Early 2025 has been a travel bliz and I am grateful for a couple weeks home after work trips to Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, Vancouver and Las Vegas.
So, driving home from the airport on these winding rural roads and passing this sign that has become weathered over time made me focus and giggle at the sharp contrast between this country life and the city life to which I now feel unconnected.
Nights out here are silent save for the occasional high pitched coyote yowls and the deep throated barks of neighbours’ guard dogs. I contrast this with the nighttime yippty yappy yaps of the pint sized pets in my old condo community.
City mouse versus country mouse. Missing cat versus missing cow. Oh, cats do go missing out here but most farmers are pretty fatalistic about it. The barn cats for rodent control can also be snack food for the aforementioned coyote population and larger wildcats.
Our daughter again begged us this weekend not to get a cat for exactly that reason. But there has been a wily black puss that has roamed our place since we moved in, and I am more than happy for him to keep the mole and vole population in check with 100 % appreciation and 0% responsibility.
But now that the ground is thawing it is time to attend to the property which needs a LOT of work.
The house interior is done now, thankfully, so we have a comfortable base from which to expand our plans for the land. We do have a first draft of what we want to build and grow on it and where. What we don’t have is the money to do it all at once.
So we are rolling up our sleeves and have been grateful to have had family over the last couple of weekends volunteer to roll theirs up, too.
Starting with property clean up. The rickety greenhouse is being dismantled. Almost every tree and shrub on this property has been planted into a tire so we have to cut and pull those out. The tires that is. A dense mat of weeds and grass managed to grow and thrive ON TOP of old landscape fabric so I have been pulling that out with determination and profanity in equal measure.
But the biggest thing we have done so far cut down a bunch of trees that were either threatening to fall on the house, act as kindling for the house during fire season or were just diseased and scraggly.
We thought about felling many of the trees ourselves. But in the end we did not. We did our homework. We window shopped for chainsaws and watched YouTube videos. Had a sales guy give us pointers on five chainsaw maneuvers to avoid in order to dodge a severed femoral artery. Factored in Ron’s counter fondness for heights, and my old hernia repair which just “happened” to flare up and decided we needed to be “selective” with our DIY projects.
We ended up contracting Limb Masters. I like the company name double entendre. And they answered my inquiry about a consult within about 5 minutes after I asked for it. The crew was professional, good humoured and efficient.
The place is starting to look like a fertile and lovely clean canvas now. But it’s a project for sure.
When my parents had the farm, I know from conversations I had with my mother that she loved the idea of it. But she was an extrovert and saw the property as more of landing place to host family and friends than as a project though which she could express aesthetic or sustainable living vision. That was more my father. (And perhaps now mine.)
I think as we siblings grew older she found the farm a lonely burdensome place. I was heartbroken when they sold it but I see that now and understand. She spent a huge part of her life generously giving her life blood to a project that was never really hers.
But I love our North Okanagan project and embrace it. I am an introvert and I like creating spaces that are sustaining, homey and relaxing. I love growing things. And this country mouse is thankful to have been gifted my mother’s grit, guts and competence.
2 Responses
Fun read Anna, thanks for sharing!
Love this!