Out with the old; in with the new

Tarragon went to a new home today; he has developed a fair set of horns, and our little setup is not appropriate to deal with those. He may or may not be bred; one horn is turning in a little close to his face so he has to grow up a little longer before any permanent decisions are made. He has gone to live at Bill Stearman's Willow Garden Shetlands in a group of 14 first and second year rams.



He went rather grudgingly. Although we halter trained him when he was little, we didn't continue. He has a tendency to dramatically throw himself to the ground ... and then eat.


In return, this fellow came home with us. Unlike Tarragon, he has measly little scurs, and was getting picked on by all the horned ram lambs at Bill's place. So Bill and I did a trade. Right now he is nameless; he is what is known as a Shetland Mule; that is, half Shetland, half Blue-Faced Leicester. Last year Bill imported the very first BFL's into Canada ... and this year, after a rather disasterous lambing season, has sold all of them. They are known for their roman noses, massive ears, and long, lustrous coats that make handspinners quiver with anticipation. Bill bred a natural coloured BFL ram with a moorit Shetland ewe lamb; she had triplets, and this little guy was one of them. Interestingly, he is not a colour, but considered an English Blue patterned lamb. Although he appears brown, his fleece is iron grey.


Here is a close-up for my readers who spin :-). It's not a great shot; it looks a little primitive, but Bill assured me it's lamb coat on the ends. Very dense and crimpy inside, and colour that makes me think of a latte.


Here is Iain making friends with him while we picked up Alison at work.


And, one horse photo ... here is Alison riding her current favourite lesson horse at Mar-A-Thon Stables. Her name is Maya, and she's a draft/paint cross. She's quite green, but she and Alison seem to get each other.

Our "Office-away-from-home"

Iain, working on his summer school work at our desk :-) in Miss Lily's Cafe. Complete with excellent coffee ... in our case 60% spring water decaf and 40% "Sleeping Woman", a LOVELY Guatamalan coffee.

This morning there were two other tables set up as home offices. They are very supportive of business loiterers, supplying an outlet per table and free coffee refills (unadvertised benefit to business people; Pictonites, just ask if you're there with your laptop!)

The doorway through to "Books & Company" the new Picton bookstore; better than Chapters and Barnes and Noble combined. Not quite the volume of stock, but lovely leather couches and chairs for all, not to mention "Miss Lily", the cat, who wanders around keeping an eye on things. Because this store was a merger between Books on the Bay and Olivia's Fine used books, they provide an unparallelled selection of new, vintage and OOP books.


This is what Iain is doing while I work.


Ack. Forgot to grab a photo of Miss Lily herself. Next time :-).

How I love electricity :-)

Our power was off for 19 hours, starting during a storm Saturday afternoon.

Well.

First of all, I was supposed to be away with Kevin last night, leaving the kids home alone. SO glad I wasn't feeling well, and ended up staying home.

The power flickered on and off a couple of times, and then ... it stayed off. Just BEFORE I got up to fill the bathtub. Oops.

Those of you who have never had a well and septic, may not fully appreciate how important electricity is in this area.

Our basement washroom ... unusable, since there is a pump to send it up to the septic tank.

Upstairs washrooms ... sort of usable, as long as you pour water in to flush. But, of course, your water supply comes from the well using another pump. If you empty the lines, then the pump goes dry, causing other problems and requiring priming of the pump when the power does go back on.

Had I been wise and filled the tub, we could have used a bucket to throw water in to the toilets.

But I didn't.

We used purchased water. Oops. For the water cooler. Luckily we had enough, but what a waste.

It was interesting though ... Kevin preached this morning at church, and the message was called "Living the Simple Life" (correct me, Kev if I botched the title). He chose his topic in June. Last night, the kids and I were playing games and reading by candlelight, a very simple life. We had a LOT of fun. We were able to bless the group home down the road ... a friend of mine was working there on overnights, and she called to ask if we had any way to boil water. They have developmentally delayed adults, and she was quite worried that if a few of the men didn't get their post dinner coffee there would be an "international incident" :-D. Luckily we have our trusty propane burner, which is just the handiest thing we've ever purchased, so she was able to come down and make coffee for the residents.

I got no sleep, because we are in "teach pups to hunt" season, and the coyotes (which have interbred with Eastern Wolves and are getting bigger and braver) are everywhere this year. Obviously with the power out, we had no electric fence, nor light on in the back. I slept with the window open, and got up every hour or two to wave the flashlight and yell. The coyotes' yodelling and howling were just lovely ... 15 part harmony ... and would have been even lovelier had it been in someone else's backyard :-).

