It never rains but it pours

The title of this post has both literal and metaphoric purpose.  As I sit at my kitchen table typing this blog, it is literally pouring down with rain (hence I'm blogging instead of completing the outdoor tasks Ian asked me to do today).  But it is also a reflection of life on the farm at the moment; once something goes wrong, everything seems to tumble down around you.

Regular readers of this blog will know that we've had quite a good transition to homesteading life.  We have worked hard, made sacrifices but achieved a lot.  That changed recently.  The major story is the fruit cage falling down under the weight of the snow.  This collapse triggered a lot of other things that have thrown us off track.  Firstly, the work that has gone back into rebuilding it.  The biggest thing to overcome was an attitudinal barrier for me.  The first day after it collapsed, I went around undoing all the cables that are for training the fruit trees and bushes along.  I'd only finished installing these 3 weeks earlier.  My arms ached tightening them all up and now they were aching again undoing them.  It was really hard to overcome the mental challenge of doing it all again!  Thankfully, Ian and I work well under pressure and have banded together, erected flood lights and laboured through the dark, snow and rain to rebuild the frame.  One week after the collapse, the entire 20,000 sq. ft. frame is back up.  We still have to replace the netting but it's a little less soul destroying seeing the fruit cage now.

The time wasn't the only cost of this rebuild.  We had to replace some of the timbers too.  Unbeknownst to me, the price of wood fluctuates depending on the US construction market.  Of course, timber is way more expensive now than when we purchased it the first time.  We still need to buy more concrete and other materials, I think the remedial work will cost us around $1500, which we can ill afford.  We are also really behind our schedule, we should have moved in animals and begun planting this week but everything has been put on hold.

I also have to acknowledge the friends that rallied around to help us, especially Kyle and Shenade Ingram.  Kyle came and volunteered his time to help demolish, paint and rebuild for four days.  Shenade collected Jess from school and cleaned my house.  Thank you Ingrams!

The dishwasher died about a month ago.  Followed by the tumble dryer.  Followed by numerous other seemingly little things that all add up to one big headache.  I've spent this week trying to focus on the silver lining.

Fruitcagegate: Although devastating at the time, thankfully it was empty (apart from the chickens who miraculously escaped death by crushing).  If this happened in five years time, it would have destroyed $1000's of dollars worth of fruit trees and bushes.  We are now able to make a more accurate risk assessment for the rebuild and take steps to ensure we are never in this position again.

The dishwasher is turning out to be a blessing in disguise.  I quite like washing up.  I stand at the sink looking out of the window planning and musing about farm issues.  Two deer wondered passed the window today which was just beautiful to observe and was a reminder as to why we chose rural life - far nicer to look at marauding wildlife than gangs of marauding youth!

The other upside is the closeness it evokes within the family.  With one of us washing and another drying, we are literally close in the teeny weeny kitchen space but also we talk.  Lauren and I have been chit chatting about friends, school, the farm and even politics.  I think we'd forgotten to do a lot of talking as she turned an Internet obsessed teenage and I became busier.  But now we find ourselves in a small space discovering pleasures in each others company again.  I now relish this time without distraction.  Even Jessica is learning the value of helping with chores and asks to help dry the dishes after breakfast.  It's heartwarming to see the girls take responsibility for helping.  We're not going to replace the dishwasher and might use the space for an extra cupboard or even try and remodel the existing kitchen a bit.

The tumble dryer is another story.  I've been trying not to use it for a while now and dry the clothes on the line whenever possible.  And that's the thing. 'Whenever possible' turns into when it's raining, when I'm short of time, and a plethora of other excuses.  I'm learning that as long as I'm organized, I can dry clothes indoors when the weather is bad.  A clotheshorse in front of the wood burning stove is amazingly effective.  Tumble dryers are expensive to run so we're saving a fortune.  We've decided not to replace the tumble dryer either.

