Renovating a Victorian Manor

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We have not talked much about the old Victorian Manor in the past weeks. After tearing away at some walls and flooring, it was time to decide how we would approach this major project.

Before discussing the project, I wanted to highlight one final key aspect of the house which really suggests the fact that it was itself a "renovation" of an older homestead. This is all revealed in the back walls.

The brick walls of a Victorian home are not just decorative; they are structural. The walls of our home consists of 3 layers of bricks and they are retained by metal anchors and long metal rods crossing the width of the house. These anchors are very evident on the outside walls as large circular metal plates.

The reason, I mention this is that while stripping the back walls, we discovered a fourth brick wall! This wall was actually part of the older home around which this manor was built.

In the process (and to our dismay), we also discovered that our Mansard roof was leaking. This really put the pressure on getting the renovations started and we finally decided to employ a local contractor, Doug Tucker Constructions.

The scope of their project (the first phase of the work we intend to do) now includes: a new Mansard roof, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (one of which is currently a laundry room), a new hallway (linking the upper halves of the manor), a new mechanical room (to provide for air conditioning), a refinished main entrance way and upstairs hall, and finally (something we debated much) an opening of the ceiling directly under the "widow's walk".

To give a sense of what we are starting with (and the mess we are currently living in), we have prepared some "before" pictures.

 As indicated earlier, the big debate was the ceiling just below the widow's walk. This room from the outside seemed purely decorative. It was not readily accessible (just an attic-like hatch) and not very usable (the size would make it only adaptable to storage).

In the end, we decided to completely open up the space. The fellows from Tucker quickly got onto the project and already we feel we made a great decision. Although not finished we already are awed by the effect this change has made to the upstairs hall.

On the farming front, Tristan and I are continuing to clear the land...and there is so much to do. This week we demolished our old "Bush Hog" (a glorified lawn mower/brush cutter).

Tristan was thrilled when we bought a new one and had it delivered. Now we're right back at it and really opening up the land.

In the process of clearing land, we are also learning quite a bit about heavy machinery. This week we were introduced to the "Stumper", a very heavy machine that basically "shaves" tree stumps 6 inches into the ground. After a few painful trials, Tristan actually managed to clear all of the tree stumps in our planned orchard.

Harvesting actually also continued this week. First, I was lucky enough to outdo Francesco on my own mushroom hunt. After a few walks into the forest, I returned with more mushroom than we could possibly eat (4 1/2 pounds of it, all in just 2 mushrooms!).

The question was what to do with it all. One solution was mushroom soup. Milk, butter, salt and pepper to taste, and the result is a delicious soup with the mushroom taking on the texture of tofu.

Christine's "eagle eyes" did not fail us this week as she discovered more kiwi's in our "Canadian jungle". I thought we had picked all we could, but was rather surprised when we came back with a large basket-full (I guess it's time for more preserves).

Afraid that we would be facing our first frost this week, I decided it was time to recover all we could from the raised beds. Our best two pickers (Christine and Morgan) went out to recover all the green tomatoes, celery and kale we had. Although I expected a half bushel to come back, I was completely taken aback by the amount of tomatoes they were able to pick (and they tell me they still left some on the vines).

I now have to figure out what to do with all of these green tomatoes. Originally, I was thinking of salsa but this is well beyond my canning capacity! This being our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I have a couple of ideas which I hope to report on next week.

My personal challenge this week was the wheelbarrow of Black Walnuts. My experiments with Hickory completed, I now had to tackle these. Since the fruits were well ripened (turning black), it was time to "shuck" them. This was easily done by slicing the skin around the circumference and "squishing" the pit or nut out. I have heard of people actually wrapping these things in old linen and just driving over them to get the nut out of the fruit. I perhaps did it the tedious way, using my knife to clean the nut from the remaining flesh (almost like cleaning a peach stone).

Note that the Juglone excreted by the Black Walnut stains like you would not believe. Some of the nuts seemed to be oozing a black ink ready to be used by a fountain pen. As a result, gloves are essential (and for a matter of reference the gloves I put on were not exactly adequate).

Once this process was complete, it was just a matter of washing the nuts in water. Those that float probably indicate insufficient meat or that they have been compromised by pests. Unlike the Hickory, my yield here was much better.

This week, I was doing our nut processing under the watchful eye of a chipmunk....I pray he leaves these nuts alone since the next step is to simply let them cure for 2 weeks.

Finally, the preserve experiments continue and I think we now have the hang of it. I managed to produce a very well set low-sugar jelly; this week it was based on our Purple Raspberries and Baco Noir Wine. Of course, I use local wine from our township and in particular that of Henry of Pelham http://www.henryofpelham.com/ They really know how to process this North American grape. The result is actually very good and I am now thinking of all the fruit and wine combinations we could come up with for our tea house and country store.

I leave you this week, the way we end a lot of our evenings on the farm, walking the dogs down the lane that crosses the length of our property.