My favourite weather!

Lo and behold last Monday was a snow day for schools but not for our work. The snow arrived around lunch time probably around 10cm but it was quickly followed by freezing rain which made driving scary. Unfortunately the truck decided that it would be a great time to break down, the alternator went on it. We borrowed Rich's car to get home and the next day David was laid on his back in a snow drift fixing it!

Two weeks before Christmas David decided to take down a wall in my kitchen! The only surprise there is it wasn't Christmas Eve like usual! Before the wall can be knock through he's removing a cupboard. This will mean the hot air from the wood stove in the kitchen can circulate through more of the house meaning our oil fired heating won't come on very often (we hope). It will also make a huge dining kitchen and we'll actually use the lounge attached to the kitchen instead of it being a walk through and dumping ground.

Harriet sang in the school choir last week to raise money for Christmas Mommies, a local charity which helps families on low incomes.

Today is a real snow day, even I'm off (sadly not David though). It started snowing yesterday and is predicted to finish tomorrow. So far we have about a foot though it's difficult to measure as it's so windy it's drifting in some places and only a few inches in other. This means we can get lots of jobs done and some of the baking for Christmas before the mad rush of this weekend when we're killing turkeys and geese and attending a wedding! (not at the same time)

David taking the cupboard out

Harriet right in the middle on the front row wearing pink and black

Isaac doing one of his favourite jobs, snow blowing and digging my car out!

Oh Christmas Tree

Today was our annual trip to get our Christmas Tree. This is quite a big event with families getting together for the afternoon to go out to the Christmas tree farms and walk round picking the perfect tree, we went with the whole Philips clan. After our twig I got free from kijiji last year the rest of the family were determined that our 2012 tree would be an improvement, as you know when you see a tree growing outside it looks quite small so you don't really think about if it will actually fit into the house. We did fairly well with the height but it ended up being a lot more bushy than we realized!

Harriet and Josy getting ready to choose

This was our first choice until we realized it was too prickly!

We used Isaac to measure the trees, this one's too big!

Our tree!

It's probably the biggest tree we've ever had with the least decorations on as we left most of our decorations behind and are still collecting new ones.

Harriet started 4H this week. Max wasn't sure what to make of meeting other dogs and the whole dog training thing. He actually behaved himself  but was by far the most lively dog there.

Molly!

Molly came back from the butchers this week, her hanging weight was 220 lb. I have to say she sure is a tasty pig. We have a number of orders for pork, we've sold out of turkeys for Christmas but still have some geese and ducks. 

Although we've had some snow and very cold weather recently getting as low as -22 degrees, on the whole it's been fairly mild so the snow melts quickly. Tomorrow we have 15-20 cm forecast followed by freezing rain (our least favorite weather),the kids are holding out for another snow day which would be nice.

2012 Christmas Letter

As this is the time I usually start to write my Christmas letter I decided that this year I'm making my blog post the letter. I felt that as most of the recipients of our cards and letters sometimes read the blog it made sense to save the planet, my time and money and make this post into our Christmas greetings to you all. I have however mailed the school photos and other little gifts this week in a couple of parcels but Canada Post couldn't guarantee delivery for Christmas, so sorry if they arrive a little late.

Now we have been in Canada for over 2 years very little is new anymore. We are pretty much used to the weather, which we have to say we love the hot summers and the cold snowy winters. The bugs are eating us less so we can live with that too. We have been in our little old farmhouse for over a year now so we pretty much know its idiosyncrasies and limitations and have made wonderful plans to improve our home when we have the time and spare money! We are constantly meeting new people from our village and with being part of a much larger church than we've ever been to before still meeting new people there too.

Isaac turned 16 in January and has spent some time this year getting his hunting licence, drivers ed and beginners licence. After next April he can sit his practical test and drive by himself. He is always to be found outside whether it is with the animals, doing DIY, tapping the maple trees to make maple syrup, tipping and selling the tips for Christmas wreaths, hunting, playing on the school soccer team or snow shoeing. He is also part of the youth band, youth group and youth lifegroup at our church.

Josh turned 15 in April, he is more the indoors type and is usually found at his computer. He is part of Harvey Junior Firefighters, the school soccer team and youth group and youth lifegroup at church.

