May

Spring?  Most days are warmer now.  The deep snows are gone, with only a bit left in the shadows of the trees, along fence lines, and sides of buildings.  It's melting much quicker, turning the yard into a small lake. 

We frame in the water barrels in the pasture to keep the animals from dumping them.  They're against the chicken coop wall to collect rain water from the roof.  Emptying and cleaning will be more difficult, but dirty water is better than no water.  We fill the barrels daily with water from the puddles.  It'll save a bit of work later, when things start to dry up.

It's still too mucky and wet to use the horse cart on the trails.  The roads aren't much better.  We stay within walking distance of home.  We've adapted to walking though, and can cover a good deal of ground.

Construction begins on the greenhouses.  Then the handle snaps off the post hole digger.  Dad picks a thin birch tree and begins carving a new handle.

We tap the birch trees for sap.   We collect it every day.  We keep a pot on the wood stove boiling constantly.  It takes a lot of sap to make syrop.  I pressure can one jar at a time and store it in the cold room.

Grass starts to turn green.  I let the birds out to free range.  We start picking fresh 'greens'- weeds.

I plant my greenhouses with brassicas, carrots, beets, onions, radishes, swiss chard and lettuce.  It's still too early for tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers to transplant.  I start more seedlings in the house.  Sil, Lisa, and Nira start working up their garden space.  They all move their chicken pens over, and start working the areas the chickens fertilized through the winter.  Mom and Dad dig up their garden and plant cabbage.

It snows on Mother's Day.  Thanks for the gift, Mother Nature.  I hope that's the last of it.

Days get warmer.   Grass gets greener.

May 15th.  Wildflowers start poking up.  Mom and Dad go flower picking.  Dad gets a pain in his belly.  He lays down.  He takes tylenol.  The pain gets worse.  There's nothing we can do for him, except to make him comfortable and hope it passes.  No doctors, no medicine.  Dad dies early the next morning.  He was 66.  We are lost without him.

Days pass.  We cry.  We dig a grave.  We cry.  We bury him.  We cry.  We wait to wake up from this horrible nightmare.  We cry.

I cry all the time.  I go to the garden to plant or pull weeds.  I cry.  I stack firewood in the basement.  I cry.  I go to bed.  I cry.  I try to keep it together around the boys, but when I'm alone, I cry.

I plant the rest of Mom's garden.  She doesn't care.  It was Dad's garden.

#2 finishes carving the birch pole and fixes the post hole digger.  The men finish the greenhouse frames and cover the roofs with plastic.  There's not much left of the roll, so everyone is on their own to cover the sides.  Brother and Sil cut poles to cover the bottom two feet, and fill the chinks with clay.  Lisa does the same, except she goes up the full north side.  Diego and Nira find some tin in one of the sheds at northern neighbour's house, and use it for walls all the way around.

We are out of hay.  The pasture is still short.  We reinforce the fences.  We add another fence line to keep the critters in one spot and let the grass grow on the other side.  We move the cows and horses over.  We add another fence line.  We keep adding fence until the pasture is divided into 12 sections.  We'll have to keep rotating the animals all summer.

Sanya lets her horses loose.  Her paddocks are too small to feed them.  We find them in our yard one morning.  We shoo them away.  Husband goes to talk to her.  She figures they can roam free for the summer, and eat what they like, and she'll worry about hay next winter.  Husband tells her they can't roam free on our land, and we will protect our property.

We build gates for the end of the trails.  They won't stop the horses from entering through the trees, but they will slow them down a bit, cutting off the easy access.

It finally gets warm enough to plant the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in the greenhouse.  We plant more brassicas, beats and mangels in the garden.  The beans, corn and potatoes go in.  I decide not to plant melons, since spring was so late.  I plant a few pumpkins and squash, but save most of my seed for next year.  We fill the rest of the garden with wheat, barley and oats.  It's less than half the seed, but we'll see what grows best in our short season, and save the seed to plant a full crop next spring.

We move the birds to the turkey pen.  We let them out to free range for a couple of hours every day, then pen them back up.  Two of the banties go broody, so I take them back to the new chicken coop and put them in the brooder boxes.  I let them set their own eggs for a few days, then sneak in at night and steal all of the eggs from one hen and replace them with eggs from the larger birds.  I add the stolen eggs to the other hen's nest.  This will keep the timing together so they should all hatch at the same time.

As the other banties go broody I move them to the new coop, into the brooder boxes, until all six have a broody banty nesting.  The rest of the banties are on their own to raise what they like outside.  Three go missing, nesting I hope.  One continues to hang around the other birds.  I add the days eggs from the other birds to the banty's nest when I move her.  Banties are great, but there's more meat on the larger birds.

The trails dry up enough that the men can get back to the lake in the horse cart.  They go fishing in groups of two or three, forage for puffballs and fiddleheads, and cut more wood.  They travel down different trails each time, looking for more lakes, different trees, raspberry patches.  We draw a map on the wall and make note of everything they find.


