First snow

Yesterday was the first "big" snowfall of the year. Later than some years, earlier than others. But the chronology doesn't matter. Just that it's here now. It was only about 6" of accumulation but enough to cause the school board to cancel buses. Enough to coat the land with white frosting and dust the trees with icing sugar. Enough.

The kids were thrilled -- snow day! Sledding and hot chocolate and warming cold toes by the fire. And me -- rumbles of dread and panic began burbling inside my chest. Winter is no long coming, it's here. While the snow absolves me from many farm responsibilities and covers a multitude of sins and unfinished projects, winter also makes other day-to-day tasks harder. But it's not the practicalities that fill me with anxiety -- it's the unexpected, the unknown, the whats, the when. Will the power go out this year and if so how will I get the generator out of the garage? What if the barn pipes freeze like last year? What if the winch on the plow breaks again or if it stops running all together? When will I run out of wood/hay/money?

How will I manage the darkness?

I tell my kids there are no such things are monsters, but that's not entirely true. Those are the monsters that haunt my mind and leave me tense, short tempered and fearful. The monsters that fill my thoughts with their disparaging words, their put downs, their judgements, their 'you don't deserve this' and 'you can't handle it.'  

And yet.

Today I walked to the barn under a canopy of peacock blue sky, sunlight captured in the snow. Dancing. Like fairylights. I breathed in the cold air tinged with a tease of woodsmoke. The taking of breath. Breathtaking. I could hear the goats and sheep bleating, the pigs barking (more incessant than oinking), the chickens clucking for their breakfast. In this morning my chest ached with beauty. And possibility. And purpose.

Sometimes I wish my soul was drawn towards an easier path. Living on a farm can be hard; doing it alone can be terrifying.

And yet.

I recently found photos from before the move, when we lived in suburbia in a small semi-detached house that we bought because it was in the right neighbourhood with a small shady garden that grew hostas and patchy grass. I recognized the place but it was like looking at a stranger. I am so different from that woman who went to bed at night gazing out at the neighbour's rooftop wondering, is this all there is?

Stronger. Tougher. Harder. Smaller. Fuller.

The seeds of growing self-reliance, of finding meaning, of realizing a purpose, were there, but dormant. It took moving to the farm for the seeds to grow. Not all seeds flourish; some fail to germinate, others grow weak and spindly, and there are those that die from disease or neglect or for no reason at all.  

I grieve for the woman in the photos who thought that moving to the farm would be a dream come true. In many ways it was, still is. But that dream came at a cost. Fairy tales never talk about what happens when happily ever after ends. But I never wanted to be like Cinderella anyway.

So for now, this day, I think of the healing power of winter. A time for rejuvenation, reflection, next steps. Author and poet Brian Brett wrote that farming is a profession of hope. There is always next season. Forgiveness for last year's mistakes. Another chance. A fresh start.

The seeds are waiting.

Foto Friday -- (A) Good morning

Welcome, spring!

"The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts
well out of proportion to their size."
~ Gertrude S. Wister, horticulturalist (1905 - 1999)

May your lives and gardens be blessed with abundance
and may today bring forth joyful beginnings.

Happy first day of spring!

Bloom

Between the rains

We've had a lot of rain lately, and while the day started out clouded by a thick fog and the weatherman said to expect more heavy showers, we were pleasantly surprised by a large orb in the sky that resembled something called "the sun."

I took advantage of this calm between storms to capture some of the new life in the garden.



Even the lilac buds have started to sprout!

As I was clearing away last year's leafy debris from under the lilacs, I noticed this garden friend. Ever since reading Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows, I always think of toads as being "distinguished" -- like Mr. Toad Esq. of Toad Hall.


Isn't he handsome? OK, maybe handsome isn't the right word. Did I mention I got a bit too much sun today?

Back to the garden:

The rhubarb is filling in, which is exciting as the kids are already asking for fresh rhubarb crumble.

The garlic chives are also growing well, but the kids aren't nearly as excited about these.

Over in the cold frames, the spinach is still in its spikey stage...

... but the heirloom Mesclun mix is greening up nicely, though the leaf lettuce (not shown) isn't nearly as leafy yet.

Besides the cold frames, there isn't anything growing in the garden yet. I know, I'm late -- I was hoping to have my peas in by now, among other things, but there is so, so, so much tidying up to do in the kitchen garden. Then there's the rain.

It's been hard not to get overwhelmed with what needs to be done before any seeds or seedlings even touch dirt, but I decided to try on some patience and perseverance and simply take advantage of today's sunshine, while it lasted.

