It’s still hard to believe it’s been … only? … already? a year since we moved out here.
After finally being reunited, we didn’t have much time to rest. There were some unexpected runs into the city to get things like a small tank for our fish. Too late for them, unfortunately. Continue reading
The heat is on for the next few days, with some thunderstorms predicted by the end of the week. This will limit what we can do in the yard, and when, for a while.
After dropping my younger daughter off for her first shift at her new job, I decided to finish up the sun room. I’ve emptied it out completely, and mopped the concrete floor. I’d originally intended to take a hose to it, but there is nowhere for the water to drain.
I mopped that floor three times, with many changes of water. I swept it as much as I could, but there was just so much dust left behind!!
It is now drying, so I figured this was a good time to make a post. :-)
Yesterday was our day of rest, and I took advantage of it to just walk around, checking things out now that it’s all as green as it’s going to get, and thinking ahead.
After I finish with the area I’ve been working on for the past while, I intend to slowly work my way through the maple grove to the garden area.
There was a time when this space was a path to the garden. I think that stick next to the dead spruce tree is marking one side of where it used to be.
As you can see by the dead branches in the foreground, there’s more than dead spruces blocking the old path. There is where there are a bunch of maples that had been cut down, cut into pieces, then left there. I don’t know who started the work and then stopped part way through; for all I know, it was my late brother, which might also explain why it was left unfinished.
Before we can even start on taking down the small dead trees (the big ones will wait until we have a chain saw), I will have to clean up all the deadwood on the ground.
We’re going to have several years worth of fire wood for cookouts, by the time it’s done!
I squeezed my way through to check out the West end of the garden space. There, I discovered a huge mass of horseradish! My mother had told me she’d transplanted some there, but that the younger of my brothers had plowed too close to the pole and dug it up, so she transplanted it again, under a spruce three nearer the house. Clearly, she missed some, and it is thriving!
When I was younger, this area was pretty much all open. Now, there is a dense, virtually impenetrable wall of trees where I remember we once had a cabbage patch. From what I could see, along with the usual maple, elm and black spruce, I believe there is also some Colorado blue spruce and birch.
Unfortunately, the trees near the pole are tall enough that they are reaching the power lines! I think they are still clear enough, though, that we can safely cut them down without hitting the the lines. At the very least, we will need to thin the area down. It is so dense, everything is fighting for survival. I can tell quite a bit of it is deliberately planted, such as the Colorado blue spruce (not a native species) and the row of birches, plus the rows of black spruce, but I’m pretty sure there is quite a bit that is self sown. Some of the black spruces, perhaps, and most likely the maples and elms. I am hoping to save as much as I can; the birches look pretty good, but I will likely be removing 2 out of every 3 trees in the rows of spruces. Though just removing the dead ones might achieve the same goal. I would really like to save the Colorado blues.
A number of years ago, the Canadian government was encouraging people living on farms to plant more trees and shelter belts. They had a program where people could sign up and order all kinds of trees, shipped to them for free. I have no idea if this program is still available, but I know lots of people took advantage of it. I am thinking that this is how my parents ended up planting so many of the trees I’m finding, including the shelter belt outside of the yard, along where the cow fence is now.
After checking this area out, I took a look at the North fence line. At this end, there are a number of trees that look like they were deliberately planted, along with some obvious self-sown ones. There is a gap between the big trees and the fence line, which is good. I’d like to clear that gap, so that the fence is accessible. Once the lilac hedge starts, though, I couldn’t see the the fence line at all, and couldn’t tell if there was a space between the bushes and the fence. While walking along the lilacs to try and see, I did find a couple of chokecherry trees.
There are quite a few berries forming, though a lot of them seem to have insect damage to them. We shall see how they do throughout the season.
Eventually, I found a gap in the lilacs and went to see how close to the fence line they are and found…
… some mystery wire.
