Image: Bloody sunrise in Johnstone Strait. We are heading across Johnstone Strait to Kelsey Bay, and the day is just breaking. This is not your usual sunrise, however. The sun peers over the horizon like the bloodshot eye of some strange beast. Dark clouds form a horizontal band across the sun that resembles the slit ...
Image: A Surfer boat Have you ever had an event in your life where destiny played a hand? Man, I can't shake these boat blues ... what the heck is a Surfer Boat? Back to the boat blues. We were looking for a little run-about to replace the Moody Blue. Now this should have been ...
Image: Our front yard, a wild and busy place. I'm not going to write much in this post - just let the photos tell our story. The summer has been busy, but we are beginning to see the results of our hard work. PS Keep tuned in for some upcoming artwork that is connected with ...
Image: Elderflowers. All over the hillside above our house, the elderberries are in glorious white blossom. The sweet smell of the flowers carries on the breeze, tantalizing. I had read that a syrup could be made from the blossoms. Earlier this year, a friend gave me a copy of Susan Musgrave's "A Taste of Haida ...
Boats seem an inevitable part of our existence, living up near the head of an inlet as we do. Every year, I think, "Well, the boats are in good condition this year, we've done lots of work on them, and everything should be fine." And every year, our boats work hard to add just a ...
Image: The fleet at anchor. You know the old saying - "A boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money"? Well, two boats are two holes, so I'm singing the boat blues ... When we purchased the Awen, we knew we might have potential engine problems. The original 80 hp Ford ...
Image: The Draiocht. We've had the Olivia K. for nearly two months, and it's now time to give her a new name, something that will be meaningful to us. Many people believe that renaming a boat can bring bad luck. However, some boats just seem to end up with names that only the previous owner ...
Image: Collingwood Bay. This line, from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, truly sums up one of the more serious problems facing the world today as a result of poor resource management and global warming. Last summer was a hot, dry summer in Port Neville. When we arrived at our site ...
Image: The foundation for our cabin. Houses, like relationships and careers, need to have a solid foundation if they are going to be able to stand the test of time. Unfortunately, foundations are often under-appreciated. Most people take them for granted, or can't even see them, until there is a problem. So, wisely, we have ...
Image: Solar Panels. We just got our first couple of solar panels hooked up and charging the batteries. It's great to get off the genset... The pair of Champion generators that we bought last summer have been great - reliable, fuel efficient, and not very noisy. However, its good not having to go outside to ...
Image: Compost Bins. We've been invited to a deconstruction party. It's one of those win-win things. Our neighbour has decided to tear down his old cabin, which is getting pretty tired, and replace it with a brand new one (yet to be constructed). The contractor has told him that the old cabin has to come ...
Image: Porphyra. Call it nori or laver or slake, by any name Porphyra is not only delicious, but good for your health as well. In Japan, where Porphyra is called nori, sheets of compressed Porphyra are eaten with rice as sushi. In Wales, Porphyra is called laver, and is boiled to form a thick paste ...
Image: Summer solstice. Today we celebrated summer solstice - the longest day of the year. Although a somewhat odd way to begin a solstice day, we started by washing a load of laundry. Recent rains had increased the flow of our spring so that we had enough excess water to wash our laundry, which we ...
Image: Start of a garden. I finally got all the herbs and berry bushes that we brought from Prince Rupert planted. This is the start of our garden. The bush flowering in the center is a Saskatoon.
Image: Full moon over Johnstone Strait. The full moon is shining brilliantly just above the horizon. Wearing my rubber boots, I am standing in 10 inches or so of water in a tidal marsh grass slough armed with a 12 foot pike pole. The northwest wind is howling in my ears, and I am really ...
Image: Rainbow over “Tir Ceòlmhor” – the Singing Land. It seems to me that I can't remember a day in the past month when it hasn't rained. What is this - global warming, or global wetting? Back when Ken and I were considering buying property, I spent some time looking a climate models to see ...
Some many years ago, back when I was an instructor of first and second year biology at a British Columbian college, I used to give my students genetic problems. These are really exercises in logic, brain teasers, if you will. I've always loved them, although I understand that some of my students weren't quite so ...
Image: 3D model of our cabin. Building a cabin in a remote location, even if the cabin is "prefabricated", is not a simple task. As we start to build our cabin, I am reminded that this is the end, not the beginning, of a process that has been underway since the start of this year. ...
