We are still here.....brrr it's a little chilly!

Today Josh and I went to watch Harriet in the Santa Clause Parade in town. She was with K9 kapers, the dog agility club she joined this year. It was a very long parade on the coldest evening so far this winter, -18 with wind chill, after an hour and a half and still more floats were coming we gave up and went to defrost!

Harriet is in the centre of the picture in the blue and white coat.

On Wednesday evening through to Thursday lunchtime we had the second storm of the month and the second snow day. About a foot of snow fell unfortunately the snow blower decided to have a day off so it meant rather a lot of shovelling!

The chickens sunning themselves in the shed doorway.

We have been filling the freezers with pork recently so we have less animals to overwinter, saying that though we have had 4 litters of piglets born in the past 6 weeks totalling 19 piglets.

David has been busy putting the new siding on the house but the dark nights and cold weather are slowing things down.

I survived the crazy 6 weeks at work and after running 5 conferences plus other commitments things have quietened down a lot.

David has been promoted at work to the support manager for Canada, he's really enjoying this new challenge.

Isaac is really enjoying student life in St Andrews, he's been home this week on a placement in Fredericton.

We went with Josh to a UNB open evening a couple of weeks ago, he applied to study there and has been accepted for September 2015 studying Computer Science.

My mum and dad are coming across to spend Christmas and New Year with us which will be great, only 3 weeks before they arrive! 

Harriet's baptism

On Sunday we had the pleasure of celebrating Harriet's baptism. Here's a short video of it and if you want to listen to her testimony you can visit our churches website www.christcentral.ca and click on the audio of the sermon on 19th October.

I

A new season

The leaves are beginning to change and the temperature is dropping significantly, we even had a frost warning last night. During the day it can still be very warm we even had another day which felt like 40 degrees with humidity last week before a big thunder storm.

We took Isaac down to St Andrews last week to start college. He comes home each weekend to work (and see us of course!).

Here he is outside his new digs!

Josh is now in grade 12 and is once again in the soccer team which means approximately 2 months of practices and games till the end of the season. He is still working at Geek Chic part time too.

Harriet is now in high school, grade 9. She is once again on the cross country team and spends the rest of her time doing dog agility and chores on the farm. Her best friend emigrated to the US a couple of weeks ago so we see a lot more of her now.

David is renovating our house and has taken off lots of siding, repaired the woodwork under it and put house wrap round. He's replaced 6 windows so far which is great as they now open and we can have fresh air through the house. The lounge and dining room are back to bare boards and we've now got to insulate, plaster board and paint everywhere before winter. When we took all the lath and plaster off the walls we found none of them had insulation at all so once we are done we will hopefully see a marked improvement in the temperature we can get the house this winter and our heating bills!

I'm during my busiest season at work, I have to plan 4 conferences in New Brunswick and PEI but before I do that I have to go to a conference in Montreal next week. 

Along with the renovations we are expecting our pigs to give birth soon and we are trying to get lots of firewood chopped and stored and tidy up the place to we don't lose anything under the snow when it comes!

A fun summer

The summer is drawing to an end, it's cooled down to mid to late 20's and most of the bugs have gone. It's been a complete blurr and we're now catching up on everyday tasks like washing and mowing the grass and after a month of overeating it's time to stock up on salad stuff!

David's parents arrived 3 hours after our power and water came back on after hurricane Arthur, this was good timing except for my poor vacuum cleaner which overheated!

 We had a lovely 2 week visit with David's parents, as well as fixing my kitchen cupboard door, putting up a washing line, putting in 2 windows and a door we did manage some trips out. This is on the ferry across to Campobello.

 Head Harbor lighthouse on Campobello. 

 Harriet learning to water ski on Yoho

We had a Woollin family reunion, we were very kindly loaned the 2 cottages at Yoho which was the base for the holiday, we also went to PEI for the holiday weekend.

All 11 grandchildren

 

the whole lot!

 As usual whenever there is grass either a football or cricket bat appears. 

 The view from the house we stayed in on PEI, that's the confederation bridge on the horizon

 We spent a day in Charlottetown which had erected these to celebrate 150 years of the confederation

 Grandma and Granddad with their grand kids

 trying to get them lined up in age order!