I have no idea what kind of wire this is, other than it is NOT fence wire. I can’t even see anything nearby that it might be from, or that might explain why it is here.
Something else I’m going to have to clear out and add to the haul-away pile.
The lilacs, meanwhile, are well into the fence line. Not going to be able to clear a path out. Ah, well.
As I was finishing up, I went past a bush my mother planted by the clothes line platform. I had ruthlessly pruned it down, because it was in the way of trying to hang things on the line.
It seems to have like the pruning, because it is now completely dense with foliage, and covered with flower buds, including one early bloomer!
Based on how many buds I’m seeing, by the time this bush is in full bloom, we’ll hardly be able to see any leaves at all; it’ll be a mass of white!
I’m rather looking forward to seeing that.
Well, I think the sun room floor has had enough time to dry. Now I have to decide what to put back, and what will have to go into storage!
By the end of the day, we should finally have a usable sun room. :-)
The Re-Farmer
Last night, the girls alerted me to a leak that started in one of the rooms upstairs.
Right near an outlet, too. So they shut down their computers and unplugged the power bar as soon as they could.
The water was coming in between the window box and the moulding. It was leaking out the bottom, too, for a while.
These windows were installed just this past summer. Wherever the water is coming from, it’s going into the wall, first. The girls crawled out to clear things a bit, and they found the wall itself was quite dry on the outside.
I emailed my brother about it and he thinks this has been an annual leak; we just happen to be here to see it. Even when my dad was still living here, the upstairs was hardly used and, in the winter, blocked off completely at the stop of the steps, to conserve heat.
It stopped leaking during the night, but now there is water damage to the nice, new window frames.
There is a similar water stain on the bottom of the frame.
So today, the girls crawled through the window to try and clear the roof as much as they could. This is what they found.
This moss is over the north window (it’s the south window that’s leaking). After speaking with my brother, he tells me that moss has been there for many, many years. They had replaced the rotten wood all along the outside wall this past summer, too. He also cleared the eaves (I believe they are called gutters in other parts of the world) several times over the summer.
This is the ice dam they found under the snow; my daughter included her thumb for perspective on how thick the ice is. Unfortunately, the ice was going under the shingles in some places, so they couldn’t get it off without damaging the shingles.
Check out the beautifully clear – and empty – eavestrough!
This section of the roof was raised to make more room in the second floor, so the slope is not as steep as it should be. Now that the upstairs is being used and heated, even though there has been very little snow this year, it would be melting from underneath and not draining as well as it should.
They also got a picture of this for me. I asked my brother about it, and apparently it has always been like this (I was very young when I was clambering on the roof as a child, so I did not remember it). So the water is draining directly onto the shingles, rather than down the side of the building.
Not that there is much water to drain right now, since it’s not melting into the eavestrough.
This is not the only area with potential problems. These are new icicles outside our living room window. Formed between the eavestrough and the eave.
Apparently, my dad did not believe in soffits.
This ice jam has formed at the corner between the master bedroom and the old kitchen. I’m told it’s an annual thing.
You can see the pruning saw leaning against the wall in the corner. It’s on a very long pole. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to do the actual pruning, before the sap flows, as we wanted to.
This section of tree is the one that’s causing the most problems for the shingles. Despite my brother cutting it back over the years, branches are touching the roof again.
I wasn’t able to unhook the broken branch that’s stuck on the TV antennae support wire.
The only way to make it not be a problem anymore is to cut that whole “branch” (it looks like a trunk!) back to the main trunk. To do that, though, it has to be cut back in sections, so as not to cause damage to the house as the pieces fall.
Theoretically, it can be done with a ladder, but the safest way to do it is with a lift bucket. Because a chainsaw would be the best tool for the job, and using a chain saw while on a ladder is just not ideal!
No one has lift buckets around here. We’d have to hire someone.