Harriet turned 12 in February and never seems to be home. She got her babysitting licence earlier in the year and regularly babysits for a family up the road with 4 kids and her 2 cousins as well as kids at church. She also loves animals and breeds guinea pigs and has put her own pet puppy the top of her Christmas list (she is not getting one!). She does kids church with the babies and toddlers and also goes to youth group at church. She has just joined 4H for the first time and is going to do the dog obedience unit with Max!

We are part of Christ Central Church in Frederiction which is a great community of believers to be part of. We all keep fairly busy David, Josh and Isaac drive, fill  and empty the truck we use for set up as we have to rent a bigger building to all fit in on a Sunday. David and Isaac do the sound system. Harriet and I are part of kids church, I lead the 0-2 year old group so I can get my fix of cuddling little ones! I also cook a very large turkey once a month for our sandwich run where we deliver over 300 sandwiches to people we have contact with through our drop in facility and to others in low income housing and rooming houses. We also attend a lifegroup in town once a week.

We live in a little old wooden farm house which is similar to the one in Anne of Green Gables if you've ever seen it. We are on a main road about half an hours drive from Fredericton and 1 hour from our nearest seaside at St Andrews. We are just outside the little village of Harvey which has a gas station, health centre (where our doctor is), a number of stores, a pub, a fish and chip shop, bank, hair dressers, curling club, loads of tiny little churches of various denominations,schools, an ice rink and candle pin bowling club to name but a few things. It looks a bit like an old wild western town and has a railroad running straight through the middle of it. It is also well known for the public lakes we can all enjoy.
This was the original farmhouse but over the years the land has been split up so we now only have 2+ acres to work with and a small barn/shed. We have meat rabbits (approx 50), ducks (10), geese (6), turkeys (12), chickens (22), 5 breeding pigs and 26 piglets, Harriet's guinea pigs and one crazy dog! Most of the birds will be sold or in the freezer within the next 4 weeks, we will be replacing our current laying hens at Christmas and next week we have our first pig at the butchers. I tried tanning the rabbit pelts and have a box full done but as yet I haven't made anything with the fur. I've just worked out our chickens will have laid approximately 4000 eggs between them this year and we have probably sold 3/4 of them, in fact some weeks we can't keep up with demand.

The extension to the little pig shed

David works for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, where he is a supervisor in the support department. His job comes with good benefits so we have all been able to visit the dentist this year. I work for Partners for Youth a not for profit organisation who work with youth at risk. Rich, my brother also works with me so they put us in the same office and call it Coronation St! Now we are both working full time our hours are similar so we can car share most days into Fredericton.

We enjoyed having 2 groups of visitors this summer. My Mum, Dad and Auntie Brenda came in June/ July and we got to visit some of the local area with them. David's parents came in August, we did some sightseeing but a lot of the time was spent on building our big deluxe pig shed in time for our first piglets to be born.

I stopped doing the market last Christmas and I have to say I don't miss the early mornings and long days baking and selling. I still take orders occasionally, which I quite enjoy as I get to bake again.

We have a number of British friends over here so we have got together to celebrate bonfire night and we had a British garden party for the jubilee.

We got our first Christmas card from England yesterday, we had to laugh as it wasn't signed and didn't have a postmark on to give us a clue who it was from. So if it was from you thank you!

Canadians like to have lights and decorations up for each special occasion very early, so now Remembrance day is over Christmas lights are already up. When we got home the other night Isaac had already put lights outside the house and the next day he put some on the chicken shed. It reminded us of chicken run!

I think I've covered pretty much covered all of 2012 in the Laver household so all that remains is to wish you all a Happy Christmas and many blessings for 2013. Please come and visit, we love having guests.

1st snow day

Today we woke to snow. The forecast rain that was supposed to wash it all away hadn't arrived before school so Harvey kids had the day off. This weekend is a long weekend anyway with parent/ teacher interview day and remembrance day holiday on Monday so the kids get a 5 day weekend. Thankfully we were prepared for the snow having put our snow tires on a couple of weeks ago after the first flurries mid October so we got to work safely and the rain did eventually come and wash most of it away.

 view from our back door this morning

One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato....

