The Boy is Six

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Troy

Happy birthday little buddy!

We celebrated Ethan’s sixth birthday last weekend with a special family trip. They didn’t know what we were doing, but we told them we would go in something public, go up something tall and see something big. The public part was a ride on the Calgary C-Train (you know you are small town folk when taking your kids on a public transit train is exciting), we went up the tall Calgary Tower (though not the tallest in Calgary anymore), and the big thing to see was a couple of IMAX movies.

Ethan has always liked trains, and all the kids enjoyed the multiple rides on the trains. We rode downtown Calgary to go to a McDonalds for lunch, then back on the train to get to the tower, then a train again to return to our car.

Up the tower.

The glass floor…

…which the kids really enjoyed.

We ended the day with two short IMAX movies, which we all enjoyed at the dome screen at the Telus Spark.

Solar Eclipse – October 23, 2014

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Troy

For the October 23, 2014 partial solar eclipse I took all my gear out to my kids’ small school to teach them about eclipses and then give them a chance to view it with glasses and some of the gear. We had a blast and it was fun seeing them get so excited about what they were seeing.

I first gave a bit of a presentation explaining an eclipse to the students, talked about the dangers of looking at them without the right equipment, and talked about sunspots because they were going to see a massive cluster!

Here is a NASA image showing the current sunspots, including the massive 2192 cluster. Note the circles at the bottom showing the scale of the Earth and Jupiter.

We missed watching the start of the eclipse, but started watching not long after.

In addition to the telescopes with Baader filters, we used large binoculars and a spotting scope to project the sun onto a white surface.

The cardboard creates a shadow within which to see the projection of the sun.

Using the ultra high tech microwave box and tinfoil. This only gave us a very small disk to see, but it demonstrated a safe way to watch the eclipse.

I also had 5 sets of Thousand Oaks solar viewer glasses that they could watch the eclipse with.

In all the craziness of it, it took me awhile to get a picture of the actual eclipse. The eclipse started at 2:44 PM, but this first picture wasn’t until 3:29. In it you can still see the massive sunspot group.

3:46

4:11 – just past maximum (4:07)

4:23 – the sunspot group 2192 comes out from behind the moon.

4:30

4:43

4:55

5:14

Last contact – 5:20 – you can just barely see the moon touching the disk of the sun.

The eclipse is over! 5:24 PM

Beautiful clear skies for the whole eclipse! An answer to prayer.

The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.

They speak without a sound or word;
their voice is never heard.
Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
and their words to all the world.
Psalm 19

The next solar eclipse visible here is August 21, 2017, and then the next is in 2023! So thankful for the clear sky this time.

Our last partial eclipse – May 20, 2012

Photos from our harvest

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Troy

With early October underway, our growing season is pretty much over now and we are so thankful for the harvest that we have been enjoying!

We really wanted to have a greenhouse to help extend the shoulder seasons and for protection from frost, but we didn’t expect how badly we would need it with snow and heavy frost in early September.

Frost blankets, two extra garbage cans full of water, and a heater running to keep everything alive through the cold snap! We knew this cold would be over in a couple days and we could expect several more weeks of warmth for the growing season if we could just get through this.

The gardens outside buried in early September snow.

Everything in the greenhouse survived and the plants in the raised beds (strawberries, lettuce, beets, carrots) came out fine. We pulled up the onions right away after the snow was gone, and they are drying in the basement. After the cold snap, we had several more weeks of our growing season.

With another heavy frost forecast for October 1st, we decided to pull the plug, or at least the harvest. We felt that it wasn’t worth trying to fight -6C (21F) in early October as there wasn’t going to be much more of a growing season. That night we emptied the greenhouse to let stuff ripen indoors. The greenhouse has been a wonderful addition to the yard, and we have been able to grow so much in there. For the last month Naomi has spent lots of time processing the food and trying out delicious new recipes. Lots and lots of canning.

The harvest from our own yard and greenhouse includes: cucumbers, grapes, chili peppers, bell peppers, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peas, carrots, lettuce, spinach, beets, onions, shallots, strawberries, raspberries, choke cherries, potatoes, and lots of herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme, basil, oregano, coriander).

We also had a row of potatoes, onions, beets and carrots out at a friends farm. Our neighbor gave us two big bags of apples from their tree. From friends’ yards we harvested nanking cherries, raspberries, saskatoon berries and red currants.

We recently planted 4 blueberry shrubs and have some saskatoons to plant, so hopefully we will have that to add to future harvests, and we expect to see our three different apple trees start to produce too.

Bell, chili, jalapeno

A giant cucumber that was hiding in the greenhouse. And Chantel.

Choke Cherries

Picking choke cherries

Three berry syrup -nanking cherries, red currants, choke cherries

Three berry syrup

A row of potatoes, beets, carrots, and onions at a friends farm

Big beets

Onions, potatoes, beets, carrots

Potatoes from the yard

and from the farm

Apples from our neighbours

Grapes

Beefsteak Tomato

Roma Tomatoes

The last strawbereies

Big peppers

Picking Saskatoons at a friend’s acreage

Raspberries, Nanking Cherries, Saskatoons

Strawberries and raspberries on my cherrios

Roma tomatoes

Roasting tomatoes to make sauce

Some of the late summer harvest

Did somebody say salsa?

