The FIrst Year on... the Little Homestead on the Prairies, Part 3

Summer, Summer....Where Art Thou, Summer???
First off, my sincere apologies for the formatting. It's doing it's own thing, not mine.


Well, the weather guys were right; they all said that by the time summer was over, we would be wondering when it would start.  That's pretty much the way it was.

As Mudtime left and Springtime slowly advanced, we rejoiced to have everything finally start to dry out enough to get some real work done. The farmer we bought the place from had burned garbage on the land in a variety of places, leaving much cleanup of rusted metal, broken nails, plastic bits and glass to be done, even from the pastures!  Rusty barbed wire was strewn everywhere. Dead trees and rotting limbs had been revealed by the melting snow. Fences were falling down everywhere. 



One of the old wooden granaries half-rotted with time, was listing to one side like a drunken homesteader....

Bryan drove the truck into it and helped it fall the rest of the way down. He had fun doing that! Darryl would have appreciated it. Look very carefully at the picture on the right. See that collapsed building? Uh-huh. You can see it to the left in the picture with the horse and the pasture, too.

The injury I got from being run over by Wildfire (see last post) really put us behind schedule here on the homestead. Things were finally starting to dry out and be Spring - time to get some work done! - we thought, but no. The silly horse ran over me two days before we were supposed to plant the largest garden of our lives. The idea was to try and see if we could grow enough food to feed ourselves with the understanding that anything we gained was a bonus, since none of us were experienced gardeners. I had gardened years ago, but...that was surely done by someone else? It was an ambitious start, I admit, but we wanted a baseline, a good learning experience for what it would take (It ended up taking a lot, but more on that later) if our lives suddenly depended on the food we could grow.

I ended up in bed with my foot elevated and the rest of me in recovery mode from being trampled on while Bryan and Cheri prepared and planted the garden. His hooves nailed me in several places....I was blessed to live to tell the tale, they tell me.  Eventually, I did get crutches, but meanwhile, my foot went from very bad to much worse; you don't want the details, trust me.
The garden was the biggest job we had undertaken so far, and I was no physical help whatsoever!

It was starting to be so pretty around the Homestead - bushes and apple trees were all in bloom - the colours were so wonderful. You would not believe all the birds we have had here! So many species came to visit and many stayed for at least a week or more before moving on.

This is just one of our apple trees. Unfortunately, the fruit are all so small, you can't do anything much with them.

I think we shall have to learn about grafting, and maybe graft a larger breed of apple onto the trees here. We have crab-apples as well, but again, they are quite tiny, but Bryan loves the flavour. 

This apple tree is beside the trailer but there are several other apple trees behind the trailer and over by the garden. 

It's June now and we should be looking at summer sneaking up on us, but we are still in a long, extended Spring - as per the forecast. Everything was so delayed because of the cold weather this spring! We are still in a solar minimum - hence the cooler temps with a lower energy output from the sun. We even planted the garden really late because it was so rainy and so cold for so long. Everyone was quick to assure us things were not going as usual as far as the weather went. 

We move here from BC and the weather goes to pot.

Figures!

We have a huge, lovely lilac in the front yard, near the road and I had been eagerly watching and waiting for it to bloom - I just love lilacs!! They are one of my favourite flowers... The lilacs were close to opening up their wonderful blossoms when Mike and I had to pack up and fly to Kelowna in mid-June so he could write his final exams for the year. By that time, I was still barely able to get around on my crutches, but imagining the huge kerfuffle they would cause at Security in the Airport, I left them behind with the lilacs that were almost ready to bloom. Argggh! I missed the lilacs entirely!

However, there were sweet joys awaiting for us in Kelowna...I got to see my dear son Darryl and His wonderful Bekah...and meet their first child, my newest Granddaughter!

Here she is, all sweet and precious as can be...

This is Sadie Anne.... isn't she adorable??  The Lord has blessed me with three beautiful Granddaughters - my quiver is filling up with them! Thank you, Lord! 

I spent most of my time in Kelowna still laid up with my lame foot, which really limited what I was able to do. I helped Bekah as much as I was able - I remember what it was like to be a new Mom, and be so tired all the time.  I spent most of my time up on the mountain on Darryl and Bekah's farm and didn't see all the friends I had wanted to, as my foot kept me from walking much of anywhere. I felt so blessed to see those I did, especially my best friend in Vernon! 