Nelly calves, but the calf is still born.  Husband, #1 and Diego go looking for a replacement calf.  At one of the neighbour's they find a farmer whose cow had twins.  One is not doing so well, so he lets them take it in exchange for 10 chicks when they hatch.  He doesn't have enough pasture to keep all of his cows either, so Diego makes a deal to let some of them graze at northern neighbour's, and keep one for beef in the fall.  The farmer will try to walk them over. 

Sanya's horses are running up the fence line at our house when they return, irritating our horses.  Husband goes out to shoo them off, but Diego stops him.  If they're running free, they're free for the taking, right?  They manage to catch three of them and Diego walks them home.

Nelly is very disagreeable with the calf, kicking it every time it tries to nurse.  We end up bottle feeding it with Mildred's milk.  After several days the calf, Murphy, figures out that Mildred is more agreeable, and starts nursing off of her.  We let Nelly back in the pasture with the other cows.  I am amazed that Mildred is able to feed all three of them. We keep Mildred and the calves in the side yard.

Our milk supply drops again, but that's okay.  We milk just enough for tea, breakfast, and a bit of butter, and let the calves take the rest.  Since we can't store the butter long, I just take the cream off the milk after a couple of hours in the cold room, put it in a small container and shake it up.  It's more of a chunky cream as we use it than real butter.

Mom is upset that her grass is getting so long, which makes the bugs worse at her place.  We aren't about to go wasting gas (if the lawn mower even works) and 'hay', so we offer to bring Mildred and the calves over to eat it.  Then Mom gets upset about the poop on the lawn.  Then Mildred walks through the garden, and Mom gets real upset.  We dig out the old solar electric fence charger, and are surprised to find that it still sort of works.  It's not a very strong shock, but it seems to do the trick for Mildred, so we fence in her yard.

We take the horses back to the creek pasture to 'mow' the lawn around Lisa's place.  Brother and Sil's place gets mowed when we're there with the horses.


Everyone is busy, foraging all the time, drying weeds for winter, planting, digging, weeding.  Everyone comes to visit and borrows the wheel barrow, helping to clean out the barn as they take home manure for their gardens.

Husband takes apart some old bicycles, wheel barrows, and a wagon, and builds a water cart, a manure cart, a tool cart and a horse hitch.  The hitch can be moved from one 'implement' to the next without unhitching the horse.  It seats one.  He takes the side cutter off the old tractor and loads it on the horse cart, along with some bits of scrap metal, and takes it up the road to the fellow who builds cutters.  The sound of the generator is deafening after silence for so long.

The fellow who builds cutters will get started on ours in a couple of weeks.  He needs more parts and gives Husband a list.  He wants beef in the fall for trade.  I worry about how we're going to keep producing beef of our own if we keep trading off all of our calves.

Spring is short lived and soon it's hot and dry.  Summer seems to have arrived.  We haul water from the creek several times a day.  We do laundry at Lisa's, hanging it on the clothesline at home.

The townsfolk are moving out into the fields and bush, staking claim to land outside of town, digging gardens, setting up camps where they will spend the summer.  Three families choose our road for their base, one is actually on Mom's land on the far side of the ravine.  They're a young couple with two young children.  They seem harmless enough for now, and self sufficient, so we let them be.

News from the south isn't great.  It seems in some areas whoever has the biggest guns gets to be the boss.  It's sad really, in a time like this when we all need to work together for the future.  People are still leaving the cities, moving into the country, squatting on any open space.  Unlike here, where the trees and forage are plentiful, there the concrete is plentiful, and absolutely useless in these trying times.  People are being killed all the time, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  There is news that the working windmills in one area have been taken hostage by a group of thugs.  They figured they deserved the power for themselves.  No one knows what happened to the guy who was fixing them.

March

The snow keeps coming.  This will not be an early spring. 

The men continue ice fishing, feeding us, the birds and the dogs.  They bring home logs which we pile outside of the wood shed, slowly getting them cut up by hand saw.  The wood shed is nearly full.

Mildred calved.  She has a lovely little heifer calf, Maureen.  We get busy milking right away.  So much milk, and such poor storage.  I make butter and cheese and yogourt.   It's a great addition to our diet.  The excess milk and whey goes to the dogs and birds. 

Coffee is gone now.  Husband has adapted to drinking homemade tea with me in the mornings.  It's mostly dandelion root, pine needles, mint, rosehips, and yarrow.  It's hot, and we drink it without sugar or honey now.  The milk makes it much more palatable. 

We emptied the freezer in the garage.  I canned the remaining meat for summer.  We started filling pop bottles with filtered melted snow and filling the freezer with them.  When we ran out of pop bottles we made a trip to the dump to scavenge for more.

