photo of the day

Yay! Hot Water!

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We had a wonderful visit tonight with my oldest brother and his wife, whom we have not seen yet since our arrival.  They were the ones who had managed to do so much before we arrived.  Looking at what the state of things are now, we readily acknowledge how much worse it was before, and really appreciate their hard work.

This brother is a real meister fixer, just like our dad was.  He can put his hand to just about anything and be able to do it, build it or fix it.

Well.

During the visit, the problem of our hot water came up. It’s a perplexing one, since the tank is obviously working enough for us to have hot water in the morning, but once it was gone, it was gone for the rest of the day.

So he and I checked it out Continue reading →

Slaying the paper monster

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I like to think we made good progress today. The office is basically done; what’s left is stuff that needs to go elsewhere, not sorted or packed.

Then my daughter and I tackled a stack of boxes in the second floor hallway.  These had been stored in the laundry room until the hot water tank died, flooding the floor enough to damage a couple of them before I caught it and hit the shut off valve.  After cleaning up the mess and getting the tank replaced, they just never made it back into the laundry room.

I have discovered something about myself today.

Apparently, I never throw out bills.

Or notices.

Or bank statements.

Or receipts and newsletters and classroom materials or forms…

These boxes were still unpacked from our last move, when we went from a 3 bedroom townhouse to the 5 bedroom townhouse we are in now.  There was 6 of us at the time. Of all my moves, this one was the worst. We all got sick with colds and what should have taken a leisurely few days became a week that ended with us just throwing things into boxes and bins and dragging them over the half block to our new home.

We had a very large desk back then, and it would not fit with the new layout, so we passed it on.  The contents got thrown into boxes, but we never had a place to unpack them. So in the laundry room they sat, virtually untouched.

Until today.

As my daughter and I went through them, almost everything went into bins or bags for garbage, recycling, Goodwill or ReUse Centre. Oh, and the Eco-station. We seemed to collect old power and USB cables and cords.  Almost nothing was kept.

By far, the largest portion had to be shredded. I found old utility bills from before we moved into the Co-op. There were credit card statements for cards we haven’t had for years. Some of the utility bills were the first to encourage people Go! Online! to pay their bills.

I was even finding hand written prescriptions from 2003-2004, when we lived in another province.

And tax stuff that should have been shredded years ago.

The tax stuff made sense, but why did I keep all those classroom materials from when I taught crochet? I haven’t taught formal classes in over 5 years!  Class outlines. Sign up sheets. Pattern notes. Evaluation forms.

So. Much. Paper.

Some of it made sense to keep for a few years, and since they were in the boxes, there they stayed. But much of it, I don’t know why I kept them.  Shredding from just these 4 boxes filled about 5 garbage bags!  And there was still the stuff that went into recycling. Plus, this is after many, many more bags of shredded paper from the office and even some ground floor stuff.

As stressful as this move is becoming, finally slaying the paper monster is turning out to be a huge benefit.

The Re-farmer

One down

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Well, it’s official. I have completely finished clearing one room on the second floor. (My daughter has pretty much finished the entire 3rd floor.) It is now going to hold boxes that are packed and ready for the movers, as well as a few other things.  Not the box spring in the photo, though.  It’s damaged, and is waiting to be hauled out, along with two others we discovered were broken.

One of the things my mother dangled in front of us to entice us to move was the offer to pay for the movers.  She has followed through with that promise, to our great appreciation.  It simply would not be possible, otherwise.

The problem is that, because of the shortened time line, things we expected to be able to set money aside for slowly, over several months, aren’t going to happen.  What we have is it. There is no more coming in until after the move. Our total of funds must not only cover the cost of the movers, basic living expenses (like groceries at both ends of the move), stocking up on prescriptions until we can get a new doctor, etc, but also the extra costs in fuel for the drive out, travel food, and those million and one little things that add up, unexpectedly. I’ve moved often enough to know what to expect.

Movers charge by weight.  I got estimates based on the average weight for a 5 bedroom home, which is about 10,000 pounds.  We are going to a smaller home, so I got updated estimates for the smaller size, since we would have to pare things down.  Based on those numbers, we should be good. Even including the weight of our heirloom piano, plus surcharges for the piano and the (soon to be empty) aquarium.

Then I got two in home estimates. One by estimated weight, the other a flat rate.

Despite pointing out all the stuff we would NOT be taking with us (almost all the furniture, plus a lot of other stuff we would be getting rid of), we were still told the weight would be 10,000 – 12,000 pounds.  When I questioned that, I was told he had been doing this for 20 years and was sure, based on experience.  I also asked for the cost of a full pack, which was based on the same weight. The base cost alone was more than we have. The packing fee was completely out of budget.

