15 November 2006
Many days travel and work
It's been a while since we last posted, so there's lots in one here. Some new posts below this one too.
Sunday 5 November
On Saturday night the room was really hot, so with that and the dinner we didn’t sleep particularly well. It was nice to be in the same place for more than one night, though – by yesterday morning we had made the room thoroughly our own (i.e. a tip).
Laundry was the first priority today. We asked at the hotel front desk if they knew of any laundrettes (“Laundromats” of course in American); the only one open on Sundays was at the Marmot Inn, and was strictly speaking for guests’ use only. Having no other choice, we went. After a bit of hunting, we found the laundry, got change at a nearby garage, and did our washing clandestinely. Sophie did some blogifying while we waited.
When we’d done the washing, we hired a car, bought some food at a local grocery store, and drove to Maligne Canyon. The woman at the car hire place had suggested it (along with lots of other places) as worth a visit. It certainly was - a spectacular deep, narrow gorge with the river and waterfalls beginning to freeze over. There was a lot of snow on the ground, and the path down the canyon was fairly well-used and so slippery in places. We got past the fourth bridge (of six) before we had to turn back to make it out before dark. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at the Fairmont Lodge to have a look. It’s a huge site, with motel-style rooms, chalets, a hotel, two restaurants and a shopping centre, and it all looks very nice. We also accidentally saw a bit of the Icefields Parkway after taking a wrong turning.
We got changed, then walked to the Pentecostal church which had (so the hotel list informed us) a 7pm service. After a cold 20 minutes’ walk we discovered that it didn’t any more (no doubt closed for the season), and walked back to the Baptist church to try their 7:30 service. It had started at 7, but at least it was running! We made up a third of the congregation, and although the service was unusual (mainly reading from meditations by Henri Nouwen on the life of St Anthony about the need for solitude) it was good to be there. We had dinner in a Chinese restaurant and managed to avoid over-eating, so slept better.
Monday 6th
This morning we re-packed, which was a less painful experience than before – maybe we are getting better with practice. Then we drove to Patricia Lake. More snow had fallen in the night and we were the only people walking the path round the lake. The views over the lake were beautiful, and there were lots of animal tracks in the fresh snow, although we didn’t see or hear any wildlife except for various water fowl on the lake. We walked about a third of the way round the lake then decided we’d better turn back as we had to return the car by 1pm. Hiring the car was definitely worth the two trips we made.
We got back in good time to re-fuel, rearrange our baggage and check it in, and have lunch in a café. Then I went to try and sort out tonight’s accommodation in an internet café while Sophie tried unsuccessfully to phone our next host and do some shopping. The train was on time and, with two coaches, had lots of room so this journey is a little more comfortable than before. We arrived in Kamloops at 10:10pm with no idea where we were staying or anything, jumped in a taxi and said, "take us to a cheap hotel near the bus station" which worked a treat. In a strange place, local knowledge is probably worth the taxi fare even if you could have walked (it was 7 miles so we couldn't).
Tuesday 7th
We got the bus at 8.30 and changed buses at Kelowna, where we had a two hour meal break. We each phoned our parents and Rowan left a message on our next host's answerphone, as there was no reply. Then we went to a pancake house for lunch.
We had another meal stop at 5.15pm in Grand Forks, and this time Rowan did get through to our host's house. But someone else answered the phone and said the owner was away until Sunday and hadn’t said anything about expecting any Wwoofers. Rowan had to cut the discussion short as we had to get back on the bus, so he phoned again when we got to Castlegar. We had thought we’d just go to a hotel in Castlegar and phone around to find another wwoof host, but this time the guy who was house-sitting had spoken to the owner and she’d said we could stay for a couple of days until we found somewhere else. So we dashed in to buy tickets to South Slocan (the next stop), while Rowan got our luggage back on the bus. On the continued journey we were a bit nervous about how it would all work out!
