Today my brother Thomas and sister-in-law, Steph, came to help with the tires. It was a bit chilling in the morning but we had some great sun later on. We had to stop at about 2 pm for piano lessons, but still managed to get about 24 tires filled with their help.

Steph brought leftovers for lunch: Chana Masala, some spicy lamb chops and spinach paneer. That together with a few quarts of our apple juice, pita bread, my homemade relish, roasted tomatoes and samosas (which came up from Vancouver with Steph earlier in the week) we had a spread that I wish we could feed all our volunteers!

They will be back tomorrow and hopefully we will get slightly more than 24 filled, leaving us with only 10-15 to complete on Saturday.

My father picked up 13 more tires in Kamloops today, leaving us with only 17 more to complete round #10. He will swing by Insight Tire and Auto in the morning to see what they have. We could be in good shape to be done by Saturday!

On the 16th Alvin returns to finish backfilling the tire walls and then he will remove his wondrous backhoe for the season. This will leave us in good shape to be able to work on the roof from the outside of the building.

Chris and I have been re-reading and plotting our next steps. We will be doing a continuous concrete bond beam on top of the tires. The forms will be made from setting pop cans in really stiff mortar. We finally start to use the many pop cans everyone has been donating to our non pop-drinking family!

My father, who recently sand blasted the outside of his log house, has got Katie started on collecting dry sand for us as we intend to sandblast our round beams for the house. Then, I’m going to stain them before we place them on the roof.

The big question is whether we will go past pouring the bond beam this season. A lot will depend on the weather. Two people this week have said an early cold winter but I think they were reading the same almanac, personally!

On the 17th we have another couple coming to help for 3-4 days. We should just be starting the bond beam then so they will be learning along with us! I think this activity will be very easy for the kids to involve themselves in; it should be like playing in the mud!

Here are some photos of today’s work!