As another year ends!

Well… here we are with 2016 fast coming to an end….. Christmas is over for another year, I am using up some holidays I had left over from this year and I am chilling at home until after New Years.   It’s been snowing for the last few days and we once again have a few feet of snow….  a nice time to do a little reflecting on the last 18 months.

So here I sit with my knee high fuzzy slippers, a lovely hot coffee, watching the fire in the woodstove, and reviewing all that we have done since the “big move”.   I went back and read my early blogs and have been giggling away at the craziness of our life – what the hell were we thinking?   Who does that???  Who chuck’s everything, turns their lives upside down, leaves everything that they know and that is familiar, for a complete and utter unknown start in what, for most of the last 18 months, has seemed like a completely foreign land??   Crazy, city people apparently!  Crazy like foxes I say – what an amazing adventure we have had!

If you haven’t run through all the blogs – let me catch you up to speed.  We packed up our city lives, threw the cat and everything we own in our truck (purchased for this very adventure – every farm needs a truck right? Still miss my bright red Mazda 6!) bought a huge property in a tiny town and moved in.  We gutted our little Doukhobor house to the studs and replaced it all in approximately 30 days – no tiny feat considering our new found knowledge of “Kootenay Time”.  The building didn’t stop there!   We have gone on to build a chicken coop, rabbit coops, a green house, a turkey coop and a couple car shelters.  With no limbs lost or serious injuries to speak of!

Then there was the animals…… and once we got started, there was no stopping us.  Oh it started innocently enough, Fallon and Darren got themselves a dog… you gotta have a dog if you have a farm right?  Then Chuck got himself some chickens.  With those early successes – we expanded – because really…. what else are you going to do with 43 acres??  Rabbits quickly followed, then we needed more chickens because suddenly we couldn’t keep up with the requests for eggs… then meat hens – because we need to eat! And surely if you are going to do meat hens, the you might as well do turkeys too – how hard can it be?!   We love turkey!  Other than looking after our cat – who, let’s face it, essentially just wants you to feed him and then leave him alone – we have zero knowledge in this area.  Good thing Chuck is a quick study and we have access to the internet – very slow internet – but don’t get me started on that!

Not content to leave well enough alone – we put in a garden – one big enough to feed the town we are in I swear!  We plant and weed and water and pray for sun…… which was in short supply this summer.  Oh tons of it the summer we are ripping the house apart, but as soon as we put in a garden….. nope! Lots of lessons learned here – knowledge we will take into account when we get started again this coming spring.

Thankfully, our city friends and family are country life curious!  At least enough to consider making the 8 (give or take) hour journey out here from Vancouver. We’ve had tons of visitors and we have thoroughly enjoyed introducing  them to all our country crazy!  Lazy summer nights watching the chickens scratching around in the yard, and the bonfire nights with stick roasted hot dogs and salad prepared from your very own garden.  Everyone gets a bunny to hold if they feel like snuggling – there is nearly an endless supply!  Fishing, hiking and seeing the local sights, it was wonderful to show everyone around our new home.   Summer travel is no problem but it takes some very special patience – and the love of family – to venture out here in the winter.  No guarantees that planes will get in or out from the two local airports and when they don’t – they get diverted to an airport about 3 hours away.  Getting to that airport means a trip over a mountain pass, never a great thing in the dead of winter. Kudos to both Trish and Brittany who have braved the winter trip!

The lists of things that we have done and learned over the course of the last 18 months is staggering and somewhat shocking in some respects, but I am certain that none of us would change a thing!  We have had some huge successes – we hatched baby chicks, we nurtured several litters of rabbits, and raised both laying hens and meat birds, along with turkeys!  We ate all summer on vegetables we grew ourselves, animals we raised and “culled” (yes I ate the rabbit!  Tastes like chicken!! ) and our own eggs.   Work successes came too!   Fallon has recently been promoted to a newly formed community paramedic position, and I have moved from Branch Manager to Operations Manager for my company.

It hasn’t always gone right…… consider the first days truck fire, bugs, going in the ditch my first winter, forest fires and certain aspects of our garden adventure.  I had to return to Vancouver for breast cancer treatment and radiation in the middle of the house renovation and we all held our breath and prayed for a miracle when my sisters husband became critically ill.  Thankfully those hurdles are behind us and we are all full speed ahead!  We are made from tough stuff!  Go Mike!!!!

So what’s next??  Oh, we do have some new adventures planned……  we can’t stop now!  I am pretty certain that there are more animals to come, we have to give the garden an overhaul, and likely there is a ton more stuff to build!!  Have we lost all our city??  I’ll leave that up to you to decide!  In the meantime, I feel a need for a spa day !!!

Stay tuned!  Thanks for reading!

*****I have added some of my most favorite pictures of our crazy adventure on our Facebook page – come find them by searching under Owl’s Hollow Homestead.