Off The Beaten Path

On Saturday, my family attended a memorial service that never should have had to happen. One week ago Friday, a carload of teens on their way to youthgroup was hit head-on by a drunk driver in the wrong lane. The driver, an 18-year old girl named Laura, and two of her passengers, an 18 year…

Last night was meteorologially a bit tempestuous. We had rain, snow, ice, wind. Always wind here. We’ve had the door blow open on us before, so we locked it. This morning, husband woke me up in the before-dawn time to tell me the lock is frozen and the door won’t open. We tried a few…

I hate plastic. It changed the world, yes, but not really for the better. And now we have microplastics in absolutely every part of the ecological biome, fish, animal… We try hard to reduce our plastic use, and what we cannot avoid, we reuse as much as we can, before finally recycling. Single-use is something…

When we left off, both the door and the tent shed were both broken. The doorknob was a simpler task, one I could do alone, at least in theory. I had to get screw-extractor bits, and then figure out how to use them. I got the old doorknob off, and went to put the new…

I’ve been worried about the shed tent ever since we put it up. It is almost constantly windy here. Sometimes, the wind is quite violent. After every blow, I look out to see if it has survived. Every time, it has still been standing Yesterday, it lost the fight. The good news is, only the…

This morning, our neighbour saw the shells in the driveway and asked me about them. Shortly thereafter, he showed up with his tractor to finish the spreading for us. It took him about half an hour to do what would have taken us more than a full day to do by hand. He drove over…

Saturday, it poured down rain. We made the usual hygeine day trek, but this time it involved walking out in the mud and the wet and getting soaked. Always my favourite. On the way back in I held a feedsack over my head, and that was better. Sunday was shell day. We trekked out Saturday…

Some weeks, nothing happens. Some weeks, much happens. This is more of a ‘much’ week. We have the shed on site now. It rained and was sloppy all last week, so we needed to wait for a couple dry days. It came yesterday. This means that (once the driveway is useable again), we can load…

A year ago today, this is where we stood: The first floor was framed, and part of the loft floor was down. Since that time, not only did we finish the build, and the steel and the inside and the insulation and all the things, but we have also planted over 100 orchard plants and…

We hatched out about a dozen ducklings about a year and a half ago. 4 pekin females, 6 runner/Rouen/pekin cross males and 2 cross females. In the 18 months since, we’ve lost one of the pekin females and one of the cross-females, but all the males were strong and hardy. Now, anyone who keeps any…