As I was pulling weeds and grass, I was thrilled to find loads of thick, juicy worms in the ground. Just three years ago, the soil was devoid of all life as the previous owners had used chemicals on this site. Today, it was teaming with it. Unfortunately, I also found lots of Japanese Beetle larvae. Talk about raining on my parade...

While gardening with hand tools is slow going, there's something delicious and satisfying about this kind of quiet and intentional work. Slowing down and working deliberately helps strengthen the connection to the land that grows your food, making the relationship that much more personal and intimate. That's what I find, at least.

I didn't get all that I wanted accomplished, but I got the root beds cleared and ready for the first outdoor planting of carrots, parsnips, onions and beets. (This is only the first section; I got the left-side done, as well as the next section down. And if you're wondering what that leafy clump is, it's a patch of perennial wormwood, good for repelling deer and carrot fly.)


I was hoping to get some veggies seeded, and perhaps transplant some beets, but just as I finished up, stretched my back and shook the dirt off my hands, the sky opened up and the rain began to fall. But this time, after several lovely hours playing in the newly-warmed dirt, I welcomed it.

They're back!

The sights, smells and sounds of spring are a delightful assault on winter-weary senses. And for the last few weeks I've been noticing -- and savouring -- many of the classic signs: succulent daffodil tips poking their sunny crowns through the soil, red-breasted robins punch drunk on juicy worms and mild breezes kissed by the scent of rich earth. But tonight, it sounds like spring.

There is nothing like the profound depth of winter's silence, as the earth sleeps under its white batting-like comforter. While the snow has been slowly receding over the past week, and much of it is now melted under the lashing of last night's thunderstorms (save for a few pockets deep in the woods), this place felt like it was suspended in that in-between dream state -- when you're neither deeply asleep nor fully awake.

But tonight the spring peepers are back and the night is alive with their melodic chorus! Anyone who says that the country is a quiet place has never experienced the orchestral and incessant call of these diminutive frogs. Measuring only the size of a paperclip, the males serenade the lady frogs with a huge voice; a high pitched, ringing chirp that has been likened to sleigh bells.... that keep ringing, and ringing, and ringing.

While March 20 may have been the official first day of spring on the calendar, tonight it truly feels -- and sounds -- like spring.

Foto Friday -- Spring blessings...

... and Nature's miracles.








Wishing you a joy-filled weekend!

Madcap Monday -- the Spring (?) edition

I heard them before I could see them. And then there they were -- three massive V formations that spanned the width of the bright azure sky. The Canadian geese were back. With a hearty 'whoop' I called out to Ella and we welcomed our friends home. It was a perfect way to usher in the Spring Solstice. That was yesterday.

This is today.

While yesterday the snow seemed to recede before our eyes and the kids played baseball in sneakers and sweaters, today they bundled into their snowsuits before heading down the driveway to catch the bus.

I was feeling discouraged and down by the unexpected snowfall, but then Ella turned to me and said, "Mama, it's so beautiful." Then Jack said, "It's so quiet, too." They were right.

We lifted our heads and caught snowflakes on the tips of our tongues. After the children boarded the bus, I turned and walked towards the barn and I could feel the ground soften and squelch beneath my feet. Now back at my desk, I can hear the birds singing.

The changing of the seasons is an exercise in respect, patience and in letting go. Despite all the control we humans try to exert on her, Mother Nature is a much greater force than any of us. Spring will arrive when she is ready, not according to a date on the calendar.

Spring is a time for new beginnings. For me, that means cultivating a greater sense of acceptance and patience in my everyday.

So on that note, I wish you all a happy (belated) Spring Equinox and a day filled with peace, light and abundance!

Calm after the storm?

Maybe not...

Snowstorm!

Celebrating the Earth

"Too few of us are aware that to any beauty we must come as lovers, not destroyers, come humbly, softly, to look, listen, learn, to cherish and to shield." ~ Nancy Newhall

"The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope." ~ Wendell Berry

Happy Earth Day, everyone.

This is April? Part 2

This morning we woke up to a full-out blizzard. Within minutes, all the green that we had been savouring just yesterday got buried by a few inches of soppy white stuff.

Needless to say, we weren't pleased. Well, some of us weren't.

As Lucas and I sat at the kitchen table grumbling over our morning coffee about how we couldn't possibly believe it was actually snowing (big tufts of it too), Ella turned to us with a sparkle in her eye and exclaimed, "Yay -- I get to make snow angels!"

