Well, now I am a “gentleman of leisure” once again. Well sort of. I was laid off from my seasonal job at Kingsbrae Garden and have, for the first time in my life, applied for Unemployment –or rather– Employment Insurance. It remains to be seen if they actually grant me this, with my pension and all. We shall see. In the meantime, I am spending more time finishing off existing projects and starting new ones. Hen House, Snow shelter for the “tractor” and snow blower so they will be more easily accessible in the coldest parts of the winter.
This weekend, we had a pre-taste of winter here on the Ridge. A couple of inches of snow actually stayed put. Down in town, everything is nice and green still. Today, it felt like spring, with melt water dripping off the roof everywhere, on your head, down your neck….
The joys of country living.
Category: Retirement
Retirement thoughts
Fall 2011
A gardening friend just recently told me somewhat reproachfully that I am not keeping my blog updated. “Guilty as Charged!”
Not like I don’t have time. If everything I have thought about posting was here, the blog would be much fuller.
So..here goes.
It has been an very busy summer, with many “learning moments”
Working at Kingsbrae has been a good experience. It is serving to keep me humble, but more about that later. I have met many new, interesting people. The more people I meet, the more connections I discover back to BC, and even to Vancouver Island. I was chatting with a woman, who told me she has a place in Ladysmith, the next town south from Nanaimo. Turns out she knows, and has had visits from the young man who took over my job when I left the Parks Department. She even knew that the man he replaced had moved to New Brunswick…. Again, “Guilty as Charged”. Small World!!
I am finding that I am making more connections in Saint Andrews than in the Saint Stephen region though. Contacts with the various Garden Clubs helps moderate that.
Now, about Humble Pie. I find that, like many of the students who came to work at Parks, I have felt the need to challenge some of the practices at Kingsbrae, because they were not in my nearly 30-year long “Rule Book”. I have to reflect on the changes, sometimes almost daily. I realize that just as the students learned things “by the book” and didn’t understand why we didn’t do things that way, I have to review some practices of mine. Keeps life interesting, if nothing else.
The homestead is developing reasonably well. Spring was kind of chilly this year, and the blackflies came out in maddening force early on. This made planting a garden challenging here. Marie planted a number of plants in containers for her Straw Bale Gardens. These were planted out, with some losses to slugs. I planted seed for squashes and corn, later in the season, thinking in mynaivete that they would surely all grow anyway. Not so. We last many plants to a harsh frost in the first week in October. The pumpkins she planted did exceptionally well though. the Squashes I planted had a few good “fruit” but many died on the vine from the frost. The corn…well now, there was another big serving of Humble Pie. I set a lot of seeds, and planted the plants in different sections of the developing garden. I have NEVER had such an embarassing harvest of corn. Stunted, poorly developed, barely fit for the chickens. Clearly lacking a few things in the soil. Marie first asked me what army I was going to feed with the corn. I replied, that we could freeze what we didn’t eat right away and if it got too ripe, we could feed the chickens. HMM….
“There’s always next year”
We are working on plans for the 2012 season. I will be building a Sugar Shack down in the woods so we can cook off the Maple Syrup from the trees we have identified as tapping candidates for Spring.
I hope to have a functioning greenhouse soon so we can have a sun room to sit in on those sunny but bone-chilling winter days, and still get a tan. That will be fun. Then we can get a better start on the tender plants so they will have a jump on the weather, and get out sooner and give us more garden bounty!
Oh.. the German Butterball potatoes I mail ordered from Eagle Creek Seed Potato Farm did quite well for us. Delicious, and definitely worth ordering more for next season!
Marie has been crocheting sweaters for
Country Crafters Woolens in Saint Andrews since summer now. Very satisfying for her! She has started giving Crocheting Lessons at the Wool Emporium in Saint Stephen. That is going well for her. She gave a well-received talk on Herbs at the Social Gardeners Club in Saint Stephen yesterday (October 17). She has been invited for repeat performances at 2 other garden clubs. I am PROUD of her!