Image: Bull kelp in a tide pool off Collingwood Point. We had our first family members visit our new home this week! What a wonderful and crazy week it was. We were both happy and exhausted when it was over, but I think the family mostly approves of our eccentric way of life. Ken's sister ...
Fortunately Brennan is pretty much a "wash and wear" puppy, no dry cleaning or pressing required. However, he can also be a pretty dirty fellow, who loves splashing in the intertidal mud and digging under the house. We were getting ready to visit Ken's sister in Qualicum Beach. Not wanting to expose her to Brennan ...
Image: Our Gardens. We finally got all our gardens planted. It was tough, slow work, as the ground was full of roots - wild rose, salmonberry, thimbleberry, alder, and worst of all, English ivy. However, we now have four patches broken and seeded. The gardens are very experimental this year. The soil looks not too ...
We have considerable rain catchment – something around 20 blue barrels that collect rainwater from the house eaves. Last year got really dry, and we ended up taking some of the blue barrels down to a creek to refill them, using our herring skiff, then pumping the water back up the slope to more blue ...
Need I say more?
Image: Carrot freshly harvested from our garden. Having just got in from chopping wood in the forest (hence the wild woman look complete with twigs and moss in the hair), I decided to pick some vegetables from the garden to make a good lumberjack stew, and pulled up this beauty. For those who are interested, ...
Image: Artistic Rendition of Our Cabin. Kennard and I have often given our homes and our boats Celtic names, as a reflection of our Celtic ancestry. For example, our home in Prince Rupert was called "Creag Faoiltiarna Fitheach", which is Gaelic for "crag of the the wolf and raven" (both of which are common in ...
Image: Potatoes, carrots, and sunchokes harvested from our garden today. Traditionally, we usually harvest our root vegetables in the fall and store them in a root cellar over the winter. However, with our high water table in the winter, a root cellar just isn't feasible. Last year, I harvested my tubers and tried storing them ...
Image: Trailing blackberries. Although we are itching to start work on our homestead, we are still waiting for the last of the legal paperwork to be done, and the property to be transferred into our names. So instead, we spend our time hiking around the site, trying to become more familiar with our new home. ...
As it turns out, we've made quite a few trips this summer with "dog in tow", mostly to Campbell River, but also to Qualicum Beach. It definitely gives us a new perspective on dog ownership! My previous border collie, Shadow, used to get terrible motion sickness when we took him on trips. As a result, ...
Image: Hakai Institute. We finally took a vacation. Well, a working vacation at least. It started as an email out of the blue. An organization called SeagrassBC was going to have a meeting on Quadra Island at the Hakai Institute research station, and I was invited. What's all this about? Sometimes when you are here ...
Image: Gem-studded puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum). With the start of the fall rains, mushrooms are popping up everywhere. It's time to go shroom hunting. No rifles, slings, or bows and arrows are required. All you need is a camera, an ice cream pail, and a sharp eye. I'm a conservative shroom hunter, so I often return ...
Image: Vintage gardening tools. We've been busy gardening and trail breaking, now that the rains have finally stopped. I've definitely developed some tool preferences ... Our garden is still pretty rustic - lot's of rocks, roots, and a never ending supply of new salmonberry, thimbleberry, and rose shoots. The tools we use have to be ...
Image: Our creek flows again. Autumn is upon us, the temperatures are cooler, and the rains have started to fall again. Along with the almost instantaneous sprouting of mushrooms throughout the woods, this wetter, cooler weather has brought another pleasant surprise - our creeks are starting to flow again. When we arrived at our site ...
Image: Hoar frost on moss. Originally, when I started out with the idea for this journal entry, I was going to tell about our concepts for microhydro on our site, but … water froze and became ice, and the story developed of its own accord. In the summer, with our south facing slope, solar works ...
People always ask us if we have problems with bears. The last two summers, our answer was "no". This summer, we have a little black bear ... When I say little black bear, this is somewhat relative. It's most likely a rather underweight three-year-old, but it still outweighs me, and I wouldn't want to have ...
Image: More solar panels added to our array. After being away in Campbell River for two weeks, it was time to get caught up on a bunch of fall projects, before the rainy, drear weather of winter settles in. Our most pressing concern for the winter was insuring that we had enough firewood stored away ...