Tonight while the 4H kids were working their project lambs, my neighbour Mike called me over to say that he got up at 4:00 (the one time I managed to actually sleep) to check on his cattle, and there were about a dozen coyotes staring into to our sheep pen on the laneway between his farm and our property. More were racing down to the road, and more were out back his farm. Just crazy. He was concerned they would try for our sheep, and got out his 22 and shot in the air a few times. They left. I, finally sleeping soundly, didn't here a thing.

Today, the power is on. I spent a few minutes making sure that the fence was very hot, and I presume I will once again get a lousy night sleep as I listen for "pup-hitting-the-fence-with-wet
-nose" yelps all night :-).

Mike let me know that, in the future, if an outage were to happen again, that I can run a wire from his electric fence to mine since he has a generator at his place. That will give us some peace of mind. He is a good neighbour!

Last week of Drama camp for Claire coming up! Hurray! They will do a play on Friday (2 showings; one for parents and one for the public). Alison works 8-4 all week, and hopefully will get 2 lessons a day (save for the rainy days). Iain and I will take our work in to Picton and work at Miss Lily's Cafe (Jana, doesn't this sound like a Gilmour Girls' kinda place?????). I must take photos of our "office"!

Successful end to the terrible day :-)

Kevin is feeling somewhat better.

The flood water has mostly drained away, save for our redneck pool. Now, we are not red-necks. We don't have an old washing machine sitting on the porch. We don't have a tire-less 1974 dodge charger in the driveway, serving as a chicken coop. We do have this:


Amazingly, my 12 year old Claire started. For those of you know her well, this is completely out of character for her ... reminding me again to not hold on too tightly to my perceptions of my children ;-). I'm also quite shocked, given the amount of rain we've had to far this summer, and the colossal amount that came down yesterday, that this is all that's left. Our property is clay based, with little topsoil, and the drainage isn't great.



Next, I sent Iain outside to harvest dinner for our 100 m dinner. In this case, rather than 100 mile, we have a 100 metre dinner. Had I used lamb, it truly would have been. This is what we came up with from the garden.


We have early beans from our Scarlet Runner plants, summer squash and zucchini from the side of the house, onions (planted by the previous owner of our property in a long-defunct garden, we harvest them out of the lawn at the back :-D!), and fresh parsley and rosemary from the planters on the front railing. All I added was a bit of fresh ground black pepper, and it became:




Now, if could just figure out to grow wild rice on the property, we could have used lamb, and made mint tea from our mint plants, and everything we ate last night would have come from our measly 3.25 acres. I love this challenge, but what I particularly love about our gardens this year is that I've finally figured out I don't do vegetable gardens. Every year that I've planted a huge vegetable garden, we are unsuccessful. The weeding kills me. I stop. By July, the only thing growing are metre high weeds. I didn't grow ANY vegetables two years ago out of frustration, then last year we started again on a much smaller, and more useable, scale.

At the moment I intersperse flowers and veggies in our regular gardens, plus have three square foot gardens containing flowers, beets and tomato plants. If I get everything weeded, I'll put some photos in. The scarlet runners in particular are beautiful, and serve more than one purpose. They are climbing up a tent of 6 bamboo poles and give a focus to one of our gardens. The beans they provide are tougher and must be picked young, however I'm much happier about weeding them when they're not in a typical garden. And I LOVE growing zucchini and summer squash now ... I hope to get lots of REALLY big ones (the kind that jokes are based on) because here, they get tossed in the chicken pen and are a real delicacy for the birds.

Lastly, a photo of some of the sour cherry jam, sour cherry jelly, mint jelly and sweet cherry chutney Kev and I put up last week. No comments that of the "preserves" we made, there are jars of each already open in the fridge. So much for waiting until winter to savour the summer's bounty! We also had a surprise visit from our 4H friend Amanda last night with raspberries from her grandma's garden, which I'll do today. It's somewhat out of necessity that we make this stuff ... it's very difficult to find jams and mint jelly that don't contain high fructose corn syrup (glucose/fructose on the label, for those who are curious), and I have two children that don't do corn.


All for now!

The Stenhouses and the terrible, no good, very bad day :-).

Oh. My.

Kev up all night with what we thought was a reaction to buckwheat (his only food allergy). I got three hours of sleep ... maybe.

Took Claire and friend to camp.

Came home. Kev VERY sick now, and with a fever that won't come down. We were told that from now on, a fever is bad for him, and that he has to go directly to hospital for IV antiotics if necessary. Checked with doctor. Headed to the ER.

ER looked like the ER in Guelph. Packed out, and nurses and triage who don't get the problem.