When we got to the place we were shown to our accommodation: a log cabin. It had a bathroom (some walls missing; bath full of dead insects; mice running about) and a bed upstairs (with a few dead insects too and lots of live flies buzzing around). It was very cold so we got some kindling and Rowan managed to start a fire in the wood stove. Sophie used the phone in the main house to arrange an alternative wwoof host. The first one she tried asked whether we were vegetarians and whether we’d mind slaughtering chickens and turkeys. We arranged to come from Friday onwards, as they had already had a wwoofer so they couldn’t take us earlier.
After a cup of tea in the main house we went to bed in our sleeping bag liners, covered with various blankets and sleeping bags and wearing more nightclothes than we are used to in expectation of being very cold. The property did look very beautiful in the bright moonlight with the starry sky, surrounded by trees and mountains. As it turned out, we were quite warm and the fire burned most of the night.
Wednesday 8th
This morning we got up around dawn (there are no curtains in the cabin). Rowan saw three does just outside in the garden. We were pleased to discover that we had hot water (we'd been warned it might not work), so things were looking up. The guy who was housesitting cooked us a fine breakfast of buffalo sausage, eggs, sweet potato and onion. We sat around and talked about Christianity, the holy grail, Knights Templar, the Mayans and various other “esoteric” subjects. Then we were set to work stacking firewood. We had lunch and vacuumed our cabin, and washed some of the eggs which were to go to a local shop.
Thursday 9 November
We woke up with the dawn again. It was a cold, frosty morning so Rowan started a fire (eventually) and we went for breakfast while our cabin warmed up. When we got back to the cabin the fire had taken a bit of the chill off the air but the hole in the bathroom wall meant washing was still rather bracing. What a pair of soft city dwellers.
We started work – feeding the goats and chickens and collecting the eggs and cleaning out the chicken coop. Then we did some more firewood collecting, stacking and splitting. We're getting quite handy with an axe now.
Friday 10th
This morning we got up early to pack (which we did quite quickly again). We had fried eggs for breakfast again then got a lift to our new farm, which was only a couple of miles away.
We had a quick tour of the farm when we arrived. They have 70-80 chickens and quite a big vegetable and fruit garden. We tidied up a bit, then chased some of the chickens back into the run (they roost in the trees, then fly down outside the run in the morning and don’t know how to get back in). Then we went in to have our second breakfast! After a quick drive round the local area we had lunch - fried eggs on toast (again! a good job we like them). In the afternoon we pulled up all the dead tomato and cucumber plants from the greenhouse as it was sleeting outside.
In the evening we cooked spaghetti bolognaise and over dinner our host told us “all he knew about farming” which was:
· There’s no money in it.
· Start small and build up slowly
· Build a greenhouse. It’s much more efficient for a given area of soil, it’s easy to work in (warm, dry, fewer weeds), and you get a handy storage area in the winter. Make sure you have ventilation (automatic ones are good) and water sorted out when you build it.
· Keep chickens (or ducks) because they weed and tidy the garden and you get eggs and meat and manure. He said they are particularly good round cane fruit and fruit trees because they keep the weeds down and eat the larval stages of many insect pests.
· Permaculture is a good thing.
Then we watched TV for a while. We are staying in the basement, which is the only part of the main house that is finished. Our hosts live in the guesthouse next door while they're rebuilding the main house.
Saturday 11 November
We herded chickens, collected eggs and fed the chickens before breakfast again. After breakfast we washed the eggs and went for a walk round the outside of the property. Sophie took some last photos of the turkeys in their live state.