Image: A start to our cabin. It's been a long, hard week of hauling. First, we hauled all our furniture and belongings out of the hold of the Moody Blue and up to our sheds. Then, we took the Moody Blue and the Kipper's Folly to Kelsey Bay to pick up the first half of ...
Image: Our cabin with edge trim and soffits installed. Well, we finally won the marten war. We managed to get the soffits (shiny black material located in the eaves in the above photo) installed in and around weeks of rain. Mr. (or Mrs.) marten has been around, checking out our work, and has deemed the ...
Image: Draiocht on the grid this spring. It must have been a really good summer for barnacles. When we put the Draiocht in the water this spring, she was freshly cleaned. Now, only four months later, she has multiple layers of barnacles on her bottom and leg. Looks like it's time for another haul out ...
Image: Moody sunrise over Johnstone Strait. Why is the hardest question you will ever ask. It will change your perspective, and ultimately, if you choose to seek the answer, it will change your life. The young are innately curious. We start asking questions at a very early age. I'm sure we've all known some young ...
Image: Finally got our greenhouse out of the box. Ah ... spring is here at last ... sort of. In between deluges of rain, we've been working on a variety of projects in the yard. Image: Our old greenhouse where it used to sit on our deck in Prince Rupert. For the last two years, ...
Image: Let there be light - new lights installed in the cabin. We purchased a bunch of lights for the cabin last spring, but then we got busy, and of course the days got longer and sunnier, so who needed lights anyways? Well, here we are now at the beginning of November, and it's getting ...
Image: The repaired greenhouse in its new location. From a state of near wreckage, the greenhouse rises again, a peaceful zombie composed of broken aluminum struts and strangely resilient sheets of polycarbonate ... It was one of those OMG moments. I just stood by the kitchen window, where I'd been working on supper, saying quietly ...
It's been a cold, slow spring, but gradually the signs of its impending arrival are starting to show up. [caption id="attachment_1038" align="alignnone" width="768"] Our first snowdrops, popping up around the oak trees. They persisted, even when it snowed on them several times. However, the ruffed grouse were hard on them, nipping of leaves and flowers ...
Meet Brennan! He's an eight week old Border collie puppy, and he's joining our family (pack). Bringing Brennan home has been the culmination of a lot of thought over a number of years, and some serious planning over the last few months for Kennard and I. I'm sure there are many questions that can be ...
For the last four years or so, our back door has opened out onto a set of rustic cedar steps built for us by a friend. They were meant only to get us by in the short term, but, like many things, became a nearly permanent part of our cabin as other things in our ...
Image: Wood Cook Stove Installed. Although we now had our wood cook stove in our cabin, we still had a long ways to go before the cabin would be warm enough for us to move in. The chimney installation for the stove promised to be challenging. The chimney needed to be located on the steepest ...
Image: The Blue Rocket. My husband, Kennard, affectionately calls our old truck the Blue Rocket because it can go faster than 8 knots, the speed at which he is used to travelling on the Moody Blue. Today is our first trip across Johnstone Strait to Kelsey Bay, and the reason for our trip is to ...
Image: Snowdrops. Today we celebrated Imbolc in our little cabin in the woods. Imbolc is a Gaelic festival marking the beginning of spring. It celebrates the successful passing of winter and the beginning of the agricultural year. In Irish Gaelic, it's called Oimelc, which translates to "ewe's milk", and is sometimes referred to as the ...
Image: Tree of Life Fractal. I've recently learned that people like us are referred to as "OTG" - for Off The Grid. Good to know that you can apply a simple abbreviation to our peculiar type of eccentricity. Almost sanitizes us! Most of our adventure so far has been pretty much just us doing our ...
Image: Industrial Rape of Flora Bank by Pacific Northwest LNG (image provided by PNW LNG) Sometimes I can go weeks without remembering my past life of over 20 years in Prince Rupert. This week was not one of those weeks. It all started on September 27, with the announcement that "Today, the Minister of the ...
Image: Winter at the cabin. We celebrated our first winter solstice at the cabin today. From here, we can look forward to the days getting longer. I've always struggled with the short, dark days of winter, and always feel uplifted as we round mid-winter solstice and start heading into spring. We've been working very hard ...