The offset of all this is my time.  I've talked about this before I think but my previous reliance on modern luxuries like dishwashers & tumble dryers was driven by convenience.  It's hard to manage a frugal lifestyle and a full time job!  But now this is my job.  When you consider the cost of going to a job (fuel, childcare, convenience items and easy food), I believe I'm saving us more than I could earn.  And that monetary value will increase as my homesteading role extends to growing and produce.  Somebody said I was a housewife which a disdainful and patronising tone last week, which made me laugh.  Well I'm not sure there are many housewives that can operate the kind of power tools I can or have the carpentry skills I'm acquiring, but whatever.  I know the value of my time here on the homestead may not yet be making us financially better off but all our lives are richer.

Housewife, eh?

As for the other things that have failed, broken, given up, well it's nothing we can't manage really.  It's amazing how creative you become when you walk away from a throw away society and mind set.  And so it's time.  This is it.  The point in my transition that I have truly become a homesteading hippy. :-)

Cathy and Ian, circa 2064, probably. :-)

Diary of a disaster, day 2.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was horrid.  I'm certainly feeling the effect in my aching body this morning.

After I got home from taking the girls to school in the morning, the cage had collapsed further.  The top layer of netting and snow was on the ground.  My concern was that I could only find 20 chickens and had to assume the rest were under the collapsed structure.  I spent the next 2 hours trying to locate them.  Some were out on the lot and some had walked into little hiding places under the net.  I found the last five after two hours of searching.  They were trapped in little air pockets.  I can't believe they all survived and feel so relieved.  I did however managed to almost get myself trapped rescuing the last chicken when the wood that was holding her little air pocket gave way and came crashing down on top of me.

Ian came home from work at the point and we set to work clearing.  One of the myriad of emotions we were experience was embarrassment about the collapse.  We reflected that part of our error was to try and save the entire cage the night before by clearing snow from the top.  If we had just cut the nets and let the snow fall through, we would have lost some netting but saved the rest of the structure.  However, during the clearing process we found the root cause of the collapse.  One post and it's concrete base had lifted out of the dirt suggesting that it was the ground that gave away first, not the structure.  This made Ian feel a bit better as the architect and builder of this project.  We were also finding that not much of the wood had broken, and so can be reused.

His relief soon ended when as we started to put the outside layer back together.  Ian dropped a piece of 2x6 lumber from the top, right onto my head as I was bending down.  A quick trip to the walk-in clinic for the all clear and then back to work.

We have now got almost half of the outside posts back up and the snow cleared off the netting.  I will carry on today clearing and prepping for the rebuild.  Ian has gone back to work.

Yesterday was certainly hard but we learned our lessons and have done enough to see a way forward.  There were certainly some tears, anger, frustration and self loathing flowing throughout the day.  It's so disheartening to see all the hard work lying on the floor and knowing that we have to do it all again but we feel relieved that it can be saved.  I wouldn't exactly refer to this as a 'Phoenix from the flames' moment but there is a small spark of fire.

We were extremely touched by the outpouring of support from people.  Although there is not a lot people can do until we make it safe, we had lots of offers of help during the day.  You really get to know who your friends are during challenging times.  Thanks you to all that contacted us yesterday with offers of help and words of support.  We will always remember how your kindness picked us up and motivated us to keep going.

The post that came out of the ground bringing the rest of the structure down.

Repairs underway.  Believe it or not, this is progress.

Winter attacks!

