Expanding Family at Fy Nyth

And then there were three!

Manipi is doing well. If you've followed my blog for a while, you know his story. (If not, catch up on past installments here and here.) He's put on a lot of weight and seems very comfortable around my house. I've never tried to force him to stay since he came back, and he's generally never gone more than a few feet away. Since he's recovered his health, every now and then he'll go for a little stroll part way down the lane and back, but that seems to be the extent of his desire to wander now. And he is still slowly loosing those frostbitten tips on his ears as you can see. But overall, he looks amazing considering how close to death he was when he first came back!

Wynn has also been doing well in the large space she's had to roam in my friend's shop. She's grown up a lot and become good friends with another rescued formerly feral cat named Luther (my friend's choice of names, he thinks the cat looks like a Lex Luther) who's been living there too. He's a huge long haired black tom who I was slightly afraid might try to kill her. Instead, when she first showed up, she hissed at him and he ran away from her for several weeks before she finally decided to be nice to him. Now they are together all the time. 

I've always hoped to be able to bring her back to my house at some point, and a few days ago, that's just what I did. With her new buddy Luther in tow. Right now it would be hard for any of the cats to run away since the snow is hip deep on me. So I thought this would be a good time to try to get them all settled in together. First I put out three sets of food and water so hopefully none of them would get into a fight over any of those things. Luther and Manipi looked at each other for a few seconds and then both went to eating right beside each other with no complaints.

Wynn, on the other hand, decided to be a drama queen. She peered out of the crate at both of them just like this for hours without deciding to take a step out.

The boys made themselves comfy on the porch and just let her watch. Luther took a stroll around the house, the driveway, over to my little shed, and seemed to approve.

It's about time Luther has some stuff to run after and chase to get a work out. Living in that shop he was just getting fat. He's probably the biggest normal domestic cat I've ever seen and all that hair just makes him look bigger! He went from the porch, to under the house, to perched on top of the ladder that's still sitting behind my house from installing the pipes for my wood stove. Then he decided he needed a higher perch and settled into a tree branch about level with my window tops. He's always liked high perches I think because in the shop he would hang out on top of a tractor cab most of the time.

Wynn finally got brave enough to get out of the crate around dusk. She really is the prettiest one of the three I think.

She took a little walk around the shoveled paths and then hid under the house too.

Manipi is under there too in this photo, but too far back in the dark to see. Later Wynn crawled into my little shed and decided to hide out there. This morning, she was curled up back in the crate. Manipi was under the house which is where he normally sleeps, and Luther had made his own bed under a fallen log at the base of the tree he'd been perched in earlier. They all seem to be getting along ok which makes me really happy! So now I have three pets.

Yes, I know, it looks like I'm on my way to being a crazy old cat lady. Really, I'd like to think of it as just expanding my homestead. The next critters will probably be chickens and maybe a few turkeys in the spring...

I Have A Fire!

Yesterday I lit up my new wood stove for real for the first time! The final parts and pieces we were waiting on finally arrived on Monday. That evening, I got everything ready, and yesterday my friend helped me put everything together.

In case you missed my last few posts, my new wood stove is a Mini CT12 from Grey Stove Works. I decided to add a wood stove to my house for several reasons. First, I have access to plenty of free firewood right around my house thanks to lots of standing dead trees, many of them beetle killed. Removing them helps lessen the wildfire danger in the area. And this is certainly cheeper than buying propane. A wood stove does not require electricity and my vented propane heater does to run the fan. So this will greatly lessen the drain on my battery bank in cold weather and thus the amount of gas I buy for my generator to top those batteries off on short and snowy winter days. Lastly, wood heat produces a very dry heat, helping out greatly with reducing condensation and the resulting mold issues that tend to plague very small spaces. So, I decided a small wood stove would be a great addition to Fy Nyth.

Here's a short video tour of my first fire burning, and some details on installing the stove. Below, there are a lot more photos and a description of the whole process. 

The stove is set up to use standard 3'' pellet pipe. The two main brands seem to be Dura Vent and Selkirk and they both seem to be good. I went with Selkirk just because I was more easily able to source all the parts I needed from them from where I live. Above and below you can see what the pipe looks like. 

It has a double wall and fire braid set inside each connection. All the parts were silver, but I wanted them to all be black just because I didn't like the look of silver pipe coming out of a black stove.

So I bought a couple of cans of heat safe black spray paint and used my friend's shop to change the color on all the pieces.