WARNING TO THE SQUEAMISH OR VEGETARIAN: YOU MAY NOT WANT TO READ THE NEXT 4 PARAGRAPHS
After lunch we went to prepare for the turkey slaughtering. We had a sinister-looking black plastic-covered table, a dustbin of hot water and five buckets which we had cleaned (in nearly freezing meltwater) ready for cold water. Our host, Bryce, caught the first turkey (a huge male – 45 or 50lb dressed) and did the work while we watched. He carried it by the feet to the greenhouse, then we hung it by its feet by a string from the roof. Fortunately, being upside down seems to calm turkeys – they flap about a lot when you’re catching them, but are quite still once they’re upside down. He trussed the wings up with duck tape (turkey tape?) to avoid us getting injured by their flapping, then held the head down and cut both sides of the neck just above the red skin. The blood runs out pretty fast if you do it right and get the carotid arteries (there was a bucket underneath to catch it all). The bird stayed still until it was almost dead, then started flapping its wings furiously – the turkey version of the running headless chicken. One of the wings broke loose from the tape so we retired to a safe distance. Once it was still our host cut off the head. With the head gone, it started to look more like food and less like a creature, which helped. He dipped the turkey in the dustbin (no buckets were big enough) of hot water. You’re supposed to use water around 180°F (80°C) and dunk it until the tail feathers come out easily, but this bird was so big that he had trouble getting all of it in the dustbin. Then it went on the table and we started plucking the feathers. They came out fairly easily after the dipping, apart from the wing and tail feathers, which we had to get out with pliers, and turkeys seem to be quite sparsely feathered so it wasn’t a bad job. After plucking it definitely looks like a roast, not a bird. Next he cut off the feet and started eviscerating it. Sophie finished off the main body cavity, then our host came back and removed the crop with Rowan's help. Rowan had been particularly nervous about the eviscerating stage, and it was unpleasant but not as bad to watch as he had imagined. The fact that most of the blood has been drained off helps. Once it was done, we tried to put the carcass in a bucket of cold water to cool down, but there weren’t any buckets big enough so it ended up in the bath in the area we’re staying in!
The next turkey was our big chance. Our host caught it and killed it, and we did the rest while he went to help his son with some building. You have to cut up the belly from just above the vent to the ribcage, being careful not to cut the intestines underneath, then cut around the vent, using the other hand to keep the end of the intestine clear of the knife. Then it is a case of sticking your hand in, grabbing bits, and pulling. Rowan did the cutting and Sophie did the gutting bit again because Rowan was still a bit squeamish – he tried getting the lungs out but they are hot, bloody and unpleasantly squishy so Sophie had to take over. The heart, gizzard and liver can be eaten and are saved but the rest is thrown away. The gallbladder has to be cut away from the liver without breaking it, and the gizzard is sliced open just to the outer of the two inner membranes, then peeled away leaving the inner sac intact with its contents. Once the main cavity is empty, a cut is made in the skin from the neck to the top of the ribcage to remove the crop (a large, thin-walled bag). The oesophagus comes out with the crop, and the trachea is pulled out either from the neck or from inside. Our host came back, impressed by our work, and put the turkey in the bath with the other one. We cleaned up a bit but left most of the slaughterhouse set up for the next day’s killing.
After dinner we bagged up the turkeys and left them in the barn (you have to leave poultry for 24-48 hours after killing before freezing or cooking otherwise it’s tough) while Sophie cleaned the bath.
Sunday 12th
After breakfast we started on the other three turkeys. This time, we did the whole thing, with our host only supervising. Rowan caught and killed another big male. It was actually quite hard to cut the neck deep enough but he didn't do too bad a job. He felt a bit shaky afterwards, with the hot blood soaking through his gloves and splattered on his coat. This time Sophie did the cutting and Rowan did the disembowelling. It was unpleasant but not too bad – most of the entrails feel drier and less slimy than you might expect. Again, the worst was the lungs, but Sophie’s tip (get your fingers between the ribs and go in from the side) helped a lot. This time we had a dustbin full of cold water so we didn’t need to use the bath. Sophie caught and killed the next turkey, Rowan did the cutting and she did the guts, and for the last turkey our host caught and killed it and Sophie did all the eviscerating (Rowan had had enough of entrails for the day). We each shared the plucking and the feet (one each) for all the turkeys. Sophie didn’t find the killing part as bad as she’d expected, maybe because she was concentrating so much on doing it right (so as not to make the bird suffer more than necessary) that she didn’t have a chance to get emotional about it. The blood didn’t flow as quickly as the ones our host cut, but it was dead pretty quickly and didn’t flail much. It did seem to be full of blood inside though, and the lungs were almost scalding hot.