It’s been a while since my last post and that’s a reflection on how busy life has been recently.  As you may remember, I took a seasonal job in Old Navy to keep me busy during the ‘quiet winter period’ on the farm. Pfft!  Winter has not brought rest.  Ian erected flood lights and we just carried on working in the dark, after the day jobs.  Old Navy has been good for me though.  I quite enjoy being around people who are constantly happy.  I’ve enjoyed making new friends that aren’t poultry and the light, fun atmosphere.  I’ve even enjoyed that madness that comes with sales and the quiet solitude of losing myself in sorting a heap of clothes balanced precariously on a table.  The whole work thing is proving a bit of a challenge for me personally though.  Trying to juggle a civilized work environment with rural farm life has presented both comic moments and feelings of failure.  For example, there was the time I was so rushed to get the school run done, buy chicken feed and get to work before 9am that I forgot to change out of my farm footwear!  I parked outside Old Navy only to be hit by the realization that I had boots on that were covered in paint and chicken poop.  Luckily for me, Old Navy is right by Walmart.  What I should have done is go and buy a cheap pair of shoes but my flustered brain did not choose that logic.  Instead I went and purchased some Brillo pads and cleaned my Hunter boots.  Also lucky for me, Hunter boots are quite fashionable at the moment and so when I strolled into Old Navy in my Hunters, a coworker said to me “I just love your style, the way you rock the country chic look is awesome”.  Well thank you naïve sole.  I love being an accidental style icon!

There has been quite a bit of progress on the farm as well as some harsh realities.  We have extended Chickingham Palace and there are additional occupants.  We now have 41 birds.  For those of you interested in chicken breeds, we have Caramel Queens (our only non-heritage breed), Coronation Sussex, Australoops, Amercaunas, (the blue egg layers) & Leghorns.  We also got 3 bantams (2 girls and a boy) for Jessica to tend to and enjoy.  We’re getting around 18 eggs a day now in a beautiful array of colours including white, hues of pink, brown and blue.  Despite plummeting temperatures and snow fall we have not lost any birds and although egg production slowed down during the cold spell, it didn’t stop.  I hate to gloat but this has made us feel good, especially as our experienced farming neighbours have significantly less eggs from the same amount of birds.  It’s really not about competition, but it certainly boosts our confidence that we are doing ok with the livestock.

The extension in progress

We built an asparagus bed in front of the barn extension as this is an area that gets a lot of sunlight.  I almost sustained serious injury (well, to my pride at least) during this endeavour.  I was filling the bed with compost (my home made compost!) when I went to push a lump of soil with a rake.  The lump was not moving and I had my legs against the wooden perimeter.  The result of me pushing unmoving soil and having no leverage resulted in me pushing myself backwards over the edge of the bed, much to Ian’s amusement.

Ian’s friend was looking for somewhere to park his excavator between jobs and so we struck a deal.  He could bring it here & we could use it.  And so we have started levelling out a plot for a hot house and excavating the site of the duck pond.  We’ve also started the pig and goat house in the front paddock.

Laurica Farm has had another opportunity to present itself as a master of social gatherings, this time in the form of Jessica’s 6^th birthday party.  On a beautiful sunny day at the end of November, 20 kids and their parents descended on us.  I had planned numerous party games to amuse the kids but they just turned into a wild, marauding bunch of squealing and laughing animals.  So we just left them to it.  We called them into the heated barn to feed them and sing happy birthday but then just left them to enjoy the fresh air.  There were a few tired kids by the end of it!  It’s a privilege to hear to sound of kids experiencing unconfined joy (right up until someone fell into a satellite dish of frozen water).  The other thing that brought me pleasure that day was to see the parents stay.  Some of these people we know well but some we have had limited contact with.  Everyone stayed at the party and had a glass of wine and some snacks by the fire pit.  That’s what this little piece of land excels at; making people relax.

There have also been some side projects here at the farm.  Ian built a custom stage for Jessica's school which look fabulous.  Also, we've been commissioned by our neighbours to build a cart for the farmers markets.  I hope that Ian takes this as a real compliment.  This piece of work was commissioned based on them seeing what he had created here on the farm.  I've also started working on blending some medicinal teas, to be marketed in the new year.  It's great to have these opportunities, but once again requires us to push ourselves to the limits.  