Our well ran dry this week. Not terribly surprising, given the lack of rain. In fact, it was quite amazing how long it did last. Since the well is now completely dry, it was a good opportunity to dig it deeper. Earlier this spring, when we first dug it out, water had seeped in so ...
Image: Red tide in our bay. It's definitely been a summer for unusual events. Harmful algal blooms, often called HABs or red tides, have been one of these. Beginning in May, and extending throughout the summer, there has been a massive toxic bloom of the marine diatom Pseudo-nitzschia, stretching from central California to the Alaska ...
Image: Sunlight beaming down on our new home. Finally the northwest gales had caught up to us. We had deeked into the Broughten Archipelago, avoiding the worst of the gale winds, but now we were trapped. Just around the point from where we were anchored was Port Neville. Between us and our final destination were ...
Image: Salmonberry blossom. Today is the spring equinox, and we finally finished cutting a trail from the cabin up to the center of the property. This trail will allow us to access the old logging road that runs through the upper reaches of our land. Finally, we will be able to move around our property ...
Officially, this post is about the pine marten that has been determined to share our cabin with us, but in actuality, it's more about all those little things that have been happening in my life, and my head, since my last post, way back in December - the bats in my belfry, so to say. ...
Since I have written quite a few journal entries about foraging or wild harvesting, I figured that now would be a good time to post this presentation I gave a couple years ago, titled "Ethical Wildcrafting". Always obtain permission from landowners or get proper permits for collecting. Do not harvest on private property or First ...
Image: Our second marten guest. Martens 1: Determined Cabin Owners 2. The war continues ... This cute little fellow showed up about a month after the last marten relocation. At first, we feared that it was the same marten, come back to haunt us, but it quickly fell for the pepperoni-stick-in-the-live-trap trick, and once we ...
The long days of summer are here, and I find myself thinking, as I have before, that this is a rather strange year, following up on a growing number of peculiar years in the recent past. So what makes this year different? Is it the year itself, or the trend that is developing? To start ...
Image: Rays of sunlight shining on our homesteading site. Over the last couple of years, I've talked to a lot of people who thought that our crazy scheme of going OTG and developing a "permaculture homestead" was a really good idea. But when asked whether or not they would consider doing a similar thing, they ...
Image: Golden plums from our site. During our clearing of the land, we have been careful to preserve any fruit trees that we find. So far, we have discovered a Saskatoon tree and several crab apples. One of our neighbours was visiting and was looking over our site. I was explaining to him that we ...
Image: Common bird's nest fungi (Nidula candida). Today is Samhain, or as most people know it, Halloween. What better way to spend a Halloween afternoon than on a hike through the damp fall woods, battling through spiderwebs and hunting weird mushrooms. Samhain is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the ...
Image: Hairy cat's ear (Hypochaeris radicata), also known as false dandelion. When we purchased our property, we knew that it had a history of human use - hand logging and pioneer homesteading around the turn of the century, then more recently, clear-cut logging. So we expected weeds. Weeds and humans go hand-in-hand. Some weeds, such ...
Image: A Christmas Scene. We were invited to a Port Neville community Christmas dinner at Ransom Point today. Ransom Point is the old Hansen homestead at the mouth of Port Neville Inlet. The community dock for Port Neville is located here, and once upon a time, there was a post office and store run by ...
Image: View from the Above Tide Motel. We were starting to run out of supplies again, and our list of required building materials was growing, so it was time for another trip to Campbell River. However, no more dark drives over icy roads - we were going to stay in a motel this time, and ...
Image: The Kipper's Folly. Having sold the Moody Blue, we now have a little bit of money in the bank to deal with boat issues... Since we live quite a ways from "civilization", one of the things that we have been working towards is redundancy in all of our systems. This includes our boats as ...
Image: Bantam eggs. Years ago, as a child growing up on a farm, I used to have a flock of bantams and sold "organic free range eggs" at the local health food store. However, as I grew older, eggs and butter became "bad" foods, full of cholesterol and saturated fats. Since heart disease runs in ...
We need to build a woodshed. Up to now, we’ve stored our wood under the house – the house is on pilings and there's lots of room for wood under there. However, the minks, martens, and rodents have been building homes in the wood stacks, and this is not so good for the cabin. Also, ...
