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.

April

The rains come.  Snow melts.  Snow falls.  Rain.  Warm days.  Cold nights.  More rain.  More snow.  The roller coaster of spring has arrived in the north.

By mid April it's no longer safe to go ice fishing.  The men have little luck fishing from shore.  The sleigh bogs down as they travel through the bush.  The trails aren't clear enough to use the cart.  Everyone stays within walking distance of the house.

What little grass pokes through the snow is still dead and brown.  We manage to shoot an occasional bird, rabbit and fox.  They stave off starvation for the birds, just barely.  The birds are getting more milk than we are now, along with the kale that I planted midwinter in the sunroom.  I'm afraid I may have to start feeding them my seedlings soon.  They're almost ready to transplant now, with no where to transplant them to.

I busy myself in the greenhouses, working the soil, filling buckets with snow, patching the plastic.  It's still too cold overnight to plant inside, but towards the end of the month the weeds start growing, giving the chickens some fresh greens.

The men cut logs to build more greenhouses for each house.  The ground is still frozen, so no digging yet.  At least they'll be ready when they can dig.  Tree tops are brought up for firewood.  Our wood shed is full, so we begin refilling the basement.

 I can what meat is left in the entranceway freezer.  There are over 700 jars, enough for one meal a day for each house, until fall.  We decide not to butcher anything big until then.  With any luck Dorie and Nelly will calve soon, and we'll have meat for the future.  Mildred's calves are growing well, and Monsoon, the little bull, will probably be on the menu next winter.

The garage freezer is filled with pop bottles of water.  All the extra bottles have been filled and stored in the basement.  The carboys, canning jars, and 5 gallon pails in the cold room have all been filled with water.

There are only a few jars left of pickles and beats, and still a fair bit of jam.  Sometimes the boys take a jar and eat it straight.  What else can we do with it with no flour for bread or pancakes?

Dad and #2 carve a mold of a foot, and make new shoes for #2 from last year's cow hides.  They plan to carve more molds in everyone's sizes, but only #2 is without shoes for now.

We're down to the last four bales of hay.  We need grass soon.  The snow melts slowly.  We put up more fences in the clearings, more places to graze this summer.

We have visitors regularly now.  The townsfolk come out to see if the trails are cleared to the bush every 4 or 5 days.  They're looking for greens.  They cut pine branches for tea, but there's not much else to be found yet. 

A seed exchange is set for mid month.   We go with just a few assorted seed packets.  There are fewer people than last time.  We hear of many who didn't make it through the winter, or chose to head south.  Letters from the south tell of decimated populations, but an early spring, and growing season well under way.  Town governments have begun contacting one another, seeking answers to the questions that everyone is asking- when will the power be back on.  In some areas windmills have been fixed, and pockets of hydro do exist.

We're surprised to find some of the Mennonites there, and they have wheat, barley and oat seed with them to share.  Everyone gets enough seed to grow one acre.  I am thrilled at the prospect of bread in the fall.  They have a working mill, and will grind what wheat we grow, in trade for other goods in the fall. 

Everyone is hopeful for the future.  We've survived the winter.  In another month we should begin harvesting the first spring veggies, and fresh weeds and forage before that.  Hydro in the future.  Some hope for normal.

Day 99- In The Cities

When the power went out people went crazy.  So many people, so unprepared, so close together.  People went to work for the first few days, but found little they could do.  The retailers lasted a bit longer, almost a week, until desperate people with no access to money started pillaging for whatever food and supplies they could get their hands on.  It wasn't safe to go to work.  It wasn't their problem anyway.  Let the store owners deal with the pillagers.

Crime was at an all time high.  Looters were out on the streets, breaking into buildings, taking the big ticket items- the big tvs, stereos, computers.  They expected to be sitting pretty once the power came back on.  The days passed, as gangs and looters ran into each other and fought in the streets, as they stabbed, shot and bludgeoned one another to death.  Riots broke out across the cities.  Desperate people, with nothing to eat, worried about friends and family, got caught in the crossfire.

People were afraid to leave their homes.  They barricaded the doors, covered the windows, hiding in the dark, waiting for rescue. 

Police tried to maintain order.  So much crime.  So many deaths.  Bodies littering the streets.  They're human too.  People were out of control.  The world was out of control.  Each day fewer and fewer officers showed up to work.  They too were hungry.  They too were worried about their families.  They knew it wasn't safe to leave their families at home alone.  And for what?  To do body counts?  There was no controlling the raging mobs.  There were no jails to put them in- the guards were gone, no food to feed them, no electricity to power the security.  Their only recourse was to shoot to kill.

The doctors and nurses went to work.  They tried to care for their patients.  Back up generators ran out of fuel.  Equipment failed.  People died.  More and more sick, injured, hungry and desperate people came in.  The medicines ran out.  The bodies piled up.  The hospitals became centres for disease out breaks and crime.  They were human too.  There was nothing they could do.  One by one, they stopped going to work and chose to stay with their families.

Government and city officials became targets for crime.  People were convinced that they must have food and supplies in their big fancy houses.  People were angry that nothing was being done about the power outage, the crime, the services.  Of course some public officials managed to flee, but many were murdered.

Weeks passed.  Desperate, hungry people couldn't hide any more.  They ventured out of their hiding places looking for food.  Looking for some sense of safety, some sense or order.  Many were killed.  Many got sick from the disease infested streets.  Bodies lay rotting in the streets.

Some made it out of the cities, to friends and family in smaller towns.  Some stayed.  Some took disease with them and sentenced those who had given them refuge to die as well.