The adventure goes on …
Our Adventures
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 Prince Rupert and have significance to us). However, we were having a hard time naming our new home. Should the name reflect the land (50 acres of forest) or the house/home?
Today we celebrated Imbolc in our little cabin in the woods.
We’ve been in for a bit of a surprise – on January 3rd, the end of the Port Neville Inlet froze up.
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 a friend or neighbour and often involves the giving of symbolic gifts intended to bring luck to the householder. Food and drink are then given to the guests. This may go on throughout the early hours of the morning, and well into the next day. The first-foot is supposed to set the luck for the rest of the year.
We were invited to a Port Neville community Christmas dinner at Ransom Point today.
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.
Continue reading “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Windows”
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 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 enjoy our first showers since May!
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.
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 much investigation, we decided that we really liked a stove called the Baker’s Choice – an Amish made stove designed and manufactured in Canada by a company called Suppertime Stoves in Ontario. This stove is a durable, functional (but not fancy) airtight wood stove made from welded steel plate, and has been recommended by many homesteaders, both for heating cabins and as an excellent stove for cooking. However, before we actually purchased a Baker’s Choice stove for our home in Prince Rupert, we decided to sell the house and begin our adventures with simplicity and sustainability.