Going back in time a few years, here is laundry day on summer solstice, 2015. We washed the laundry in the creek, in buckets, by hand, and hung it on ropes strung between the trees. Laundry has always been challenging here. We don't have the electricity necessary to run a full-sized washer and dryer, nor ...
Image: A Kipperfull of wood. We now have a Kipperfull of wood ... With our late start on house-building last winter, we never really had a chance to get enough wood to keep the stove going. All winter long, we were scrabbling around looking for dry-ish downed trees that could be cut up for firewood. ...
Image: Our new home. A vibrant green triangle – that's my first impression of our new home as we pass through the narrows near the head of Port Neville Inlet. A vibrant green triangle pointed uphill towards a background of mountains, with the broad base coming down to meet the shoreline. Two deer calmly graze ...
Image: Front Windows in the Cabin. Our weather hs been alternating between snow (we had our first snowfall a few days ago) and southeast gale with torrential rain. Today, however, dawned beautifully blue and clear. Although it seems like an odd thing to do on Christmas day, the weather was perfect for completing the installation ...
We started our homesteading project back in June 2015 ... and finally, nearly 4 years later, we have hot running water in the cabin, and can take a hot shower! What a luxury when you’ve been out working all day in the mud, and come back in filthy!! This project has taken us a couple ...
Image: Towing the Awen around Cape Caution Just as in rock climbing, every journey, like every ascent, has a "crux" point, a passage through the eye of a needle, a time of greatest struggle or danger. Although I didn't know it when I got out of our bunk this morning, today was going to be ...
Image: Freeze-up We've been in for a bit of a suprise - on January 3rd, the end of the Port Neville Inlet froze up. We were very worried. We couldn't get our little row boat out to the float to check on the Moody Blue and the Awen, and we were very concerned about the ...
An oceanographer needs a seadog ... and it looks like I've got one! Brennan met the sea full on today, a true baptism in salt water ... and discovered he could swim (a good thing, this). No, we didn't throw him overboard. We were walking along the beach, with Brennan cavorting along as he loves ...
Image: Our Cozy Home Gradually our little cabin is becoming our cozy home. On the days when the weather has been cold and wet, we have continued with our work on the cabin interior. After nearly a year in storage, we have moved all of our furniture and belongings into the cabin. We had to ...
I was messing around on the Google Earth Engine the other day, and discovered that their Timelapse site finally had satellite images available for our region. So here is our homestead from 1984 to 2016 ... [foogallery id="933"] If you want to explore changes in landscapes over time, Google Earth Engine Timelapse can be found ...
Image: Awen with an outboard attached to get us to Campbell River. Well, the time finally came. We had sold the old Moody Blue, so we now had a little bit of money to deal with boat problems. We had bought the Draiocht, so that we had a reliable runabout while we were sorting out ...
Image: ATV and trailer at the house site. "You're going to need a tractor", one friend advises sagely. Another friend, who owns a remote piece of property up in the Hazelton area, tells us how useful his ATV has been for working around the property. Fifty acres is a lot of land - our friends ...
We've been away from home for two weeks, and sometimes things happen when you've been away. This time, it was a dreadful smell associated with the sinks. At first we thought it was the grey water drain system. Sometimes it gets a bit smelly if no water had been running through it for a while. ...
Image: Apple blossoms. Beltane is the name for the Gaelic May Day festival. which is held on May 1st, or about halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. Beltane marks the beginning of summer, and historically, it was when cattle were driven out to the summer pastures. In ancient times, rituals were performed ...
Image: Loveable Loo. When you live in the city, getting rid of human waste is as simple as a flush. When you are living off-grid, things get just a wee bit more complicated. One of the first things you need to deal with when you start living on the land is how to dispose of ...
Image: "The Snow Queen" - a print from the original painting by Emily Balivet, 2012. Winter solstice has passed, Christmas has been enjoyed, and here we are ... we've gained a whole entire minute of daylight! As usual, our life seems to be moving along, often quicker than we realize. Coming into the shortest day ...
Image: Plum blossoms. Sometimes you get so busy that you miss beautiful things happening right in front of your nose ... like plum blossoms outside your window. I was typing an email on my computer, and looked up, out the window, deep in thought. Suddenly my eyes opened and my mind awakened ... the plum ...
