July

The beginning of the month is still hot and humid.  There's so much to do, but it's so hard to get motivated.  The Littles start going to the lakes with the men to cool off and swim in the afternoons.  They return with the cart loaded with firewood, weeds, and grass.  The fishing is horrible, but that's to be expected, given the heat.

I get up early every day to let the birds out and get the gardening done before it gets too hot.  The beats are looking good, we're starting to harvest peas and lettuce, and tiny peppers and tomatoes have started forming in the greenhouse.  The potato plants are a mess of bugs.  I pick them off every day and toss them to the birds.

Another banty returns with a clutch of chicks.  One is still missing.

The Bigs work on cleaning out the old chicken coop in the mornings, taking load after load of manure to the garden.  It always amazes me how we end up with so much manure out of one little building.  I spread the manure between my garden rows and pile it at the ends and side.  It'll make spreading easier in the fall.


We finish the fence down to the creek on our south side.  Our new neighbours get halfway to the creek on the north side before we go over to help.  We take them the chicks Husband offered for the fence work.  We talk and work together.  Arlene is waiting for berry season to start canning.  Her garden is doing well. 

The weather breaks and the rains come.  Day after day it rains and the temperature drops.  We start cooking inside again, to take the chill and the dampness out of the house.  It's sweater weather in the mornings now.

We finish the fence to the creek on the north side of Mom's property.  We start fencing the roadside.  We fence around Mom's yard and build gates for her back trails.  The tree tops and branches give us enough firewood to finish filling Mom's wood shed.

The blueberries ripen and we start picking every day.  More and more townsfolk travel through to go picking in the woods.  I put a sign out, eggs for trade.  A few people stop and ask about the eggs.  Two agree to pick a small basket of blueberries for a dozen eggs.  They come back at the end of the day.  One man has some tin at his place.  He'll trade it for eggs, chickens and a chicken pen. 

Husband and the Bigs spend three days carting logs to town, building a little chicken coop, fencing it in, and bringing home tin.  We give him four hens and two chicks, along with 3 dozen eggs.

The tin is nearly enough to finish Mom's roof.  We decide to take the rest of the siding off the trailer wall that is inside the add a room, and that's just enough to finish it.  That also exposes the insulation, which we pull out and put into the new outside wall.  It's enough to cover the west wall.  Two more to go.  Mom has a can of roofing tar, which we use sparingly to fill the old nail holes in the tin.  Leaks should not be a problem.

I get enough blueberries to make a batch of wine.  Blueberries were the reason I bought the wine making equipment.  They're coated with natural yeast, and very sweet, so I add nothing but water to the carboy and hope for the best.  I rack the dandelion and dandelion/rhubarb wines. 

Husband picks up the newly fashioned hay cutter and practices using it on the way home.  He's got a pretty good handle on it when he gets back.  It's too wet to cut for winter storage though.  The rain has helped the grass though, along with our continued rotating of the cows.  The pasture looks like it might last the rest of the summer now.

The boys and I finish the fencing down the road.  We build gates for all of the driveways.  So long as the critters don't try to cross the creek, they are completely fenced in.  The sides of the creek are very steep from winter run off, so I don't think it'll be too much of a problem.  We decide to test it with the horses, Mildred and the calves, leaving them loose overnight.  The next morning we have to walk to Brother's place to get the horses back.  They stayed within the fence, but now have too much freedom.

The rain finally settles down, and after two days of straight sun, Husband decides it's time to start cutting hay.  He starts with the north side, beside Arlene and Mel.  It's the largest clearing.  The boys and I follow along with the horse cart, raking the hay and tying it in bundles.  Most of it will be left to dry in the field, as it should, but since we expect this to be a long process, we get started right away.  Once the cart is full we take it up to the house.  We unload the bundles in the new chicken coop and open them back up.  I spread them on the floor in the pens to finish drying.

The boys go back for a second load and I go back to picking blueberries.  It takes nearly two weeks to get the clearings all cut, dried, bundled and brought back to the house.  We fill the manger in the old chicken coop- the milk room, and cover the floor with thick bedding.  We fill the old chicken coop from floor to ceiling for storage.  The hay loft above the barn is only half full when we finish.  There's not nearly enough for winter.

The elderberries ripen near the end of the month.  The Littles do an amazing job of picking them off the stems.  I start another batch of wine, elderberry with some blueberries thrown in for sweetness and yeast.

I can blueberries without sugar.  They'll probably be our sugar next winter- one of the few hints of sweetness in the long, cold, dark nights ahead.

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.

Day 44- Settling In

Lisa and Sally come up for breakfast this morning.  Lisa returns the hatchet and trades it for an axe.  She has most of the stubs flattened off now, and needs an axe to spit kindling.  She'll need to keep working on firewood as well, since there's not enough back there cut to last the winter.  She helps the boys with chores, and me with the dishes.  She's never been afraid of hard work, and it's good to have her around.