It was chilly up on the mountain for the first two weeks and I nearly froze, but after that, summer began in earnest. It even got hot enough - and my foot was healed enough - to swim in Carol and Trevor's pool one day. Sheer heaven! If the Lord should ever grant me the chance to live near a nice lake, I shall swim every day! Come summer, I want to live in the water. Seriously!! Always have. Every year, I wait all through the long, cold months for swimming season to arrive once more! It's hard when I can't swim much.

It was so peaceful up among the trees on their mountain farm, far above the madhouse down below. I don't miss Kelowna one bit. Great place to visit, and I do like K-Town, but......no thanks.

I'll take a quiet grove of trees with filtered sunshine over shopping malls and mega-highways any day!

I must be a country girl at heart....

I got a real kick out of watching Darryl and Bekah's chickens every day. They had lots of entertainment value! I especially enjoyed their cheeky rooster, Roger....who had...issues, shall we say. This is Roger here. See his beautiful, colourful tail feathers, the pride of every self-respecting Rooster?

Me neither.

Like I said...he has issues.

He always wanted to chase me and challenge me. That was interesting! I always won those little contests, though! 

 I have to say, the very best eggs I ever had in my life were the eggs I ate while I was here.

If you live near them, buy their eggs! You'll thank me for this advice, trust me! These eggs are even better than ours, although ours are good, too.

We have all really come to enjoy real food from a farm - not factory produced! - and oh, such a difference that makes in flavour! Modern Canadians just don't know what real food is supposed to taste like any longer. Most of the food we get in supermarkets has been modified for ease of picking, or durability in transport...not flavour. And of course, everything is picked before it is ripe, when most of the nutrients are added to the plant's makeup...oh - don't get me started! At least, not today!

Mike was able to see his best friend a couple of times while we were there. It was so good to see him enjoying himself with his buddy once more.

Early July found us back on a plane and headed for the homestead once more, leaving our dear family and friends - and summer - behind. It still felt like mid-June here. Normally in July it gets up to 38C or 40C, rather like Nelson in the Kootenays.

We weren't back on the Homestead for many days before a major forest fire erupted near Darryl and Bekah's farm, causing them to do an emergency bug-out. 

While the fire came close, their place was untouched, praise the Lord. You can read about their experiences on  RafterMRamblings - a very good read, I must say.

Here is a photo from that time. Very aggressive fire behavior was evident from the start. I wasn't sorry to miss this! Also, a second major fire started on the same side of the lake and burned towards West Kelowna. 

While we were gone, Cheri and Bryan had bought a small, very much needed yard-sized tractor to help with farm jobs on the homestead. It came with all sorts of great attachments; a mower, a snowplow blade, a tiller - all things we desperately needed to get things done on the farm. However, by the time I got home, it was barely working and died altogether soon after. Such a great disappointment that was! We had to go back to doing everything by hand. And back. (groan...)

Summer had finally arrived here as well, but it wasn't a very warm one. Most days were cool to warmish - but perfect for working outside! Bryan gave up looking for work as there was none to be had, and worked around the farm. He built new fencing for more pasture, finished clearing away junk, built nesting boxes for our chickens...from dawn to dusk, there were jobs to do. 

Nearby fields were blossoming now and I so enjoyed the colours! There were blue fields (flax), yellow fields (canola), purple fields (alfalfa?) and green fields (wheat and oats).

This is Kami in front of a field of flax.

 Tiny flax flowers

Bryan and Cheri took their holidays next and went west to visit family. Mike and I managed the farm while they were gone, weeding the garden and caring for the animals. I was certainly busy, trying to keep the garden going on my own. The weeds had tried a forced takeover while I was gone. It looked to me like they were winning.

Kaira had to say goodbye to the big guys before she left.

My sore foot and I were glad to see everyone when they returned. There was still so much to do. The weather remained stuck in mid-June, season-wise, with the odd couple of summery days thrown in here or there. 

We had a terrible invasion of potato bugs and spent hours every day picking off bugs, larvae and eggs from our potatoes. We spent hours weeding every day, too: well, Cheri did. I was only good for two or two and a half hours a day, while Cheri worked for three or four. I concentrated on some of the carrots and the potatoes.  I fought for those spuds! Some of our produce was ready to enjoy - we had great lettuce - the best we have ever eaten!! - and huge French Breakfast Radishes (see photo at left); an old and wonderful heritage variety: we ate lots of it! Everything tasted SO good! 

The rest of the summer was taken up with gardening, animal related chores, small building projects and of course, fencing took a very long time, as Bryan did most of the work on his own. Still no jobs to be had in the area...

At the end of the summer, Kami turned 6.... Mike turned 18. Kami started school in grade 1...Mike is working on his Grade 12 with the Christian Online School in Kelowna. 