The flat rate guy was actually a higher base cost, because he factored in the distance, plus packing fees were an hourly rate. And he estimated two days to pack everything.

We aren’t going with either company.

My older daughter and I have been purging like crazy. The only way to bring the cost down is to bring the weight down. Between the boxes and bins and bags we have already given away, donated, shredded and thrown out, I’m a bit surprised by how little is left to pack.  And some if it will be going with us in the van for the drive out, not with the movers. We will also be packing as much as possible ourselves, so that if there is anything left for the movers to pack, it won’t add more than a couple hundred dollars.

In my head, I know there is no way this move is going to be 10,000 pounds. I doubt we were ever that much to begin with.  We should be fine.

That isn’t stopping me from being in an almost constant state of low anxiety over it.

For the most part, I can look at the explosion that is the current state of our home, and know that most of what we are sifting through is not going with us. Intellectually, I know we will be fine.  And I know I tend to over estimate. The last time we had stuff hauled between provinces, I had estimated the weight and figured the cost out to be $1000.  The reality turned out to be half that. But in the back of my head is that constant niggling paranoia.  Those two high estimates are completely overriding the much more reasonable estimates I got.

In the end, we will not know for sure until the movers go through the government scales, which is what they use to base the final cost on.

And that uncertainty is like a worm, wriggling away in the back of my mind.

All I can do is just keep on purging.

The Re-farmer.

Good Times… 

/ pboudrea01 / Leave a comment

So for the last twenty years or so, I’ve been at the he center of everything technological. Cell phones? I had the original brick, the palm pilot, a series of Blackberries, etc. Computers? I remember paying $1700 for a brand new *True Blue* computer with less processing power than my current watch. The true blue label indicated an “authentic IBM and not one of those evil clones that would come to dominate later.

Flash forward to today. Our new home has no cell coverage, no internet access so far, though we’re still working through that particular hurdle and I’m finding more and more excuses to come down to the local town’s Timmie’s to enjoy actual connectivity… (not that I’m going through withdrawal… I can quit anytime… I just don’t want to is all.

Oh, and if you look closely on the right, by the water bottle, you’ll notice my latest acquisition. It’s a phone modem. You see, The laptop I brought with me is relatively up to date, so it’s never even heard of dial up. I actually had to go looking for this thing fairly deeply.

The good side of all of this is that I’m *much* closer to family, on both sides, I’m getting a chance to say hi to one or two <COUGHSEVENCOUGH> barn cats and I’m catching up on some reading I’ve been putting off for a long time.

All in all, Life is good :)

Boubou

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The Trade Off – things we are gaining

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Deciding to move involved weighing the positive and negatives, and figuring out if it was worth giving up so much.  Here are a few of the things we will be gaining by moving out.

Family.

This was a big one for me.  Though the farm itself belongs to my own family, and my siblings all live within a couple of hours of it, my husband also has immediate family in The City, and we’ll be closer to family in yet another province.  In the last few years, the only trips we’ve been able to make to see family has been for funerals.  My husband hadn’t seen his family in years, and with his condition deteriorating, the road trips we used to make in the past were no longer an option.  Being at the farm means that my husband will be able to see his father more often.  With the medical emergency that had him flying out a week earlier than planned, that aspect of it really hit home.  So this one is a HUGE gain.

Quiet.

I’d made a couple of trips out over the years and stayed at the farm with my father.  Despite the fact that I was there for funereal reasons, the peace and quiet of the farm was soul healing.  I spent much valued time just sitting at the table with my father over a cup of tea, enjoying the peace.  I slept better there than I had in years.  I hadn’t even realized how bad my sleep had become until I finally got some good sleep.  My younger daughter, who has had constant sleep problems, has also found huge improvements while at the farm.  Even my husband, who is sleeping on a makeshift bed until the movers bring our stuff over, and is in constant pain, has mentioned being able to get better sleep.

Space.

While the house itself is smaller, we will have so much more space.  The main yard is huge.  There is the spruce grove that has prevented our getting internet.  A maple grove.  Fruit trees.  A huge garden area (we don’t plan to garden right away, but it’ll be an option), plus several smaller gardens closer to the house.  When we do reach the point of being able to garden, I intend to go with raised bed gardening for accessibility.  There is even a second house in the yard.  It wasn’t supposed to stay there, but my parents never got around to moving it to a more permanent location.  All that, and still lots of open space in the yard!

