Confessions of a Homesteader

This week has seen a real start of working the land and preparing for what is to come.  Grass has been cut, fences have been moved, things have been planted, trees have been felled, and I’ve been doing what every homesteader does this time of year…preserving food.  Obviously we haven’t had much of our own produce to preserve this year apart from an abundance of blackberries but I did strike deals with local farmers and received a mountain of green beans and mini cucumbers.  I jammed the blackberries, experimenting with Chia seeds as a gelling agent thus avoiding artificial things like pectin, and I’ve pickled the beans and cucumbers.  We have enough pickles for eternity!  I like the occasional pickled onion – my Mum always used to lament about the time I was trying to steal one off her Ploughman’s lunch when I was about 2 years old.  I was so persistent she let me take it in the end thinking I’d spit it straight out and leave her be, but instead all she heard was “nom nom nom” as I tucked into the onion.  Anyway, I’ve never really experimented with other pickled veg until recently.  Thankfully, I really quite like it and I’m looking forward to preserving the excess of our own harvest next summer.  I’ve also been reading about the health benefits of pickling.  I didn’t know until this week that pickling is extremely beneficial to your digestive health.

Along with our productive week, there have been a few ‘hiccups’, of course.  We decided to mow the front paddock with the tractor.  Ian started it and I took over after he’d done a few circuits.  He told me that he had seen voles scurrying around as he was mowing and joked about their funny long noses.  Off I went, looking out for these strange creatures but only saw a couple.  After I’d mowed half the field, Lauren came out to do the remainder.  I passed on the information about the resident voles and stepped back as she pulled away.  As she started the tractor, something wet hit my face.  You know that moment, when you just freeze, scared to find out what the offending material might be…yeah, you guessed it, some mangled body part of a small animal had gone through mower blades and had been ejected all over me.  I looked around to realize it was total vole and slug carnage in the paddock.  The corpses lay strewed around.  So there I was, in the midst of a Farmageddon genocide.

That wasn't the only unwanted animal encounter, this time we were the ones at risk.  We set ourselves up with a camp fire, marshmallows and sticks ready to watch the meteor shower.  All was going so well, we saw the international space center pass over and it was fantastic quality time with the family.  But before we saw a single meteor, we heard howling.  We assumed it was coyotes and didn’t panic but decided to take the dog and kids in as they were extremely close.  As I was walking towards the house with the last few items, Ian turned around and stared at something.  I didn’t need to turn around to know what he’d seen was close.  He just about had time to utter “I don’t think they’re coyotes, they’re wolves” before I started running for the safety of the house.  I know, I know, a bit of an overreaction perhaps, but still, nature can be scary sometimes.

So another roller coaster kinda week, from feeling like we were achieving a lot to feeling that we’d taken on too much, and as always, this evokes some reflection.  It wasn’t until today that I teased out the message from our recent experiences.  It was the Insurance lady who had come to finalize some details that made the metaphoric light bulb come on.  Once she had lifted her head from her clipboard and truly started to look around, she began to do what everyone does when they come here, she oooo’d and arrrr’d and wowed.  It made me think back to when I worked in Social Care.  I always believed that you could support someone in a bad situation to make positive changes as long as they had even a tiny spark of hope.  If their hope was gone, the battle was lost.  One of the things that chips away at a person’s hope is their environment.  Too often did we venture into grim, dark homes and find the person inhabiting the stale space had lost all motivation.  And it’s that belief which makes me confident that we will succeed here.  We are so lucky to have this amazing environment.  A wonderful open landscape with a natural serenity and beauty about it.  It’s the environment that makes people ooh and arrr when they come here.  It’s the environment that keeps us working late at night.  It’s the environment that makes me want to pickle and preserve its offerings.  It’s the environment that makes me want to stay home instead of going out, that makes me happy and content and makes me want to share it with my friends.  And I truly believe that, no matter how many mangled animals splat me, this environment will keep us plugging away to make it work. 

Here’s hoping I still find it inspiring in the middle of a wet, gray Vancouver winter!

Bigger, better and far more fun.

This is week has been incredibly busy but very rewarding.  Firstly, Chickingham Palace is finished and looking very retro.  After we got the structure and chicken run up and painted we had to go begging for some cladding for their double insulated house.  I sent my friend Kirstin, whose husband Bruce works for a roofing company, a begging text.  Now this is the one thing I find difficult, making ‘the ask’.  Asking people for anything makes me squirm, and so after typing the specifics of what we needed in the text, I ended it with “SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FARMER”.  It worked!  We have corrugated cladding on our chicken coop at no cost.  This will now be my default line whenever I need anything.  Surely this technique of playing on people’s emotions is classed as psychological warfare?

The next big project is well underway.  Obviously we have prioritized, sort of.  There are many things we need to do.  We need to build an animal shelter, the barn needs remedial work, there are shelves to be built and land to be tilled.  However, all these tasks have come second to Ian building what is essentially a grown-up swing set.  I showed Ian this picture from the Internet:

Now we have one, almost.  But this is Ian Finley; ours has to be bigger and better.  Ours is hexagonal and will have hammocks as well as swinging benches.  The fire pit will not be a commercial, purchased one but rather hand made from reclaimed rock.  It is filled with reclaimed gravel, built with reclaimed timbers and crafted with love and alcohol.  We will have more seating than friends.