And make snow angels she did. And a snow man. And snow balls...



As I sit here watching her play from my office window, I'm simply amazed at how young children truly exist in the moment. We adults get so grumpy over things we can't change such as weather or the economy or even little things like having to shovel more snow.



We spout platitudes such as, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade" -- but there's this implicit sense of intent, like this is what we should do.

Kids just do.


So while I still might not like our surprise snowfall, at least I have a new appreciation for it. Or perhaps for the simple joy it brings to one of the little people in my life.

This is April?

This morning

Three days ago

Happy first day of spring!

Happy first day of spring! We made it. Of course, it's minus five degrees outside right now and I can still see my breath, but gosh darnit, we made it!

I've been waiting for this day for a few weeks. Yes, winter has its charms and I've developed a whole new respect for the season but lately I've been itching to get out of hibernation.

I've always looked forward to spring in an abstract kind of way, but since moving to the farm, I find we're much more in sync with the seasons on an almost corporeal level. You have to be, out here, especially where there's wood to collect, food and hay to store, generators to prime, sump pumps to pump and seeds to sow. Rural life demands a greater sense of self-sufficiency and this winter I actually felt some primal survival instincts kicking in.

But that's a good thing. I think modern urban living has disconnected North American society from the seasons so much that we've lost our reverence for the power of nature. When it gets cold out, flip a switch and the thermostat kicks in. When snow falls, the city will clean most of it up.

The result is that we feel superior to nature, like we can control or manage it. Then something like the ice storm of 1998 hits and we realize just how powerless we are. I'm not saying we should be scared of nature, just that we should respect it a bit more and understand our place as cohabitant of this planet, not its master.

Anyway, time to get down from my soap box. Who knew daffodils could rouse so much pontificating? Besides, I've got green thumbs that are itching to be outside, not hammering away at the keyboard.

So happy first day of spring, folks. Get out and enjoy it. I can think of no better day to take a break from the busyness of life to just stop and smell the flowers.

Baby, it's cold... no it's *#@%ing freezing outside

According to the weatherman, we're in a deep freeze here in eastern Ontario.

No bloody kidding.

I snapped this photo on the way out to the barn this morning. The thermometer read minus 28 degrees Celsius, and the morning sun had already done some warming up.

It's a wonder I made it past the front door.

Actually, it's a wonder I got up at all. Getting me out of bed this morning, where I was snugly cocooned in flannel sheets and wool blankets, was like trying to convince Cinderella to get her head out of the grain bucket: it took a lot of convincing to get that ass moving.

It's been bitterly cold and I think we're all starting to get a bit stressed out around here. I'm worried about the equines especially, who greeted me this morning with snowy eyelashes, muzzles covered with icicle shards and hooves balled up with ice, which is both dangerous and damned uncomfortable.

Everyone is hungry, all the time, and it's causing a bit of drama in the barnyard. Even Lucy, who's usually quite mannerly when it's time to hand out the rations, ploughed into me this morning like some rabid were-goat.

The only one who seems deliriously happy about the weather is Henry. Then again, he's deliriously happy about just being outside, though he's not too keen on getting ice balled between the pads of his paws.

While we haven't any any problems with our pipes freezing (yet?) our wood furnace has an insatiable appetite and we're burning through wood faster than expected. We're supplementing with our kitchen wood stove which is both practical and downright therapeutic.

Now I admit, I'm usually pretty grumpy this time of year. I totally get the whole hibernation thing: I feel myself slowing down, getting tired more easily and succumbing to morose thoughts (so if I disappear for a few days - or a week - please bear with me.)

But we're safe and warm, unlike so many others in this world. When I think of all the people on the streets right now, I'm instantly humbled.

So suck it up, girlfriend, and just get on with it.

I've got a job to do outside and as hard as it is to get moving, there's an almost masochistic sense of satisfaction that yes, when I inhale the insides of my nostrils may feel like they're filled with shards of glass, my bare hands burned (yes, burned, I tell you!) when I grabbed the metal handles of two water buckets this morning and despite taking 10 minutes to get dressed I still have frozen toes when I come back inside, but the animals are fed, the water is defrosted and we haven't lost a chicken yet.

Not a great picture, but my camera battery gave out. I think it was trying to tell me something, like, 'Stop taking pictures and get the hell back inside!"

Of course, the good news is, this cold snap won't last forever. It's supposed to warm up next week to negative single digits. Compared to this nonsense, it'll feel almost tropical. (It's funny how relativity works like that: it's always about 15 degrees warmer inside the barn than out, so when I'm tending to the goats and chickens, it feels positively balmy.)