Wearing gloves to avoid the burn

some of the herbs in the greenhouse

Onions drying for storage

Jalapeños

Chilies

The final harvest from the greenhouse

The last day for growing in the greenhouse

He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
He makes grass grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to cultivate—
bringing forth food from the earth
Psalm 104:10-14

Grape Jelly

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Troy

We had to harvest our Valiant grapes a bit earlier than planned this year because of an unseasonably early snow and heavy frost in early September. Apparently, waiting to harvest until after a frost is not good if you are looking to make jelly as this leads to the grapes losing their pectin and then you will have a harder time getting it to set, which was a problem last year.

Naomi’s Vineyard had an decent harvest for our first year of having a proper trellis for our grapes. The vines were planted four years ago and their yield is increasing each year.

We harvested about 2.7 kg (6 lbs) of grapes…

…and Naomi turned them into this!

Hiking in Kootenay National Park

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Troy

In early September we took a weekend trip to Radium Hot Springs for a family getaway. It was really nice as we had a very busy summer and our trip east was jam packed with visits, so we wanted to spend some time together outdoors as a family. Naomi booked us a motel, we packed our stuff and off we went. We pulled the kids out of school early on Thursday (they don’t have class on Friday) and returned home on Sunday evening. We are so thankful that we live close to the mountains, and also for the wonderful weather (mid 20s C) during our time.

Our trip to Radium Hot Springs took us across the continental divide, the line where rain goes either to the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.

We stopped in the valley along the highway in Kootenay National Park to throw rocks in the Kootenay river and enjoy the scenery.

Friday was hot springs day! We went in the morning to the pools, then on a hike, and back to the springs in the evening.

The next day, we went on a long hike to Cobb Lake.

The round trip was 5.2 km and took us almost 5 hours. That includes taking time for snacks and a picnic lunch when we got to the lake. Along the trip we could hear just the stream in the valley, but after that – silence. It was one of the very few times in my life where I couldn’t hear anything man made (other than the occasional whine about when we could have a snack). No cars, trucks, airplanes… It was wonderful!

North is on the right of the image. The trail head is just before the highway starts to descent into the Kootenay River valley.

The kids each had a backpack in which they carried their water, some snacks, and other stuff. Ellie carried my binoculars, Adelaine had the first aid kit, Ethan had the essential sling shot! Naomi carried our lunch and I had the photographer’s burden: glass and metal. And bear spray.

We were alone on the trail most of the hike, and even had about 40 minutes at the lake without anyone else being around. The water in the lake was flat and smooth like a mirror, providing some nice reflections. The lake is actually a bog, and the “ground” around it was wet and bouncy. You could feel the ground move quite a ways away when the kids were jumping up and down.

Part of the descent to the stream in a valley was quite steep, so there were a series of switchbacks as we criss-crossed our way down the slope. Ethan and Adelaine both like being at the front when we go on a hike. Ellie usually lags behind. When we got too far ahead of her we called her bear bait and told her to catch up. We made a treaty so that Ethan got to lead us to Cobb Lake, and Adelaine lead the way back. Here is Ethan the trail master stopping to listen…

He kept doing this quite a bit along the trail as the only thing we could hear was the stream getting closer and closer.

Here he is crossing a little spring that made the trail a bit muddy, and his method of keeping off his feet dry.

Once we went up the other side of the valley we got to this one part of the trail where we turned away from the stream and started to descend to Cobb Lake. Over the distance of about 4 meters on the trail it got very quiet… suddenly we could no longer hear the stream, or anything else for that matter. It was so quiet. I took the kids back up the path to the corner where you could hear the stream again, then a few meters down the path where is was silent. Magical.

The stream about halfway along the trail provided lots of entertainment for the kids. We could have spent a lot more time there, but we had to get back to our hotel. The kids didn’t know it, but there was a movie being shown in the park that night!

Before the movie started we got to witness some interesting behaviour of some of the town’s resident big horn sheep. They were eating apples and pears off the trees. Watch the video to see how they did it.

Drive-in movie in the park!

Our last day in the mountains we drove back into Kootenay National Park and stopped to do two hikes as we made our way home; Dog Lake and Marble Canyon.

The Dog Lake hike was 5.8 km.

Along the trail to Dog Lake, Adelaine and Ethan couldn’t agree who would lead the family along the trail, so they decided to share the job, holding hands as they went along.

Cobb Lake and Dog Lake in relation to Radium Hot Springs.

Marble Canyon is an easy hike along a fenced-in trail with lots of bridges crossing over the deep, cold canyon. The glacial melt water of the Rockies are a wonderful blue colour, which creates an amazing palette with surrounding nature. I didn’t realize that there was a waterfall at the end of the hike, so I left my tripod in the car. Luckily I had my gorrilapod in my backpack, so I was able to use some neutral density filters to get some long exposures.

We had a wonderful 3.5 days away as a family, with many new memories and a greater appreciation for the beautiful world God has given us. Thank you Lord for the opportunity, the wonderful warm weather, the sights along the trails and time as a family. What a blessing.

Then we crossed the mountains and returned home to this, but that is another story…

Troy & Naomi

Nunquam Non Paratus

The Boy is Six

Solar Eclipse – October 23, 2014

Photos from our harvest

Grape Jelly

Hiking in Kootenay National Park