Visitors

Work continues on the house - Jordan is mostly done sanding, and we should be washing the house by the end of the week.  I've not been much help, unfortunately, as we've had a few visitors lately, which means a few weekends off for me!  (Jordan has some time off coming up, so he'll get his chance to relax as well!)

My friend Steph came up from Ye Olde Stomping Grounds for a weekend in July.  We hit a few of the local parks, played a round of mini golf, made kale chips, and lazed about.  It was a wonderful time, and the timing was great too - we'd had a busy few months, but work on the house was on hold as we waited for the sandblaster, so a weekend off was both needed and permissible.

Waterfalls!!!

This past weekend, some of my extended family came up for a visit - my grandfather, aunt, and a cousin from my mother's side of the family.  We spent Saturday at the farm, generally taking it easy with a game of "guess that tree" (we couldn't identify it, other than that it's a kind of pine), a wander to the berry picking spots (we found some highbush cranberries, discovered that the birds have eaten the rest of the saskatoons, and braved the wild roses to pick some thimbleberries), some lounging on the deck, and finishing with a fabulous dinner outside as the sun set and a fire.  Sunday we ate breakfast at my favourite restaurant, enjoyed a round of mini golf and a few laps around the go-kart track, and had another delicious supper outside.

My Aunt raiding our peas

Dinner!!!

Foghorn behaved very well for my cousin

Giant tires after mini golf and go-karts

Why be 28 when you can be 6?!!

We've also had some not-so-friendly visitors.  We've got a pack of coyotes hanging around, and they're brave enough that they've been out during the day to pick a fight with a neighbouring dog.  As such, the chickens haven't been outside in weeks, as we don't want to risk any getting snatched while our back is turned.  We suspect that the coyotes have one den in the field behind the barn, and another den in the adjacent field to the north.  They start howling around sundown, and we've seen a few wandering between the suspected dens; all of this activity drives Zim crazy so we've been keeping a very close eye on him as well.  Coyotes spend their whole lives scrapping, and I don't think Zim's ever been in an earnest fight in his life, so we don't want to rake any chances.

Also, something took a wander through the garden this past week and ate the tops off the beets.  So it looks like I'm canning this weekend - I'll borrow Kim's pressure canner and hopefully do all the canning inside.  If that doesn't work out, I can move out to the longhouse; it has no running water, but we can plug in the old stove and bring water in buckets from the house.

We also went on a visit last week!  We popped over to see the neighbours and the four of us had a wonderful chat.  They were able to provide us with more history of our farm and our neighbourhood, and send us a few aerial shots of the farm from 2009.  They are pretty fabulous people, and we are so lucky to have such friendly and helpful neighbours!

(c) belongs to our neighbour.  Wish the photo was bigger?  Give it a click!