Here’s an article that I wrote for the 2023 Lughnasadh edition of the Òran Mór Celtic E‐Zine that looks into the Scottish legend of John Barleycorn and the traditional songs associated with it.
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
We’ve been invited to a deconstruction party.
I’ve been having a few discussions with people regarding the safety of the mRNA vaccines being used to vaccinate against COVID-19. As the pandemic has worsened, the need to combat COVID-19, especially for those people who are particularly vulnerable to ...
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.
It’s been several months since last I posted on our blog site. To those who follow our blog, I apologize. This spring, we chose to undertake a large project – to clear land and plant a permaculture food forest. We ...
Call it nori or laver or slake, by any name Porphyra is not only delicious, but good for your health as well.
We’ve been in for a bit of a surprise – on January 3rd, the end of the Port Neville Inlet froze up.
December is nearly over, and we’re still getting rain, even though most of the southern half of the province has been snowed on. Go figure? Actually, I don’t mind an absence of snow – we can still hike about on ...
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 ...
We finally took a vacation. Well, a working vacation at least.
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 ...
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 ...
You’d think, with the degree of isolation that COVID-19 has imposed on everyone, that people would tend to be more communicative rather than less. However, strangely enough, I’ve had fewer people viewing our blog site (and this observation has been ...
The Hawthorn, a tree that displays a prolific splendour of white or pink flowers at the beginning of May, is known by a variety of different names, such as “The May Tree“, “The Beltane Tree“, “The May Blossom“, “The Whitethorn“, ...
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 ...
Here we are three years later, and I’m updating the map for the permaculture design project at Tir Ceòlmhor.
Need I say more?
Today we celebrated Imbolc in our little cabin in the woods.
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 ...
I’ve been reading a lot of Irish mythology in the last little while. Looking at the English translations of the Old Irish (Gaelic), it is easy to see that many of these stories were once oral poems (probably originally translated ...
Sadly, my mother passed away gently on the 19th of January, almost nine years and a month to the day since the passing of my father.
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.
Once upon a time, long, long, ago, there was a Celtic band called Noctiluca. Now, you might say, Noctiluca is not a Celtic name. No, it is not. Unfortunately, no one in the band spoke Gaelic. Noctiluca was the best ...
With the start of the fall rains, mushrooms are popping up everywhere. It’s time to go shroom hunting.
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 ...
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.
Just a few of the things that show up on our game camera …
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.
Another year older, and thankfully, not deeper in debt!
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!) ...
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.
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
We now have a Kipperfull of wood …
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.
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.
So here’s the permaculture design project for the food forest at our home in Port Neville (called Tir Ceòlmhor).
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 ...
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
I wrote this little color piece for an e-zine back in August. It captures some of the joys and fears of summertime on our homestead.
From a state of near wreckage, the greenhouse rises again, a peaceful zombie composed of broken aluminum struts and strangely resilient sheets of polycarbonate …
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.
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 ...
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 ...
Wow! Things got a little scary here! Just recovered from a chimney fire. Thankfully, the cabin (and the two of us) survived!
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 ...
“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 ...
Here’s some wyrd and wonderful photos of Nature in time for All Hallows’ Eve. Happy trick-or-treating this evening …
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?
My garden has been taken over …
Nothing is constant but change itself …
“We haven’t got our cabin built yet. But we have the most important thing … a 17 hole golf course,” Ken jokes.
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 ...
This fall the colors of the leaves are absolutely intense, blazing with glory. I just had to share a few pics …
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?
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!
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!
For Winter is a coming in And Summers’s gone away-O. (inverted twist on “Hal an Tow” lyrics by Damh the Bard)
Summer Solstice has rolled around again, and this year it occurs in conjunction with a full moon.
I’ve been doing a bit of research on the next step in our homesteading … bringing in animals.
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 ...
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 ...
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.
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.
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 ...
Although this year of COVID can be depressing, I always find beauty and a sense of centeredness amongst nature. Here are a few shots of our early summer garden.
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.
Martens 1: Determined Cabin Owners 2. The war continues …
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.
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.
My appointment with my optometrist back in October led to a referral to see a specialist in Comox on November 12th. This appointment applied some interesting technology to my eye problem, and finally provided some resolution (ha ha).
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 ...
Coming to the homestead, we had to downsize massively. Now that we’re here … well, things are beginning to accumulate and there is a need for more “specialized” spaces around the homestead, places where certain activities can occur, spread out, ...
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’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 ...
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.
I had our potato harvest stored in bins of sand under the house, but I obviously wasn’t prepared for -9°C weather.
