Saturday, September 29, 2007 – Tired, Homeless Farm Owners in Duncan

If four months ago Brock had said, “Hey, let’s move to Duncan, buy land, and spend every night and weekend for four months trying to make it habitable!” I might not have so eagerly agreed. But luckily we were naive and assumed we could hire other people to do the work for us, with minimal cost, on time, and perfectly. Every step seems to have gone like this:
1.realize we need something else done (e.g. install conduits for the electrical hook-up before we pour the concrete foundation).
2. make up a tidy list of professionals, and call them for quotes.
3. 25% will be too busy to do the work, 25% will not be home and will never respond to my message, and 50% will agree to do an estimate or meet with us, but not for another 2 weeks.
4. we decide to do the work ourselves.
5. we figure out how to do it, by asking Dad or Randy, reading a book/brochure, researching online, watching Holmes on Homes, or cornering one of the older, wiser sales people at Home Hardware (Gary) or Rona (Richard).
6. we do the work. It’s messy, tiring, and it takes us a really long time.
7. we realize that the next step needs to be done asap. Repeat process.

While it’s been frustrating, exhausting, and has taken much longer than we expected, we are now infinitely more capable than we were in the spring. Brock can frame walls, frame and hang a ceiling, and will soon be able to install floors. I can tape & mud drywall (not well, but I can do it), shingle a roof, use a skilsaw and paint a wall properly. We own many, many tools. And they are not new and shiny anymore. By next weekend, we might perhaps maybe be moving in. I’ve already missed 100 expected move-in dates, so don’t count on it, but we are (FINALLY) in the home stretch.

As for the farm . . . I love growing edible things. Who knew? I hate bugs, I don’t like worms, poop is poopy and dirt is dirty, and yet . . . I love eating something that I PLANTED. It’s cool. And it’s mine. Real-estate-wise, I own the tree that grew that apple. Oh, yes, it turns out that the unnamed trees on our property are four apple trees, a pear tree, a plum tree, and a chestnut tree. The apples are different kinds – we’ve diagnosed two: Elstar and Granny Smiths. The pears are brown and really hard until they’ve sit for a few days on the counter. We have MILLIONS of pears. Thousands of apples. It’s ridiculous. Even the plums tasted good, and I don’t like plums.

My real-life experience in our garden and with our trees is being supplemented by subversive literature. I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and if I didn’t already own an organic farm, I would want to own an organic farm. She’s inspired me to:

• raise turkeys. Brock and I had a deep discussion about what we were okay with raising and killing on our property. Rules say that we can’t sell any meat we’ve reared unless we get a professional to kill it. But we can kill our own animals for our own consumption. So what do we enjoy eating enough to actually KILL for? Not chickens. I’ll stick with the frozen bulk bags of marinated chicken boobs from Costco. Pork? No. They have people eyes. The only two meat products I can’t live without / are worth killing for are turkeys and beef. So we will start with turkeys (they’re smaller). And I’ll do it Barbara Kingsolver’s way, with a heritage breed so they are maybe possibly still able to mate and have baby turkeys, and perpetuate my turkey flock.
• make cheese. I’ve always wanted to make my own cheese. We eat so much of it, it would become our #1 expense if we have to buy it. I’ve followed Barbara’s advice and ordered a starter kit from the Cheese Queen (google it). Soft cheeses are easiest, but we eat mostly cheddar so I will master hard cheese making. Can you make Swiss cheese in the Cowichan Valley? We will soon find out.

Reading this book has reaffirmed my plans to bake our own bread (with a bread maker – I’m not ridiculous), grow our own garlic, and learn how to process/can/preserve/freeze veggies so we can eat them in the winter, and not waste our summer crops. I’m oddly excited about making pesto.

As for Farmer Brock, he is giddy with the thought of 10 acres to landscape. I can barely keep him in the house, to help me with the finishing work. We have a massive pile of quality topsoil in our front yard, waiting for his attention. He’s bought grass seed, determined to make the clay swamp in front of our house a walkable lawn. I bought him graph paper yesterday as a love present, so he can start his landscape plans. In his spare time. (HA!)

Along with our individual goals and visions are a few looming deadlines. We are totally broke, and need to get everything done as soon as possible so we can have the property re-appraised, get our mortgage increased, and pay our bills and our debts. This requires having the property completely livable, with septic, electricity, hydro, a finished house (including siding and trim), and as much landscaping done as possible to boost the value.

We need to have at least two acres tilled and ready to be planted by October 31 in order to claim farm status, and therefore qualify for reduced property taxes ($85 instead of thousands). This will require a tractor, either borrowed/rented/hired.

With the rainy winter season looming, we want to get our greenhouse standing so we’ll have somewhere to plant and pot our seeds and cuttings. Peter the Rabbit needs a safe, dry place to feel territorial about. And we have nowhere for guests to stay (except the pumphouse . . .), so we’d like to get my writing studio built before next summer.

While the list is lengthy, and each step requires many, many others, I’m excited about the whole thing. Our property is stop-and-stare beautiful sometimes. We keep discovering amazing surprises, like the full-grown tomato plants (with tomatoes!) that grow behind our front gate, and were hiding behind weeds until Brock cleared them. Or the mushrooms under our apple trees: I found five different kinds, one of which is probably highly tasty and expensive and will make us millionaires. (Don’t worry, we don’t intend to eat them until we’re sure they’re safe.)

When Hollis came to visit (he brought his mom, grandparents and Great-Gramma Demone), he picked an apple from one of the trees (with Dad’s help).

DAD: What’s that, Hollis?

HOLLIS: Apple.

DAD: Where’d you get it? Did you get it from a store?

HOLLIS: No. Tree.

That was pretty neat. My nephew knows that apples come from trees. He picked one and ate it. Meanwhile, the Safeway ad on the radio yesterday promoted their apples, “fresh from the produce section.” I’m not (yet) a militant farmer, but that shocked me. Apparently, apples don’t come from trees, or even farms – they come from Safeway.

This winter, I look forward to being dry & comfortable in my overly-well-insulated/built home. I will once again have my kettle and tea pot. Peter will have infinite fresh veggies to marinate his insides. Brock will spend his weekends becoming filthy, so I have to hose him off in the backyard. We will browse seed catalogues, I will research turkeys, and we will go on evening drives to find beautiful trees and steal cuttings. Also exciting: the third season of Lost will be out on DVD, so we will spend two weeks immersed, eating popcorn and growing our farm-fat. It sounds quite lovely, but be warned: if you visit us, you’ll have to sleep in the pumphouse.