DINNER

DINNER & WATER IN THE HH

Dinner and water? Sounds like an odd combination. But, things are continuing to move along in the Happy House (HH) and these are two things I wanted to share in this post.

A few weeks ago, Laurie and I set up a card table and plastic chairs in the HH. A few times we took some cheese, crackers and wine out there and enjoyed the view while munching. The other day Kelly and Carol (who are building a house on a property across the road from us) came over to share dinner. We decided to eat in the HH; a preview of the time we will be living in it and enjoying this experience every day. Carol snapped a picture with her phone:

What a view, eh?

Up until now, we’ve been dragging multiple water hoses around in order to fill up the RV, the stock tank for the horses and water for the ducks. Now that the house shell is complete, we were ready to get the well water run into the crawlspace and hooked up. We included a 300 gallon cistern for spare capacity. Here’s what it looks like in the crawlspace now:

We had put in hydrants (faucets) at the barn and at the RV. A short hose is now connected to the RV. We no longer have to fill up the tank in the RV, the water goes directly into the RV water system. This provides better water pressure and is really appreciated when taking a shower. Oh, life’s little pleasures J .
The ducks can now be watered with a short hose connected to the hydrant. And, the hydrant at the barn fills up the stock tank. No more dragging hoses around and having to remember to manually turn off the well pump when not in use! WooHoo!

We have been putting the metal roofing on and will have a post with pics when that is done, hopefully in the next week.

One by one, the pieces are all falling into place. And, we to continue to meet new neighbors and build relationships and connections in our new “hometown”. (I saw a person wearing a T Shirt that said: “Guffey, you either get it or you don’t”. You have to come see Guffey in order to understand that T Shirt!

IT’S OFFICIAL?

We’re continuing to make progress at the new Golden Gaits Ranch property. There’s a lot of grass in the fields that is just begging to be enjoyed by the horses. However, the property is not fenced. I (Tim) started working a bit on fencing in order to not let all that grass go to waste. Here’s a picture of the horses enjoying their newly expanded pasture:

The fence is not truly “horse-proof” at this point. It’s just a single strand of electric wire. But, the horses respect the wire and have plenty to eat. However, we put them back in the more secure paddock when we leave the property.

The ducks are growing amazingly fast. We’re starting to see real feathers sprout, replacing the baby down.

Laurie has lots more pictures and should be posting more details soon.

We’ve been hankerin’ to put up our Golden Gaits Ranch sign for a while and yesterday we took out time to do that. It’s kind of a temporary thing; we’ll likely re-do it later. But, seeing it up kind of makes it “official”. The Happy House will be located on top of the hill behind the sign.

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A neighbor came by the other day and said to Tim: “Are you Tim?”. I answered in the affirmative. She then asked: “Do you train horses?”. Again, affirmative. She wants me to work with her and her horse. I guess word is getting around. That should be fun.

It’s still hard to believe we’re really here. There is so much to do and yet so much to pause and enjoy. We love sitting on the swing in front of the RV in the evenings watching thunderstorms off in the distance or enjoying a beautiful sunset. We are truly grateful to our Father for this gift. We’re always looking for ways to share it with others. Come on out for a visit if you get a chance!

SUMMER LIVING

Most mornings lately have been sunny, warm and beautiful. Yesterday I went for an early walk, and loved seeing the morning sun shine through these fresh aspens near our property. The quiet is so restful, with only the sounds of birds singing. Very often there are times when nothing motorized can be heard! (Click on photos to view larger size.)

I went on to our “south hill” and enjoyed this view of our recently completed barn and home site. Plans for the house are in full swing, as Tim gets estimates from electricians, plumbers, etc. Excavation for the house and septic system should begin soon!

Here’s a closer shot of the barn, now with its siding completed. Tim also put up this nice, buck & rail fence with some posts we had brought with us from the Shoofly house. It adds a nice touch, and gives more of a “ranch” feel.

 

 

 

 

While Tim is busy with the construction work that requires brains and brawn, I am busy with other chores more suited to my abilities. I scoop the horses’ poop, lend an extra hand when Tim needs it, cook, clean the house & do laundry. A lot of my daily chores haven’t changed all that much.  I’ve discovered that our little combo washer/dryer washes the clothes ok, but takes a long time to dry them, and then they come out quite wrinkly, I think due to the small size. I’ve begun to hang things out on the line, and find that they dry quite quickly in this dry climate–at least in the mornings before it rains! The sheets come out particularly nice after hanging on the line. Not too long after I shot this photo it did start to rain and I had to bring these clothes in.

We picked up our ducklings at the post office last week (June 4) and they’re growing fast! They are currently living in a brooder box in our storage room, under a heat lamp. Meanwhile, Tim is building a duck house for them, and they should be able to move to that sometime next week. Here’s a shot of them the day after we brought them home. 

We truly enjoy being here. A few days ago Tim & I took the horses out for a ride around the neighborhood. We went six miles by the time we returned home, after doing one big loop. We saw some beautiful scenery along the way. Somewhere along the route I asked Tim, “do you ever miss Wellington or the Shoofly house?” His quick response was, “No, not at all.” My sentiments exactly!

MOUNTAIN LIVING, MAY 2015

Living in the mountains sure is different from the lowlands! We have been here almost 4 weeks now, and have had quite a taste of our new life here. We’ve had a couple of good-size spring snowstorms, which left roughly 10” of snow each time. Now we’re in the middle of the third since we arrived full time. At one point we were without power for about 4 hours, and another time it was out for about 34 hours. Today it was real glitchy, going off and on all morning. The internet has occasionally been down, which means we not only can’t get online, we can’t use our phones, since all we have right now are internet phones.
 
