With our official building and demo permit in hand, we started building our temporary living quarters in the back yard which our neighbor Matt calls, 'Shantytown'.
we salvaged as much as possible from the house, the general idea is a sleeping/clothing hut, a kitchen, a hang out space, and using the two sheds that came with the property for storage and a tool shed.

The end of the house

Where to even begin?
the last month has been so sad with the death of my mom and so happy with the wedding of two of my best friends.
so where do I place tearing down our house? at first it was in the sad category, but the minute the wrecking ball hit, it was in the oh, so happy category.
so here's some reasons why we had to tear down....(oh, and the foundations were sitting on grade, I guess the old owners didn't know there was such a thing as frost in Canada???)


we had to dismantle the crappy little house as much as we could to save time and money and move once again after having settled in for 2 months


and so we leave the house with the last batch of morels for the year

Building Drawings

This describes our last month pretty acurately (except you can't see the coffee cups)

more mushrooms

This was the most ridiculously delicious pizza ever, fresh morels (second batch), watercress from the stream 2 minutes away, ricotta, and olive oil from Penny's family orchard in Greece

mushroom madness

THE MORELS ARE OUT
well, this is a little late, these were picked 2 weekends ago, and the shitakes are from Jan and Jim's shitake log in their woods
I discovered a secret to finding morels, look for an idyllic spot in the country, with dappled sun and maybe a wild flower or two, head for it and look down. This worked almost everytime, they were either in the sweet spot or heading to it.

We now have our 2 conservation authority permits, our stamped truss drawings and foundation contractors lined up, we can now, finally, apply for a building and demo permit!!!!!!

soon there'll be photos of no rooms then new rooms instead of mushrooms

fiddleheads

Chris went fiddlehead pickin at our friend Jer's house and we went and collected some wild leek leaves too (we left the bulbs in the ground).
Amongst the many things we made with the fiddle head stash was this dumpling dinner
Tofu, Acorn squash, Leek and Fiddlehead dumplings.

We now have approval from the Niagara Escarpment Committee and the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation authority to build, we just have to anchor the building permit......

Discoveries

It turns out the former residents of this house were environmentalists, instead of clogging up the dumps with their trash they were much more responsible and just buried it. How nice.

The other more remarkable discovery made this week was the rhubarb!!!!!!
RHUBARB IS INSANE!!!!!!!
the uni- root on this one plant defies all root rules.


Japanese knot weed is a really invasive plan that grows in the ditches here and also right beside us in the provincial park, the good news is I found out it's edible so we're going to try and eat our way through the invasion.
I made pasta with wild leeks and wild watercress and garlic roasted knotweed on the side, super tasty, and yesterday we made tea with the wild ginger that's coming up.

it's like the canadian jungle here

Spring flowers

All the beautiful spring ephemerals are coming up, red trilliums are normal for this area!

possibilities

it gets a little better everyday..

Spring Beauty

The spring flowers are coming up including the wild leeks.
The escarpment is amazing, moss covered and full of secret valleys and cliffs.

The new digs

We moved in April 1st!
still not sure if this is an April Fools joke or not. There are many different surfaces in the house, including 3 different kinds of artificial wood panelling and a carpet in the bedroom our friend Hamish calls "Dead animal pelt camouflage".
We are now actively ripping out every surface we possibly can hopefully in preparation to renovate.
Mono Cliffs Provincial park is incredibly beautiful and there are several sets of nesting Canadian geese on the pond behind us who honk happily every morning and evening.
Our friend Dan visiting from New York City noted that this really must be the wild because the geese don't swim up to you looking for food.
Today I discovered a small patch of trilliums and the little water fall tucked into the woods just north of us, it's only a matter of time until we turn it into a magical outdoor shower.