It was Harriet's 4H achievement show this weekend, she did dog obedience with Max and he actually came joint 2nd! 

July 31st we celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary, to celebrate we went with my siblings and their wives/husbands to Montanas for all you can eat ribs. On Aug 4th we celebrated 4 years of being in Canada by eating DQ ice cream cake. 

We are down to 14 pigs, numerous chickens, 5 turkeys, 9 ducks, 1 cow, 4 rabbits and 2 crazy dogs. The aim is to downsize a little before winter sets in. This will also give us time to concentrate on the house renovations. A raccoon decided to help us with this by snacking on our chickens each night. We set a trap for him and caught a skunk! A couple of days later we caught him. We had a young bear in the field behind our house for a couple of days but he seems to have moved on now.

After the storm...

I felt I needed to update the blog as it's been on my to do list for weeks now!

Hurricane Arthur arrived with force Friday night/ Saturday, when it came to us it was downgraded to a post tropical storm. Approx 100mm of rain fell in just over 24 hours and the winds were amazing. A huge number of people lost power in New Brunswick and phone and cell phone reception too. The ground was so soft with the rain that when the winds got up hundreds and hundreds of trees fell blocking roads, damaging property and brings down lines. We are very thankful that we are all safe and nothing got damaged even when the trampoline flew and landed against the van and a small shed rolled across a field.

We got cell phone reception back on Sunday night and our landline Monday morning but are still without power and water.
Crews are working round the clock to get everybody connected but it's a big job and Harvey isn't at the top of this list so this could be a number of days yet.
We have a tiny generator which can power 1 newer freezer at a time running when we are home to help stop our meat from defrosting and we've brought 1 freezer into work. Thankfully it's warm and light till 10pm so we can manage without lights. We go to the local fire department for water for the animals and drinking water for us too and we had to purchase a BBQ to cook on. It's camping with a roof!

David's parents have arrived in Canada and David is driving to Quebec to pick them up tomorrow. They can join in the fun in Harvey !!

Shadow had an operation to remove the pins from his leg last week and is much happier, hopefully one more check up till he's all better. Meanwhile Max is becoming a pro at dog agility...well doing good!

We sold all our spring piglets and some older pigs last month so we are down to 15 pigs.

Isaac's graduation went well, we may never understand the Harvey traditions but we took part none the less and quite enjoyed most of it. Isaac did well and received 3 prizes, one of which was a big tool box. He is working as odd job man up at the Partners for Youth camp this summer. Josh and Harri also did well at school winning a number of prizes each.

David had to go for a week to Indianapolis last month with work, he quite enjoyed his visit and may have to return again later in the year.

Josh and Harri are both working at Springbrook Cranberries again and Josh still is working at Geek Chic too so they are having a busy summer.

We went to St Andrews again for Canada Day last week, the weather forecast was over 30 degrees feeling like 40 with the humidity in Fredericton so heading to the coast where it was only 30 degrees was a good idea and it was a good day out with Jen and Josy.

Sorry no pictures this time will post lots when everything back to normal.
We have David's parents coming for 2 weeks then 2 days after they leave it's the Woollin family reunion for about 10 days.

Marvelous May

May is when everything starts winding down for the summer which is a strange thought as the winter has only just finished, snow tires are packed away till October and we've started planting our veggie plot in between the downpours.

 Harriet was desperate to get the trampoline out again.

 This was the first of all the graduation activities we have this year with Isaac. This was the banquet at Harvey Lions club, we had a turkey dinner followed by lots of toasts and a slideshow. We then drove to St Andrews United Church for a baccalaureate service which was an interesting experience, nearly all the different denominations from Harvey took part in the service in one capacity or another.

 Monday was Victoria Day so we decided even though it was pouring with rain to test our new BBQ box. We roasted a 35lb pig in 4 hours and it was good.

The finished piggie!