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.
The Sun, the Golden Sun!
Sitting here in the afternoon, basking in the warmth of the sun that has been shining into our living room, while it is -10C outside, got me thinking. AGAIN. This is getting dangerous, this thinking!
Solar energy is such a wonderful thing that needs to be further harnessed in the winter while it is available……..Or isn’t it all solar energy?
On a cold day, the electricity heats our place. Others use heating oil. We are planning to install a wood stove soon to curtail the use of our electric heaters. What is it all but stored solar energy?
Think about it. The trees capture solar energy through photosynthesis and store it. We dry the cut trees –in that same sun– then, burn them to release the energy stored within.
The heating oil, drawn from the ground, was at some point in the distant past, produced by the influence of the same sun, storing its energy.
The electricity, however it is produced, is originally a product of –solar energy.
Even the materials that produce power from nuclear energy were originally formed in a nuclear fusion reaction, where, but in either our sun or another star that had the potential for making them.
We humans have developed the ability to make all that energy more readily, conveniently, and cleanly available to more people, at a cost.
We lament not being able to use the sun’s energy directly. But we are, we all are! It’s just how we do it and how much money it costs us. This doesn’t mean to stop trying to devise other, simpler ways of capturing the energy produced by the sun. It’s just that nature has already dealt with the problem for many eons and has perfected mass storage systems.
White-Out, and not the Office kind!
Here we are, experiencing our third white-out style blizzard so far this winter, in between several more normal snowfalls. I have been out shoveling the snow, playing with some snow fencing to learn what it does and how it directs the snow. Right by the front door, we have some “Bow Wave” drifts where the wind called a “Nor-Easter” hits the house first. I have moved some of these around a bit, and have cut through to make access, and also to attempt to redirect the snow. Interesting. It’s all light and fluffy and dry, not like our We(s)t coast slop.
Thinking about Spring, a lot. A couple of months ago, we had someone come by and offer to “Help us with the Blueberries” for 10% of the take from the harvest. “So..what do you mean by Help?” — “Mow, clean up, spray and harvest them” — “Just a second, you lost me at spray!” — “We need to control the weeds for mechanical harvesting and the bugs for quality” — Just what the other guys were telling us too…. Tests were done, apparently, that the pesticides did not go into the ground water…..I’m still not convinced.
Well, I explained to the gentlemen that I had done more than my share of pesticide application in my career as a City Gardener, and I really didn’t want to continue. Anybody bringing pesticides onto our land is in trespass. 
So we agreed to disagree. He indicated, likely in a form of “Sour Grapes–err–Blueberries” that an operation the size of ours didn’t really need mechanical harvesting anyway. I indicated that I was contemplating going organic, and he agreed that it might be a good thing, again, in such a small operation. He owns the field behind ours. That used to be part of the same property we are on, but was sold in 2007. I would so like to buy it back! But $13,500 is more money than we can bring to bear right now. Bills need to be paid first.
Life goes on.
January 2011—-Depths of Winter
Winter is much colder here than on Vancouver Island, even though we are 4 degrees latitude farther south. We have had snow on the ground since early December, actually since the week Marie had gone to Nanaimo after her sister Cathe’s unfortunate death. Except for the couple of days when we had the huge rainfall and flooding in the area here.
Mercifully, we do get more sunshine than on the Island, so that brightens it up.
Sunrises are not bad, but they are hidden behind a hill from our place. Sunsets, on the other hand, are truly spectacular.
We had a “Sun Spike” sunset a few days ago. Hadn’t seen that before.
Breathtaking! Apparently, this occurs when ice crystals in the atmosphere reflect the sunset light upwards into the almost flame-shaped spike.
Our hens seem to be doing well in their henhouse. Clucking and crooning, and laying eggs. They are 6, and they lay between 3 and 5 eggs a day. Some days, they even lay 6 eggs. Keeps us going, and they have paid for their feed now since we got them in mid-December.
