Canada Day, Breakfast & Other Crap

Although rain had been forecast the night before, we woke up Sunday Morning to a warm sunny morning. Just perfect for Canada Day and a Denman Island Fire Fighter's Pancake Breakfast. It was a record year, with over 500 breakfasts served up (approximately half of the island's population).... Pancakes, bacon, strawberries and whipped cream, coffee and juice. At some point in the morning, the line stretched down the street. The fundraiser finances a high school bursary award and firefighting equipment that is not funded through the district. I have to admit that what seemed like mass disorganization, came together like clockwork. A pager wake-up call came at 6:30 and by 8:30 everything was ready to go. The breakfast ended at noon and by 1:30 everything was cleaned up and it was over for another year.


Work on the power through the property continues. The end is finally in sight. Original completion date for this project was mid-May. The trenching on the driveway was the last thing to be done. The driveway needs to be "groomed" with lots of shale type rocks so that cement mixers and other heavy machinery can use it. We've salvaged lots of huge boulders for landscaping purposes. Some are so large, that it will take a large excavator to move them into place. Hopefully once the scrape has been done for the foundation, we'll have an idea where they should go. It will be better to place them while the machine is on site, than to have to bring it back in later.

I just finished reading "The Humanure Handbook". It may just as well have been called the Human Handbook . It details how our inability to deal with our own crap has cost mankind millions of lives. It approaches a topic (that we'd rather not discuss), with humour and some startling facts. It asks the question.... If only 1% of the world's water is drinkable, why are we pooping in it? It's well worth the read and is available FREE online at THIS LINK. We found out it was free online after we bought a copy :(
It's certainly made us re-think what is means to build "green". If we choose a septic alternative then we will need a greywater system... (so more books were ordered from Amazon last night). I also recently read an article that Victoria is actually making some headway in planning for a sewage disposal system... Victoria currently pumps 120 million litres of raw sewage into the ocean every day! I'm glad I live upstream!

I'm spending some time each day bucking up the dead-fall on the lot. The wood shed is filling up rapidly. I'm a little behind in filling it, as firewood should "season" for six months or more before burning. I'm hoping that by cutting it smaller, it will accelerate the drying process.

Valdy Update: Valdy's booking agent's website has posted an October 12th date for the Denman Island Hall. It's a Friday Night.