The trial hit a slow patch this week due to a sick juror and legal wrangles between lawyers, but we did hear from Sandy Humeny, Robert Pickton's ex-sister-in-law, who described Pickton as linguistically very plain.

She said a conversation with him required no big words or anything above his very minimal vocabulary level. This diminished capacity to understand seemed to even get in the way of him fully understanding what it meant to be diagnosed with Hepatitis C back in 1999.

Sandy said she moved on to the property in 1973 and lived there for five years, having two children with Dave Pickton - a boy and girl. Even after she and Dave broke up, she would be around because of her involvement with the various businesses they ran.

This week we also heard from a neighbor of Pickton's, Cameron Grant, who has lived on his farm since 1970. He testified there was always a lot of activity on the farm, which he drove by usually very early when he returned from moving bees, which he kept on his property. He stated he never saw anything unusual going on at the Pickton property at that time.

Also on the stand this week was Lorne Loewen, who has worked for Dave Pickton since 1996. Loewen talked at length about his job with the top soil business, and spoke to the fact that he started each work day around 6 a.m. by knocking on Pickton's trailer. He said the two would chat while he was picking up his first order of the day and would be in and out of the trailer throughout the day as he picked up orders. Loewen concurred with previous testimony that the Pickton property was constantly busy with people on and off it frequently.

In fact, he said Dave Pickton would ask him to lock the gates to help with the theft problem and constant flow of people. He would compare the constant activity to having the air of a "yard sale, people coming to buy cars and top soil" and also spoke of "people coming in and out, sort of undesirable people, coming in cars trying to sell you something or looking for Willie."

While learning the finer points of the top soil business can be absolutely riveting, it did me wish for the days of tedious days and boredom of learning about DNA.

Just a quick reminder: Pickton faces a total of 26 murder charges relating to the missing women from the downtown eastside. The current trial is dealing with six of those counts - beginning on November 29, the Judge will start dealing with the remaining 20 counts Pickton still faces.