“We haven’t got our cabin built yet. But we have the most important thing … a 17 hole golf course,” Ken jokes.
A 17 Hole Golf Course
Category: Homesteading
Our Adventures
The 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 to 40 knots blowing in towards shore. That’s when our anchor, which had been holding fine for the past two months, decided to drag.
I Never Thought I’d Own an ATV
“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 tell us that we will need something with an engine. However, neither of us really wants to have yet another gasoline engine to feed, with the ever-increasing costs of fuel. And it seems to go against our principles to have a “motor vehicle” on the property. However, the last straw comes from the contractor who is designing the cabin for our site. “You’re not going to hand bomb all the materials up from the beach, are you?” he asks in disbelief. “The last time I had to do that …” and he goes off into stories of pain and injury. OK, I’m convinced to look at options. Maybe we’ll get a winch and a trailer. “I’ll check into things”, I tell the contractor. “Look at used ATVs”, he advises. “You might be able to get something cheap …”
Smoke on the Horizon
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 pupil of a reptile. The smoke on the horizon is an eery reminder of one of the outcomes of a too hot summer – forest fires.
Moonlight Capers
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 beginning to wonder what on earth I am doing here.
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 small grizzly. As we debate, it disappears into the bush.
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 have not been able to do for a month. So we happily set our shirts and underwear to flapping in the warm summer breeze.
Black Bears and 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.
Fetching 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 fetch the Blue Rocket from Port Hardy and bring it back to Kelsey Bay, our closest point to British Columbia’s highway system.
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 seaweed at the edge of a creek.