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 …
We’re still here! Sometimes I think that’s pretty amazing.
We’ve been busy gardening and trail breaking, now that the rains have finally stopped. I’ve definitely developed some tool preferences …
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 ...
Back in April, 2019, I posted about finally getting hot water in the cabin using a coil in our wood stove. This system has been great, and has worked reliably. However, during the heat of the summer (especially this summer), ...
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!
Time whirls by, suddenly 2022 has come to its end, and here we are in the early days of 2023. I’m posting a few photos to bring the blog up-to-date on some of the happenings at the homestead.
Round XX goes to us in the pine marten battle. May the war be over …
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.
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 ...
Eight years ago, when we were still living in Prince Rupert, I took my Permaculture Design Course (PDC), and created a design project for our home there (called Creag Faoiltiarna Fitheach). Not too much later, we moved to Port Neville ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
I came across the Aspen Proposal a day or so ago in one of my web browsing moments. It resonated very strongly with me, and I can agree with all of the points that it raises. We all need to ...
Our neighbours picked up our mail from the post office, and the new Kuwfi 4G hub arrived, even sooner than I’d expected, given that it had shipped from China (I wish Canada would make decent electronics so that I could ...
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 …
Our yard has been taken over by ruffed grouse, or “yard chickens”, as Ken calls them.
Did you think that last summer and this winter were a bit abnormal? Well, you weren’t the only one …
Gradually our little cabin is becoming our cozy home.
A good friend has passed on. We are shocked by the suddenness of it, and saddened by the knowledge that his presence in this world is lost to us, that we shall not share another smile at the joys of ...
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.
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.
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.
An oceanographer needs a seadog … and it looks like I’ve got one!
You could say it was all my fault … but there was a cougar in my garden today.
Having sold the Moody Blue, we now have a little bit of money in the bank to deal with boat issues…
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 ...
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” ...
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. ...
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.
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!
Certainly not with silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row. But grow it does … at least some of it.
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.
Just for fun, here’s a little historical fiction short story that I put together recently, based on the Irish Iron Age culture.
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.
So … I’m trying to get over writer’s block. Or maybe it isn’t really writer’s block, but a combination of summertime busyness – gardening, making jam, cutting firewood, maintaining boats and buildings – and procrastination. Whatever … it’s been quite ...
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. ...
As we spiral through the cycles of the seasons on our homestead, Lughnasadh comes to us as a time of balance … between sacrifice and blessing, hard work and reward, safety and danger.
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 ...
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 ...
So, I’m 55 and I think I can be allowed just a tiny bit of nostalgia. For those people who knew me in Keremeos, when I attended the Similkameen Secondary School, can you remember a grade 12 course called Community ...
It’s been a cold, slow spring, but gradually the signs of its impending arrival are starting to show up.
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.
Winter solstice has passed, Christmas has been enjoyed, and here we are … we’ve gained a whole entire minute of daylight!
What’s it been like on our homestead during the COVID-19 crisis? Well, some things remain much the same, and others have become strangely different.
Is anyone out there still have trouble with concepts like “climate change” and “global warming”?
We’re still going strong this year, even into November. Looking forward to some winter “rest” …
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.
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. ...
Well, I finally dun it … I got me a chainsaw!
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 ...
We just got our first couple of solar panels hooked up and charging the batteries. It’s great to get off the genset…
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 ...
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 ...
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!
Gosh! Winter Solstice is just around the corner, and I haven’t written anything in our blog for quite awhile!
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
August flew by some time ago, but here is some of our summer trivia.
It’s definitely been a summer for unusual events. Harmful algal blooms, often called HABs or red tides, have been one of these.
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?
October came, with its glorious colors as the maples, apples, and oaks put on their fall displays. Time to bring in the last of the harvest and watch the rains start in earnest.
Sometimes you get so busy that you miss beautiful things happening right in front of your nose … like plum blossoms outside your window.
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”.
Here’s an article that I wrote for the 2024 Beltane edition of the Òran Mór Celtic E‐Zine that explores the history of the Fire Festival of Beltane.
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 ...
We were invited to a Port Neville community Christmas dinner at Ransom Point today.
After three years of drought, the rains of spring have brought an incredible intensity of life to our homestead… plants flourishing in variegated shades of green, flowers blossoming in profusion, and the bushes bending heavy with fruit. As we work ...
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.
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. ...
We finally did it!! We bought ourselves a little tractor and figured out how to get it to our homestead!
Here’s an poem that I wrote for the 2024 Imbolc edition of the Òran Mór Celtic E‐Zine that celebrates the awakening of the year.