Another month has nearly gone by and we've gone from really hot summer to very wet autumn. As I write hurricane Sandy is howling past us. So far we have suffered very few ill effects of it except the wind and rain, neither of which compare to the rain we had a couple of weeks ago. We still are expecting more days of bad weather probably going on till the weekend. We have enough wood cut to keep us warm and a little generator if we lose power and plenty of meat in the freezer or running around to stay fed!

We are preparing for winter, one thing we needed was water pipes laid to our animals so we don't have to carry buckets out every day. We found a local man to help us dig the trench which has to be about 4' deep to be under the frost line. We are trying to find some extra food sources for our pigs as we have rather a lot to feed. The Nasons have grown some oats and field peas which we grind to supplement the food bill. This week we also found a farmer selling cull potatoes which we collect by the truck load, then cook before giving to the pigs! One of the piglets, Leafy, had a bad leg for a while so Harriet gave him some tlc.

For the past couple of weeks at church we've had Dave and Rosie Fellingham visit from the UK, we've had a number of special meetings which we really good. By the way our church changed its name from The Meeting Place to Christ Central Church last month, just in case you were trying to find the website.

A large number of people were laid off last week at David's work. We were very thankful that David still has a job and that things are settling down again after the big shock.

My job is going well and will be very busy for the next 6 weeks when I will be doing 2 elementary projects in addition to my other roles.

The boys have finished soccer for the season. Harriet has decided she's training Max, which entails making him homemade treats and teaching him to walk on his lead and come on command.

This is one of my favourite trees from my afternoon walks.It's called Woodpecker Hotel and if you look closely on the end of the stumpy branch you can see a woodpecker.

Nicky using his mini excavator to help us lay the water pipe, this was the day before the torrential rain and now our back yard is a large muddy pond!

This is another view of one of the woodland trails I frequent around Fredericton.

This is what I mean by a truck load of potatoes for the pigs.

Leafy is getting a wee bit spoilt, this was just before she put a harness and lead on him and took him for a walk!

Happy Thanksgiving

This weekend is the 3rd Thanksgiving we've been in Canada. I have to say it is becoming one of my favourite holiday weekends as fall is a beautiful time of year, it's a chance to eat a delicious turkey dinner and visit friends and family. We went to Kevin and Dianne's on Friday evening and had a lovely time with our family, extended family and friends. Today we were invited out again to friend's from church which was great too. It also means having a long weekend we can get one or two more jobs done than usual.
Molly our final pig gave birth to 7 piglets last Thursday, she is by far the most protective Mum of them all. We now have 32 pigs in total!

One of my many sunflowers I grew this year

The Thanksgiving gang at the Phillip's

All pile on Harriet

Molly's babies

Bessie's 11 venturing out

Twenty and counting

We seem to have piggies all over. Penny has 4, Deidre has 5 and Bessie has 11 little piglets. Each pen has a little wall so the Mum can get out but the piglets stay in, the piglets think it's fun jumping over it and following Mum outside now! Molly is due to have her litter in October.

Sunning themselves under the heat lamp

A pile of piggies

Our geese and ducks now have free range round the back garden as the grass is growing much more slowly now. Our Christmas turkeys are due to arrive next Monday. Our 10 surprise litters of rabbits are getting bigger now and hopefully there are no more on the way.
Isaac and Josh have both got in the soccer teams at school. Isaac is in the senior high team and Josh in junior high so it means one or other of them have either practice or a match on most nights of the week until mid October when the season ends.

Penny with her 4 babies; Leaf, Bolt, Back to Front & Freckle

Bread and Butter Pickles

We are getting back into a routine this week as everyone went back to school.

Our first piglets are doing really well and the second litter is due any moment.

It's harvest time and we've been busy preserving apples, tomatoes, cucumbers etc. My cupboards and freezer are getting very full.