It was all going so well until the snow came this week.  Despite popular perception about snow in Canada, here on the West Coast around Vancouver, we really don’t experience much extreme weather.  In fact, the 6 inch fall that came this week is probably the most snow I’ve seen in this area since we moved to Canada.  However, it was enough to expose some weaknesses at the farm and keep us panic working until late on cold nights.  The 6 inches of snow sat on top of the fruit cage netting creating a white ceiling of snow pillows.  To be fair, the netting has held up fairly well but some of the weaker timbers that we didn’t finish bracing in the summer buckled.  Nothing broken but we do need to do some remedial work on the fruit cage.  We also lost the old lean-to roof at the back of the barn.  No harm done really and that can wait.

What this period has taught me is not to spread myself too thin.  By embracing Farmageddon, we’ve chosen a lifestyle.  It’s a lifestyle that has many rewards but demands everything.  We can flirt with other pursuits but we must stay committed to our little homestead.  We must ride the ups and downs of our relationship with farming and give ourselves completely to make it work.  Sorry Old Navy but you won’t be getting me back next Christmas.

Growth and Loss

It’s been a while since my last post, sorry about that but things have been quite busy around here.  Ian and I have had to assume the roles of farmers, builders, animal rescuers and undertakers, and social butterflies.  We’ve also finally had a well-deserved break, taking 4 days in Whistler.  The theme ‘growth and loss’ runs through the elements that I want to talk about…farm, animals and people.

Let’s start with farm.  Growth has come in the form of the fruit cage and the barn.  When Ian proposed his plans for a fruit cage, I envisaged something about twice the size of the average garden greenhouse.  Once again I underestimated the scale of Ian’s plans.  The frame of the fruit cage is now up, painted and concreted into the ground – what a day of hard work concreting was.  We drafted in our good friend Kyle to help, I’d like to say he volunteered but it was more like he was voluntold to get up here.  We wouldn’t have managed without him.  Thanks Kyle.  All that’s left to do to the fruit cage structure is netting the sides and top.  We’ve managed to acquire some netting from a construction yard for $300.  The frame interconnects with the chicken coop so the chickens can roam free in the cage, foraging and fertilizing as they go.  This should keep them busy for a while as the finished size of the cage is 160ft long x 100ft wide x 16ft tall!

The ‘loss’ is in our schedule.  The building of the cage has taken so much time and resource that we have missed our window of opportunity to plant a winter cover crop.  We’re just not ready to do this and, once again, are running out of money to plant this huge area.  We’ve been back to the drawing board.  We’ve found someone who wants rid of horse manure so we will use that and maple leaves from one of our big trees to create a natural compost that can be tilled into the ground.  Everything will be ready for planting in the spring.  Although, I found four apple trees on the sale table at a local nursery that can be planted fairly soon.  The weather here is surprisingly mild at the moment so we’ll get them in soon and then use wood chips from the tree we cut down last week to cover the roots and protect them from frost.  Although this veers away from our original plans, I am pleased with how it meets our values to reuse as much as we can and reduce waste.

The other farm achievement is the barn.  This is a very literal growth with a big extension on the side.  This fully insulated addition will serve as Ian’s workshop.  He has done a fabulous job of removing the original bevel cladding from the inside of the original barn and reusing it to clad the new addition.  It blends in perfectly; we’re really pleased with how it’s turned out.

The original barn has a new career!  When we moved here, it was very dilapidated and neglected.  It had been built as a cattle shed but had not been functional for a number of years.  Much to Ian’s annoyance, I had arranged a thanksgiving dinner in the barn…for 25 people!  In my mind this entailed cleaning out the junk and sweeping the floors in preparation.  Once again I underestimated the vision that Ian harboured.  On the Friday before thanksgiving, we started work.  The barn was emptied, striped of all internal walls and cattle feeders,cleaned, insulated and internal walls re-installed.  By thanksgiving on the Monday, 25 people sat down to an epic feast in a beautifully decorated barn that was warm and light.  It was a real success that we felt really proud of.

