Oh Canada!

It's official. I am a Canadian.

Some of you may not know that I'm a duel citizen cause my pops was born in Canada. So today I received my Canadian liscence and now I can drive legally! I am also set up on the BC Healthcare (which is not totally free like the movie Sicko leads you to believe.) I currently pay $54 a month and after 12 months of being a resident I can apply for premium assistance (since I'm poor) and get part of the cost subsidized. Cool huh? The health plan covers a wide range of things...except dental. You can get a percentage of the cost of a massage reimbursed, but you can't get your teeth cleaned...unless you have extended coverage through your job or something.

I also have a library card and a L.I.F.E pass to the Sooke recreation center. Again, because I am poor I can use the facilities for free! I can go swim, ice skate, lift weights (cough), and even join the jazzercise and water aerobics classes for free! Ain't gonna be no obesity issues here.

According to my grandma, I even sound Canadian. Apparently, I raise the ends of my sentences nOW. But I haven't reached the point yet of saying "Eh" (is that how you even spell it?) And I've noticed that the younger generation here says "hey" instead of "eh" - "That was a pretty cool concert, hEY?"

I will never stop using the word "y'all" though. I mean, it makes perfect sense! There is no 2nd person plural in the English language. Genius.

Alright yall. I'm aboot to go oot so I'll talk to yall later, hEY?

Knitting

This evening I had my first knitting session with Lesley, a wonderful British woman who lives here in Sooke with her husband Gordy. Lesley sells her felted hats and bags around town and is very talented with her work. And lucky me, she is going to teach me how to make a felted hat.

Let me just say that Lesley and Gordy are the cutest and sweetest people ever! I believe they are both retired...I'm not sure what their professions were, but Gordy carves beautiful wooden sculptures and is a musician in disguise. One minute he was playing a little diddy on a wooden flute and the next minute he was playing the guitar and singing songs about the Georgia pines (making me nice and homesick for my Piedmont trees...oh man, I have so much to say about the feeling of knowing what trees surround you and what a sense of place that evokes...but that would be a major digression.) He even gave me a penny whistle so that when I'm alone in my trailer I can practice becoming a grand penny whistle musician.

Lesley was very excited to have me come knit with her...apparently she's been waiting her whole life to find someone to knit with! So we drank tea and knitted while watching the "log" on TV. Yes, that's right a fireplace on TV. HA! I didn't know that actually happened in real life. Lesley says that when there is nothing good on the telly they just turn it to the "log" - channel 50. Is that not awesome?! At times, there was even a hand that reached in and probed the indestructible log that hadn't changed shape in two hours. All the while, Gordy talked about one thing or the other...comments like "I bet a lot of kids are nicknamed 'peanut' down there in Georgia." And then Lesley would roll her eyes and tell him to shush! "She's counting her stitches!" she'd say in her British accent. "Shush is my middle name around here" Gordy would reply. The whole time I was internally beaming with how cute the two of them were.

When it was time for me to go they had put together a bag full of fresh baked cookies and banana bread (which according to Lesley I need some "marge" to put on it)...along with a felted "knitting" bag made by Lesley, my penny whistle, and a bunch of tea light candles...cause Gordy has a ton..."a bag of 100 for only $5."

All I have to say is that I smiled the entire way home. There are some damn beautiful people in this world.

On an entirely different and not as beautiful note - I am going to start adding my rat count to the bottom of each entry along with the number of times I've been pecked by chickens.

Rat count: 2 and a mouse
Chicken pecks: 5 (maybe this means I look tasty) - and one of those five drew blood.

Eggs

I suffer from alektorophobia. "Alektorophobia is an abnormal fear of chickens which may be a result of the fear of feathers, of winged creatures, or of flying animals or birds. Such fears may also include eggs and live or dead chickens. A few reasons include fears of being pecked, swooped upon, and because they roost above eye level or that they eat food from the ground or manure piles which apparently may contaminate the bird. Such fears usually involve relative closeness to live chickens, but usually don't include cooked chickens."

