Our Christmas to remember

Thank you to all who have sent cards, presents and good wishes this Christmas and I'm very sorry we've not been in contact with everyone individually.

Things were going pretty much to plan, the Christmas cake and puddings were made, all baking was finished and in the freezer, Josh's room had a floor and was mainly insulated, most presents were bought and some were even wrapped then the weather came.....

We had a first with our church being cancelled 2 Sundays running, now that's never happened before. The first Sunday we had a huge snowfall and high winds, the second was even more snow followed by the dreaded freezing rain. On Monday 23rd December we were all busy killing the turkeys for Christmas orders, we were doing really well having finished 14 out of 24 so we stopped for a break and to feed the animals. At this point we had had yet more snow which had turned to freezing rain again. The power went off with ice making trees fall on the lines. More than 50 000 people in New Brunswick were suddenly without power 2 days before Christmas. We were very fortunate that we heat the house using a wood burning stove so we were warm but we have a well for our water and the pump is electric so we were without water which makes life very difficult not just inside the house but trying to feed and water lots of animals too.
David got up early Christmas eve and while I delivered the turkey orders we'd managed to complete he and Isaac and Harri set to trying to kill the rest of them so we didn't spoil anyone's Christmas dinner. As I delivered the turkeys I collected fresh clean water for David to use and us to drink. By that evening all the orders were complete.

We had invited out friends the Lemmons for Christmas lunch so we really wanted the turkey dinner rather than beans on toast so we hatched a plan. While we were in town for our Christmas Eve service I cooked the turkey in the oven at my work. We were planning on cooking the veggies on the woodstove and having a simple dinner without all the trimmings. Just as we were melting yet more ice for water and digging the drive at 11am Christmas morning the power came back on, what a celebration! 2 1/2 hours later we sat down to a very yummy turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

Rich and Jen came for tea and stayed over till boxing day but went home feeling sick, Harriet then also spent boxing day in quarantine being sick too! fun, so far the rest of us are ok.

We were one of the fortunate ones to get our power back, there are still thousands without power, our friends the Warringtons being one of them. They visit us on a daily basis to borrow our little generator so they don't lose all the food in their freezer, to wash, have a coffee and shower. Our local village hospital is open as a warming station and the fire brigade have visited every effected home making sure they are ok and taking water for drinking and to animals too, they also have special heaters that they can heat up homes to stop pipes freezing and are offering food and showering facilities. Some homes probably won't have power  until the New Year. Just to add more spice to life we have another severe weather warning for Sunday/ Monday with lots of snow turning to freezing rain again, it looks like we may have to get the candles out again!

On the plus side it has been a Christmas we'll never forget and although it has been hard work it's also been fun.

 Our Christmas day walk Harriet with Shadow and Daisy also with her Shadow!

 Shadow!

Best buddies!

Christmas is coming the turkeys are getting fat!

Happy Christmas everyone.
Once again I've decided to write my blog instead of mailing a Christmas letter to you all,hope you don't mind too much. The parcels to UK and USA were mailed a couple of weeks ago but as usual they can't guarantee delivery in time for Christmas as I chose snail mail.

So I've been looking back on 2013 and trying to remember what exactly has happened.
Some of the highlights of the year are always visits from family and friends and this year was no exception. It's not just the fact that visitors bring us goodies from the uk...honest!
We had 2 lots of visitors pretty much at the same time, Steve and Jan came at the end of June and Mum and Dad arrived beginning of July. We had lots of fun visiting new places and even trying our hand at tubing as it was so hot.

We started renovations on our house this year, we took the wall down between the kitchen and dining room so the hot air from the woodstove could circulate better. We also gutted Josh's room and hoped to insulate it and have new floor, window and plasterboard done while he was away at camp...he's still sharing with Isaac!

From our little farm we sell eggs, pork, turkeys and rabbit. We can't keep up with egg orders, turkeys are good sellers when we have them at thanksgiving and Christmas, pork is selling steady, during the summer we had a special offer on and sold a number of whole and half pigs. The rabbits are still an acquired taste for some so sell slowly. We have tried our hand at making bacon and sausages too which are rather good.

