Over the last few days, I have been making a humungous mess.

Barrel Stove

During the winter at Ginty Creek I put up with an ugly barrel stove as a heater.  Rocks were heaped around it to help retain the heat.  (There is snow melting for water on top.)  I use a stone oven for baking bread in the mountains at Nuk Tessli. Bread baked in a stone oven has a flavour like no other.  I also found that the rocks radiated a very comfortable heat for hours and intend to put this natural phenomenon to good use at Ginty Creek.

When I was last in Williams Lake, I bought some cement.  Cement comes in 100 lb sacks made of very thin paper that easily tears.  I cannot lift them.  The dogs had ripped the paper with their claws as we rode back from town, and I had to manoever the sacks into garbage bags.

Unloading cement sacks.

This is how a poor, weak, helpless female unloads a 100 lb cement sack.  Using a plank and a cheap toboggan.

As Lonesome wrote in Memoirs of a Wilderness Dog, “men lift with their muscles, women lift with their brains.”

Sweeping the Chimney at Ginty Creek

I planned on building a stone stove to replace the ugly barrel heater.  When Mogens, my current wwoofer,  arrived, I sent him up on the roof to sweep the chimney.

Might as well make all the messes at once.

Collecting sand

We needed sand.  There didn’t seem to be much sand around until the snow melted and I saw what the River McClinchy had deposited after last fall’s floods. It was quite close to Highway 20 and easy to shovel.

Mixing cement

Then the real mess began.  We mixed cement in the wheelbarrow.  First we built a floor of rocks.

Each stage of the building needs several hours, sometimes days to dry.  So this will be an ongoing project spread over several posts.

I am trying to live in the house while I am doing this.  We move the sand, plastic, and wheelbarrow out at night but I still have rocks and other debris to trip over.