We still had lots to do and fall was coming. August was nearly over and summer had not even begun... that's what happens when you have been in very deep and long solar minimum. I remember thinking that winter would be tough again this year for09/10.... but it's to soon to think about that...at the end of August!

Stay tuned for the final part of Homestead Happenings, part 4, in the next few days.

The First year on…The Little Homestead on the Prairies, Part 2

Spring has sprung....mostly...sort of....

 Spring was our season of impatience.  We were impatient, because it never seemed to fully arrive, although it made several broken promises to appear.  It was preceeded by a season we are still trying to name. For now, we shall refer to it as, "Mudtime."  It would rain, then snow...rain a bunch, then snow a bunch.  Rain some more, snow some more. 

In Mudtime, everything is brown; light brown, medium brown, dark brown, with last year's dead, brownish yellow weeds thrown in for local colour. Oh, and it's muddy.  Very, deeply, bog-you-down-muddy.  Even the ponds are slate-grey in Mudtime.  I didn't take a single picture until Mudtime was over last year.  At least we finally got a good look at our land - it's pond, and other features.

We were impatient to see something green, or orange, or some other colour.  We were impatient to get working on the land, putting up fences and getting things organized the way we wanted them.  We were certainly very impatient for the mud to dry up and go away!  Eventually, the grass became the richest, most amazing deep emerald green and all the ponds and sloughs turned a very deep, brilliant sapphire... it was so amazing!  It was as if the same, bright sapphire colour of the waters of creation were suddenly present here - quite the notion, I know!  But, the colours were so utterly amazing.  Cheri and I marveled at them.  

The buds on bush and trees stayed stubbornly shut - forever, it seemed, no doubt protesting the frequent snows that accosted us all.  Then one day, when the girls and I were driving to the big city, suddenly it happened all at once: everywhere, all together, on one single day, the leaves all burst open their buds, spliing forth their rich, emerald green leaves, everywhere on every bush and every tree... all at the same time!  We were SO excited!

One treat happens during this time of year; the migratory bird flocks return - and a good portion of them go by our neighborhood!  We get ducks, Canada geese, and snow geese, to name a few.  Watching a flight of geese go overhead that numbers in the thousands and stretches as far as the eye can see in either direction... now that's impressive!  Snow geese in particular seem to enjoy the hospitality of our land, and this neighborhood in general.  This is Doran and Kami watching the snow geese prepare for the next leg of their journey.

In early spring, Cheri and Bryan bought their Arab horse Wildfire who turned out to be the "troubled youth" of the pasture.  He spooks easy, and is green as all get out - not like we were led to believe at all!  - But he has a good heart, and he loves anything young.

Cheri and Bekah (via the phone) have figured this fellow out, though, and there is a good plan in place to bring him along.  He has great conformation, and oh, he is SO amazing to watch... one's heart just lifts as he trots or gallops with his head held high, and his tail up, looking for all the world like some foreign-born horse-prince held captive in our pasture, running over the prairie grasses!

Of course, this is the same fellow who ran me over in a blind panic and put me off my feet for 2 months with one of the injuries that I got from it... still have the scars on my foot, but hey, I got off easy.  It came close to being much worse.

Mid spring, we acquired our Dexter cows; two heifers, (Dixie and Daisy) with calves (Rosie and T-Bone) at foot.  Dixie is our only full-blood Dexter; Dixie is half Gelveigh.  Both calves are mixes as well.  Dixie will be the "genesis" of our eventual herd, if our plans hold.  Often plans are subject to change without notice, we have discovered, so we shall see!

Daisy soon proved herself to be a terrible bully in the pasture of anything and everyone near her.  She actually used to stalk us people.  Trying to sneak up on us and bowl us over.  Of course, we naturally would have to have a predatory cow!  I have had to whack her a few good ones and chase her a few times to give her the idea that I am the alpha and not her.  She respected me once we had a few run-ins, but I had to watch her.  She has made great hamburger, I must say.  We butchered her and the calves this December just before Christmas, leaving Dixie as the solitary cow for now.

Next we got our first chickens, an endangered heritage breed called Chantecler.  They are a Canadian chicken, originally bred by a monk in Quebec to withstand our cold winters and to be good layers, even during the dark months.  They arrived as tiny balls of yellow fluff, and they grew so quickly.  This is Kami with a young chick.

Aren't they cute?

Here they are as awkward teenagers...

 

...And as Adults this winter.

