An interlude......

today, over at Facebook's Take back Urban Home-steading(s) page, it was Action day.. a lot of us got together and made videos and blogs about our Urban gardens... i'm not exactly 'urban' but i am a small 'gardener', did have chickens, pleasants and 1 piggy wiggy... and am mostly interested in the issue of someone trademarking 'urban homestead' or 'urban homesteading' ... anyways... some very awesomely fine videos were posted and this was my collage of earlier photographs... if you've been following my blog, you've probably seen some of the photos.... i'm most impressed with the back to the land/old school folks that are caring and sharing.... gives me hope for the future that doesn't necessarily include McDonald's or Wendy's...

i'm still working on the scanning for my series on Knight Inlet and my parents homestead... today i was busy... we had a family dinner and turkey was the star.... and in my waste not want not mode i canned 13 pints of turkey broth... i especially like the fact that it's about as pure as you can get for broth... no salt, no chemicals.. just straight broth... and it didn't cost me an arm and a leg...

daughter gave me several packages of  peat pellets and the little greenhouse boxes they come with...greenhouse here i come...  woohoo....

yesterday a friend and i went to Nanaimo's Seedy Sunday... i bought some seeds and ooh'd and ahhh'd over pots of plants and specialty seeds... and came home with 2 blocks of mushrooms... Tree Oyster Mushroom and Shiitake... i've never grown mushrooms before... should be interesting and i hope that i don't kill them... we shall see....... going to the event was good, i feel a sudden surge of plant frenzy coming on... only cure is a good length of time in the greenhouse or soon in the garden.... they are saying more snow tomorrow... sighhhhhh

A little pre-history.....

my father had a very interesting childhood compared to most, not necessarily a great one.. it was fraught with hardships.... he was born in Burma, of a English military chemist and a Burmese woman.. one of several siblings and the middle child... their father died while they were young.. Grandma Hacket and the children moved back to the United Kingdom and lived in Scotland, where conditions were difficult at best..  for his post education he was enrolled in Navel College... (back row, 4th from the right) and was stationed on the H.M.S. Barham

the exact year of this photo i'm not sure of, but would have been in the late 1900 or early 1920's...

the following picture is dated 1920 and includes King George VI who was in a play on 'a' ship (since i don't know if he was on the Barham or not... my father loved to show this photo to anyone that was willing to look at his photo album...

he must have had a small camera at the time because he had a picture of the final days of the  German Battlecruiser SMS Hindenburg 

unfortunately he never wrote what ships these are...

he travelled the world, was the only one on his ship to get malaria, was a champion boxer and had a woman in every port...

after he and his brother got out of the military, in the middle 1920's  Grandma Hacket and her children immigrated to Canada, to the west coast where they went into the wilderness of Knight Inlet and decided to live...

my father got a boat and went fishing to make a living.. and thats where he met my mother...
she was a young girl who was working in a fish camp where he came to sell his fish....i'm not sure how the story goes but they got married in her home town of Courtenay and moved upcoast to settle.......

i wish i had more pictures of this part of the story but in his senior years he threw out hundreds of photos.... these are some of the very few that remain...

more to follow..... (hope i'm not boring you)

Life on the Water....

was a very different life to most people but to those that chose that path, it was a very 'free' existence... my parents always claimed it was better to work 18 hours for yourself  than 8 hours for someone else.. and yes 18 hour days were often.... the hard work was endless... logging and trapping in winter, fishing in summer....

Out on the Prairie wasn't sure how the house was situated so i'll explain better... it was entirely on water, nothing but the boom logs holding it to the shore...

here you can see the house on the beach.. while the tide was high they pushed it onto the beach and when all the cleaning and repairing was done, pulled it off the beach and returned the house back to where it was anchored.... 

my parents often remarked about the fact that if they got tired of the view, they could just tow it to a new location... sounds idealic doesn't it!!

i'm not sure of the age of this house, but i'm assuming somewhere in the middle 1940's ... previous to this house they built 3 others....

in the pictures below show the first house (from picture above) but i'm not sure who the folks are... i do know that my parents built several houses and boats, dingies and anything else that was required for themselves or neighbours...

the long poles they are using for manipulation of the logs is called the 'pike pole' ... note the laundry and of course the woman is wearing a dress, apron and heels.... (this is why i know for SURE that is not my mother, she was well known for wearing pants and comfortable shoes)... 

i still find it amazing how the houses were built... not so much the skills but everything was done by hand, most likely the trees to make the boards were chopped down by my father, towed to the local sawmill and then either loaded up on the boat or perhaps a small barge to tow the materials back to the place where the house was built... i'm not sure of the process, it was before my time....

some of the settlers actually lived on land in nearby bays and coves... such as Minstrel Island... which is where we would trundle off usually once a week, for grub and mail and company.... it was a big event to catch up on the local news, greet the steam ship that would arrive with passengers and supplies......
the folks that lived on land often had small homesteads with clearings enough for a small garden and perhaps even some livestock... i remember my parents telling me of when 'grandma Hacket' had some goats and sheep on the farm on the island (another island) but i can honestly say i don't remember anyone having livestock of any kind.... 

next episode...... i'll give some back ground as to how my parents got to Knight Inlet and some of the famous settlers .....