The girls come to get the Littles and the wagon to go to school.  Sally asks if she can go too.  Lisa is a little concerned about them being separated, but I assure her Sally will be safe.  #1 goes with them and takes the .22.  He'll go hunting while they're at school.

#2 gets the smaller cart ready with Tori, and helps me load laundry.  I take one of my big stock pots as well, since it's too cold to use water from the creek.  We put four of the chickens in a cage and take them and a bale of hay with us as well.

I take the water filter off the tub at the creek.  It's frozen solid, and they'll need it in the cabin.  I use some baler twine to tie it to the wall inside, and set the stock pot below.  Once we've filtered enough water through, it goes on the stove top to heat.  I empty the oldest of the lye water buckets into the tub, dump the ashes, and refill it with ashes from the stove.  Lisa scooped them out with her hands this morning, but she'll need a shovel and a metal bucket for future use.

#2 sets up a little chicken pen with another log cabin coop for the birds.  The thin layer of snow keeps them from being able to feed well, but I notice a piece of rotting firewood that's full of trails at the end.  Lisa splits it open, and we toss it in to the pen.  Full of ants, it'll feed the chickens well for today.  We cut a pine branch for them, and toss in a flake of hay.  They should be ok for a few days.  I tell Lisa that they're hers now, so she'll have to forage feed for them every day.

#2 takes the cart and goes back to the house.  He and Husband are going to see Diego and Nira.

When the water has boiled, I pour a bit into one of the laundry buckets, fill the coffee pot, and take the rest out to the tub.  Lisa washes the bucket with a bit of lye water, and rinses it out.  That'll be their drinking water storage.  She takes in another bucket of water from the creek to filter and boil.  She puts a pine needle branch in the coffee pot on the stove to steep.

I'm almost done my laundry when she comes outside to the tub.  It's too cold to be too picky about how clean the laundry is, and we seem to change clothes less and less frequently these days, so there's not a lot to do, mostly just socks and underwear.  We add more lye water to the tub and start on Lisa's things.  Sil arrives with a basket of laundry to wash as well.  I think they've met before, but I introduce them anyway.  Lisa hangs her things on the line, while Sil and I leave ours in baskets to go home.

The second pot of water has boiled, the bucket to drink is filled, and a third bucket is filtered and put on the stove to boil.  I bring in another stump to sit on, and we drink our pine needle tea and chat.

The drafts in the cabin are really bad.  The bucket of clay is warm and gooey, so we fill chinks in the walls.  Once it's empty, we refill the bucket and take it in to defrost.  We wash up in the bath tub, then drain the water out.

Husband and #2 arrive.  Diego has started a little hobby, making bows and arrows from a pile of PVC pipe he found in one of the sheds.  Husband has brought one with him, a gift.  Diego thinks they'll make good trade items.  I think it's great, and perfect timing, too.  We leave the bow with Lisa.  It's the only weapon she has.  She shouldn't need it for protection, no one is likely to be wandering that far back in the woods, but if she practices and becomes a decent shot she might be able to get a few birds or a fox with it.  I'd like at least three more for the Bigs and I.  It would save ammunition for hunting.  I'll have to think about something to trade with them.

We load the laundry and go to Brother and Sil's.  Brother has been busy hunting, and has two fox skins nailed to the side of the cabin.  He's feeding the meat to their chickens.  I think that's great.  That'll help with the predator situation, as well as the chicken feed.  He's gotten some partridge and a couple of rabbits.  He's also built shelves in front of the window.  Sil wants to plant something in the window.  She's got a bucket of dirt that she dug up before the freeze, but needs some pots and seeds.

We go back to our place.  Sil hangs my laundry for me.  I get a bunch of pots from the garden shed.  I had wanted to start some kale in the house, but hadn't been motivated enough to get it done. No time like the present.

I sort through my stash of seeds and pick out kale, swiss chard and lettuce.  We each plant a pot full of each.  Then I plant an extra set for Diego and Nira.  Hopefully they'll provide enough fresh greens to keep us all through the winter.  We take Sil home, then Lisa and I go back to the cabin to put up some shelves in front of the window. 

Everyone returns from school.  Sally had a fun day.  It's the first time she's been out with other kids since the blackout started.  #1 got two partridge on his hunting trip.  He saw a couple of friends from school, and they made plans to go ice fishing together as soon as the lakes freeze.

Lisa and Sally stay for supper with us again, then walk back to the cabin.  I am really tired, considering I didn't really do that much today.  I have a bit of a chill, but it's probably from the laundry.  I go to bed early.