The End of the Summer

We've noticed a big change in the weather this week. No longer are we getting 30+ days although we are still in the mid 20's in the afternoons. The days are shorter and there's a distinct feel of Autumn around with leaves already turning and dropping. This is probably happening early this year as we've had so little rain all summer and everything is bone dry.
The kids get an extra day off school due to all the changes in education over here with school districts merging so they go back on Wednesday after having 10 1/2 weeks off.
David's Mum and Dad have been over for a 2 week visit and are currently sat in Halifax airport waiting for their flight home. We've had a good time with them and visited a little of the local area but most of the time was spent on David, his Dad and Isaac making a huge shed for the arrival of the first piglets. It was completed enough for Penny to be put in there on Saturday and she gave birth to 4 beautiful tiny black piglets this afternoon, just before David's parents left and very appropriately born on Labour Day!

The deluxe pig shed

Summer 2012 Laver family photo, the artistic angle is because the camera was sat on a rock!

The first couple of piglets

Live Pig Cam

 

Penny is due anytime

A fun week in the Laver house

Isaac passed his theory test on Tuesday so he can now learn to drive. We've given him a couple of lessons so far which are going well. He will be able to take his practical test anytime from beginning of April next year.
I may not be at the market anymore but I have a steady stream of orders for scones and cupcakes which I don't mind doing from time to time. A lady called me and asked if I would do cupcakes for a 90th birthday party so I said 'Yes, how many do you want?' 17 dozen was her reply! They sort of took over my kitchen today but it was fun to do again.
Harriet's guinea pig had babies again this week, another 4 very cute ginger and white babies. She's on holiday this weekend with Rich and Jen as their babysitter (for the girls not them!) while they attend a conference.
Our resident snake keeps saying hi, the boys even caught it and were going to save it until I got home except it kept trying to bite them!
It's Harvey Days this weekend so there's been lots of events on like dances, sports, yards sales, parade, big screen viewing of Olympic mountain biking, fireworks, fair etc. I went to the village photo where a couple of hundred people turned out and 3 horses! Josh was in the parade throwing candy at the kids from the firefighters float. I also went to the olympic screening (just to get on CTV!!!) it was difficult holding back the cheers for the Brit when came in 1 before the Canadian.

Isaac holding the snake with my oven glove as it was trying to bite!

One of the new babies

The best photo I got of Josh in the parade, he was in the yellow rescue boat being pulled by the second fire truck

a small selection of the cupcakes with a sports and gardening them

A week of celebrations

Today we celebrated 2 years of being in Canada by going for ice cream at DQ. 

We still love it here, the kids are doing very well at school, both David and I now have jobs we love, we love our church, we live in a beautiful village and have our various animals who keep us entertained, busy and well fed! Hopefully through reading this blog you will have gleaned just how different our life is now but that isn't a bad thing at all. Sure we would have done lots of things differently if we'd known what we know now, who wouldn't? But that's all part of the learning journey. There are lots of things that make us think about life in the UK and wish we could teleport across, weddings we've missed, babies being born, just being able to pop in on family and friends, a really good indian, chinese or fish 'n' chips with mushy peas or even being able to walk to a local shop or go to any of the Olympic events. We quickly realised we won't be able to just pop across every couple of years as we had planned but we do promise that we do intend to visit when we are able.

Isaac and Josh came back from canoe camp today which they really enjoyed. Harriet was at Green Hill lake Camp this week as well, she hasn't stopped talking about all her adventures yet! While they were all away David and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. We both got the day off and I presumed as we have all the animals to look after we would just go out for the day. As I picked David up from work he surprised me by telling me to pack a bag and my passport as he had booked a hotel in Presque Isle in Maine for us to stay. We had a great time and because we stayed more than 24 hours we could benefit from some tax free shopping too. 

This Monday is New Brunswick Day, basically a day off. On Tuesday Isaac has his theory driving test, if he passes he has 8 months to practice his practical driving before he can take his road test. He passed his Drivers Ed course in June which means he can pass his driving quicker and will have cheaper car insurance. 

Summer holiday family photo

This was taken at Rich & Jen's the night before Mum, Dad and Auntie Brenda left us to go to Quebec then home. 

Summer 2012 is flying by

We forgot about our raspberries as they are in the part of the field we haven't been using this year, when Isaac went to check on them this evening he found a bumper crop. This is one of my huge mixing bowls which we filled in about 15minutes before the mosquitoes started having us for supper! I think tomorrow may be spent picking pounds and pounds of them and working out the many different ways of preserving and eating them.

