plans? what plans?

Insane

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

The delivery of our stuff was simply insane.  I am not up to detailing it, so here are the highlights.

  • They had a hard time with finding us on a map, despite my directions. It’s actually very straightforward, but we are quite isolated.  I did tell them, we are in the bush.
  • They came with a full size semi trailer.  After stopping on the road and walking in, I told them they could go into the yard.  They would have broken tree branches, but I told them that was okay.  If they went into the yard, they potentially could have had a ramp right into our front door for an easy offload. They said they would look around and decide.
  • They decided to go in front of the yard, by the small people gate, and that’s where they started pulling up, with spotters.
  • While driving in, they hit the power line to the garage.  They broke the power pole by the garage, which is now leaning of the roof. The line got hung up on the truck.
  • The driver blamed me for not telling him about the power line.  It was dark, but we have a yard light. The light is on the main power pole, which means the lines to the garage and house were in the light.  By driving to the small gate instead of the yard, they drove under the lowest point of the line.
  • Unhooked, the only thing keeping the line off the ground was tree branches.
  • They got stuck in a few inches of snow.
  • The driver yelled at me because it way my fault, and he had been doing me a favour by coming out in the dark.
  • Later, he came in and talked at my husband, demanding we call a tow truck, on our dime. If we didn’t, he said he would leave with our stuff.  My husband refused.
  • After more than an hour, they started unloading. They called a tow truck. The driver ended up helping unload.
  • We called Hydro. A guy came and cut electricity to the line and took it down. The pole is not theirs, so it is up to our end to get it repaired.
  • Between the girls and I, the movers and the tow truck driver, there was 7 of us working on it.  The girls did much hauling of things upstairs.
  • They were finally done around 11pm. They got here at about 7pm.
  • The driver apologized.
  • It took them about another half hour to get out of our driveway.
  • The house is in chaos. But we slept on our own mattresses.

This is what the master bedroom looked like.  There was space on the floor for the mattress and that’s about it.

But our stuff is in.

Finally.

The Re-farmer

Getting used to the new normal

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This afternoon, my husband had an appointment with a new doctor.  For a GP, we don’t need to find someone in The City, so he booked one in the nearest town with a medical centre.  It took about 15 minutes for him to input the list of medications, which my husband handily keeps up to date on his phone.  The process has been started to get his files transferred over from his old doctor.  We will have to apply for new medical numbers, which we have 3 months to do (by mid-February), though the earlier, the better.

I had forgotten something about this town.  The distinctive smell from the distillery, when the wind is right.  The smell of fermenting grains.  Like a giant bakery.  It smells delicious. Continue reading →

No Internet… yet

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So the guy came out and did a site survey.

He couldn’t get a signal.

That spruce grove that protects our home from severe winds and snow build up, also prevents us from getting any signal at all. We would need to get at least a 60 ft tower.

Since all our money is going to pay for the movers, we don’t have the $1000 or so that it would cost.

My husband is on the phone now with a satellite based company. It will be more limited, but my daughter will be able to work again. That’s the most important thing right now.

Oh, and that breaker is still giving us issues.  So we have sporadic hot water.

Of all the problems we expected to have, trees blocking internet options and lack of hot water were not among them.

The Re-farmer

The Best Laid Plans…

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Our decision to move to the farm was not an easy one.

BeepBeep

My husband popped back into the house for a moment, came out to find his walker occupied. One of the farm’s semi-feral cats, now named Beep Beep, likes walkers.

Before we could even say yes to moving at all, we had to make sure changing provinces would not affect my husband’s disability payments.  He is, after all, still considered employed.  It took some time for the answer to come through – apparently, no one had asked the person he spoke to this question before.  Then, just to confuse things, his employer changed their insurance provider.  Because he was already on long-term disability, anything to do with his injury, such as physio, is still with the first company.  But everything else, such as his prescriptions, dental coverage and my own coverage, is now with another company.

In the end, we did find out that we would still be covered the same if we moved to another province.

So after several months, this past spring, we could finally tell my mother that yes, we could move into the old farm-house. Continue reading →