The big guy in the foreground with the fancy tail is one of our two surviving roosters (we ate the others) with one of his many wives in behind.  The brothers get along just fine and seem to have no problems sharing guard duties...or anything else.

Right now we are getting 8 eggs a day on adverage, and no longer need to buy eggs at the store!  Soon it will be a dozen a day... wanna buy some farm fresh eggs?

Stay tuned for part 3 : Summer Summer, Where art thou, Summer?   Coming soon!

the first year on....The Little Homestead On The Prairie Part 1

As promised, here is the first installment of the Christmas Letter from 2009 I couldn't bear to chop the photos out of...

Homestead Happenings, 2009 Part 1
Dear Friends and family,
As I sit and begin this letter, I pause and look out my window at the bright sunshine glistening on the apple tree just outside my bedroom window and reflect on this past year in our new lives. It has certainly been a year of great adventures and lots of joy, & a few struggles mixed in for flavour.

(The above photo is one of our first sunsets after we moved
to the farm)

Last Christmas found our extended family newly separated from friends and relations, beginning this grand adventure alone on the Prairie for what would later prove to be the harshest winter in anyone’s memory with more extreme cold weather events - well, we broke a lot of records, they say. I think somebody ought to have designed a T-shirt, but then I was born a BC girl. Out here, it's just another punch you roll with....

We settled in quickly with winter hard upon us, doing what we could to stay warm (our furnace died a week after Christmas!) We thanked God we had been able to get a woodstove installed 3 days earlier!


(Photo left: Cheri admiring our woodstove this November with Kaira in the foreground)

Our other big struggle was to keep water flowing – this was later to prove to be the greatest challenge - that, and draining water out of things again, as our drains all froze up solid!

Eventually, after constantly loosing water in the house and having pipes freeze up, burst, get replaced and then repeat the process a few days later with the next cold snap, it became clear that surviving was Bryan’s first full time job – and with us working all day alongside him! Keeping clean and doing laundry became very hard. When we weren’t working on trying to thaw water pipes, we were trying to dig up potential firewood from under the snow, drag it back to the yard site by human muscle power, buck it up with our chainsaw, all while keeping ourselves shoveled out. Every time the wind blew, our long driveway got buried. It takes 1 person about 6 hrs to clear a deep snowfall, or a deep drifting event from our driveway. Three hours with two working at it. Longer if the wind is filling up the driveway as we empty it!

Exhilarating!
Sound like a bunch of Klingons, don’t we?
“Today is a good day to WORK! “ Kaplagh!
(that means “success!" in Klingon ~ did I mention we are star Trek fans? ) Of course, I can talk...I stayed in and watched the kids and kept the fire going. ;-)


We gave up altogether on the water issues after a long and very, very cold Arctic front blew through near the end of January '09 and froze everything for everyone everywhere (not just us) in the region – even the water cistern in our cellar froze as well as the water pipe coming in from the road that was buried seven feet down for protection! During that storm we lost our second water pump of the winter – dang things don’t like getting frozen and they are very expensive!

(Photo Above: Cheri and Kaira with Doran leading the way going to get firewood from our pre-cut stash)

Obviously, this was a battle that was impossible to win so we gave up and we lived pioneer style for quite some time after that. We were without water at all for about two solid weeks at one point (our longest stretch) during which we melted snow for drinking water and washing dishes, cooking and so forth. Just try that sometime – you get so little water for all the snow you melt, it’s very surprising - astonishing, really - and a lot more work than you would suspect.

When things warmed up enough that water was at least flowing into the house again, it became clear that the whole water pipe system under the trailer where there was NO insulation was totally ruined. Again! After three days of fruitless effort on Bryan's part to even begin fixing the hundreds of leaks, we were getting nowhere. So we said to heck with it and left it that way.

Once the cistern and the incoming water pipe under the road thawed in a "warm period", we lugged water upstairs in big jugs for the rest of the winter – I think they are 5 gallons or 16 liters….very big things. We heated water in my canning kettle and stock pots for washing dishes, baths and so forth. Bath day was a real event; it took all day to heat enough water to wash 6 people. Gone very, very quickly – down the half-frozen drains – went our city-notions about bathing every day. We would have done nothing else but lug and boil water all day every day for baths! There were many other chores to do besides lugging water all day. Now, don't expect me to have photos of this!

Well, OK. But just one!

(Photo Left: Bryan enjoying his turn in the bath while Kaira frolics nearby. Sorry, Bry! tee-hee!)