We do have chain saws here. There are three of them in the garage. I’m pretty sure one of them used to be ours; we’d given our chainsaw to my late brother before we moved out of province. No need for a chainsaw when living in a city apartment! It’s unlikely any of them work. We’ll have to get some maintenance done on them.
It is not the only tree that needs to be cut back severely back there; there is another huge maple with a large trunk leaning towards the house.
Then there is the tree in front of the kitchen window.
Let’s look at this photo again.
Ideally, we’d get rid of it completely. It’s the reason the eavestroughs needed to be cleared so often. I was thinking we might be able to, say, turn the stump into the support for a table top, so we’d have a sort of picnic table out there, but this is a Chinese Elm. It has been cut back severely in the past, but it just grows back. Apparently, these trees are very hard to get rid of. It was a mistake to plant such a large tree so close to the house, but I think my mother had wanted the shade, and this is a variety that grows very quickly.
Little by little, we will figure out what needs to be done, and do it. The challenge will be to prioritize things!
The Re-Farmer
As we are settling in to our new home and going over the immediate property to see what needs to be done, we’ve been having discussions about what we want to do over the next few years.
Gardening isn’t likely to happen this year, unless my daughters do some planting. At least not any deliberate gardening on our part. Come spring, we’ll see what my mother has planted that will come up.
I’m really hoping the asparagus is still there. And the rhubarb and horseradish.
We’ve talked about making raised bed gardens for accessibility, and what sort of vegetables we’d plant. We’ll have to see what the status is of the raspberry bushes, how the apples do this year, and any other fruit trees that might still be productive around the yard.
We’ve also talked about getting chickens, and how many we would need to provide an adequate amount of eggs. There’s the possibility of getting goats, though more about getting angora goats for their fibre. A couple of goats for their milk would not be a bad idea. I’m the only person in the family that isn’t lactose intolerant, and goat milk is something they can drink. It’s just too flippin’ expensive to buy. They love milk, so they put up with the discomfort of drinking it. It would be nice for that not to be a thing. Plus, I’d like to try making cheeses. The friend I ran into at the clinic with my husband raises goats for meat, plus milk for their own use. She told me that you can raise 10 goats on the resources of one cow, plus they give birth in twins and triplets, so they are a good return on investment for food production. I’ve never actually eaten goat, though, so I don’t know if I’d like it.
Looking just at the size of our yard, I’m realizing that we could do most, if not all, of what we want to do, just in our fenced yard/garden area, and not even need to beyond the yard itself, once we’ve taken care of the overgrowth.
Along with those ideas, I’ve also started looking at other options. Specifically, I was looking into fruit and nut trees.
It’s surprising, how many food trees will actually grow in our planting zone. Here is a map from the federal government.
We fall solidly into the 3a zone, so any fruit or nut trees we plant have to be quite hardy, and able to withstand some pretty chill temperatures.
Unlike a vegetable garden, any trees or shrubs we plant have to be able to survive lows into the -40C range in the winter and survive, even if we do work out micro-climates to facilitate their growth and production. It’d be nice to actually have some of that global warming that’s supposed to be happening.
Here is a wish list I’ve started.
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Kiwi. Yes, kiwi! Turns out they can handle zone 3 quite well. We would need at least 3 plants, including 1 male pollinator.
Seedless grapes. Yes, grapes grow on the prairies, and there are native varieties, but I am interested in red and green seedless hybrids.
Saskatoon. These actually grow wild in the bush, though I no longer remember where. It would be nice to have some in the yard. The fruit looks similar to blueberries, but they are related to apples.
Raspberry varieties; I’d like to have three varieties that mature at different times, so we have raspberries available for a much longer season.
Cherry. We may have some cherry trees in the yard already, but I don’t know that they are a hardy enough variety to provide much fruit. There are varieties of cherries that can handle our zone 3 quite well. Later in the year, I want to check out an area where I remember we had pin cherries. These are very tiny and tart; more seed than berry, but I remember eating them by the handful, anyhow, and my father made wine with them. It would be cool if they’re still around, too.