Image: Potatoes (taken from Wikipedia) I had our potato harvest stored in bins of sand under the house, but I obviously wasn't prepared for -9°C weather. The sand actually worked pretty well at protecting many of the potatoes from freezing; however, all the potatoes that were touching the sides of the bins got frozen. So, ...
Image: The Moody Blue at Anchor. Today, I watched the Moody Blue pull away from the dock without me. I felt oddly out of place, not being aboard her as I always had in the past. As I watched 12 years (has it been that long!) of memories and adventures swing out of sight, I ...
Gosh! Winter Solstice is just around the corner, and I haven't written anything in our blog for quite awhile! So, let's see ... projects, projects, projects ... The flashing around the chimney has leaked since shortly after it was installed. We end up getting water in the chimney pipe, which makes the creosote wet and ...
Image: A Cougar in My Garden. You could say it was all my fault ... but there was a cougar in my garden today. I was picking huckleberries, and you know how it is - the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Or at least the berries are redder. So ...
Image: A Cabin in the Woods ('Lyle and Owen's Cabin' by Debbie Reusch) We've really done it now! The reality came home with a shock that left me feeling momentarily breathless, slightly panicky, elated, and excited all in the same instant. I was handing over the keys to the Creag Faoiltiarna Fitheach, our home for ...
Wow! Things got a little scary here! Just recovered from a chimney fire. Thankfully, the cabin (and the two of us) survived! We clean the chimney fairly regularly, so we weren't expecting this! But I guess we've been using a different composition of firewood this fall, more cedar and fir, less alder, and it makes ...
Image: Pine marten in a live trap. Round XX goes to us in the pine marten battle. May the war be over ... We'd kind of hoped that the pine marten had decided to leave on its own, but we baited the live trap and set it up under the house. Three days with canned ...
Image: White caps off of Collingwood Point. After two weeks of "deep freeze", I woke up last night to the rain pounding down on our cabin roof. We were supposed to go visiting friends today, taking the Draiocht out towards the mouth of Port Neville Inlet, but last night I was having bad dreams about ...
Image: A new ramp leading up to our yard from the intertidal zone. Mabon is past and Samhain is on its way, and as usual, we find ourselves engaged in the fall scramble as we try to get through our list of tasks that must be completed before the fall rains set in. The Ramp ...
Image: Cutting firewood. Having spent much of my life driving some form of gas guzzling vehicle around, I have become very aware at how inefficient these large gasoline engines can be, especially when used by single individuals for commuting in the city. However, only recently have I come to appreciate the value of the small, ...
I don't write many negative posts on my blog, but sometimes life can throw some really serious s**t at you. I guess it's all in how you cope. And, by the way, don't stress out! It was one of the trips to Campbell River that I’ve always worried would happen … what will we do ...
Image: Newly terraced garden with supports for climbing beans in the top terrace. Coming from Prince Rupert, I've always been concerned about getting my garden to drain adequately. We used raised beds in our gardens there, largely to keep the beds from becoming bogs. I never thought you could have too much of a good ...
Image: A Wood Cook Stove. When we were still living in Prince Rupert, we had become quite interested in getting a wood cook stove as an auxiliary source of heat for the upstairs of our house, and also as a stove which could be used during power outages (which occur frequently in Prince Rupert). After ...
Brennan's about 14 weeks old now, and has he ever grown since we got him! You can almost hear his bones creaking as his legs stretch outwards. So, for you dog-lovers, hear are a couple of shots of our favorite hound. [caption id="attachment_8067" align="alignnone" width="840"] Taking a break from the hot sun under a fern.[/caption] ...
Image: Towing the Awen out from under the clouds We've been preparing for this moment since December. Finally, we are underway. Everything has been packed. Our two boats, the Moody Blue and the Awen are ready to go. Our newest "vessel", the Kipper's Folly, a 21' herring skiff (bought to be a landing craft at ...
Image: Our home in Prince Rupert Wow! How do we accumulate so much stuff? Having sold our home, we now had to pack all our belongings (or at least the important things) into the fish hold of our old fishing boat, the Moody Blue. It is amazing how much stuff you can cram into a ...