Things are finally quieting down a bit, but I’m still in catch-up mode with our blog. So, here’s September at a glance …
Meet Brennan! He’s an eight week old Border collie puppy, and he’s joining our family (pack).
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 …
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 ...
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.
I hope you all had a happy Valentine’s Day!
It finally happened – we got two days of non-rainy, non-windy weather and, making the best of them, we got the Awen up on the grid and put the prop back on. Yee haw!
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.
We had an interesting “wolf event” towards the end of January. The wolves started howling early in the evening (and it was neither a full moon, nor a clear night), kept going all night, and only stopped sometime after dawn ...
On August 28th, we had the thunderstorm from hell. Lightning lashed, thunder boomed, and we all cowered in the cabin as the forces of Nature roared with wild violence around us.
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, ...
Last October, I did a fall sowing of a variety of different grains (rye, wheat, oats, triticale, barley) in test plots. I wasn’t sure I’d get good germination, although Dan Jason at Salt Spring Seeds recommends sowing grains anytime from ...
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?”
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 ...
Table of Contents
Newest entries, 2025
The Year of 2024
Spring
Summer
Fall
- Lughnasadh on the Homestead Remixed
- The Legend of John Barleycorn
- Fall’s Here and Winter’s A-Comin’
- Permaculture Design Project Update
- Noctiluca
- The Colors of Autumn
- Scary Spidies and Wyrd ‘Shrooms
The Year of 2023
Winter
Fall
Winter
The Year of 2022
Spring
Fall
The Year of 2021
Spring
- Imbolc 2021
- Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
- For All Those Who Are in Love …
- Mobile Again!
- COVID-19 Vaccination Questions
- Live from Boris the Spider
- Growing Grain
- Got Me a Chainsaw!
- The Aliens Have Landed!
Summer
Fall
Winter
- Edible Permaculture Plants for Port Neville
- Permaculture Design Project for Port Neville
- Eyeballs and Tomography
- Weather, Weather, Weather …
The Year of 2020
Spring
Summer
- Homesteading During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- A Quick Garden Moment
- Things Seen by Our Game Camera …
- A She Shed
- July Updates
Fall
Winter
The Year of 2019
Spring
- Our Homestead through Time
- Animals on a Woodland Homestead
- To Have a Hot Shower …
- The Saga of Water Storage Tanks
- Signs of Spring
- Misadventures When Worries Become Reality
Summer
- A Genetics Puzzle – Coat Color in Border Collies
- A New Addition to Our Family
- Brennan and the Back Porch
- Laundry Day
- A Strange Year
- Brennan the Extendo-Dog
- A Seadog
- Building a Woodshed
Fall
Winter
The Year of 2018
Spring
Summer
- Birds, Birds, Birds …
- The Beginnings of an Orchard
- Terracing the Garden
- What a Beautiful World We Live In
Fall
Winter
The Year of 2017
Spring
Summer
Fall
Winter
The Year of 2016
Winter
Spring
- Imbolc
- What’s in a Name?
- Singing the Boat Blues
- A Kipperfull of Wood
- Ostara’s Path
- Plum Blossoms
- A Surfer Boat?
- Elderflower Cordial
- The Start of a Garden
Summer
- Beltane
- Our Cozy Home
- Harvesting Seaweed
- A Walk on the Wild Side
- Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend
- Naming the Draiocht
- 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
- A Vacation to Quadra Island
- Deconstruction and Decomposition
- Humanure
Fall
- How Does Our Garden Grow?
- Making Contact
- Well Digging Again!
- Trail Clearing
- A Family Visit
- On the Grid
- Meeting with a Friend
- A Bit of History
- Adventures with Awen
- Something Dead This Way Came
- 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
Winter
- Water and Ice
- Our Winter Wonderland
- A Stormy Winter’s Day
- Still a Little Piece of Paradise
- Potatoes, Potatoes, Potatoes
- I Love My Eggs
The Year of 2015
Summer
- A Cabin in the Woods
- Downsizing
- Out from Under
- Rounding Cape Caution
- The Sign of the Awen
- Home
- Fetching the Blue Rocket
- Black Bears and Blackberries
- Summer Solstice
- The Grizzly
- Moonlight Capers
- Smoke on the Horizon
- I Never Thought I’d Own an ATV
Fall
- The Float
- A 17 Hole Golf Course
- An Unexpected Harvest
- Building Sheds
- Ode to the Small Gasoline Engine
- Asking Why
- Our Creeks Flow Again
- Red Tide
- A Start to Our Cabin
- Cabin Designs
- A Solid Foundation
- We’ve Been Busy