House For Sale

We currently live in a small town in Saskatchewan. This is a sleepy town with a kindergarten to grade six school (upper grades are bussed 13 kms to the next town). The economy here is farming and ranching, and the oilfield. So one never knows how quickly real estate will move. But really, I didn't think our little house would sell in under ten days. Really I didn't.

I was surprised how sad I felt when I first saw this sign on our lawn. This was our first real home together. We brought our first baby home from the hospital to this house, then a second son two years later. Times were very lean that first year and it was a struggle to get by. The 2010 Winter Olympics will be forever embedded in my memory: nursing a newborn in this living room at all hours, watching repeated highlights over and over and over because I couldn't reach the remote and I didn't dare break the latch. If you've breastfed you know what that means. This house is where a couple became a family, and it makes me very sad to say goodbye to these walls and the memories that live here.

I remind myself that the memories will go with us--along with the toys as I constantly reassure my 3 year old. Our new home is closer to family and it will be easier to visit, have a babysitter, possibly return to work for a few hours a week. When we leave here we leave together, and that's what matters.  

Fruit Flies

I'm sometimes guilty of not making it out to the compost pit before the bucket is overfull. I'm also guilty of overwatering my houseplants (to make up for those times when they are neglected for far too long. Hmmmm. I'm sensing a pattern here!) At any rate, it's February and we have fruit flies. This is normally a problem in the fall when it is hot and I'm bringing in vegetables from the garden. I have a theory that they came in with some bananas a month ago and decided to stay, but whatever the cause, here is what I plan to do:

Ironic that the bananas I believe cause the flies are in the background

If you punch small holes in the lid of a jar and put cider vinegar (I use rice vinegar because I happen to have some) in the jar, the flies should be drawn to the scent and drown when they can't get back out of the jar. It usually works and at least makes me feel like I'm doing something about the pesky flies!

Making Plans

As I've mentioned, my family and I are making a move back to where I was raised. There are so many posts I could write on the subject, and I intend to, but for today my focus is what I've been working on in spare moments recently.

Western Canada (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Peace River Region of British Columbia) has a prairie shelterbelt program available for rural landowners of 5 acres (2 hectares) or more. More information on the program (along with excellent planting and care resources) is available on the website www.agr.gc.ca/agroforestry 

Seedlings are provided free of charge (landowner pays shipping) for the following planting purposes:

Farmyard: for protection of a yard, residence or other buildings
Field: for soil erosion control of cultivated fields or protection of crops
Roadside: primarily for snow control along roads or lanes
Livestock: primarily for protection of livestock or livestock facilities
Wildlife: for improvement of wildlife habitat, including enhancement of shelterbelts
Riparian: to buffer between agricultural land and bodies of water, including flood plains and wetlands
Replacements: stock ordered as replacements to seedlings planted in recent years

The application requires a sketch of where the trees will go, including spacing and distance from roadways, buildings etc. I've put alot of time into the application and my drawing and it has helped me visualize what I want our yard to look like, and what we hope to accomplish for wildlife and shelter on our land. The effort of applying (not to mention the work of planting and watering!) will be well worth it in years to come when, hopefully, the trees protect our yardsite and provide food and shelter to wildlife in the area.

Is there a shelterbelt program in your area, and have you accessed it? Have you planted trees for wildlife habitat and shelter? 

Coffee in the Garden

Besides enjoying a nice cup of coffee while assessing the garden, has anyone used coffee as part of their gardening arsenal? More specifically, have you found a use for yesterday's grounds?

This past summer a local cat was using an area of my bean patch as its litter box. I had heard that coffee grounds would deter this so, after saving a few days-worth of grounds (and composting the filters of course!), I gave it a try. I did the same in my tomatoes on the south side of the house. Happily, the local kitty found somewhere else to go and we didn't resort to Hubby's more violent suggestions!

While visiting friends I noticed a cookie sheet filled with used grounds. They were about to be used on ant hills in that yard. As I am the not-so-proud owner of a couple of those as well, I began saving my grounds again. It's worth a shot! Within days I had enough grounds to cover two of my three big ant hills with a thick layer of coffee. I watched day after day for weeks, throughout the summer, and the hill topped with coffee was never penetrated by ants. It was nice to be able to tell my curious two year old helper to avoid the pile of coffee rather than worry about him getting into some kind of toxic poison in the yard.

As a matter of fact, the two year old did end up knocking the top off the mound with a stick later in the summer. Under the coffee ground there still existed a nest of sorts...if only I had my camera outside that day, I do forget what it looked like. The main thing is that no new hills popped up in the yard, we were ant free, and although it may have taken AGES to eliminate the actual nest, we were ant-free immediately. So I would still recommend this method of ant control.

I'd rather enjoy my beans knowing that cats hadn't used them for a litter box!

Have you ever tried coffee grounds to deter cats or ants? Have you found other uses for them in your yard?

Getting Started

To blog or not to blog? It's a thought that has crossed my mind over the past several months...there are a few blogs that I follow that I enjoy very much and the temptation is there to mimic what I like about them. Instead I wish to write for myself, to document the new beginning that my family is embarking on. We have a quarter section of land (the South East quarter of Section 33, as it happens, and hence the name) on the Canadian prairies. This little blog is where I hope to plan, learn, discuss, and share our journey towards a sustainable, green, frugal life together on the land.

Initial plans to go solar and geothermal have been tabled due to the reality of the budget. Our lowest quote on a geothermal system was $30,000 Canadian. Yikes. It so happened that natural gas would be less than $5000 and we felt we had to go the less expensive route at this time. But for those who would have to spend 20-30k bringing gas to their yard sites I do feel geothermal is a no-brainer. Likewise with power--our hopes of going solar and selling power back to the grid have been tabled, for now. It ended up that the extra $14-20,000 necessary to get started in solar needs spent elsewhere. With all the expenses involved in having a home built, my husband and I just couldn't afford to do all the we thought we would do. In the future we do hope to set up a system and become self-sufficient and hopefully sell power back to the grid. For now, our focus is reducing our everyday energy use and planning out our new home and yard throughout the winter months.

Above is the old house in the yard site where we will build a basement and have a Ready-to-Move home hauled in. It was a little sad to see the old place reduced to rubble and then burned and buried. It's been there longer than I remember and is part of my childhood memories. Time marches on, however, and soon that yard with the big old trees will ring again with the laughter of children and the activity of a family.

Have you started a yard and home from "scratch"? Along with the excitement, did you feel nostalgic about the change to the landscape?