Image: Full Moon at the Summer Solstice. Summer Solstice has rolled around again, and this year it occurs in conjunction with a full moon. A full moon in June is called a "Strawberry Moon", so named because strawberries become plentiful in this month. The Summer Solstice coinciding with a Strawberry Moon is a rare event. ...
Image: Our Back Yard. Hogmanay is the Scots word for the last day of the year, and is the Scottish celebration of the New Year. One of the most widespread customs associated with Hogmanay is the practice of first-footing, which starts immediately after midnight. This involves being the first person to cross the threshold of ...
Image: Single Delight (Moneses uniflora), a Wintergreen. We had another great low tide today, allowing us to hike the beach around the tip of Collingwood Point, and walk on the "wild side" of the narrows. The mountain behind our home is called Collingwood Mountain, and the point that forms part of the Port Neville Inlet ...
Image: Our cabin with windows and walls. We've been busy critters. As it turned out, all the materials required to build our house took three loads (Moody Blue towing our herring skiff) to get to our site, rather than the originally estimated two. It's amazing how much stuff it takes to build a 20' x ...
Image: Landfall. Today, we celebrated the first anniversary of our arrival at our homestead. We decided to call it "Landfall Day", since we arrived by boat a year ago, and landed on the shore in our little skiff, hoping that this piece of land would become our home. So much has happened in such a ...
Image: My Singer Sewing Machine. I've been looking in second hand stores for a set of small curtains to cover the shelves in the bathroom. Our bathroom is very small, and traditional drawers and doors would take up too much space to open. So curtains over the shelves would make the bathroom look a lot ...
Image: Overview map showing Port Neville, Sayward, and Campbell River. I've been a little more active on the "social media" scene these past couple of months, and this had led to a few old friends contacting us and asking the question "Just where exactly are you living now?" We live such busy lives, it's amazing ...
Image: Sheds for storage. Originally, we had planned on getting some sheds erected on our property shortly after our arrival. Our hope was to be able to unpack the hold in the Moody Blue, thus lightening her load and giving us access to much of our stuff. With this in mind, we purchased a couple ...
Image: A roof on our cabin. Friday, November 13th we finally got the roof on our cabin. For some people, this may have been considered an unlucky day, but for us, it was a very lucky one indeed! Getting the roof on our cabin has been a real struggle for us. The work was heavy ...
Image: A 17 hole golf course. "We haven't got our cabin built yet. But we have the most important thing ... a 17 hole golf course," Ken jokes. OK ... most people look very puzzled by our sense of humour. But we certainly do have 17 holes where our cabin should be. A little big ...
Image: Gardens and Cabin. Certainly not with silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row. But grow it does ... at least some of it. I've grown enough gardens over the years to know that the ground breaking year for a garden plot can sometimes be a disappointment. So I started ...
I've been doing a bit of research on the next step in our homesteading ... bringing in animals. I figure that the animals we bring into our landscape must be at least as hardy as we are, so the focus on my research has been on cold hardy, tough, self-sufficient critters that can thrive in ...
Image: Satellite photo of our site with the trail shown in yellow. We have family coming next week, so we really wanted to finish a project that we have been working on for some months now. We wanted to complete clearing the trail from our cabin up to the main logging road that runs above ...
Image: Launch of the Oliver Clark in 1925. On the top of a bookshelf, not too far from where I am sitting now, is a wooden model, made by my father 20 or more years ago, of a boat named the Oliver Clark. That model was made far from the ocean, in the dry interior ...
Image: The Grizzly. Dusk is fast approaching, and we are winding down our day, now aboard the Awen, anchored just offshore from our home site. Ken sees something moving along the shore. This "something" resolves into a rather large, gangly-looking bear. We are not sure if it is a very large black bear or a ...
Image: Looking down Port Neville Inlet towards Robber's Knob. It’s been a bright, blue-skied day, with the temperature hovering around 0°C, and only a slight breeze (in spite of continued warnings of cold outflow winds) - a perfect day for a walk through our woods. We have a couple inches of snow on the ground ...
Image: The Awen and the Moody Blue tied up to our float. What a week of chaos! It started with an "emergency" run to Campbell River to get new starting batteries for the Moody Blue. Then, immediately afterwards, the northwest gale picked up again, this time with real intent. We started getting gusts of up ...
