY

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

Here are some photos of the property and where we’re planning to put the house and barn. The first two were taken before we put in the driveway.​

At this time, the trailer was parked where we plan to build the house.

 

​

Another view. This is looking toward the NW.

 

​

Now we have a driveway! The barn will be to the right of the horses.

​

The trailer has been moved to its permanent location.

​

The driveway as seen from the North side of the street.
The house will be in the trees, facing South.

 

​

We see some beautiful sunsets!

​

I like the way this mountain to the NE lights up occasionally.

MAKING PLANS

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

We’ve been spending a lot of time planning our future house, and having a lot of fun with it.  Tim (the computer expert) has been teaching me how to use Sketchup, and I’ve had fun being a bit of a computer geek the past few days. Sketchup is a 3D design program, with a free version that has been quite helpful. We’ve put the perimeter of the house we’re planning into the program, and are able to add walls and sample furniture models and move them around to determine just how things might fit, where we might put things, and the best way to design the interior.

We really want a round house, and have found a kit design we are planning to go with from Smiling Woods Yurts. It’ll be like a wood version of a yurt, with a dome/skylight at the top to bring light in to the expansive floorplan. Take a look at the photos on their website. We plan to have lots of windows to the south, with a view of our property and the mountains beyond.

Yesterday we were able to visit the Smiling Woods home of some folks about an hour away, so it was great to be able to “touch and feel” it and get an idea of what it is like. It was nice of them to open their home to us and tell us about their experience of building. Their home was smaller than the one we are planning, and it looked pretty similar to this photo from the Smiling Woods website:

At this point, we are thinking about a larger diameter, without an extension to the side as in this photo.  Tim will be his own contractor and do most of the work, but I’ll add a helping hand as much as possible. There will be lots more to come on this as we move ahead. We are very excited about this plan!

Besides that planning, we’ve been talking with Park County about the permitting process, trying to find all the info we need for planning. It’s a confusing process, and guidelines are not all spelled out clearly in one place. In the process of submitting a permit for the barn, we found that even the county personnel don’t understand all the ordinances or interpret them the same way. We believed we could build the barn prior to the house, but were told at one point that it is not permissible to do that in our zoning. We’ve got it straightened out, and we will be able to proceed with the barn. We really need the barn to create a workshop and storage space for the process of building the house. Now we are moving forward with a rezoning process to accommodate our future needs.

We are still waiting for the well permit, and just have to sit back on that one. It seems things move so slowly, but there isn’t much we can do about it. Running water would really be nice. 🙂

Additionally, we are designing and constructing some insulating window shades for our RV, to keep the cold out during the winter. The single-pane windows are quite drafty, letting the heat out and the cold in. We think these shades will make a big difference, look nicer, and be easier to operate than the coverings currently in the RV.

This is Thanksgiving week, and we plan to visit the property for a few days. Perhaps then I’ll have time to catch up on posting more of how this all came about.

wu-112519

WEATHER IN PIKE TRAILS RANCHES

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

We installed our own weather station, broadcasting to Weather Underground.  It’s been fun to compare the weather at our new property to Wellington weather.  We are SO looking forward to living in Guffey.  

Right now I’m sitting here in Wellington, where it’s 48 degrees with 34 mph wind. Guffey is currently showing 50 degrees with 10 mph wind! It’s generally 10 or so degrees cooler in Guffey, but less windy. In the summer, Guffey temps are usually in the 70’s, which is perfect for us. 85 degrees would be an unusual high for them. The winters there are apparently pretty similar to Wellington; perhaps a little colder, but less wind there will make it really nice. Guffey is considered a sort of “banana belt” compared to the rest of Park County, where it can be quite cold and windy, and it’s really pretty temperate for 9,000 feet.

OUR MOUNTAIN GAITWAY

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

We’ve wanted to keep track of all that’s been happening in our lives, and the changes we are making as we move to our Mountain Gaitway. Yes, I know I’ve misspelled “gateway”. The change was prompted by our gaited horses…kind of a play on words.

