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Five Years In
Here we are, five years into our adventure in New Brunswick.
I haven’t been working at Kingsbrae Garden .
Marie is still teaching knitting and crocheting at the Wool Emporium in Saint Stephen.
We have had good times and we have had not quite so good times.
Winter 2013/2014 seemed almost relentless.
I had been questioning why we still had our generator. We used it for a while after we arrived in NB while we were dry camping in Lynnfield, then when we first were on our property here before we had power.
Then along came the Ice Storm of 2013. Everything was coated with a thick skin of ice. Trees fell, pulled down power lines and knocked out our electricity. Seven long days we were without power.
The generator was safely under a tarp, buried under a snow pile. I dug it out, wrestled it to a better spot and fired it up. It fired up after a bit of persuasion. I plugged a power cord in to it after extricating that from some ice. WE HAD LIGHT!
Since we did’t have room to put a wood stove, we had to make do with a couple of small space heaters. It was chilly, but at least the house didn’t freeze up. Three days in, many of the houses on our road had power restored. Our transformer is on a side road, on a separate breaker, so we were “forgotten” for a few days.
I finally called in to explain the situation to NB Power one more time. There must have been a crew close by, because inside of an hour, they showed up and fixed our power.
The recent *almost real* hurricane we had was quite something! The previous 3 storms just were fairly intense rainfall and a bit of wind but nothing exciting. Nothing like this one. Not like Arthur. Absolutely devastating for trees in southern New Brunswick, especially in the City of Fredericton.
Baby, It’s COLD Out There!
Forgive my rant.
Soo here’s the wet coast guy, “Come From Away”, telling the Kingsbrae gardeners all about working through the winter. They don’t get me, and I don’t get them, saying they want to have their feet up by the fire.
No WONDER they gave me these strange, pitying looks. They’ve lived here all their lives.
We lived a bit north of the 49th parallel and here we are just north of the 45th!! How cold can it get?? So it gets a bit chilly! Deal with it!
Ahuh.
Well, now we know a little better.
We have a whole new appreciation for the term cold now, living here. At least I do… Marie has lived in really cold places in her adulthood. I don’t remember the cold from when my family lived on the prairies when I was a child. Probably blocked out the memory.
Here’s another rub: When we situated our home here, we put it at the top of the property. Awesome views. Spectacular sunsets. Nice, cooling breeze, keeps the heat down in the summer……..
Oh, did I mention the Nice Cooling Breeze? Keeps the heat down in the winter too! Roars around the trailer, parked beside the house, partly as a windbreak……at the WRONG side of the house, as it turns out! Next winter, it is not gonna be parked in the RV parking spot!
I’ve been down on the lower part of the property when it was kind of cool and breezy at the house. This was at the NORTH end of the property. I had to take off a layer of sweater to keep from overheating. It was sheltered and pleasant down there.
Of course, we have our well and septic field on the top of the hill. It would cost us another $18,000 to install another well and septic field at the bottom of the hill. HMM. Guess we won’t be moving house down there for a while, even though this is a “moveable” house.
Adding to this, is the following: At the top of our hill, we can watch the sun shine DOWN onto the lower portion of the land, a good hour or more before it even starts to touch our house. So much for Solar Gain first thing in the morning. The sun does shine on the house longer in the afternoon, so it partly makes up for this oversight. Down below, the sun sets a lot earlier too……I guess you just. can’t. win..
Now we better understand significance of the question, “Why EVER would you want to move HERE??”
I guess we will be buying snowshoes some time soon. That way we can walk around and see the various animal tracks in the snow before they blow away or get snowed on again, and not sink into the snow up to our knees or beyond and fill our boots with snow.