We’ve contacted the phone company about getting a land line. At first, they couldn’t verify our address, since the county hadn’t put us into their E-911 registry. We got that taken care of with a few phone calls, and after a couple of weeks waiting, the phone company came to discover the nearest junction is across the street from us; they will need to bury a line to our house. They’ll put it where the house will be, and we will need to put our own line from there to the RV. That should be done by early next week. Then we won’t feel quite so stranded when the power and internet are down.
 
Between the snowstorms we’ve had some rain & hail, and a few nicer, sunnier days. The roads get quite muddy when it rains or the snow melts, and are a bit difficult to maneuver. A few neighbors get out with their snowblades or a drag to even out the ruts, but other than that there isn’t much done for the roads. We had thought that the local association would maintain the roads during bad weather, but we haven’t seen them do that yet. We definitely don’t see as much traffic go by when the roads are bad. The horses’ pen gets quite mushy, too, and it’s difficult to feed them and impossible to scoop poop. The poop will wait, the food gets thrown over or under the fence.
 
Yikes! It’s 2:20 pm and I just saw a coyote about 100 yds from the house. We do frequently hear them in the evening/night, but I don’t like seeing them around during the day. Perhaps the snow brought him out. Fortunately, KK (the cat) is inside curled up on the sofa, and not out roaming around!
 
That’s what we’re dealing with here these days.

RV HAS A SKIRT

We took advantage of MLKJR day and planned a trip to put up skirting around the RV, to keep the underside warmer and hopefully prevent freezing issues. (See Winter Camping)  The weather was beautiful most of the time, and we got some nice skirting up.

The people we bought the RV from had some pretty nice skirting, with wood frames, foam insulation and plywood all around, and when we bought it we also brought home all the pieces of this skirting, which Tim had helped to remove.  It was a lot of puzzle pieces, and would have been a lot of work to replace just as it had been before.

Tim decided to use an easier method for a quicker fix. Perhaps in the future we’ll do something more permanent. For now, he just used the foam insulation, cut to fit around the edges, and we taped it on with cold weather insulating tape. It worked quite well, and it already seemed warmer, as the furnace didn’t seem to come on as often. Nice job, Tim!

WINTER CAMPING

We came to Guffey for a few days over the holidays, and are sitting here on the love seat we brought from home. (It’s awful nice to have this comfortable reclining sofa–the one that came with the RV was a rather uncomfy sofabed.)

This trip has been an adventure for sure. First, we came down for a day trip last week, to bring the loveseat. It had snowed the day before, Kenosha Pass was reported closed, so we took a different route, through Canon City. It was nice to know we have that option, and easier traveling to avoid icy roads.

It snowed again, Christmas Day and the day after, so we waited until Sunday the 28th to come stay for a few days. We were expecting the propane company to bring our tank on Tuesday and needed to be here for that. We also wanted to be here to relax a bit, read, enjoy some time away.  Monday was cold and snowy; we spent the day indoors working on various projects. We got our new roll-up window shade installed as well as some for the smaller windows that attach with velcro. 


Since then, it’s been COLD! Frigid, I would say. Monday topped out at around 15, with a low of -9. Tuesday morning was around -15, and we woke to discover that the freshwater tank must have frozen–we had no running water. In expectation of receiving the propane tank around noon, we ran the furnace a lot, hoping to thaw the tank. We followed the water lines, trying to find where the freeze might be, we pointed an electric space heater toward the pump and water lines in attempt to thaw. There is really no way to access the freshwater tank without cutting a hole in the underbelly or removing a large portion of it. This RV is supposed to be the “arctic package”, but I guess there’s only so much cold it can handle. When we bought it, the former owner had built insulated skirting around it which we took apart and brought here, but haven’t had time to put it up yet. 

Tim is dunking a bottle into the tank to bring up water.


Tim managed to thaw the frozen water in the water tank we use to haul the water here with a submersible water heater (another story) and draw water out with a bottle tied to some twine, which I heated on the stove. We dumped hot water into the fresh water tank to try to thaw it, but that didn’t help either. 


Eventually, the propane delivery came, we managed to get the tank set up and the propane flowing, Tim helped the driver get his truck out of the snowy driveway, and we were back to working on the water situation. We actually reached a high of +13 at one point, but most of the time when the guys were out installing the propane, it was around 0. Later, with a 200 gallon tank of propane to use, we turned up the thermostat on the furnace, and Tim redirected one of the ducts to blow hot air down toward the freshwater tank. We’ve got heat, electricity, a stove, oven and microwave to cook with, plenty of food, jugs of water, and we’re fine.


Resourcefulness!

Around 6 pm, the temp dropped to a whopping -23! Yes, that was a minus in front of the 23. We’ve got plenty of propane, so left the furnace on, with the duct pointed toward the fresh tank. It was on all night. This morning, we still have no running water. At this point, Tim brought in a cooler full of water, which he managed to draw through the pump. At least we now have running water! (All the way to the potty 🙂 The water heater is full and hot, so with the pump functioning, we even have hot water. (Time for a shower??) 

With a little snow predicted for tomorrow, we think it’s best to pack up and go home. The exit tube for the black & grey tanks are frozen, too, so we can’t dump them. They are minimally full, we can’t completely winterize the RV, but we’ll do what we can. We will put antifreeze though the water lines, and leave the tanks as-is. There should be plenty of space in them for frozen water to expand, so hopefully they won’t crack or cause problems. Tim hopes to get back here on a warmer weekend to put up the skirting, and hopefully get those tanks emptied. Now that we have plenty of propane, we’ll leave the thermostat on to around 50-55, and hope for the best.


It’s surely an adventure!

RV WINDOW SHADES

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.)

WINTER CHALLENGES

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.