In July 2014, we vacationed in the area of Guffey, Colorado, and “fell in love” with the area. We’ve been in lots of places with our horses, but we felt this was the most beautiful and the best riding. We just plain liked it there. We began looking at properties for sale, and (Iong story, short…) purchased 40 acres at 9,000 feet elevation. It’s in the subdivision, Pike Trails Ranches, in Guffey, CO. Here’s our property below, and as the caption reads, this trip did touch our souls, and the journey has just begun.
We really feel that God has chosen this place for us, and has led us to it.  We don’t exactly know what His purpose is, but we are following His lead to go there, just as Abraham obediently left his home, not knowing what the outcome would be. We are now making plans to sell our current home (outside of Fort Collins), move to the new property, and build a new, much smaller and more modest home. We want to get rid of extra, unnecessary “stuff” and learn to get by with fewer things.  As the saying goes, “The best things in life aren’t things.”
Our main goal is to follow Jesus, seek His Kingdom, and serve others along the way.  As Tim has stated on our website, Listen To Him, our “Statement of Belief” is merely, We believe everything that Jesus taught and modeled.  That sums it up.  Every issue we face, we go to the Gospels and see how Jesus would respond.  And we want to approach this move in the same way. We want to always remember that we are stewards of the land and the resources He gives us, and to treat them respectfully.
We believe this new place will be a gateway to new things for us, as well as for the people in our future; hence, the name “Mountain Gaitway”. The property will be our new “Golden Gaits Ranch“, the same name as our former GGR. All three horses will be with us, with plenty of room to roam and graze. We’ll have “KK” the cat, and will eventually get some ducks. We’ll have plenty of south-facing space for a vegetable garden, and will grow whatever we can at that elevation.
Tim retires May 31, 2015, so at this point we plan to move to the property around June 1 (+/-), depending on when the house sells and other details.  Between now and then, we’ll get a well drilled & septic put in, build a barn, fence the property, and do as much as we can to move the belongings we plan to keep. We need to clean up our current house and get it ready to sell, too. We’ve purchased a nice, used fifth wheel RV to live in while we build, which may be a year or more. It’s a dandy little “tiny house” for us to live in, and quite comfortable.

We’ve moved the RV to the property, and already have electricity and internet. We have already visited frequently, taking the horses and the cat along with us. With the internet connection, Tim is able to work from there, so it makes it easy to stay there for extended weekends. When we are there, it feels like “home”, and we have a hard time wanting to return to Wellington. We sold our ducks, to make it easier to go back and forth without getting someone to feed them (we will get more later). Tim has built a shed for us to keep a few supplies in (it’s behind the trailer in the photo), and the cat gets to sleep in it at night. Last week we had our driveway put in, as well as a pad where we’ll build the barn. We’ve made arrangements to have the barn built, and it will probably be built around the first of the year, to the left of the horses above. The house will be on the hill above the horses. Unless something changes, we’re thinking of a round home, very open, with almost everything in one big living area. Tim will do most of the building himself, and I’ll help as much as I can.

That should bring us up to date in a nutshell.  In future posts, I’ll try to fill in some of the background and how God has led us to make this move.

For more info on our Wellington Golden Gaits Ranch and garden, see the Golden Gaits Garden blog.

THE ROAD AHEAD

by with No Comment GuffeyWellington
We are now making plans to change our lifestyle by eliminating a great deal of our stuff, eventually selling our home and moving to the mountains.  We are now in contract to purchase a lot near Guffey, Colorado, where we intend to build a small home where we will retire.  We will be Golden Gaits Ranch, Guffey.  (GGRG)

 
We visited the area on a recent vacation, and “fell in love with” the land there.  This “trip” truly did begin a new path for us, as we immediately began to consider moving to this location.  It’s at about 9000 feet, where the summer temperatures never go above 85 degrees.  Wahoo!  We both dislike hot weather.  Considered a “banana belt” by nearby locals, there should be equal to less snow there than what we experience here, and a great deal less wind in addition to the lack of hot temps.
 
