This week marked a milestone in the renovations to the old Victorian manor. What we refer to as "Phase 2" is pretty much complete and for the next few days we will again be juggling our furniture and belongings from one side of the house to another. In the process, we will now be losing the only remaining kitchen in the house - luckily it's now BBQ season.
As a result, we can now post before and after pictures showing some of the changes made to the west side of the house. I just wish we had a wide angle lens to really capture the dramatic alterations made to the interior.
Although not all lighting is in and some remaining finishing touches are still needed, these photos should provide a good feel for the changes accomplished over the past few months.
On the lower floor, we created a dining room and a "brandy room"/study from what were two apartment bedrooms. These are now openly linked by a reconstructed archway.
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| This room was acting as one of the apartment bedrooms |
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| It has been transformed into a large dining room |
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| This blocked archway created a second bedroom |
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| It was opened up to a "Brandy Room"/Study |
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| This small dark bedroom.... |
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| ....has become the study. |
The lower portion of what we refer to as the "west wing" (since the house is L-shaped), will be dedicated to our gallery. Here the front room is almost complete and so is the gallery's powder room.
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| This front room to the lower apartment underwent significant changes |
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| It will now be a gallery. |
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| This small bathroom was completely redone |
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| This is now the gallery powder room |
The rework of the upstairs has been just as comprehensive. We effectively transformed an apartment consisting of a kitchen, a family room, a bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and another small room into one large bedroom, bathroom and family room.
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| This family room was opened up by removing an odd shaped closet |
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| The result is a brighter more spacious room |
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| ....to produce a large L-shaped bedroom with 4 windows |
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| This narrow bedroom and a small kitchen were altered.... |
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| This tiny bathroom.... |
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| ....simply became the walk-in closet |
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| This small room with odd-shaped closet..... |
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| ...has become a good size bathroom where we've exposed an old chimney |
As we progress, we have raised a lot of interest from the community as well as individuals interested in renovating Victorian homes. It is clear now that when we finish the process, we will need to get a much better photographic record of the house.
What remains to be done internally is a living room, a kitchen and the main entrance to the house. Also under completion is the second gallery and the cellar...where a new discovery was made!
In the newly joined cellars, we have been using some of the reclaimed wood from the barn to contain one of our furnaces in a utility room. As one of the team was cutting a plank to fit it around a beam, he turned it over to complete his cut....as he did this he noticed scratches on the surface of the wood. As he cleaned it, he found a word: "WARD". Not recognizing what this might mean he showed it to our site manager who quickly understood the significance. It seems we may have found (by very sheer luck) an inscription by one of the Ward family (the original founders of this estate).
This small cut of wood is now resting proudly on one of our re-used barn doors.
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| This was a very, very lucky find! |
On the farming front things are progressing well. We have been transplanting some old and hardy black currants to new rows. These were "bush-hogged" last year but proved to have very healthy, large and deep roots....so we decided we might as well relocate them.
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| Transplanting old Black Currant stock with very well established roots |
We've even completely transplanted all of our vegetable seedlings.
Our major issue has been weeding. Our nemesis is the Boxelder or Manitoba Maple. Because we refuse to use chemical herbicides, we are spending a significant amount of time pulling back the branches of this very invasive plant....and where we can, we attempt to pull their roots.
One possible solution brought to our attention by our neighbour Debbie is what she called "home-made roundup". Basically this consists of vinegar, salt and dish soap. We did try this on one Boxelder and after one day, the results were impressive. Over the next few weeks, we'll now see if this is effective and if we can proceed to eliminate some of these nasty weeds.
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| A healthy Boxelder |
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| One day later, following the application of our home-made herbicide |
We also had the time this week to carry out another foraging experiment. Last year, I had noticed a large amount of stinging nettles on our property. After finding out that these are a very edible and healthy green (very high in iron and protein), I was determined to try them somehow.
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| Nettles abound on some portions of our fields |
So this week, we decided to make a pesto. To do this, we combined our nettle with another "weed": Garlic Mustard. This plant is not native to the area and is highly invasive. So instead of just pulling it wherever we find it, we decided to eat it!
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| We obviously also have a lot of Garlic Mustard |
Using these two plants, greens from our Garlic, Walnuts (which our neighbour provided us last fall), we proceeded to make our pesto.
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| Three key ingredients to a good pesto: Garlic greens, Garlic Mustard and Nettles |
We blanched the Nettles (this removes their stinging ability), blended them with the Garlic Mustard leaves, our Garlic greens and the Walnuts. We added a touch of Olive oil, some grated Parmesan, salt and pepper to taste.
The result: very satisfying. The sauce took the bright green colour of the Garlic Mustard. It was more "garlicky" than I actually expected. For the whole family, it was quite a pleasant surprise to actually get something that really tastes good from what we had always considered "useless weeds".
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| A very satisfying bowl of pasta with Garlic Mustard-Nettle Pesto |
I will leave you this week with a picture of a tree which is finally flowering: the Tulip Tree. This is a rare sight in Canada since this tree only grows in a rather restricted portion of the country (South shore of Lake Huron and portions of the Niagara Peninsula). A member of the Magnolia family, this is a beautiful plant with large almost tropical leaves. Wherever we find this tree on the property, this is definitely something we aim to preserve.
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| Our Tulip Trees are blooming |