There are the usual outbuildings; barn, cattle pens and hay yards.  All of which are basically used for storage right now.  The land itself is rented out, so it’s not like we’ll be doing any actual farming, though there is enough land around the house and main yard that we could still probably get a few chickens.  My daughter will finally be able to get a dog, and we might even get some alpacas or angora goats at some point, for their fibre.  We would have the space to set up bee hives, if we wanted.  We shall see, after we’ve settled in.  We’ll have the land and space for it.  Heck, just being able to light up the fire pit and have a wiener roast, as I remember we did quite often when I was a child, is something we look forward to!

Financial.

This one is still a bit in the air.  The farm is my mother’s, but she can’t live there anymore.  We will be living there “rent free” in exchange for taking over the expenses.  The problem is, we’re only guessing at what those will be.  So while theoretically, we’ll save a lot of money by not having to pay housing charges (the housing co-op equivalent to rent or mortgage), there will be extra expenses that come from being so isolated, plus having to drive so far out for medical care. Personally, as long as we can stop slowly falling behind, as we have been in the city, I’ll consider it a win.  Plus, we’ll be saving my mother the expense, so it’s win-win for her and us.

No neighbours.

Introverts will understand this one. LOL

We will have neighbours.  There is actually someone living across the road from the farm.  I think.  The family that lived there when I was growing up are long gone, and I am pretty sure there is someone living there now.  I don’t imagine we’d ever cross paths unless we go out of our way to do so.  Plus, I have a brother that lives nearby.  “Nearby” in farm-speak, is about a quarter of a mile away.  All other neighbours are about a mile away or more.

Basically, it means we’ll only see people if we really want to.  I will certainly miss the friendships I’ve developed here; it’s the first time we’ve lived anywhere long enough for that to even happen.  But we will no longer have that ever present population of people around, whether we want to see them or not.  And it’s people that have been the major source of stress in my life.  Toxic people that I just haven’t been able to get away from, for various reasons.  It’ll mean getting away from threats and intimidation and manipulation.  It’ll mean those people will no longer have any say over our lives anymore.

Freedom.

This one is a bit harder to quantify.  We’ll have more freedom to make choices in our lives, simply because we won’t be in a housing co-op anymore (which are run by a board, committees and voting), and we won’t be renting (which means the owner makes all the decisions).  So we don’t have other people telling us what we can or can’t do within our own home.  We’ll be able to leave the curtains open and not worry about who can see in.  We can do things on the property without having to get permission from someone else, first.  Sure, we won’t actually own the farm, but the house needs work, and we’ll be a direct part of the process, rather than having to go along with whatever some board committee or landlord has decided we can have.  No more politicking to get improvements, and being fought or sabotaged every step of the way.

It’s all of that, and yet there is something more, that just doesn’t translate well into words.

 

Going back to move forward

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Have you ever had a point in your life, where the only way you can move forward, seems to be by going back to your roots?

Well, that’s what seems to be the point I’m at, now.

I grew up on a subsistence farm, the youngest of five.  I remember a time before we had running water or an indoor bathroom, and using a wood burning cook stove.  We had cows and chickens, sometimes pigs, geese and ducks (I was too young to remember the sheep) and any number of sundry creatures my parents’ city friends passed on to us (because there’s always room at the farm, right?).  We grew a lot of our own food, milked cows by hand, butchered our own meat and basically lived that “sustainable” life that’s oh-so-trendy right now.

After moving out, getting married, raising and home schooling two daughters, and moving more than a dozen times across Western Canada, we are now in an odd situation.

Since my husband has had to go onto long term disability, things have been challenging, of course.  Our daughters help as much as they can, any way they can, but as much of a blessing it has been to be on private health insurance for an income, a 40% cut in pay didn’t come with a 40% cut in bills.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, the family situation has left the old house unoccupied since before my father’s passing.  And empty houses do not do well.

So when my mother once again asked me if we could move into it, this time we said yes.

Which means we’ll be going from living in the downtown area of a sprawling prairie city, to a fairly isolated farm two provinces away.

Oh, and it’s a cell phone and internet dead zone.

But in the end, we feel that this is going to be the best thing for us, as a family.  Especially for my husband’s health.  At least that’s what we’re hoping for.

And so it is that, in order for us to move forward with our lives, we’ll be going back to my family home, and to a lifestyle that is going to be wildly different from what we’ve known for years.

It’s going to be an adventure, if nothing else!

The Re-Farmer