Those of you who have known me for a significant part of my life have been aware of my perpetual fear of eggs - aka "hen fruit" (according to thesauraus.com). This disease has plagued me for years. I even remember hiding a piece of hard-boiled egg from a preschool snack in with the basket of building blocks. My mother tried for years to disguise them with cheese but I never failed to sniff out that proteinaceous stench. Later on in life, my Costa Rican host mother thought I wasn't worldly enough to know that French toast was drenched in the stuff..."No hay huevos" she said as she handed me my plate.

I am starting to understand that my apprenticeship here at ALM farm is really chicken/egg boot camp in disguise. Today, while cleaning off the pooh streaked eggs I broke two of them. One cracked in my hand and the other fell on the floor. I believe I yelled both times and did the squeamish dance. I can only imagine what I must have looked like trying to scoop the egg off the floor with a spatula - yeah, I know...what was I thinking. There is just something about that smell...that flat fishy smell that can't hide the sticky, slimy goo it belongs to. All I have to say is thank you, thank you mama, for your wise words that have stuck with me all these years - "You can always wash your hands." This has become my mantra.

The thing I really don't understand though is why I have to suffer this alone? How do you all do it? Do your intestines really not flip when observing all the forms and textures an egg can take on? From cool, sticky goo, to sweaty, quivering jello, to sebaceous rubber, to that really weird pastiness of hard-boiled? I've watched you all devour these things my whole life and I still to this day do not get it.

Sigh.

Amazing how my blog reflects more on my albumenal fears than my verdurous passions (yeah...that was some total thesaurus work there).

I'll continue to keep you all updated on my progress.

October

Did you know that tomatillos grow until they explode? I noticed that today as I pulled the last plant out of the greenhouse. I think that's probably the coolest way to die - grow until you explode.

A lot has happened this past month. The month of change.

Here's a quick summary of October:

Marika harvest something like 1500 lbs of winter squash- we pulled up the remaining squash plants and made a giant compost pile- pulled up all the irrigation before a heavy frost came- pulled out the sweet pea plants- prepared the upper greenhouse for lettuce transplants- transplanted lettuce and spinach- harvested all the green tomatoes and wrapped them in newspaper for their final chance at ripening- pulled all the tomato plants out of the greenhouses- pulled up the dhalia flowers and stored the bulbs in the barn- moved the movable greenhouse with the tractor (crazy to see a greenhouse move)- started carrying cedar logs Jan cut in the woods to the new property for fence posts- started doing chicken duty for the first time- attended a few of Mary's classes on "Farming as a Business"- killed Cocky the rooster. Yeah!

The saddest thing that's happened is that Yoko and Renae finished their apprenticeship and have headed off to new experiences. Since I came during the middle of the apprenticeship, I plan to stay through the winter into the next season. Mary says that if I make it through the winter I'll be the first one! Ahhh! What Mary doesn't know is that I actually love being alone and relish in quiet time. There is definitely the feeling of a black hole on the farm without Yoko and Renae around...but there is also a feeling of rest and calmness.

I don't think I have ever felt this calm in my life before. Everyday is a day of internal reflection and listening. For the first time in a long time I'm hearing myself again. And I'm happy to realize that I'm the same person I've always been! Same heart...same dreams and passions. It's pretty exciting actually.

Growing up I always talked to myself in the mirror (wow. I'm confessing this on a public blog. weird.) I think that was probably the best thing I could have done growing up...because it meant that I learned a lot about myself. I worked through problems on my own...saying things like "Well Nat, look at it this way..." and never once did I leave a conversation unhappy. I haven't done this in many many many years. Until now. I talk to myself a lot...and I listen to myself a lot. And I am recognizing all the things I'm fortunate for (which is pretty much my whole life...so wow!) and being thankful for them. And lastly, I'm just falling in love with myself, which honestly makes me the happiest person each day! Ha!

I bet at this point you are all thinking I'm going crazy in my colorful trailer out in the woods. Maybe I am. But at least I'm happy.

PS. Mary and Jan had their annual Halloween party. I dressed as the Ghost of Cocky the Rooster...back to haunt Jan. Look at the pic below.

PPS. I've put new pictures on my flikr account...check em out.