In the next weeks and months we will begin working on our timeline of how we’d like to proceed. This is bare land.  We will need electricity (which is already there), a well, septic,  fencing, barn, workshop, garden, probably ducks or chickens, and a home–more or less in that order!  We are purchasing a fifth-wheel that we plan to live in for 1-2 years while we build.  Prior to our actual move there, we will visit on weekends and vacations to both work and relax.  Eventually, we’ll sell our current home and make the move, maybe in 1 1/2 to 2 years.
 
For the home, we plan to build something small and energy efficient.  We want to keep our accumulation and retention of stuff to a bare minimum.  Living in the RV while we build should be quite an experience, and help us get accustomed to that new kind of lifestyle.  We may build a yurt, if we can get county approval; or if not, another circular, open type of structure.  We’re thinking of a small living space with a basement for storage & work space that won’t need to be heated all the time.
 
I’m thinking I may start a new blog to document the process.  If I do that I’ll post the address here.  I don’t want to just talk about the building and moving process, but include some of our thought process and how this all fits in with our desire to “seek first the Kingdom of God”.  That is really our goal in this change, and we really want to follow Jesus and the life God wants for us.

Ducks 2014

by with No Comment DucksPekinsWelsh Harlequin

An update on our little flock…
We now have four ducks, 3 Welsh Harlequins and 1 Pekin; they are three years old.  After several months of getting “dud” eggs pretty consistently, we finally determined one of the Pekins was throwing the duds, so we retired her.  The duds were deformed shells: soft, like the membrane without the hard shell, sometimes with a string of shellish mass hanging off the end; or sometimes little to no shell at all–just the white and yolk in a splooshy mess with a little membrane-ish stuff along with it.  After seeing one of the Pekins lay these a couple of times, we began calling her “Dudley”, and soon after that we had her for dinner.  She was not good.  I wondered if being an older duck would make her tougher, and it did–I should have made soup or stew, I suppose, rather than put her on the grill.  As it was, we couldn’t eat it.  Nice try.

With the four remaining ducks, we do still get an occasional dud here and there–they seem to be coming from the remaining Pekin (our current “Whitey”).  On very rare occasions we get four good eggs in one day.  I know that the 3 Welsh Harlequins lay good eggs, I’m just not sure if “Whitey” is done with her egg-laying days or merely a bit off for a while.  We don’t really want to keep feeding a non-productive duck!  I’ve been encouraged by two days with four eggs in the past week. 

One duck has begun to lose feathers, and I suppose the others will soon, too.  Along with the loss of feathers, egg production will drop off and stop as they molt.  Another year done.  Hopefully this coming fall/winter they will begin laying sooner than last year.

Thar’s Voles in my Peppers!

by with No Comment Garden-Wellington
See the trench going under the plant!
I’ve been noticing underground trenches in my pepper bed, starting at one end and on through to the other end.  The holes are about 1 1/2-2″ in diameter, and go under the pepper plants, up again, down and up to the end of the row.  First off I discovered that 6 or so peppers on my only paprika plant had completely disappeared.  Then I found holes and chew marks on some of the anaheims.  Each day I inspected, I’d kick the soil back into the holes.  I’m amazed that the pepper plants are still living, with the holes going right through their roots.
I began researching on the web to determine what kind of critter might be burrowing like this and eating chile peppers.  All I could find was that I should use chile pepper spray to repel them.  Ha!  These guys seem to LIKE the chiles and at first were leaving the sweet peppers alone.  I said, “at first”.  Now, I find chew marks, holes, and half-eaten sweet peppers almost daily.  They really seem to like the peppers, but so do I!  That’s enough.
Yesterday I went out and bought some snappy-type mouse traps and placed them near some of the entrances/exit holes.  Before I ever left the area, in maybe 3 minutes, I’d already caught a vole.  Mystery solved–it IS voles.  Overnight I expected I might catch more, but although a couple of the traps had been snapped, no more catches.  I also bought some castor oil, which is supposed to repel them, so I’ll give that a try, too.  Perhaps I can keep them out of the peppers, but hopefully by just “repelling” them from the peppers, I won’t be sending them off to the tomatoes nearby.
I took a pic of the dead vole in the snap trap, but I’ll spare you.  There’s a nice picture of a cute, fuzzy vole and more information HERE.