The chicks we got in April have been promoted to the chicken shed. They are a different breed and are much bigger than our layers, at first they all huddled together in a corner and seemed quite scared and now they strut around and rule the roost especially Harriet's rooster Velvet!

 This is two of my veggies plots which I'm trying to keep up with weeding, I didn't take photos of the other 3 as the weeds are winning! We've eaten all our spinach and radishes and most of the lettuce so far. The rest of the vegetables are doing really well except for the carrots and parsnips. I'm trying to empty the freezer of all last year's produce as we'll soon be filling it again.

At the moment we are trying to get all the rabbits in outside cages, we have 2 cages finished and we move then round the grass twice a day. They are better than our lawnmower!!!! (Which isn't saying much as we spend more time fixing it than using it!)

We made the ducks and geese a large outdoor enclosure which has a couple of little ponds in (formerly kids sandpits found for free on kijiji!). Their enclosure has an electric fence round it, one day last week we came home to find all of them sunning themselves next to my veggie plot. The pigs had dug up so much soil and had put it on the fence wire that it had shorted out meaning the other animals could just walk through it. When we got them back in there were 3 missing, we hunted high and low for them and gave them up for dead thinking some predator had taken them. Harriet went out for one last look round and found all 3 down a 3' hole we'd dug for the fence which we hadn't yet put a post in! They were fine once we lifted them out.

The pigs are becoming nice and portly, we are expecting the first litter at the beginning of September if all goes to plan.

As you know we have lots of interesting wildlife here in New Brunswick, some of them you wouldn't want to meet close up! This summer must have been a great year for all the animals as we've seen numerous snakes, eagles, deer, raccoon, foxes, moose, groundhogs and 3 bears in the past 4 weeks!

I've been following all the facebook posts from the UK and there seems to have been a common theme recently, rain and more rain! So I've decided to get a New Brunswick weather rant in here too. It's beautiful and sunny and very, very hot!!!!!!! To be honest sometimes too hot when it's over 30 degrees we just have to give up and sit in a nearby lake to cool off and have the fans going all night to have a chance of sleeping. This week it's cooled down to mid to high 20's which is perfect. To top it off it gets so hot it causes wonderful thunderstorms where it rains really heavy for a short time and we have spectacular thunder and lightening rumbling round the hills.

Isaac and Josh are enjoying working, especially the pay cheques! They had a day off today so after I finished work we went shopping, this may not seem very exciting but it sure is when you live half an hour from the city and don't get in very often with money burning a hole in your pocket! Harriet has done the most this holiday what with spending time with Grandma & Grandad Woollin and Auntie Brenda and this week going camping with a friend's family. All the children are going on various camps the week after next so David and I are taking a day off for our 19th wedding anniversary and will go out for the day somewhere. We are looking forward to David's parent's coming to visit for a couple of weeks next month. We still have some weeks spare this summer if you want to pop across and enjoy our sunshine.

Summer is here

Mum, Dad and Auntie Brenda introduced themselves to the mayor of McAdam!

The Lavers on holiday

David & Suz chilling in a little chair

Dad preparing for Canada Day

Canada Day parade in Tracy

Isaac found a friend

Fireworks in Tracy

Summer has arrived. The kids officially broke up from school on 21st June for 10 1/2 long weeks. The boys are working on a local fruit farm for the summer when the weather is good. 

Mum, Dad and Auntie Brenda arrived in New Brunswick last Tuesday and stayed with us till Monday. They are now at Rich & Jens and are heading off to Halifax and PEI for the weekend and taking Harriet with them. We had a couple of  days off last week to make an extra long weekend. We all went to Woodstock, Nacawic, McAdam and St Andrews, then Mum wanted to do the yard sales before we went to Tracy for the Canada Day celebrations which included a parade, village games and entertainment, a BBQ at Kevin and Dianne's and fireworks. After lots of rain mid week the sun came out and it was very hot. 

David found out he's got a new job starting in a couple of weeks time. His title will be 'Supervisor, Customer Support, Integration Group' he'll still be working at the same place but with more responsibility.