Moving onto animals, I nearly lost a chicken.  Although they have a sizable coop, the objective is to have them free-range.  Until the cage is netted, it’s not safe to let them roam free; I was reminded of this 2 weeks ago.  When I’m out on the farm, I let them out and they generally follow me around.  I was painting fence posts (again) and they were foraging about 10ft away.  All of a sudden I heard a frantic flapping; I looked up in time to see a red tailed hawk swooping down.  I jumped to their rescue but unfortunately was wedged between fence posts causing a complete wipe out.  Thankfully this commotion was enough to get the hawk to retreat to the top of a fence post of the fruit cage and give me time to herd the chickens back into the coop.  But there was another loss.  The skin from the front of my shin and my dignity from face planting into the dirt during my rescue attempt.  If hawks can laugh, that bird was laughing at me.  He did not see my fumbling, clumsy, bloodied self as a threat and so he waited there looking down at me with disdain as I shouted at him and waved my arms in a fruitless attempt to frighten him away.  In fact, he totally ignored me until I walked away, at which point he saw fit to try and take the dog.  More by luck than judgment he failed and Baxter lay quivering on the floor.  As I consoled the poor dog and wondered aloud if canines can suffer from PTSD, the hawk landed on the guinea pigs outdoor cage and started pecking at the mesh to get in!  This bird was relentless.  It’s a jungle out there!

The final animal loss came yesterday.  We had just returned from Whistler and had put the pigs into their outside run as the weather was glorious.  I looked at the g-pigs and stupidly thought Enzo was sleeping.  They do sometimes lie on their sides and snore, but Enzo was twitching.  Stupid me, I thought he was dreaming, kind of like a dog does!  To be fair, even Ian looked at him and we laughed at how he was sleeping.  Of course, when we went to get them in that evening, Enzo was cold and stiff and Elmo was crouching in the corner shedding little guinea pig tears.  Ok, that last bit about Elmo crying is not true, he was grazing around his dead buddy, but that sounds so cold.  So here we are, faced with coping with an animal death.  We decided not to tell Jessica until this morning and I spent all night worrying about how she would take it and questioning whether we were really tough enough to send animals off to slaughter in the future.  When Jess awoke this morning, we gently broke the news.  Before I started talking to her, I looked into her little face and I welled up.  Here I was, about to break my little girls heart.  But apparently I have raised cold-hearted children because all she said is “Yes! Now I only have to look after one of the little buggers”.  I overlooked the use of choice words in this circumstance and all of a sudden, as Jess and I hugged, I realized that I was not consoling her, she was consoling me.  She rubbed my back and hugged me and reassured me that we would be ok.  Guess it’s just me that has to toughen up!

RIP Enzo

And so onto people.  Mainly Lauren.  Ian and I have been musing on how she has blossomed.  Lauren has a calmness and air of contentment about her that we haven’t seen before.  She’s obviously still wearing her teenage stropiness like a badge of honour, but she’s mucking in and helping on the farm.  She’s looking after Jess when we’re super busy, she’s bringing us tea and cakes while we work and she’s showing her true colours again of being a kind, helpful, considerate and funny young person.  Whatever we grow on the farm, nothing will be as rewarding as that growth.

As I read this post back to myself, it makes me surprised that we have any time to farm as we’re are far too busy building fire pits and renovating barns into dining rooms.  It also has made Ian and I talk about the future.  Obviously the plan is to farm but there’s also a social element that I don’t want to overlook.  We are good at bringing people together, even if I do say so myself.  We enjoy it and work well under pressure and we're finding that people want to be here.  It would be a shame not to utilize that.  It has brought forward a plethora of ideas about hosting wedding, buying yurts as accommodation, providing education farming holidays, building a farm kitchen and café……  The list goes on.  But what I really love is that the ideas are happening organically.  Like everything on this farm.  Whatever happens will evolve because it feels right.  Having no set plans worried me at first, but now I find it liberating.  It feels like our plans ebb and flow with the land and with our own personal growth.  I can’t tell you what the next project will be, but I’m damn sure you’ll enjoy it when you visit.