The henhouse is build out of recycled pallets, new plywood and OSB strandboard. The walls and roof are closed in with plastic tarp and Particle Board Sandpaper Belting.. Makes for a good, solid and effective house. We light up the inside with an incandescent (GASP! How Old School!) light bulb from 7 AM until 9 PM. We need to change out their water 3 times a day at least so they can drink. We usually give them warm water so it lasts longer before it freezes again. Besides, they like it when it’s warm.
We are thinking a lot about the next growing season and what we are going to plant and grow, and where on our land we will do this.
We have been walking around and “surveying” to see where we want to make more trails, where to clear, and where to build bridges across our creek and “pond”. Bits of orange ribbon are beginning to appear all over trees on the place.
Time is stretching out…watching Star Trek TOS reruns on DVD, and Mythbusters on Netflix. HMM.
Work at Kingsbrae is scarce due to the weather and the money is getting scarce at the end of the month…
This too shall pass. The first winter is the most challenging.
Fall 2010, October 20
Fall is in the air and a lot has happened since my last posting in the summer. Our house is in place and sheltering us nicely from the sometimes heavy rains and very blustery winds up here on St. David ridge. Recently, I cut another significant tie to BC. My ICBC insurance expired and now I have NB plates on my truck. A bittersweet day.
And then there’s Kingsbrae Garden. After the initial job offer advertisement I read in the newspaper, I applied for a job there. They did not respond to my e-mailed cover letter and resume. After almost a month, I e-mailed them, asking if they had even received my application. Next day, I received a very embarassed-sounding e-mail back, saying that they had been busy and that the job was filled, apply again in Spring. Three weeks after that, Another e-mail arrived in my inbox on a Friday afternoon. Due to a change in circumstances, they were taking applications again. They had taken the liberty of slotting me in for 10 AM on the following Tuesday. Was I still available? I replied that I was and was looking forward to seeing them then. The interview went well, Andreas, the manager and Bob, the assistant manager were the “committee”. Next morning, Wednesday, at 8:10 AM I got a phone call, asking if I would start the next day , Thursday, August 20. Well, that was easy.
So I’ve joined to the ranks of the semi-retired, working on average 3 days a week. In the winter season, after November 5, I will be working 1 or 2 days a week. The garden closed officially to the public on October 9, but does still allow visitors, if they are willing to brave the hustle and bustle of putting the garden to bed.
My workmates are all pretty good people, like to work there, but also like to have their winters off on EI. Different sort of lifestyle. It’s all about getting enough hours to qualify, then it is a kind of happy atmosphere as the cutoff days come close.
The Garden is an interesting place. It was originally conceived in 1996, the same year that the Central Vancouver Island Botanical Garden Society was formed, with a very similar aim. Construction began in early 1997 and was completed in late 1998. It is comprised of several themed, formal and informal gardens. It shows how you can make an extraordinary place with a lot of normal garden plants, with relatively few exotics. Part of the reason is of course, the cold climate zone. This is at around 5 here, with some warmer pockets in Saint Andrews, where the garden is situated.
All in all, I like working there, “Keeps me off the streets, not like my last job!”
There are several alpacas, some goats, chickens and peacocks as part of the displays here. Also, there are 2 resident cats and 2 resident dogs. The cats have the run of the place and often greet visitors. the dogs are confined to the Works yard by a buried wire system
One dog, Bubba, is quite old and some days doesn’t feel the shock of the collar and ventures out. This makes for a cute, interesting situation on some days. There are also resident foxes in the garden. On fox apparently likes to play a “chase me” game with old Bubba. He is seen running up a pathway with Bubba in “hot” pursuit.
When Foxy gets too far ahead, he stops and waits for Bubba to catch up a bit so they can resume the chase. Guess they probably know each other on a first-name basis, and the fox knows he’s pretty safe doing this.