it's only January ...

And yet already I'm thinking about growing things!



We haven't been to the land since my last post ..well we drove by the next day to see the damage to the neighbours house and it was very sad. Most of the house looks ok to the outside eye - so I hope everybody and most things were saved .. won't know for a couple of weeks though.



I'm daydreaming about spring though.

i think therefore i blog

Personally, I have been very impressed by the slow food movement. It is about celebrating the culture of food, of sharing the extraordinary knowledge, developed over millennia, of the traditions involved with quality food production, of the sheer joy and pleasure of consuming food together. Especially within the context of family life, this has to be one of the highest forms of cultural activity. Prince Charles



Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the cornfield. D.Eisenhower



Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics. We plow under habitats of other animals to grow hybrid corn that fattens our genetically engineered animals for slaughter. We make free species extinct and domesticate species into biomachines. We build cruelty into our diet. J. Mason (included cause I've met him and he's passionate and thought provoking!)



Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days. H. Alain



yup diverse thoughts to keep my mind going while I'm packing adn cleaning and packing our city home some more!

not so much fun on the walk today

Kcat - Kali- Kaylie - that damn cat - is gone. Everyone's friend she fought a valiant battle against her cancer for over a year and obviously was not ready to go - however her weak body couldn't match her indomitable spirit and she died on Friday. I wrote a much longer piece on the cat blog for her.

That is not the only reason today's walk wasn't as much fun as usual though.


Our neighbour's house is on fire.
when we arrived for our walk all seemed normal - deer tracks were neat to follow - the dogs had a blast
by the time we left fire fighters (volunteer) and fire trucks were coming from all directions and black smoke was filling the air

I feel so hopeless.

more walking

a couple of snaps from our most recent walk - on camera phone so they aren't great but you can see the pond overflow a bit and the broken tree so typical of what we found!






It's a planning time of year - looking for wood, deciding on locations for hives, cabins, barns etc..watching the pond overflow it's banks and hearing and seeing flocks of birds. There was some substantive wind damage last week (apparently the winds got up to 120 kilometres an hour just south of us. Interesting to see that we know our woods well enough to easily be able to see where trees have come down from the wind.

a lovely, sad, walk

Ashlynn G. Porter

Hank, Sally, Brody, Big T and I went for a long walk at the land today. It was beautiful. Really cold but really lovely. We walked places we hadn't walked before - including some serious bush whacking through the back of the woodlot. We have wood for years just waiting to be cut. We also have posts and rails for the whole property.

I spent much of our walk wishing my aunt Ashlynn would be able to see it some day. However she died on Christmas Day. She was in palliative care in hospital for a week. She had known her cancer had returned last spring but doctors were optimistic that her cancer would be manageable and chronic in nature. Her death was peaceful and calm and she knew she was much loved right until the end but that really doesn't help those of us she left. I'm glad she's not suffering but the ache is amazing. I ache for my mum who is all alone now - no family in her generation at all any more (and she's watched most of them die - her mum, dad, aunt, baby sister, and now little sister). I grieve for Ash's daughter. Another only child (like me), at only 23 she's way too young to lose her mum and her friend. I am saddened for me. Ash was my aunt, like a big sister too (only 12 years my senior she was the same age as my hubby's oldest brother) and a dear friend. She called and left messages often on our answering machine - just cheery little 'notes' saying hi and keeping in touch. I have a collection of physical notes from her too. She made sure people knew they were important to her and she included her immediate family in that effort. She had such a positive life force - she is in large part responsible for Mum and I taking on our crazy projects.
She loved to ride - I'm sure I was allowed to ride because of her efforts. She inculcated me with her competitive spirit as well as the need to be gracious in victory and defeat. I realized today I had been looking forward to riding horses on our property with her in the future.

Life is just not kind sometimes.