Talking of friends, this week has been a time for valuing existing friends (again) and making new ones.  I went to meet the neighbours behind us.  We knew they had some sort of growing operation and spotted a sign saying that they were open to the public on Sundays, so in I went.  How absolutely wonderful their enterprise, Glorious Organics, is!  Not only was I welcomed enthusiastically by “oh, you’re the people with THE chicken coop” but I was introduced to their cooperative and given unusual fruits, veggies and flowers to sample.  I left with an Ikea bag full of organic yumminess for $20 and an inflated ego knowing that our chicken coop was a thing of legend.

This weekend was a holiday weekend and we received offers of help from our friends.  I found it amazing that people wanted to give up free time to come and help us.  On Sunday afternoon, three couples plus kids arrived at Farmagddon to paint and construct.  It felt sooooooo gooooooooooooood.  Not only was this saving us time and effort but people were willingly investing their time in this little project of ours.  My heart swelled to see our friends sweating in the hot sun and covered in paint, cuts, bruises and mosquito bites.  Thank you to Martin, Erica, Shenade, Kyle, Travis and Kyla.  In exchange for services rendered we lit Ian’s homemade Texas BBQ (an oil drum cut in half, put on a stand and filled with charcoal) and served up homemade Alpaca burgers (the Alpaca farm is just a couple of blocks away) with bread baked in the Otter Co-op and organic salad and edible flowers from the field right behind us.

I also want to talk about growing, the thing we came here to do believe it or not.  Occasionally, but not very often, I get to talk to Ian, you know, when I’m holding something he’s nailing together or we’re washing paint brushes together.  The topic of conversation recently has been what and where to grow.  We know we want an orchard at the back right section of the land.  This will be netted at the top to protect from birds and other fruit stealing critters.  The bee hives will be here too for effective pollination.  I’m going to plant wild flower seeds in the orchard to make it beautiful.  The Royal Hens, Elizabeth, Victoria, Anne, Eugene, Beatrice and Georgia, of Chickingham Palace will be able to roam in the orchard during the day to forage and provide natural fertilizers.  The location is also near to the barn which will someday double as a brew house and kitchen….think craft cider and jams.

The veggies are presenting more of a challenge to our marital harmony, where to put them and what to plant changes daily.  Our continued discussions are largely irrelevant really.  We need to do some tests on the soil here to assess for nutrients and PH levels.  As far as we know the land has never been used for growing but it is quite sandy in places and very stony everywhere.  There is also noticeable differences in the soil in various places.  We can argue about the virtues of the back left section vs. the front paddock all we like but it is these tests that will determine the outcome.  In the meantime, I’m putting a few broad beans in a pot outside the back door as a gesture towards self-sufficiency.  Maybe when we have a swing set to swing on and our creativity is warmed by a hand crafted fire pit we’ll be able to make better decisions????!!!

We're jammin'

The big move is next Wednesday!!!!!!!  I hope you can gauge my anxiety by the excessive use of exclamation marks.  Actually, we're in pretty good shape as moving day approaches.  Everything except for beds and kitchen essentials is packed in a mountain of boxes.  It makes me feel both sad and liberated that our worldly possessions now fit into our garage.  It's strange to think that next time I write a blog post (hopefully a week on Friday), I will be a Farmer with my very own tractor and chickens.  It's amazing how quickly a transformation can happen.

Talking of transformation, I've just signed up for another workshop.  In keeping with my new lifestyle, I've registered for a Food Preservation Workshop.  That's right, cannin' and jammin'.  I'm thinking of taking my 13 year old daughter, Lauren, but I'm too afraid of her teenage mood swings to tell her yet.  I might post it on her Facebook page or Tweet her or something.  When I called to sign up this morning, I was told I need to bring "an apron, cutting board and a paring knife".  This evoked another "Oh f#*k" moment.  I don't own an apron, I do have a cutting board but it's marble and weighs about 1000 lbs and I had to Google paring knife.  Should go really well.

It's interesting though, when I talk about my newly acquired skills from various obscure workshops, it's met with mixed reaction.  My friends, the ones who know me really well, display reactions on a sliding scale...from smirk to uncontrollable outburst of hilarity. But others are excited, this lifestyle change doesn't appear to be as ludicrous as I feel when I talk about it.  There is a real change of attitudes out there.  The people who attend the same obscure workshops as me aren't what I thought (with the exception of well maintenance seminar where we were the youngest by 3 decades).  There's a real movement of late Generation Xer's and Y's out there recognizing the need for change.  The general feeling is that we need to preserve old fashioned skills and be equipped to provide for ourselves.  Of course, this group is peppered with some crazy.  I have listened to theories about the Zombie Apocalypse!  Oh well, whatever the future holds for humanity, I'll be ready with my excess jars of jam and canned tomatoes.  See you at my place!