Remembering the past......

once there was a little girl who lived in the wilderness.... (seriously folks) and had a stellar few years as a free spirit.... so long ago.. i would think about 1955 or so... the wilderness was Knight Inlet on the British Columbia coast ... my parents were homesteaders of the coastal variety.... we lived in Sargent Pass and live in a float house which was attached to the shore with boom logs..... our water supply was a creek behind the house.... our heat was our cookstove and in the shed was a generator which ran an hour a day.....our house was tiny, consisting of kitchen/living room, small bathroom, one bedroom and my 'bedroom' which was the pantry/closet.....i have fond memories of using a blanket, which was held up by the canned goods, to cover my bed, and myself 'reading' books.... or just pretending with my teddy and 'nelly' the elephant.....i was either the nurse or the teacher... and of course teddy and nelly were either patients or students... my outdoor playmates were usually my stuffed animals or Squeaky the cat or sometimes the boys that lived further down the Pass....

such a life i think... my father made me a 'boat' with a wooden box, where i spent many hours... eventually i learned how to use the real dingy and spent a lot of time on the water... my lifejacket my mother made by hand... she used Kapok for the stuffing and i NEVER went outside without it being on... Squeaky the cat (in lower pic) doesn't appear to approve of being with me.. but i owe her my life... one time i was out on the float and was playing with 'princess hair' kelp and slipped on it... into the water i went..... i remember it only too well... as i was floating away, i wasn't concerned with drowning, i knew that i would end up on the shore nearby... mostly i was worried about being eaten by a whale... anyways back to the cat... i guess Squeaky knew that i wasn't supposed to be floating away because she went back in the house and wouldn't leave my mother alone, kept going to the door and eventually scratched my mother... my mother finally figuring out something wasn't right, went outside and saw me floating away... there was no dingy (it was with my dad who was logging) so she grabbed the pike pole and held it out to me.. after that i guess she watched more closely and Squeaky got well treated for the rest of her very long life....






































to be continued......

Bags and Brussel Sprouts.......

unlikely combination right?  well i finished another grocery bag and yesterday was 'out and about', going to our semi-local farmer's market... well not exactly since a goodly portion of their produce is brought in from california, mexico and other points far south... i took my beautiful bag with me and filled it up.. i'm happy, they hold a lot of groceries and look pretty, had no distress with the weight of the produce... all good i'd say...

as for the brussel sprouts i've found a very very good reason to grow more and protect them better from the deer.... at $8.13 a kilogram i'll not be buying many more from the produce section of anywhere..... the brussel sprouts do very well overwintering here and in the spring  the stalks produce lovely tasty new spring greens and if you  haven't eaten all of the sprouts you also have those ... not bad i'd say... and did i buy some? Yes.... sigh.. why? you might ask ...because turkey just is NOT the same without brussel sprouts and cranberry sauce... we are going to have a family dinner next weekend and the turkey has been in daughter's freezer.. time to cook it up and make a batch of turkey broth with the carcass...i've now used up all my canned turkey broth and am needing more...

this winter i truly fell off the veggie wagon and have been eating a fair bit of meat/poultry and fish... not sure why, but i figure if i'm craving it i most likely missing something in my diet... i'm gradually cutting back more and more on the meat department and trying to get back on the veggie/beans/rice wagon... wish me luck!!

am going to have to grow more green/purple beans this year too since i've managed to use almost all my canned beans that i did up... i canned them because i had them and a lot of carrot leftovers and i'm a touch quirky about letting the bounty rot on the compost heap... i'm not much of a canned string bean and or carrot lover but i've used them in a lot of soups and stews and i have to admit they were a good addition..

and here comes the 'rant'... i shall be good, honest!! this link is from Mother Earth News so i'm going to 'assume' that it's pretty correct... it's an article on certain company that isn't on the up and up on their 'organic' status...... as for me IF i could find a supplier of local goats milk i'd be there like a dirty shirt.. but once again.. not allowed to buy it raw and no place local that i know of..... the milk police at work you know... the milk police, the egg police, the slaughter house police .... oh wait... here's a link to an article about how our meat has to be processed.... it is an older article but still rings true.. many small farmers literally gave up and once again many of us are forced into buying meat that is processed in large facilities.....

here on Vancouver Island there is a movement from local small farmers to break into the market, as it is now it's a very small portion of what is offered in larger grocery stores... 
rant over..... back to reality....
since gas went up another 10 cents a litre... $1.23 a litre ..... i shall be home much more..so a sewing i shall go.. until i can 'sow' in the garden!!!