The dump looked to have been well scavenged already, but we were able to dig out a couple of bags of pop bottles from the recycling bins.  We found a few boards and an old pair of boots that might fit #2.  They have a rip in the side, but I can patch them with a piece of leather.

We stop to visit one of the neighbours on the dump side of town.  He's had a few calves born already, but lost one cow during delivery.  The calf is only a few days old, and not doing well.  He hasn't been able to get one of the other cows to adopt it, and milking enough to feed it isn't going well either.  He agrees to let us take Monsoon home to try on Mildred.

Mildred takes the new calf just fine.  She seems quite content with two calves.  Our milk supply drops a little for a few days, but then seems to pick up again.  It's still more than we can use before it spoils, so no loss.

We get the extra pop bottles washed out and continue filling them with filtered water.  I know it won't be enough to last the summer, but it might make things a little easier when we have to haul water again in the spring.

I start seedlings.  Lots of seedlings.  The plant stands in the sunroom are full of tomatoes, peppers, brassicas, herbs, and perennials.  Mom, Sil, Nira, and Lisa all have their shelves in front of the windows filled with seedlings too.  We are all looking forward to spring.

We got a letter from my sister.  It took 6 weeks to get to us.  She's with her family in Saskatchewan.  Luckily it's a small town, so they're doing as well as most of the folks in town here.  No word from government, military, or any sort of officials.  No power.  Waiting for spring.  She has learned to grind her own wheat.  Everyone there is grinding wheat.  The town plans to get an old mill up and running in the spring.  Meat has been scarce, but they're getting by.  We all write letters back to her, and hope she gets them.

Day 100- Ice Fishing and News

The weather has warmed considerably.  Nights are still cold, in the -30°C range, but the days are barely hitting -10°C now.  Of course that shift in temperature brings fresh snow, and freezing rain. 

Niece1 and Niece2 took the Littles, the kids and Sally back to 'school' when the weather broke, while Husband, Brother, Dad, Diego and the Bigs went ice fishing.  It didn't go well. 

The snow is too deep to make it back to the good lakes, so a lot of people are out on the lakes by the highway.  They were lucky enough to find several previously drilled holes to fish in, that only needed the fresh ice cut, but the lakes are really being over fished right now.  Dad managed to catch one small pike, Diego got a larger one, but the others have no luck.

Chatting with others in the area they learn that there is mail in town!  There's no organized 'postal service', but people have started taking pen to paper, passing letters on to whomever happens to be going the right direction.  A few people in town have heard from relatives from the south, and one got a letter from Manitoba.    The news in general is that there is no government, no corporations, no military coming to the rescue.  There are self appointed local sheriffs in some towns, and maybe even a mayor, but mostly just people trying to get by. 

Home alone for the day, I walk to Sil's for a visit.  She's been busy knitting and making rugs through the cold spell.  She's nearly out of material for rugs and completely out of yarn.  She has their floor completely covered, with more rugs of various sizes covering furniture and walls.  She may be able to trade some of them at the store.  Their food stores are running low, since it's been too cold to hunt.  I tell her I'll send over some beef when the men return.  We decide to walk to Mom's together.

We take the back trail and stop in at the cabin by the creek to see Lisa.  She's happy for the company.  She's been keeping busy whittling and has started to develop some skill.  She's made a few wooden spoons and is working on a ladle.  She and Sally have dug out a root cellar under her bed, giving them more room for storage and more clay to fill the chinks.  Today she's busy cutting firewood to replenish her pile. 

We find Mom outside in her garden shed.  She doesn't usually start her own seeds in pots, but has started getting things organized for this year.  Dad plans to put a small woodstove in the greenhouse and start tomatoes and cucumbers from seed.  I tell her I've finished sorting and organizing my seeds, and have tomatoes and peppers started already.  She gets out her seed stash and starts sorting while we're there. 

Mom and Dad's garden has always been pretty simple- tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peas, onions, turnip and lettuce.  They grew potatoes last year, and hopes they left enough in the ground to bring up another crop this year.  They want to try a few cabbages and some carrots this year, but otherwise don't plan to try much new.  I'm sure I have enough seed for that.

Walking home I stop and stare at the back field.  I want a new greenhouse put up in the spring, to keep the squash and pumpkins separated.  In truth, it probably isn't far enough apart for proper seed saving, but for now it's the best that I can do.  We'll need to fence off the clearing too, to keep as much of the wildlife out as possible.

When the others return and share the news, I send Brother and Sally home with a couple of roasts and some stew meat.  Hearing that mail is moving gives me a bit of a thrill.  This one small service could be the beginning of a return to civilization. 

The Littles had a good day at the community center.  They played outside most of the day.  It seems all of the children had too much pent up energy from being cooped up the past week or so to sit still and do any work.  I laugh as they tell me all of their stories.  It's nice to see them getting along for a change.

After another meal of stew- the pot is never ending, always on the woodstove now- we all head off to bed and read.