Reflections

We just had two days of rain with accumulation of about 50mm in total.

Today, as I sit in our beloved sunroom, writing this post, I'm seeing an incredible number of birds having a feast on the worms surfacing the earth.

Sure there are the migrating flocks of birds but I'm also seeing a lot of chickadees and bluejays that live here year round.

It's an amazing sight that I will attempt to describe for you. The still wet turning leaves from the rain and sparkles of the flickering sun rays as the gentle breeze go through them are magical. Birds of all sizes swooping down as they watch the bigger or more dominant birds already on the ground, all somehow very focused on getting a belly-full before they start their migrating journey or simply fattening-up in advance of leaner times ahead.

Amazingly never engaging or resulting in any fights other than perhaps a couple of very short hops of forward chases before resuming their feast :)

Funny thing happened on the way to the forum.....but for those of you who have never heard this fraze, I will say, funny thing happened at the cider-press.

I attended my first apple cider press ever, here, seven years ago. It was held at our then land-lady, now neighbour's property. It must have been a great harvest season because I remember that we all went home with 2-3 jugs of cider each. Of course there weren't as many of us then. Less than 20?

The tradition continued for the following two years but then it came to a halt due to dry next two years. This year however was a great harvest year. Lots of warmer, sunny days with at least one to two rainy days a week, for the entire growing season + no frost as of this writing. All of which granted us a much missed neighbourhood cider press day, yay!

The neighbourhood is much more populated this year than seven years ago, plus some folks brought their friends & relatives with them. All and all, there may have been close to 50 of us?

Two pick-nick tables are dedicated to folks chopping the apples to a more manageable size for the mulches to receive, while 4 people are assigned to feeding and turning the manual mulcher-wheel and two people to spin the press/squeezer for the final step, with some folks still picking & collecting apples. Folks rotated as they got tired.

As the gardener/groundskeeper for my neighbour, I had the additional task of emptying the wheel barrows full of pulp in the large compost bins which is a whole other story/process.

I don't have any pictures of this event because with covid, some folks wouldn't want to be seen in public in addition to the typical everyday privacy preferences but if I manage to find a picture of our own old apple-press machine at our place that we are yet to use, I will post it for you.

Ok, there it is under the white framed window. It's not doing it justice. Perhaps I'll take a close-up picture and include it.

I arrived here as someone who went to the gym six days a week for at least an hour and rotated between weight-baring exercises, cardio, group class and yoga, for years. So I considered myself fit by all accounts, lol.

Lol because I saw a man with little to no visible muscle mass and one even 20 years older than I, who never seemed to tire during those many hours. I was floored!

Seven years later, I saw and see boys 20 years my junior who are new to this lifestyle, that were exhausted after not even an hour, while me and the old boys were going strong, until the end, lol.

Actually, I had even worked in the morning, hauling compost, manure, weeding,... prior to the cider-press and had to go home to cook and tend to our own property after the cider-press as well.

In short, it seems that city-folks have visible muscle mass(those who work out) while the country folks have endurance(mostly those who work on the fields/grounds).

One cannot simply even entertain the idea of fatigue, when there is firewood to stack/season, weed, haul compost/manure, harvest, build,......when it's a sunny, dry day. I could be doing all that, on foot, pushing wheel barrow after wheel barrow, for my neighbour and/or ourselves for many hours on end with only an hour or two break in between, if afforded, before retiring for the night.

If you ever want to know or learn what it takes to live sustainably or how we go on with our lives as former city-folks now off-grid homesteaders, we do hold workshops and even offer overnight accommodations with private guest rooms & bathrooms at our main-building.

There was a potluck the very next day at the very same property.

I heard some folks speaking about the recent events. We are not on social media, own a TV or even listen to the radio so any news that we get regarding whatever really would either be at such a gathering or from our core yogis, here twice a week.

Anyway it seems that more & more folks are getting very frustrated on both sides of the vaccine debate. I'm not going to start a debate here but regardless of your views, you might want to remove yourselves from the cities, as soon as you can.

You may believe that the governments are not imposing enough restrictions which leaves you in close proximity to millions of others.

You may believe that the government is imposing too much which if you are living in the city, you are left with the same outcome.

Confrontations, disruptions, physical altercations, possible food shortages and more are only in addition to the everyday polluted air, now super contaminated water and food, etc.

So by removing yourself from those stressful elements, you can at the very least not have to deal with so much more stress in your lives that can be to a great degree avoided.

I just wanted to mention one more thing on the subject of moving out of the city or what is known to you as the norm.

We moved and lived in three provinces since we moved to Canada nearly 40 years ago. We felt like new immigrants everytime we moved to a different province. Not knowing anyone, whole new set of provincial & municipal laws, etc. etc.

So you can say that we were seasoned immigrants by the time we moved to New Brunswick. BUT, all of our experiences and lessons paled in comparison to what we were faced with in the country/rural setting. After all, we knew how to navigate our way around the city-folks, neighbourhoods and neighbours, tradespeople, schools, stores and culture, but here, here felt like a complete unknown!

Now add to that our worry that something big was to happen soon. A disruption, chaos, instability, mayhem, turmoil,.. Yes, that was one of the reasons why we moved here...not last years but seven years ago.

So we had one more element to worry about, as some folks who move out of the cities do today.

We were in a complete panic mode, upon our arrival. Nine months later, we saw the same look on the face of someone who was moving here from California. He had nowhere to stay or to store his belongings. So we helped him out, at least with storage, for a few months.

Since then and over the years, we continue to see the same desperate look on some of the newcomers faces. These are folks who are looking to get situated but don't know what their first step should be, timelines and more!

Making connections alone took and costs us so much time and money! No-one wanted to work for us simply because they didn't know us.

New Brunswick still has the most affordable real estate prices in the habitable-zone of Canada and of course we would be willing to sell our property, to the right person/family.

As always, if you require assistance or coaching with your rural/country property purchase, we are here to guide you with everything that we learned over the years.