A couple of weeks ago we had problems with a visiting bear trying to get his fill before sleeping for the winter. He was on our neighbour's front lawn early one morning, had to be chased up the field behind our house by one of our other neighbours on a 4 wheeler, emptied the garbage cans of our next door but 1 neighbour and rolled our big heavy wooden garbage box the next evening. Things seem to have settled down so we presume he's now sleeping as the weather has turned wintery. We had 1 day off school last week for icy road conditions and had approximately 15cm of snow fall on Sunday. We thought it might be the start of a white Christmas but it got warmer again and rain washed it all away.

first real snowfall this winter

David is still working as a support supervisor for Salesforce.com,which he enjoys. All his free time is taken up with running our little farm, building sheds, feeding, chasing pigs etc. He also fits in wood collecting, doing the sound at church, DIY and lifegroup each week.

I am still working for Partners for Youth, my role has changed again this year but it's all good! I'm now Education Coordinator which entails me teaching lessons up at the farm PFY runs and running the Making Waves program. I did my first Making Waves weekend in November which was great. I enjoy gardening, DIY, lifegroup, cooking a turkey each month for a sandwich run we do in the city and coordinating 'fireflies' which is the babies group at church.

Isaac is going to be 18 next month. He spends the majority of his time outdoors doing something with the animals.He plays on the school soccer team, goes to a youth lifegroup and has just started a new job on another farm in Harvey feeding their animals after school. Today he got his acceptance letter from New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) to do a course in refrigeration and air conditioning in September next year. He will move to the little town of St Andrews for the year then come back to do an apprenticeship locally.

Josh is in grade 11 and likes to do indoors, non smelly stuff! He likes anything to do with computers, plays on the school soccer team, goes to science club, debating club and junior firefighters.

Harriet is in grade 8 and loves to be outdoors, Her new puppy has arrived and is settling in well, we get sleep most nights and she cleans up after his little accidents! She is in the school cross country and athletics teams, the choir and does dog training with 4H.

picking up Shadow last week

All the kids go to our church youth group and worked at Springbrook Cranberry Farm over the summer and for the fall harvest.

Good news, walmart has opened a new superstore that has an English section, just look at the goodies we can get now and at a fairly reasonable price too

For those of you who have purchased a copy of my Dads book don't believe everything he says....I'm a great driver!

We are looking forward to 2014 and all it may hold. We are having a Woollin family reunion in July/Aug with Mum and Dad, David and Kathryn and family coming from the UK and David and Sarah and kids driving from Michigan.  David's parents are also hoping to visit in the summer too. We still have room for more visitors so feel free to come along.

Many blessings for 2014, keep in touch we love to hear from you all.

Think she's happy!!!

Thanksgiving was lovely, we had a yummy meal at Kevin and Dianne's followed by a bonfire in the woods. After spending 2 days getting the turkeys ready for Thanksgiving we then relaxed on the Monday off!!!

Josh's room is slowly improving with some of the floor level. Jobs are also getting done outside but the dark evenings and frost is slowing the work down.

David is busy revising for an exam this week and I am only 3 weeks away from the Making Waves weekend which I'm running this year as part of my new role at work.

Isaac has bought himself 6 Muscovy ducks this week with a hope of breeding from them next year.

As anyone who knows Harriet at all will know she's wanted her very own puppy to do dog agility with for ever! Well it has taken much persuasion and after that much looking to find the right dog. We really like border collies and these make one of the best agility dogs but pure bred ones seem to be hard to come by around here. Well today we surprised her and took her all the way to St Martin's to choose her very own puppy which will come home just before Christmas. Phew one present sorted! She has named him 'Shadow' in honor of Shadow the sheepdog books which her Grandad Woollin has read to her for as long as she can remember.

 Finally she chose him, good job there were only 4 unspoken for or we could still be there!!!

Fall jobs

Sorry it's been so long since my last update, life just runs away sometimes, here goes...

Harriet took Max to the 4H provincial show at the end of August, it was a very long couple of days for him but overall he did very well for such a lively dog. Harriet has had dreams of doing dog agility with Max but with him being so full of life she started with dog obedience. When she was at the show a number of people mentioned to her that he would do well at dog agility so since then she has setup a course in the garden and Max is now weaving through poles, walking over a seesaw and jumping over the jumps.