Image: Kiwi fruit arch looking into the old golden plum grove. This year, we decided it was finally time to begin planting trees on our site - the start of an orchard. So, early this spring, we began the project by clearing nearly an acre of our land. This involved cutting lots of salmonberry and ...
Image: The Awen calmly waiting for the tide to go down at the Port Neville public dock. A couple weeks ago, we picked up a new propeller for the Awen while we were in Campbell River. Now, we finally have everything ready to put the new prop in place. As usual, nothing about boats is ...
Image: Ken's new Cromach. Another first for us here - we just met with an old friend from Prince Rupert who was traveling down to Victoria. Being so far off grid, it can be hard to schedule meetings with people, particularly as the Johnstone Strait crossing can be so weather dependent. It's also rare that ...
Image: Solar dehydrator built from left over bits and pieces from our house construction. The summer solstice is past and summer's finally here. The weather has become typically hot and dry, with no rain in sight for weeks. It's time to start harvesting the garden before everything dries up and dies. As part of that ...
Image: Ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) in our front yard. Our yard has been taken over by ruffed grouse, or "yard chickens", as Ken calls them. They are very tame and not terribly bright, but otherwise add some excitement to the yard. I can pretty much walk up to them, and they will gradually drift away ...
Image: Our home, a little bit of paradise. Winter solstice has passed, and the days are getting longer, albeit it is still hard to notice much change. The weather has been a bit crazy - periods of icy cold, but sunny, "deep freezes" followed by torrential rainfall. Here in the Inlet, the weather has been ...
Image: Saskatoon tree with bird netting. We love our birds ... they are, after all, what gives our land its voice, makes us the “tir ceòlmhor” – the singing land. However, sometimes there are conflicts ... It started with the Saskatoon tree the year we arrived. We carefully extracted it from the mass of rose, ...
Table of Contents
Newest entries, 2020
December, 2019
November, 2019
October, 2019
September, 2019
August, 2019
July, 2019
June, 2019
May, 2019
- A Genetics Puzzle – Coat Color in Border Collies
- A New Addition to Our Family
- Brennan and the Back Porch
- Laundry Day
April, 2019
- To Have a Hot Shower …
- The Saga of Water Storage Tanks
- Signs of Spring
- Misadventures When Worries Become Reality
March, 2019
February, 2019
January, 2019
December, 2018
November, 2018
October, 2018
September, 2018
August, 2018
July, 2018
June, 2018
May, 2018
April, 2018
March, 2018
February, 2018
January, 2018
December, 2017
November, 2017
October, 2017
September, 2017
August, 2017
July, 2017
June, 2017
May, 2017
April, 2017
March, 2017
February, 2017
January, 2017
December, 2016
- Water and Ice
- Our Winter Wonderland
- A Stormy Winter’s Day
- Still a Little Piece of Paradise
- Potatoes, Potatoes, Potatoes
- I Love My Eggs
November, 2016
October, 2016
- Now That’s a Carrot!
- North Coast Tidings
- Fall Projects
- Shroom Hunting
- Ethical Wildcrafting
- A Gen Xer Goes Homesteading
- Yard Chickens
- Eating Our Weeds
- Samhain Walk
September, 2016
August, 2016
- How Does Our Garden Grow?
- Making Contact
- Well Digging Again!
- Trail Clearing
- A Family Visit
- On the Grid
July, 2016
June, 2016
- Our Garden is Planted
- Landfall Day
- The Kipper Gets an Engine
- Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink
- Summer Solstice
- Me and My Singer Sewing Machine
- A Cougar in My Garden
- Solar Panels At Last
May, 2016
- Beltane
- Our Cozy Home
- Harvesting Seaweed
- A Walk on the Wild Side
- Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend
- Naming the Draiocht
April, 2016
March, 2016
February, 2016
January, 2016
December, 2015
- Moved In At Last!
- Mad Shopping Spree!
- Winter Solstice
- All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Windows
- A Community Christmas
November, 2015
October, 2015
September, 2015
August, 2015
- The Float
- A 17 Hole Golf Course
- An Unexpected Harvest
- Building Sheds
- Ode to the Small Gasoline Engine
July, 2015
June, 2015
- Out from Under
- Rounding Cape Caution
- The Sign of the Awen
- Home
- Fetching the Blue Rocket
- Black Bears and Blackberries
- Summer Solstice
- The Grizzly