Once we had cleaned up we had lunch. Surprisingly we were hungry after all that. Our host was impressed that we’d been able to go through with it.
We had the afternoon off and got a lift in to Winlaw (the nearest small town). We looked round a couple of craft shops and a bookshop, then went into the grocery store/gas station for snacks and a beer as our evening treat. By the time we came out it was almost dark so we had to hurry. We had to ask at one of the shops for directions to the path back (an old railway line), but once we found it it was easy to follow.
Monday 13th
We helped Bryce move some things in preparation for renovation work on the house and put yesterday’s turkeys in the barn, then because the weather was sunny we switched to outside work. So we dug up some fir and spruce saplings from the chicken lot and Bryce drove us down to a plot of land he owns and is trying to make usable. We planted some of the saplings to form a hedge along one boundary. We came back and had lunch, then did some more furniture moving. We made ourselves dinner (Bryce had gone into town to pick up his wife Julie) then came back down and watched the Simpsons and read books about farming till late.
Tuesday 14th
We met Julie this morning, which was nice. After breakfast we cleaned a couple of the kitchen cupboards, then stapled the polythene roof up in the chicken/turkey coop, and started shovelling out the manure. It was hard work, and when Bryce came back we’d only taken about 3 inches off the top (still a lot of manure!) He showed us how to use the fork to get right under the compacted layers, got us a better wheelbarrow and generally sorted us out, so it went faster from then. We were exhausted by the time Julie called us in for lunch. We went back out to work after lunch but were told we'd done enough for the day soon after. We came in, had very welcome showers and read farm books again. Rowan fell asleep just before dinner (too much hard work). After dinner we read more books and planned our future farm.
We leave here on Sunday and go to Vancouver Island (back to where we went on honeymoon) before our last farm.
Sunday 5 November
On Saturday night the room was really hot, so with that and the dinner we didn’t sleep particularly well. It was nice to be in the same place for more than one night, though – by yesterday morning we had made the room thoroughly our own (i.e. a tip).
Laundry was the first priority today. We asked at the hotel front desk if they knew of any laundrettes (“Laundromats” of course in American); the only one open on Sundays was at the Marmot Inn, and was strictly speaking for guests’ use only. Having no other choice, we went. After a bit of hunting, we found the laundry, got change at a nearby garage, and did our washing clandestinely. Sophie did some blogifying while we waited.
When we’d done the washing, we hired a car, bought some food at a local grocery store, and drove to Maligne Canyon. The woman at the car hire place had suggested it (along with lots of other places) as worth a visit. It certainly was - a spectacular deep, narrow gorge with the river and waterfalls beginning to freeze over. There was a lot of snow on the ground, and the path down the canyon was fairly well-used and so slippery in places. We got past the fourth bridge (of six) before we had to turn back to make it out before dark. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at the Fairmont Lodge to have a look. It’s a huge site, with motel-style rooms, chalets, a hotel, two restaurants and a shopping centre, and it all looks very nice. We also accidentally saw a bit of the Icefields Parkway after taking a wrong turning.
We got changed, then walked to the Pentecostal church which had (so the hotel list informed us) a 7pm service. After a cold 20 minutes’ walk we discovered that it didn’t any more (no doubt closed for the season), and walked back to the Baptist church to try their 7:30 service. It had started at 7, but at least it was running! We made up a third of the congregation, and although the service was unusual (mainly reading from meditations by Henri Nouwen on the life of St Anthony about the need for solitude) it was good to be there. We had dinner in a Chinese restaurant and managed to avoid over-eating, so slept better.