Doc sees him, says he has gastroenteritis, and since there's no rash, it's fine (despite the fact that docs said don't wait for rash, and Kev told him that).

We drive Kev home .. in the middle of a SEVERE thunderburst with huge hail. These clouds were dumping rain and hail like I've never seen before, with no wind. The worst of the storm seemed to be anchored in our neighbourhood. Can't see two feet in front of the car. Got to the driveway; rather than waiting I ran in the house to discover water seeping in under the back door. Although we dumped sand, it had been worn down by the wheelbarrow and feet, and the area was flooded and filling fast. I ran for a rain coat and shovels, and started moving sand. Alison and Iain started a bail line. Claire mopped up the water leaking indoors. Meanwhile, Kev is very sick again ...The water went down, and then ... hurray! ... the rain slowed. A house flood averted!

I am so tired. Kev is still sick ... please pray that it's just the flu.

What a day. We are now mindlessly watching Gilmore Girls.

Blur ..

This week (and the next two weeks) have been a blur of ...

... picking up Alison from camp
... taking Claire every morning, for the morning only, to a drama camp in Milford
... taking Iain to the dentist for yet another tooth to be pulled (he's having 6 in total removed)
... taking Alison to her stable job
... if raining, taking Alison to her babysitting job
... working on my website job
... attempting to beat the house in to submission (thank you Claire for your hard work yesterday!!!)

Claire is loving camp! Auditions were yesterday and today ... she's hoping for a major role. The kids are helping write music and write the script as well as presenting the play ... a historical biography about the founder of Milford, Ontario. Bizarrely, with a group of students they KNEW would be primarily girls, the camp is using a play with only male roles :-). So her 2008 productions involve being a witch and a man ... both low on her list of chosen roles :-).

Alison loved 4H Youth Adventure Camp and is already looking forward to next year. Her favourite parts were the orienteering and survival training, plus just the chance to meet new kids from different counties and spend more time with some from the county she knows already. Small world moment; one of her new friends from Junior Day last week AND camp this week is the daughter of a fellow I knew at university and danced with regularly at junior farmer dances ;-). I've even been to his folks' farm near Peterborough. (As soon as I saw the member list with Clara Leahy's name on it, I told Alison to find out if her dad's name was Bernie!). And yes, these folks are related distantly to "The Leahy Family"; went to school with a cousin of the band.

Iain is enjoying lots of "only child" time, and the chance to work on his summer school work (heh, heh, mean mom is making him do some bridge work before grade 6) at the library, or at the Bean Counter, or in a park, or in Miss Lily's Cafe :-). He has no complaints, and actually mentioned yesterday that he'd forgotten these benefits of "home"-schooling (or as we like to call it, community-based education!).

Ack! Gotta run. 15 minutes to eat and get everyone out the door to drop off Alison. This pace is nuts!

Day 2: Georgian Bay is Our Playground

Early morning at Cypress Lake:



Hiking the Cypress Trail portion of the trail to the lake:







Driftwood glasses:



Kev and I at the top of the waterfall leading from Cypress Lake to Horse Lake:



Cliffs on the Georgian Bay Trail ... the kids had a lot of fun climbing here. You can see Iain peering over from the top of the cliff if you look carefully:



Georgian Bay at Indian Head Cove:





A tree at Indian Head Cove ... check out where it managed to establish itself. The Bruce Peninsula National Park and Fathom Five National Park is a world biosphere reserve because of its ancient trees. Some of the tiny ancient cedars growing out of the rocks are 1000 years old.


Another typical photo ... it's remarkable how plants can die in my garden no matter how carefully I tend them, and yet check out this wild columbine, growing out of a crack in the cliff with barely any visible detritus or dirt in which to anchor itself ...



More climbing at Indian Head Cove ...





The Natural Arch ...


The kids sitting on the arch ...


Alison in "the rabbit hole". This is the easy way down to the grotto ... if you fit. I don't any more ... it was much more difficult than I remembered to get down. This is a vertical tunnel that cuts through the rock and comes out by the large erratics at the mouth of the grotto. Another way down involves sliding horizontally along a narrow ledge ... also better for the under 20/skinny set. All the other methods involved rock climbing down the face ... SO FUN! Although I did require the assistance of a kind Asian man who got me started in the right direction.


The mouth of the grotto. The lake is below the lip of the grotto entrance, yet the grotto is filled with water. There's a tunnel out to Georgian Bay about five feet below the water's surface (Alison could just hook her toes on the top of the tunnel). My interior photos did not work ... too bad because the eerie light coming through the side of the cave was spectacular.