Max and Harriet at the provincial show

The really hot summer turned into a very wet summer that was still very warm but muddy on the farm. It started turning much cooler in Sept but October has brought back the warm daytime weather but nights are chilly and we've had a couple of frosty mornings. All this means we have to spend all our time at home getting ready for winter. This includes wood collecting, chopping, splitting and storing in the basement, so far we have much more dry wood in than we've ever had in the previous 3 winters but we still need a lot more before we can be sure we've got enough. We have to get enough animal food and hay, oil for the furnace, lots of trips to the tip to clear the yard and more shelters and sheds built to house the animals over winter.

David has moved the compost pile onto my veggie plot so I'm finishing the harvesting and putting manure on for over the winter.

Inside the house we  are doing Josh's room still, finishing the wall in the dining room we took out to circulate more warm air and other jobs like guttering and making a boot area for winter. Nothing very exciting but all necessary and time consuming!

The kids went back to school and immediately the boys joined the soccer team and Harriet the cross country team,the season for both sports is so short they fit all the practices, games and meets into about 8 weeks before the icy ground and possible snow! Isaac and Josh's team are doing very well this year and actually winning a number of games, Harriet is also doing well and has measured out a route round our property a mile long to practice each day with Max as her support! She is now up to running 3 miles per day!!!

Two of our pigs had litters a couple of weeks ago so we have 19 little piglets running round the field which are very cute. We have sold a good amount of pork over the summer to lots of individuals and 2 local restaurants. We need to take more to the abattoir but we'll have to wait till they finish butchering all the moose from hunting season last weekend.

I love the colours at this time of year

Some of our piglets and Mum

We also hatched 17 more chicks a couple of weeks ago as we had mainly roosters hatch earlier in the year

Thanksgiving dinner looking yummy...

We are raising turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. The Thanksgiving ones will be butchered next week and are looking very healthy, the baby ones are outside in a pen. Last week we got up to find something had eaten the leg off one while it was in the pen. We realized that a raccoon had found a tiny gap between the grass and the pen and had reached in while they were sleeping and pulled a leg out to eat. This meant war! We got a live trap and baited it, the first night it came back it managed to set the trap off, tip it up and eat the bait without getting caught but not last night! It was well and truly caught.He was very fat and not at all friendly, after taking swimming lessons he is now a fur hat for Isaac!!!

Mr Raccoon looking like butter wouldn't melt!

We also have a skunk living under our front steps and Isaac and Josh had a bear cross the road in front of the car about 100m down the road from our house!

Next weekend is Thanksgiving weekend. David is off for 2 days before to get all the turkey orders ready and the kids will be helping him as they have time off school too. We are going to celebrate at the Phillips on Sunday which we are looking forward to.

August

 

 

 

Lemmon getting bigger

 

I was reminded that I hadn't mentioned about Harriet's chicken, Rhonda in my last blog. She disappeared for a few weeks back in July and one morning when I went to let the chickens out she'd come home with 4 little chicks in tow. She is an excellent Mum and she looks really funny when they all huddle under her with their little heads popping out!

 

We cleared a space to get a big delivery of pig feed which not only makes it cheaper but saves us going to the animal food store every other day. The delivery truck was huge and we were amazed how the driver managed to get it up our little drive and blow the feed into the barn.

 

On the 4th August we celebrated 3 years in Canada by eating ice cream cake, it was good. Now we can apply to become Canadian citizens and have 2 passports if we are successful.

 

 

 

Each year the village we live in has Harvey days in August, this includes competitions, yard sales, Miss Harvey pageant, a parade, fireworks, concerts, dances etc. This year Josh was in the parade again representing the firefighters and Harriet had her 4H show where she had to show everyone what she'd been teaching Max in dog obedience. Max did well in the individual part of the show but was having too much fun playing with all his friends and rolling in horse poo to do the sitting for 1 minute or laying for 3 minutes. he managed to come 4th overall and has to do it all again the end of August in Fredericton.

