Another weekend at the cabin, but not much to write about.

We spent three days at the cabin last weekend.  It rained on Friday and Saturday, but fortunately I spent most of the weekend work in the cabin.

I completed the work fixing tongue and groove panels to the walls and I fixed skirting boards around the floor.

I also completed fixing up coving around the kitchen ceiling.  It can be small details that take so much time to complete, like joining two different types of coving in a corner.

On Sunday the sun was shining and so I spent some time photographing birds including this Pied Flycatcher

and House Martins collecting mud to build their nests.

Another hot weekend at the cabin!

The temperature last Friday was 30 degrees C and and after working out in the heat all day, when we arrived at the cabin, both myself and Emma headed straight to the lake to cool off.

Initially the water was cold, but after a couple of minutes it was warm and relaxing to be in the lake

I spent most of the weekend working on the cabin.  This time I was fixing tongue and groove boards around the living room walls, one metre high.

We will then have wall paper on the walls above the boards

Emma was bored, so I asked here to draw a picture on the wall where the boards were going, and she also wrote about our family, so that in future years when the boards are removed, someone can read about who was living there before.

I put up a hammock as a chair on the veranda and Emma spent quite  bit of time sitting there birdwatching.

We have a pair of White Wagtails nesting under the cabin roof and they spent a lot of time catching insects.

There were also Black Grouse displaying nearby in the evening.

We will be spending three days at the cabin this coming weekend.

A hot weekend at the cabin

Two weeks ago when staying at the cabin I took this wintry picture.

Last weekend we were at the cabin and after two weeks of exceptionally warm weather (which is still continuing now) with temperature up to 29 degrees in the shade, the same view now looks like this.

I spent most of last weekend dragging trees to the cabin, cutting them up and splitting them.

Wood from two years ago in our outside wood store

had to be moved to our inside wood store to be used over the next year

and then the new wood had to be stacked outside.

I spent quite a bit of time fishing but caught nothing.  So on Saturday night I put out my fish-trap in the lake and when I checked it next morning, there were fish in there.

There were sixteen Perch in total

Most of them I put back in the lake because we did not need them, but the larger ones I kept.

5 days at my cabin – day 5

I had left my Little Acorn camera out overnight at the cabin to see if any animals came to visit.  I was surprised next morning to see that a Reindeer had been to visit in the middle of the night.

Myself and Erik walked in the forest.  We eventually decided to stop and make fire,

and cook coffee and some lunch.

Close to where we made fire, we found a couple of really nice Birch burs.

Later during our walk, we found a site where a fox had killed a Capercaillie.

I could not understand why there was a lot of mouse droppings in one are, but then realised that this was actually the crop contents and that this bird had recently been eating Birch leaf buds.

We spent the afternoon fishing but again did not catch anything.

At 6pm we loaded our kit in the valp and Erik gave me a lift to my car.  As we drove along the track I had walked to the cabin on, I spotted fresh bear tracks.

The tracks were from the previous day and it was not a particularly large bear that had made them, so if we had travelled in the opposite direction the previous evening we might of seen it.

5 days at my cabin – day 4

I spent the morning gathering wood and splitting logs.  Late morning I heard a vehicle and eventually my friend and neighbour Erik appeared.  He had been ploughing the road to our cabins with his military valp and it was nice to see that I would have some company.

He drove up to his cabin and made fire to get the cabin warm and then came to join me for coffee at my cabin.  Later in the afternoon we decided to try and walk across the marshes to another large lake.

There was still a layer of ice under the water so I wasn’t too difficult to get across to the lake.

As we walked back across the marsh there were quite a few Wood Sandpipers, Spotted Redshanks and Greenshanks feeding there.  This Green shank sat up in a tree watching us.

We spent the evening fishing, but did not catch anything.

Later in the evening we drove around in the forest (the Valp will go just about anywhere!!) looking for birds, Moose or bear but we only saw a Capercaillie.

New bird species for the year were a pair of Smew on the cabin lake, a Dunnock and a Rustic Bunting singing at the cabin.

5 days at my cabin – day 3

I decided to start my day off with a good breakfast.  Curry and cheese bannock bread, with fried sausage!

Most of the day was taken up finishing off the new ceiling.

Over the fireplace, where rain water had leaked in before I bought the cabin a 2,4m long ceiling bearer was completely rotten.  I needed to replace it before the ceiling could be completed, but did not have anything long enough, so using my saw and axe

I made a housing joint to connect two shorter pieces together.

There were over 100 Bramblings feeding on seed I had put out and so a took a break mid-morning to take some photographs of them.

Because the walls and roof of the cabin (like most older properties here) is insulated with saw-dust, you get a continual fall of saw-dust when you are working.   To reduce the amount of saw-dust falling from the ceiling I have placed newspaper in all the gaps and open spaces.

Saw-dust falling all the time also meant that I got very dirty. So each evening after I had finished working,  I filled my solar shower with warm water and hung up out side the cabin so that I could shower and get clean.