A couple of weeks ago Max and Shadow were playing outside and as they were running back up the steps Shadow managed to break his leg. This then started a long process of visiting the vet's, x-rays and an operation to pin and put a rod in his leg. David has made him a cage in the lounge as his crate was too small to spend 2 months recuperation time in especially with a large cone on his head! He has also made a ramp as he can't walk up or down stairs for 2 months either and he is getting rather big for lifting everywhere. Today he has his stitches out and in another 6 weeks another operation to take the rod out of his leg. This means he hasn't started dog agility and instead Max is having to take his place this year. Max is really enjoying himself!

Mud, mud, glorious mud!

Spring is here! At last we are seeing more and more of the wonderful brown grass and even some little green grass shoots and the odd signs of daffodils. That's not to say the snow has finished yet we had a storm a couple of weeks ago and some flurries last weekend and there are still piles of snow in the ditches and woods but it's going the right direction. All this melting means lots of roads flooded out and mud everywhere on the farm.

I've been trying to remember what's been happening since I last wrote, Josh turned 17 and got himself a part time job. It's the perfect job for him at a shop called 'The Geek Chic Boutique' in town. It sells geek stuff!!!!

New hog roasting box

We had lots of piglets born this spring but due to mainly the weather and other unforeseen circumstances we are left with 13 which are all sold. We had some little pigs slaughtered as BBQ pigs and David has bought this roaster box to hire out for hog roast events. We can't wait to try it...yummy.

Our local supermarket is now selling Yorkshire Tea in it's specialty tea section...life is good!

Harriet has been practicing for a drama called 'John and Gretel' she did a good job of being the wicked step mother and a tree.

she's the tree at this point!

Harriet is signed up for her first block of dog agility with Shadow starting next week.

Isaac is still enjoying his coop placement and now the fun begins with all the graduation stuff we have to attend including banquet, church service, a ball, grand march, the list goes on and on.....

We had a wonderful time celebrating Easter with the gang at Kevin and Dianne's.

The AV gang and band

The highlight of our month was our Christ central Church 2014 conference. Terry Virgo was the excellent main speaker as well as other seminar speakers. It was a time of real challenge and blessing and was a life changing event. David and Isaac spent nearly 5 days at the convention centre setting up, practicing, doing the actual conference and tearing down all the AV equipment. They had fun!

Oh the weather outside is frightful....!

I don't mean to go on about the weather, when we moved here we thought it was just a British thing to do but Canadians are far more obsessed by the whole subject!

I was trying to think of a way to describe this winter and 'brutal' is the kindest I could come up with.

This is by far the longest winter we've ever experienced and it's no where near finished yet.
Just to put things in perspective Fredericton, which is the city we live close by usually has an annual snowfall of 252cm. From October to mid March this winter we have already had 357cm and that was before this weeks big storm and we still have snow/ freezing rain on the forecast till well into April. We also live much higher than Fredericton so we get more snow and bad weather.

The snow is a problem as there simply is nowhere left to put it but the well below average temperatures mean its not melting. Also the past few years we've had some weeks well below -20 degrees but mainly in the -teens, this year most of the winter has been below -20 which makes it difficult to do anything outdoors as you very quickly lose the use of your fingers and the ability to think.
The kids have had a snow day a week for the past 3 weeks, they are not complaining!

Josh passed his driving test, at the beginning of a snow storm, and is starting to enjoy ferrying Harriet around!

Harriet had her 4H speech day last week and came second talking about Shadow.

We sent 8 piggies to become BBQ pigs last week and have another going to be sausages this week so our numbers are going down till the sows start to give birth this weekend.

I hear it's Mothers day in the UK this weekend, so Happy Mothers day mums and you will get your cards for the Canadian Mothers day in May.

Sorry no photos this time!

Spring forward!

So last night the clocks went forward so now I'm sat at 7pm and it's still bright blue skies and sunshine outside, spring is coming. This has been a very long winter and very cold, February was cold and lots of snow, yesterday and today it has been much warmer around 0 degrees but still minus teens on a night. We are still expecting more snow this week but over the next month it should melt a lot.

In February Harriet and I celebrated our birthdays by going to an all you can eat Chinese buffet!

