Our hops in action

Great to see that Persephone are already brewing with the hops that we picked, I know this because that's my writing on the side of the bag.

These we picked on the 26th of August, Centennial hops that I roped into one of the bags yesterday, gosh, those guys are quick on the brewing game.

Last day before the Party

Second anniversary party and "Tough Kegger" on Saturday and we have our tickets. Today was our last day, our fifth, picking hops. We are both a little tired but happy with many aspects of the gig.

Almost endless conversations, many funny which of course was helped along by the quaffing.

Now I suppose, we'll be waiting for next year to help with the planting again, unless the guys at Persephone come up with some other exotic work for the pair of us.

"Will work for beer"

Greenhouse......Done

That's about it, the greenhouse is complete.

We have a rain barrel and water capture system to set up, but the structure is done in just short of three months. We have to admit that the last few weeks have been difficult, and that's typical with most projects as they progress close to the end.

We celebrated today with some home built beer, to toast a home brewed greenhouse.

Keep posted, more to come.

Temporary Foreign Workers

Once again we were TFW's at the beer farm around the corner. Two days of hop picking and being coerced into drinking lots of beers, force fed fruit, cheese and cucumber sandwiches and oven fresh thin crust pizza. They also gave us a gift card with the equivalent of eighteen pints of beer.

Cheap foreign labour, we feel used...

As shown here with a pair of the employee's kids, they also capitalize on child labour, although these two were more interested in the foosball table and the free pizza after climbing up the trolley just once.

Marilyn's Plum Tree

A few photo's from our kitchen window, a big black bear inspecting our neighbours plum tree.

Treat it as a Roundabout

In front of the postbox this morning, what Karen described as "The biggest bear poop I've ever seen" and we tried to find Norris McWhirter's phone number and then discovered that both he, and Roy Castle have kicked the bucket.

The fruit trees are abundant, our neighbours plum tree is bursting with fruit and the bears know it.

We're going to use the Gordon Ramsey "Bear Poop Wellington" recipe on this one and it should be quite fruity with a nutty finish...

Closer to the Boat

We're wimpy when it comes to fish, but today we stepped closer to the boat by buying a whole pink salmon from IGA. I have a few what I believe to be sharp knives and I literally butchered this thing, emphasis on butchering. However, we farmed some very fine portions from this rascal.

The process felt brutal, far distant from buying shrink wrapped in the supermarket, but on occasion, perhaps we should all get a little closer to the boat, just to see what other people do, to present those convenient little 200 gram parcels in the shops.

The price of one of these unfortunate chaps at this time of the year? - this one was just shy of one kilogram, and was $4.71 which is really no money whatsoever for such fine protein.

It was delicious.

Vegetables a go-go

End Gable One

A tricky venture, mainly the cutting of the perspex was a bit of a chore, but it is installed and working as it should.

The filling of the holes continues and as of today, there are only four left (if you count the other gable as two holes) - we had a little break there and a few days of creating a potting table, today was back to work as we need to progress the shell further before we get to the rainy season, after we've finished all the windows, we're going to be applying some of the free trim metal we obtained from Gibsons Building Supplies.

Potting table.

A five dollar desk from the Zero Waste store at GRD, some repairs, some tile and wood and a bit of free paint. Voila! - A potting table with plenty of storage and a waterproof top for young Karen to do her experiments on.

Yard Sale Surprise

We were down on Chaster Road this morning at a yard sale, just parked up and Karen started shouting at me "Look, look, a mother bear and three cubs" and at first, for the life of me, I could not see them. Then there they were, in all their total magnificence, three of the cutest cubs imaginable and a big 350 pound mamma bear.

We kept our distance, because truly, no-one wants to piss off a black bear with a set of triplets.

A magical moment, probably one of our best nature moments yet in British Columbia.

Not our photo, but you get the idea.