Bad photo of the kids swimming in the grotto. A teen on a hiking trip with a YMCA camp commented "Is it possible to have water below freezing and still liquid??" Very, very cold! (Not quite as cold as the time I went swimming in Lake Huron at Easter, but very close ... you'll notice I didn't actually get in ... yes, I have matured ;-) ...)


The view from inside out:



Post-hike. Kev made it out part way today, and committed himself to making it all the way to Georgian Bay before the end of our trip.

Camping Day 1 ... arrival and set-up

Lambs out, dog out, camping gear and kids in ... we're all set!!!


First visitor at the campsite! S/he hung around most of the week.


Camp set-up just gets easier and easier now that the kids are older! Our site was in one of the more crowded campgrounds at Bruce Peninsula National Park, but we had a host family site that was QUITE private, and about a 60 second (maybe) walk from the beach.



Evening visit to Cypress Lake ...



Iain wading ... we love this park because whether you're feeling lazy or adventurous, there's something for you. This lake is shallow WAY out to the middle, with a lovely sand bottom for most of the distance. Because it is shallow, it is WARM (unlike Georgian Bay).


One of our hammocks, in a little nook that was JUST right for it ;-).


More to come, but I have a daughter quite interested in getting on the computer ... NOW :-).

Tag-along ...

Somehow, between the sheep disembarking the the camping gear being completely loaded ...


Yes, Dickens knew exactly what was going on, and took matters in to his own hands ... well, you know. Poor guy ... he hates to be left behind.

Note to self ...

Camping the first week of July is not the best timing ... our sweet cherry tree, for the first time in five years, had a BUMPER crop of cherries this year.

By the time we made it home, many were eaten. Next year ... planning will be better. Jelly will be made. Cherries will be frozen.

Beautiful, aren't they? Hundreds

This is the sour cherry tree, just before we left ... not even the birds will eat this fruit ;-).



This is the sweet cherry tree ... and we were eating them like this while packing. Delicious, and not even totally ripe!


Hundreds and hundreds of cherries on each tree :-).

Mmmmm.

Busy, busy ... (edited to add lamb capture photos July 9)

Our family will be camping from July 3-9, so blogging will definitely disappear during that time. We have had an eventful day today getting ready to go, PLUS after trashing the house with camping gear, then realizing we still have to ready it for the lovely woman who is staying here to look after the animals.

We had a small wrinkle this morning; an emergency call from a fellow 4H members dad who had picked up his son's (single?????) sheep yesterday, and lambie had managed to escape. Somewhere in 120 acres. I was headed to West Lake this morning anyway, so we made a deal. Paul would pick up the livestock panels I was supposed to be picking up, and deliver them this afternoon, and we instead would bring a couple of lambs over to lure back this panicky lamb. It worked like a charm, but I missed the best photo! Alison is an awesome sheep catcher ... sheep are very sensitive, and she has the gift of seeming completely calm, then exploding into action in a millisecond. She got good and close to the escapee, tempting with soy meal (a.k.a sheep candy), then BOOM, she grabbed her.

But ...

This lamb was quite big (75+ pounds), and in order to keep her, Alison grabbed her right round the body, then pulled her down in the finest wrestling hold (with the lamb on top, winning). But Alison did not let go, and we were able to get her back to the barn with the assistance of our two lambs Peppercorn and Rosemary.

It made for an ... interesting .... morning ... but I seriously regret not getting a shot of Alison and the lamb rolling in the hedgerow! The family was supposed to take home TWO lambs, in which case there wouldn't have been a problem, but a lone sheep is a nervous sheep, so they will be making arrangements to pick up another one in the next couple of days. In the meantime, "Trouble" a.k. Mira, is locked up in a calf hutch :-).

Photos of the morning ... Peppercorn and Rosemary, all loaded up in Dickens' crate, and ready for their first road trip ...


En route ... "okay, okay ... we'll relax and enjoy the ride ..."


Bringing little lost Mira back in (Alison on right, with Matthew Cairns on left).


You'll notice some difference between the lambs. Mira is a katahdin sheep (a variety of hair sheep). They don't need to be sheared ... but they shed like crazy and Kev is quite allergic to them. Mira also towered over our girls. She was lambed in February, so is 6-8 weeks older than our little Shetland crosses.


Home again, home again ... back to solitary confinement until another lamb is brought home to keep her company. You cannot keep a single lamb; I'm not sure why the lamb provider sent home only one to the Cairns' place, as originally she promised a pair. Likely just lack of communication; we're thankful she was caught safely.


Bye for now ... more to do before we head out tomorrow to pick up Claire, who has been at her nan and papa's house near Cambridge, then head up to the Bruce!!!