Harriet has spent the last month doing her Stem Expo (science project), her friend Monika paired up with her for this one and for a good number of weeks we've had a papier mache cow hanging in the kitchen. They were trying to make a model to explain how milk is produced. Just before March break they had the fair at school and won 1st prize and they now have to go to regionals this Saturday and if they progress from there provincials.

Isaac is enjoying his coop placement at ET Mechanical, he is travelling round with the mechanics fixing different types of home heating systems.

Isaac and Josh played snow cricket with Richard for the Fredericton Frostival, their team won!

David and I had a night away on PEI a couple of weeks ago, I was going with work so he tagged along with me.

I was taking Josh into town for a driving lesson during a snow storm last month when I hit ice, lost control of the van, snaked down the road before doing a 360 and flipping on the side in the ditch. Once some kind passers by had righted the van we could get out unscathed. Unfortunately the van has some interesting bumps and a smashed windscreen but the garage has given it the mechanical all clear. It has made me super cautious now driving in snow.

Josh has his driving test this week and looking at the forecast it will probably be in a little snow storm.

Me and the kids have had March break off this week, the aim was to get lots of farm jobs done and to finally get round to painting Josh's room. As usual things haven't gone quite to plan and we spent all the time sorting farm issues so poor Josh still hasn't got his bedroom finished. This month we have a number of pigs due to give birth so we are hoping it warms up a bit.

 My favourite bit of the hockey match!

 

 Everyone else's favourite bit of the hockey match we went to

 

 Snow cricket final match and the winning team celebrations

 

 Harriet's 14th birthday

 

A quilt I made for a friends baby

 

Gertrude, Harriet and Monika's cow for Stem Expo

 



3 1/2 year anniversary day

I was just looking back and was surprised to find I hadn't updated the blog since last year, I can't decide if that's because January was so busy or as I get older time flies much quicker?!

We all went down with the sickness bug after Christmas and it took quite a time to shake it off but we are all fit now.

Today the Laver family have been in Canada 3 1/2 years, whooo, it's been a rollercoaster of a ride but all good fun!

Isaac turned 18 at the beginning of January, he got a place to do refrigeration and air conditioning in St Andrews this September and we went to visit his new student accommodation a couple of weeks ago. He will be living in a big house which has room for 8 students and is 1 block away from the sea and the college he'll be attending. He already knows 3 of his housemates as they are either school or church friends. He's in his final semester at school and is going out on a coop placement to work for a local company called ET mechanical to start to learn the trade.

Isaac surprised us with a gift of a table he made in his cabinet class at school. It is nearly 8' long and is beautifully finished.

At the beginning of January I had a conference in Toronto to attend. There was very little free time during the conference but after it finished and before I had to go to the airport I did get to go up the CN tower which was great. Unfortunately as I was eating dessert I got the text to say my flight was cancelled and I had to rush back to my hotel to get booked on another flight and find accommodation for the extra night. Thankfully David managed to get me booked on a flight the next day so I was very fortunate as some travellers were stuck most of the week.

Harriet is busy teaching Shadow all sorts of tricks, he can sit, lie down, roll over, high five, high ten, jump through hoops and run through tunnels. The dogs still have their mad half hours but on the whole they are much calmer than when we first got Shadow.

This winter has been really weird, lots of snow before Christmas (about 3'), then lots of rain melting nearly all of it again and really cold bitter weather. We've had small amounts of snow but mainly temperatures of -20's and -30's which means fuel bills are sky high and we've burnt huge amounts of wood. At least we're in February now so the end of another winter is nigh!

We've outgrown our little smallholding and if we want to continue farming we need more land. Just before Christmas we were approached to see if we would like to buy a farm the other side of Harvey. With the busyness of Christmas and then being ill we only got to look at the property a couple of weeks ago. After visiting the bank and negotiating with the owners we have had an offer accepted on the property. Unfortunately this means we need to sell our place before we can move so we are busy trying to finish the DIY which could take sometime. Then we can put it up for sale- anyone want a little house in Harvey? We don't have a set time limit  but would like to move as soon as we can.

 Isaac's birthday

 

 My view in Toronto

 

 The pool I enjoyed swimming in till it got to -34 degrees then I went in the sauna!

 

 Up the CN tower

 

 

The table Isaac made for us