 

 We were trying to get Josh to throw us candy at this point

 







We are selling a good amount of pork since we put the August offer on, we have been experimenting with different flavour sausages and we even cured back bacon this week that tasted wonderful.
The kids all went on their camps last week so David and I took some days off to surprise Josh by decorating his bedroom. We had good intentions of getting it completed in the time he was away but it didn't quite happen as we had imagined! The big surprise reveal was more of a shock horror where is my room. It didn't help the fact that it took nearly 3 days to get all the lath and plaster off the walls and ceiling before we then had to take up the sloping rotten floor. The boys are now room sharing again while we crack on with it.

 Day 1 furniture out, empty room

 3 days later lath and plaster off walls

 David started taking up 3 layers of flooring then we ran out of time!

 

 The big reveal!!!!!

We've not changed a bit!

So today we are celebrating our 20th Wedding Anniversary, time has just flown by and we haven't changed one bit!

20 years, 5 different houses (plus the odd short stay in other houses), 3 kids, 2 dogs, other animals too many to count, 2 countries, lots of jobs and part time jobs, ups and downs, laughter and tears, slightly grayer hair, the list could go on and on. We're looking forward to the next 20!

We are going to celebrate by taking some time off in August when the kids are on camp. Harriet made us a lovely tea cooking up some delicious pork chops from a little known producer of quality pork in Harvey and baking us a cake!

Yes it tasted as good as it looks

 Since moving to Canada we still miss certain foods that are very different here, sausages are one of these things. This week we bought a sausage stuffer and found some good  old English recipes. Our first attempts at making them weren't half bad, I had imagined something like the generation game with sausages flying out at alarming rates but it was all well controlled and they looked like sausages just some longer than others. The taste was amazing we will be expanding our selection of flavours as we slaughter more piggies in the next few weeks.

Mixing the ground pork with the secret ingredients!

This is the fun bit!

The finished product ready to cook for tea...yum

July flying by

We had a wonderful visit with Steve and Jan. The weather got baking hot and a day tubing down the Nashwaak River was perfect relief. We also spent some time at Magaguadavic Lake on our favourite beach and finished the visit with a trip to the market.

Steve and Jan posing outside our house!

 Jan really wanted to go up a lighthouse, so these pictures are proof that she got to see one even if it was only in Fredericton!

 We had a picnic at the White Rapids in Fredericton Junction, unfortunately the bugs snacked on us too. This picture was taken before I fell in!

 Me and David at Yoho

 The day tubing, the yellow one is the cooler tube so we could stop for a picnic part way along.

 Jan

 Suz and the food!

Steve

Magaguadavic Lake, the perfect place for a swim.

After Steve and Jan went to drive down to New York to catch their flight home, Mum and Dad moved in for a week. During that time Josh passed his written test and now has 8 months to practice before he can take his practical test.

With Mum and Dad we visited the site of a  world war 2 internment camp and a museum about it, in Minto. We went across to Deer Island and Campobello Island on the ferrys for the day and did lots of wood collecting, gardening, shopping at yard sales and swimming to keep cool. The temperature hit 39 degrees on Monday which was very hot! Most days have been in the late 20's or 30;s for the past couple of weeks, thankfully this evening the weather has broke with a huge thunder storm lighting up the sky as I write. Hopefully we'll be able to sleep tonight!

After delivering our 2 pigs to Brewbakers we were mentioned as one of their suppliers in the newspaper at the weekend trying to encourage people to buy local. In honor of the weather we've started to sell a BBQ pack as no one seems to want to cook indoors at the moment!

Harriet is currently helping Jen look after all the kids she has while Rich is away on camp, the boys are going to work early on the farm so they can finish before the worst of the heat. 

 Dad posing on the ferry to Campobello

 While the rest of Atlantic Canada basked in the heat we went to Campobello in the fog!

Roosevelt's summer cottage we visited

Mum and Dad and the pigs!

Harriet, Max and Lemmon!

The Laver's with some of their crazy animals, pigs, dog and a chicken

 Maeve and Josy at the family meal at East Side Marios

 A wonderful picture of Rich! 

& Jen 

 Mum and Dad, Dad asked for a large drink!

Josh, Isaac and David

Mum and Dad left yesterday to get their flight from Toronto tonight so now we are visitorless again. Still time to book your flights if you want to come this year!!!