The only new bird species today were a pair of Goosander.

5 days at my cabin – day 2

I awoke next morning and it was snowing heavily.   I estimated the time to be around 6am.

The main reason for my visit to the cabin was to remove the ceiling in the living room and replace it with a new one.

After making breakfast I started pulling down the ceiling.

I remembered that Teres had  little radio in the cabin, so I turned it on to listen and find out what the time was.  As I started fixing up the new ceiling panels the 8am news came on the radio.  This means that I had got up at about 4am!!!

It took most of the day to get half of the ceiling completed.  The 3.6m panels kept bending as I tried to put them up and this made it very difficult to connect the tongue and groove joints.

I made a great tasting meal with food items I had available and thought I would write up the receipt;

1 tin of Cambells Mushroom soup, 1 tin Baked Beans, Carrot, leak, onion, pepper, mushrooms, 1 stock cube, pepper & mixed herbs, tomato ketchup, powdered soup an sausage.

I fried the sausage and vegetables in a little oil.  Then I added a water and seasoning and cooked for 10 minutes.  Then I added the soup and tomato ketchup and cooked everything for another 15 minutes.  Finally I added the beans and powered soup (to thicken the mix) and coked for five more minutes.

The snow had stopped late afternoon and after that there were both Spotted Redshank and Greenshank present on the marsh.  There was also a Restart singing in the evening.

 

 

Paper rockets

On Friday evening we travelled to the cabin.  It wasn’t easy driving the snowmobile, because in some places there was no now, and in others there was deep snow, which the snowmobile sunk into.  I had to make two trips in to the cabin; one with Emma on the back of the snowmobile and then with Teres.

By the time we had made fire, got the cabin warm inside and cooked food, it was getting late so we went to bed.

Saturday was cold, with heavy showers of rain, sleet, hale and snow.

I spent the early part of the morning cutting up two Birch that had come down over winter.  When I started, the snow was hard enough to walk on and I used the snowmobile to drag large lengths of timber, but then both I and the snowmobile began sinking into the snow.  So I resorted to cutting smaller pieces and transporting them by dragging with the pulka.

Emma was bored in the cabin, so we made some paper rockets (many tutorials on YouTube)

which were made to fit over a piece of plastic tube.  When you blow hard into the tube

the rockets fly across the room (the yellow streak you see in the picture below)

we made different designs to see which flew the best.  Teres even made some paper birds for Emma to shoot down with the rockets

In between snow showers

we tested them outside and they flew surprisingly high.

I was a bit concerned as to how we would get back to the car, because the snow was now wet and soft.  Fortunately the sky cleared during the evening and at 4am when the temperature was -5 degrees and the snow nice and hard, I woke Teres and Emma, and we packed to leave.  I was reluctant to make two trips again so we put Emma in the pulka and drove out without any problems!

What a difference a day makes!

We were out fishing on Saturday.  It was cloudy and around 0 degrees.  Unfortunately the fish were not interested in our bait and only Emma caught a fish, but the fish got off the hook as she took it out of the ice hole.

On Sunday the sun was shining and it was + 10 degrees.  I had to work as there was going to be an outdoor church service at the Arctic Circle where we have a Polar Circle Portal (this a picture from summer 2010)

It was a 40km drive with the snowmobile

I stopped halfway for a coffee break.

We had a number of people who travelled by snowmobile to the church service

We provided food for everyone, which was fried reindeer meat and vegetables

There were about 30 people present for the service and everyone had a great time.

The weather continues to be warm and the snow is melting very fast now.

A cold weekend at the cabin

Spring is going to be late this year.  A cold north wind has been blowing for three weeks now and although the sun lifts day time temperatures just above freezing, at night temperatures can still go down as low as -30 degrees.

I arrived at the cabin Friday evening and made fire in both the kitchen stove and in the fireplace.  After a couple of hours the cabin was warm and with a night time temperature of -20 degrees I kept the fires going all night.

Early on Saturday morning I cooked breakfast; potatoes, sausage, eggs and onions.

I spent some time ice fishing, but it was very cold and I caught no fish, so I decided to do some photography.

There were several different birds coming to the bird feeder and I particularly wanted to photograph Siberian Tit and Siberian Jay.  Siberian Jay’s were not so difficult to photograph.  After standing for 15 minutes they came to feed.

To get VERY close to the Siberian Tit’s, I put a reindeer skin on the snow, and some food just in front of me and laid there and waited for them to come down.  It proved more difficult than expected to get photo’s of them because they kept flying down and sitting on my head!!  Eventually they came for the food.

On Sunday, while out in the forest with my snowmobile I came across some very strange tracks.

I called my friend and neighbour at the cabin Erik, and explained what I had found and he drove out immediately to take a look.  Eventually we deduced that the spore was that of a displaying male Capercaillie.

We followed the tracks on our snowmobiles and found this fine print where the bird had originally landed (from the right you see where the tail touched the snow, then where the body impacted and finally the imprints of the wings, then he walks away displaying).

This is what the display looks and sounds like.