Haskap. This is a hybrid I’ve been learning about that looks a bit like a long, somewhat misshapen blueberry. They can be used the same as blueberries, too.
Sunberry. This is another berry that can be used just like blueberries, though they look quite different.
Plums. We might have plum trees, still. They were little, hard bright red plums, not the soft purple or red ones you buy at the grocery store. We didn’t really eat them, but like the pin cherries, my dad would make wine with them. I think my mom might have made jam with them, but I never liked jam, so I don’t remember.
Pine nuts (Korean pine). Yes! They can grow here! Pine nuts are so expensive, it would be awesome to have our own trees.
Buartnut. This is a hybrid walnut. They are also fast growing shade trees that get huge, so we’d have to be careful where we plant them. Black walnut is a native Canadian variety, but after reading up a bit, I think I’d rather try the hybrid.
Butternut. This is another Canadian native that I’d like to try.
Beaked hazel nut. This variety, I remember picking with my mother once, as a child. I don’t know how she found the bush, because I remember having to go deep into the bushes to get to it, well away from any cow paths – and loosing my sandal in some muck we had to cross in the process! I think this would be a good thing to plant along the edge of our spruce grove or along a fence line.
Gooseberries. Mostly for sentimental reasons. I have such fond, delicious memories of the one we had when I was a child.
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So that’s my list so far. Some of these require a lot more work than others – the grape vines, for example, need to be trained and pruned over several years.
What we actually end up doing over the years, who knows. I’d be excited even if we manage just a few of them.
If you’ve got any sort of experience or knowledge about some of these – or suggestions to make – I’d be thrilled to hear it!
The Re-Farmer
As I went out to empty our kitchen scraps onto the compost pile at the edge of the garden area, I paused to look around and noticed something interesting.
There were trails, everywhere.
And not one of them made by human feet.
They were all deer trails.
They all lead to our feeding station!
This is by far the most well worn trail of them all, cutting through an old section of the garden that hasn’t been in use for some time.
This pathway runs between the maple grove and rows of spruces that were planted much later. You see that post in the mid-ground? That’s where there is a water tap. When I was a kid, the walking path around the edge of the garden was right up to that post. All those trees to the right are growing in an area that used to be part of the garden. Same with the apple trees in the opposite direction, near the spruce grove. As big as the garden area still is, it is much smaller than it used to be.
I made my way through here, having to wind around broken branches and dead trees all over the place. There don’t seem to be very many maples left in our maple grove. :-( We’re going to have some major clean up to do in that area.
This is one of the furthest ends of the garden. This gate is where we could drive into the garden itself.
As you can see, it is no barrier for the deer! Their tracks look as if they can walk right through the gate, as if it’s not even there! I know they’re jumping over, but it doesn’t look like it from the tracks alone.
Going through the maple grove was a bit of an eye opener. We have got SO much work to do to clear that area out! It’s a lower priority over working on the house itself, of course, but I hope we will be able to do at least some of it over the summer.
At times like this, I think my family and I really got the short end of the stick with this deal we made with my mother to live here for “free.”
Ah, well. We came here expecting to have work to do, even if we didn’t expect quite this much.
The Re-Farmer
Now that we’ve been here for a couple of months, I’ve looked back at some things. Now I want to look forward.
I had some idea of what would need to be done here before we moved in, and not a lot has changed. Continue reading
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.
Since I posted yesterday, I’ve learned that not only were we not able to have a tower installed to get internet at the farm, but not even dial up is an option. The laptops are too new, and incompatible with it! Meanwhile, today is our last day with our internet and cable package at my end, too. This afternoon, someone from our provider is coming over to pick up their equipment. Any online activities from then on will be done through the data plans on our phones.
Which leads me to the things we will be giving up, in our decision to move from city to farm. All of these, and more, we took into consideration when we made our decision to move. Continue reading
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
The Re-Farmer 