And come spring, when the bugs are swarming, the sump pump is working around the clock and the poop is gooshy and smelly, I'm sure I'll look back on this stretch of winter with the feeling that it wasn't really that bad.

Then again, maybe I'll just start planning my garden. A seed catalogue and a cup a tea makes the perfect antidote to the winter blues, any day.

Winter prep, homesteading-style: part two

As promised, here are some photos to accompany my Simpler Living column on "Preparing for winter: Homesteading-style".

This was the first sign that we should take our winter preparation kinda seriously. Our house inspector found not one, but two electrical panels in our kitchen. The second is, of course, for the generator. Right.


I'd done some research for an article on generators but it was different shopping for our own. We had to walk the fine line between buying something with sufficient capacity to cover our basic needs in a power outage (fridge, well pump, some lights... we can camp out in front of the wood stove, right?) and spending way too much money on a piece of machinery that sits and gathers dust. (Hopefully. Not likely.)

We settled-on a 5,500 watt gas-powered model. I would have preferred diesel, so we could eventually convert it to bio diesel, but we had a budget to stick to. And to be honest, this model was on sale. We haven't hooked it up yet (we just got the right cable for it yesterday) but we're planning on a test-run before the lights go out for real.

This is our external wood furnace that sits about 100 feet away from the house. It works by circulating heated water, via insulated underground pipes, to a water-to-air heat exchanger in our basement. The exchanger is in turn connected to a conventional forced-air furnace that is controlled by a regular thermostat.

Eventually, we hope to use solar to power the furnace (and everything else) but for now, it's an on-grid system.

This is a somewhat blurry peek into our wood shed. We had to buy wood this year, which was an unexpected expense, but as we moved in July, we didn't have enough time to gather enough from our property AND unpack, settle in and figure out what the hell we were doing.

It's a mix of hard and soft wood in various sizes. Everyone and their uncle had advice on what to use so like most things out here, we're figuring it out as we go. The pile goes back several rows so I'm hoping we'll have enough to last until spring. If not, our 71-acre property is half woodlot and there's enough dead-fall to keep us warm for years. It's just a matter of collecting, cutting and seasoning it. That's all.

This is my favourite piece of "furniture" in our house. It's an old Elmira "Sweet Heart" wood stove. It's not original to the house (which is about 100-years-old) but it was installed by the former owners. There is nothing like cooking with or savouring the warmth of a wood stove. Simply delicious.

While there are ducts on the first floor of the house, which circulate heat from the external wood furnace, they are not connected to the second floor at all. There are only three small bedrooms and a two-piece bathroom upstairs (our "full" four-piece bathroom is on the main floor, off the kitchen -- makes for interesting visits with guests!) but it can get chilly up there.

And yet, it's amazing how efficiently this "peak-a-boo" flap above our fridge works to draw warm air from the wood stove up the stairs.

It's also amazing how handy this is for keeping an eye on the kids.

Finally, we knew once we moved to the country, our little hand-held snow shovel just wasn't going to cut it. Many farmers around here use their tractors to plough, but all we had was our little ATV. Despite its size, it's incredibly powerful (and maneuverable) and we haven't had to call in the army yet (yes, that's a jab at you Toronto folks out there!)

We use the same ATV for hauling wood out of the woods during the other three seasons and occasionally, for a little country entertainment.

Yes, that's Lucas pulling the kids behind the ATV in a snow scoop*. Good times... uh huh.

I recently read somewhere that winter in the city is to be endured while winter in the country is to be experienced. That really resonated with me, for some reason. Most years I've grumbled about the snow and the cold and the slush but this year, it's different.

Now that we've taken steps to protect our family from the storm, there are many times when I look out the window when it's snowing and actually smile. Yes, carrying buckets of water back and forth to the barn in a snowstorm has its own challenges and trying to keep the chickens' water defrosted can be tedious. And sure, I still worry about Lucas (and others) driving.

But in the end, it all comes down appreciating the little things -- a blazing full moon on a crisp winter night, walking through our woods when the trees are covered in a twinkling blanket of white magic, sipping hot chocolate after making snow angels with the kids or watching Gallagher roll in deep powder snow.

All treasured moments of sheer bliss, plain and simple. Little moments that have helped me rediscover the wonder and magic of the season.

So as long as we have a stocked pantry, a roaring fire and we don't have to drive anywhere, I say, "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!

* No children were harmed in the making of this blog post.