For the rest of the winter, we lugged water upstairs in big, blue jugs – I think they are 5 gallons or 16 liters….very big things. We heated water in my canning kettle and stock pots for washing dishes, baths and so forth. Bath day was a real pioneer style event; it took all day to heat enough water to wash 6 people. Gone very, very quickly – down the half-frozen drains – went our city-notions about bathing every day! There were many other chores to do besides lugging water all day. But oh, did we relish the delights of bath day! Such utter luxury to lower oneself into lovely hot water! Ah-h-h-h-h!

Cheri had an old-fashioned washboard with which we scrubbed small clothes like socks, undies, dishtowels and so on in the kitchen sink. My shoulders gave out on this activity after awhile as did Cheri’s. Trips to the Laundromat in a neighboring town half an hour away once a week to wash the rest of our laundry cost us a small fortune.

Learned something interesting though; if you want something really, really clean, use a washboard! It does a far superior job and the clothes come out much, much softer as well! Who would have guessed….

(Photo Below:Enlarge this to see how deep the snow was…abt. 3 ft. deep in the yard….deeper in the drifts. The picture does not really do it justice. Low snow year indeed!!! Picture taken from the North looking due South.)

We had more snow than we southern BC transplants are used to by far - and it was a “low-snow” year! We had just our shovels to clear our long driveway, and that proved to be another challenge last winter. We put some of the snow to good use, though, by piling it around the North and West sides of the trailer to help insulate it. Made me wish for snowshoes to get around in it!

We soon acclimatized to the drier cold here - it's so much nicer than the damp cold of the West Kootenay or the BC coast! Here are a couple of shots of us all playing outside in the snow on a day when it was -30C! It was a great day - no wind was blowing at all and it felt like -20C in Kelowna. Lovely weather to play in the snow!

Crazy as it sounds, it is so wonderful to be here – we fell in love with our new surroundings very quickly and began making friends in our new church in a nearby (small, rural) city and out here in the countryside. The warm hearts of the people here more than made for the cold winds that howled like banshee’s outside the thin trailer walls. Well, maybe a couple of exceptions, there...

You know, when I was a kid, I read books about life in the far North, and some of the authors mentioned an odd thing: the wind has a voice, they would say, again and again.

I sat in my warm house in southern BC with the snowflakes gently falling, and thought they were nuts, or using "artistic license". Balderdash.

Guess what?

..........................The wind has a voice.

Look for Part 2 coming soon!

Births are a normal part of life on a farm. Even ours - and I'm certain we will have one someday. Meanwhile....
This blog is being born for a number of reasons;
- I've wanted to do this for awhile. And why not? It might be fun!
- I have lots of opinions and more to say than I should for someone as young as I am (I'm only 56, after all ;-) Perhaps I shall learn....reticence through blogging? Restraint? Diplomacy? How to run faster scared than all of you....? ;-)
- I might learn something! Now there's a fine goal! (And high time, too!)
- What I know may be useful to someone else. Now that's a better goal...to help another!
- But the real reason I finally began this enterprise....(no, that's not a Star Trek reference...this time!) is...I can't get my Christmas letter from this past year with all the photos in it uploaded through regular email. And I can't bear to cut the photos and do a total rewrite. If this works, it will be on here soon.

Yup. there you have it. Now you know.

I should warn you about a few things. Firstly, I am a Believer in Jesus - or Yeshua (His name in Hebrew) as my Messianic friends refer to Him. My faith is a lifestyle, not a weekend fling or a weekly one-night-stand. I try to live a lifestyle that honors Him. Think of me as a Charismatic-Evangelical-Bible Believing-Messianic leaning-Christian and you will come pretty close to nailing who I am. I am serious about my Faith and how I live. I may even share some of this, eventually.

Secondly, I have a sense of humor. Really. Never mind. Moving on....
Actually, I don't take myself to seriously and I love to find the humor in situations. Just take my word for it.

God has blessed me with a wonderful family and some very tolerant friends. You know who you are!

I live on a small farm in the middle of nowhere, on the Canadian Prairies. Although this is the land of my Grandparents and great-Grandparents, I was born in the beautiful mountains of BC. I have been amazed to find all the beauty here that I have - so different from what I was used to, but here in abundance nonetheless. I want to share that with others as I write this, too.

Farming is a whole new adventure for us. None of us know how to do it. Plenty of comedy there! Oh, the mistakes we have made! But here we are anyway, learning how and becoming more self-sufficient in the process. Did I mention that we love our life here in the countryside on the farm? We cannot imagine living anywhere else but the region we are living in.

So that's a bit about me and this blog. Faith, farm and family - and fun along the way!