Here is an aerial view of the lower property at Ginty Creek. (Taken by an RCMP officer.)
On the left is a large building. It was started as a kind of lodge by the previous owner, and never finished.
It has to be the ugliest building ever built.
When I took over the property, it had been abandoned for nearly 20 years – except for the packrats! (This picture was taken by a volunteer.)
It’s a pity they are so stinky and destructive because they are actually quite cute. But they make a terrible mess.
There was very little of interest in the building – except in the library…
I have kept a few of the books: Ginty was an eclectic reader.
Nearby was the barn that Jim and Joe built. Boris (on the ladder) and Sven were two Belgian volunteers in the spring of 2007. They took the siding off; much of it now graces the first cabin’s walls.
Over the years, I rescued most of the upper timbers for building. The floor was knee deep in old rotten manure, black like well-aged Christmas pudding. This fall, Adam spent 3 days shovelling it out…
And piling it in my garden.
The first winter I spent at Ginty Creek, the concrete block chimney on the packrat palace fell down. In 2009, the rancher from the Precipice Valley took the steel off the roof for a hay barn.
In the fall of 2010, when I was building my house, we needed strapping for the roof so up went Britta and took it off.
More bits were taken off whenever there was time, and in 2012, Wolf and Camille took most of the superstructure down.
Harry had a great time chasing the packrats.
The lower two storeys, however, were impossible to take apart. They were built of 2 by 3s and 3 by 3s nailed together. Very solid – it would have taken years to pry them apart, and it was impossible to use a chainsaw as you could not see the nails.
So during this last summer, various volunteers built burn piles both inside and outside the building.
So now I just had to wait until there was a bit more snow on the ground before I could try to set it alight.