Yukon bush life

(Lou, Yukon) We’ve drilled holes in the bottom of our boat. Why not? A few holes in the transom can only improve things. The weather warmed up to -7c yesterday, time to get the power tools and get a few jobs done. The Garmin Fish Finder instructions told us to drill two holes in the boat. It suggested not to do this whilst afloat. Can’t think why? Good job they pointed that out. I was a bit nervous so we spent ages fiddling with the bracket and screws to make sure it was absolutely in the right place before drilling. It wasn’t, so we now have extra holes that we’ll have to fill or spend a lot of time bailing. Why fit a fish finder in March? We’ve heard about ice fishing so thought it might be fun to winch the boat across the river and look for grayling through 10 foot of ice. Let’s see how well this baby works. No, even we’re not that mad. We will use the device in the summer as a depth sounder to stop us hitting gravel bars and tearing chunks out of another $200 propel...

(Lou, Yukon) Don’t wash squirrels. I learned that this week. They don’t come out well. The amber, feather-light tail never quite recovers and the fur has the look of rat skin. That’s sewer rat, not muskrat. Washed, tanned, oiled and drying Au naturel We’ve been trying to ignore our squirrel problem at the old cabin all winter. After fixing the roof and stuffing it with some old insulation this autumn, we are now using it as a storeroom and, perhaps optimistically, guest cabin. And here's the master bedroom... Our plan is to keep the insulation in the roof to prevent heat escaping, the squirrels' plan is to take it down to the cold cellar to make nests and use the space above the floor as a toilet. The original roof was insulated with a tonne of mud which we had to remove before we could rebuild it  My understanding was that squirrels fiercely defend their territories so we could only have one, or possibly a pair of them, using the cabin. No. We got ...