Next I needed some kind of fire shield to protect the walls around my new stove. My local welding shop made this shield for me. It is made from 1/8 inch steel and weighs enough to be very stable all on it's own as a free standing piece. 

It's up on small feet that allows air to pass under it keeping the heat moving and preventing anything behind it from getting too hot. And the L shape on the edges holds it out from the wall, again so that nothing nearby can get too hot. I forgot to snap a photo, but I did spray paint this whole shield black as well.

Next, I needed a hole in my wall for the stove pipe to pass through. Even though I've now had several holes drilled through my wall for things like a new propane line and the cables coming in from my solar panels, it's always a little scary to put a large hole in a perfectly good wall. I could have gone through the roof instead, but in my experience, any kind of a hole in a roof eventually develops a leak and I wanted to avoid that possibility.

Here you can see the hole for the wall thimble being cut out from the interior of the house.

Look at all that great spray foam that makes my house so cozy and tight!

After repeating the process on the outside as well, I had a huge hole in my wall!

Here you can see the thimble installed. It allows the pipe to pass through the wall but keeps all combustibles far enough away to be safe. Hence the large hole in the wall.

All the pipe parts snap together. It is a bit hard to do this, but once put together, the joint is very secure.

Here you can see that thimble from the outside and the pipe running up above the roof to get a good draft going. Drilling the hole and putting everything together took less than two hours.

Now it was finally time to light it up! So I stacked my wood in there and used a bit of newspaper to ignite the pile. It started up with just one flick of a lighter.

It took off right away and has been burning great since a few seconds after we finished the installation.

After a bit more than one day of use, I will do an update with my thoughts on actually using it and a full review of it's performance. So far, I like the little baby a lot!

Little Sis and Large Wildlife

Several things happened around here in the last week other than the snow getting deeper. And several things visited my tiny house. 

First, my little sister, Jerusha, made it for a visit. A day late and several rescheduled flights later. After all the airports in her area on the east coast shut down thanks to their record blizzard. But she did make it out here eventually.

She snapped some shots of me and my house for me.

We enjoyed lots of good meals that included things like frozen greens from last years garden, home made bone broth, home canned pickles, mint tea frozen from my garden last year, and sprouts that I've been growing in my house all winter. My friend, handyman, and neighbor, Clay, joined us some as well. Since he helps me with so many projects, I like to cook for him when ever I can.

Jerusha had to admire my tiny stove and the first fire we lit in it. It's only a candle since we are waiting on one more piece of the pipe to arrive in the mail. Once that's here (maybe Monday?) I can't wait to fire this thing up for real!

Then there were a lot of moose that visited. In both of these shots you can get an idea of how close the hang out to my house and lane. One evening while we were gone, one even left tracks inches from the front door. Maybe he was sampling the cat food on the porch?

Living in a tiny house didn't phase Jerusha at all. But she did note that my stairs are not wide enough to sit on comfortably for long. She even remembered how much faster my liquid tank on my toilet filled up with two people using it last time she was here and caught that for me before I over flowed the bottle!

Never in all the years I've lived in this area have I seen as many moose as this last month. I think it's been nearly a full four weeks of seeing 1 to 8 moose per day, every day. Except for today. I guess I worked too long today or they were all bedded down from the storm, but today I only saw tracks. So my record has been broken.

All these shots were taken with my little camera and from with in a few feet of my front door.

I'm pretty sure this guy is a teenaged bull. You can just see his little budding antlers starting to grow.

And then there are the elk. These ladies were wondering around, eating, and then bedding down just up the road from my house.

I think elk might be the most majestic wild animal I've ever personally encountered. And I love living where I get to see all these creatures up close and on a regular basis!

More Snow

It snowed more! Last year was an unusually low snow year so it's fun to see how deep the snow piles are getting this year around my house. Last night added about 10 new inches.

The views out two of my windows. Above, you can see the snow piled up a little ways above the base of the window it's self. I did shovel the top of that pile off since I do want to be able to see out my windows!

Manipi seems to really enjoy the sunshine on the porch.

Last night was rather warm for this area so the snow stuck to everything. Making the whole area look like a winter wonderland as the sun came up this morning.

The sun is quite stunning as it bursts through the trees. And it is gradually getting higher in the sky again too.

Manipi also likes to follow me around like a puppy while I work outside. Pretty much no matter what I am doing, he trots along at my heels. Including the whole time I am shoveling snow.

In places, these snow piles are now higher than my head. My pathways are becoming tunnels. I am really curious to see what it looks like around here by the time all the snow stops in the spring. We probably have at least three months of snowfall yet to go!