Snow and Sewing......

yes.... sighhhh... i'm snowed in... not a lot of snow, but enough that i can't get out of my driveway... oh what to do...... i have the pre-spring garden bug and it's driving me crazy... well crazier than my normal state ....
my poor little peas.... huddled in my raised bed, tucked under the reemay and 4 inches of snow.... my greenhouse seedlings tucked in their stryofoam boxes with heat pads underneath and triple layers of reemay on them.... brrrr  .... i guess we'll see how my plant early experiment goes, since this is an unusually chilly/snowy arctic blast, and those poor little seedlings thought it was spring too....

i must admit it does 'look' lovely out there, as i'm sitting on my chaise, with a cup of coffee, my laptop, Dora behind my back and Sampson curled up at the end of chaise lounge (we're a might scrunched but happy) but i was outside earlier, topping up the bird seed and trust me.. chilly it was!
yesterday i spent sewing and today i will finish my current project... i made 2 grocery bags and am working on a third one... it's not like i don't have enough grocery bags but the ones i have are beginning to look a wee bit tattered and my new ones have a hint of elegance (one must LOOK good while shopping)

this is one of the bags that i made... the new one i'm making is made of a oilskin type of fabric and i'll post a pic when i'm done...it has bottles of wine and grapes all over it... i don't drink wine, but should prove to be a conversation piece....

i 'liked' a Facebook page Take back Urban Home-steading(s)  due to the kerfuffle over the trademark issue and the site has taken off... within a week over 5000 people have 'liked' and i'm really impressed with the activity it's generated... some of the folks who's blogs i read such as Deanna Duke's Crunchy Chicken have been commenting and contributing and it really is fun to share ideas with everyone.. i believe that a goodly majority of us farmers/gardeners/earth folk are generally solitary but not adverse to 'visiting' and what a great way, coffee, puter at your fingertips and ideas flowing ... last night the 5000th 'like' arrived and April the owner of Take back Urban Home-steading posted Rachel's blog Turtles Eat Lettuce  .. congrats on being punted out into the limelight ....

another blog that i've followed for awhile now is Mobugs ... i really LOVE her site since i'm a bugaholic... but this week she made a post on a Crawdad (Crayfish for us Canadians) that she found attempting to walk on ice... its a heart warming story and if you have children or grandchildren i recommend having a look at it, the pics are awesome and  the story will make you feel warm and fuzzy (well it did me) ... the posting after this one is a semi follow-up...

i've noticed that i have a few new 'followers'... thanks for reading and i hope not to disappoint you... cheers.. am off to sew..... laters.... 

The word is.....

my washing machine works great!!! Daughter phoned me this morning and let me know that she'd done a load of laundry .... unfortunately her washing machine is broken so i loaned her my 'new to me' one.... she was delighted to use it... one small problem tho... it leaks... but we think it probably won't take much to fix that issue... YAY......
for those of you that posted yesterday regarding Urban Homesteading etc., great posts, i've not read all of them (there were a ton) but have enjoyed reading what i have....
the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent a letter to the Dervaes, on behalf of the several targets of their takedown requests... the letter is great to read and hopefully will make a difference... we shall see won't we!
another issue i have is with Facebook .... as much as i love the connection it has given me, i find their 'holier than thou' attitude more than distressing...not just because the Dervaes were able to shut down several group pages but also their actions regarding shutting down breastfeeding and art sites which they deem 'obscene.... here is a link to the pictures.. if you don't mind looking at mommies feeding their babies, have a boo.. or perhaps that should be 'have a boob'... and if you object.. just don't look!! now back to facebook.. grumble grumble... one of the owners of a site that was shut down due to the Dervaes objections is unable to find anywhere to send them a letter..... soooooo she wrote a great one and is sharing it with others in the hopes it will be addressed... here is the facebook link, ..... enough grumbling for one day.. don't want to overload my brain and blow a gasket or anything ...

a cold snap is on it's way... complete with cold bitter winds and possibly snow.... in all reality snow first then winds would be better, sometimes snow is a good thing helping to insulate some of the more tender plants...

i have to thank my friend who bought new furniture... they were all covered with some fabric /reemay like product which i cheerfully scored and saved...... new use..... in my greenhouse, covering my new seedlings from the impending drop in temperature..... i must admit i get great pleasure out of recycling things..... i even have my kids saving me things  (and yes they DO think i'm a bit ummm... quirky ) such as string and binder twine (from  hay bales) , all good and useful items in the garden....