Monday 6th
This morning we re-packed, which was a less painful experience than before – maybe we are getting better with practice. Then we drove to Patricia Lake. More snow had fallen in the night and we were the only people walking the path round the lake. The views over the lake were beautiful, and there were lots of animal tracks in the fresh snow, although we didn’t see or hear any wildlife except for various water fowl on the lake. We walked about a third of the way round the lake then decided we’d better turn back as we had to return the car by 1pm. Hiring the car was definitely worth the two trips we made.We got back in good time to re-fuel, rearrange our baggage and check it in, and have lunch in a café. Then I went to try and sort out tonight’s accommodation in an internet café while Sophie tried unsuccessfully to phone our next host and do some shopping. The train was on time and, with two coaches, had lots of room so this journey is a little more comfortable than before. We arrived in Kamloops at 10:10pm with no idea where we were staying or anything, jumped in a taxi and said, "take us to a cheap hotel near the bus station" which worked a treat. In a strange place, local knowledge is probably worth the taxi fare even if you could have walked (it was 7 miles so we couldn't).
Tuesday 7th
We got the bus at 8.30 and changed buses at Kelowna, where we had a two hour meal break. We each phoned our parents and Rowan left a message on our next host's answerphone, as there was no reply. Then we went to a pancake house for lunch.
We had another meal stop at 5.15pm in Grand Forks, and this time Rowan did get through to our host's house. But someone else answered the phone and said the owner was away until Sunday and hadn’t said anything about expecting any Wwoofers. Rowan had to cut the discussion short as we had to get back on the bus, so he phoned again when we got to Castlegar. We had thought we’d just go to a hotel in Castlegar and phone around to find another wwoof host, but this time the guy who was house-sitting had spoken to the owner and she’d said we could stay for a couple of days until we found somewhere else. So we dashed in to buy tickets to South Slocan (the next stop), while Rowan got our luggage back on the bus. On the continued journey we were a bit nervous about how it would all work out!
When we got to the place we were shown to our accommodation: a log cabin. It had a bathroom (some walls missing; bath full of dead insects; mice running about) and a bed upstairs (with a few dead insects too and lots of live flies buzzing around). It was very cold so we got some kindling and Rowan managed to start a fire in the wood stove. Sophie used the phone in the main house to arrange an alternative wwoof host. The first one she tried asked whether we were vegetarians and whether we’d mind slaughtering chickens and turkeys. We arranged to come from Friday onwards, as they had already had a wwoofer so they couldn’t take us earlier.
After a cup of tea in the main house we went to bed in our sleeping bag liners, covered with various blankets and sleeping bags and wearing more nightclothes than we are used to in expectation of being very cold. The property did look very beautiful in the bright moonlight with the starry sky, surrounded by trees and mountains. As it turned out, we were quite warm and the fire burned most of the night.
Wednesday 8th
This morning we got up around dawn (there are no curtains in the cabin). Rowan saw three does just outside in the garden. We were pleased to discover that we had hot water (we'd been warned it might not work), so things were looking up. The guy who was housesitting cooked us a fine breakfast of buffalo sausage, eggs, sweet potato and onion. We sat around and talked about Christianity, the holy grail, Knights Templar, the Mayans and various other “esoteric” subjects. Then we were set to work stacking firewood. We had lunch and vacuumed our cabin, and washed some of the eggs which were to go to a local shop.
Thursday 9 November
We woke up with the dawn again. It was a cold, frosty morning so Rowan started a fire (eventually) and we went for breakfast while our cabin warmed up. When we got back to the cabin the fire had taken a bit of the chill off the air but the hole in the bathroom wall meant washing was still rather bracing. What a pair of soft city dwellers.
We started work – feeding the goats and chickens and collecting the eggs and cleaning out the chicken coop. Then we did some more firewood collecting, stacking and splitting. We're getting quite handy with an axe now.
Friday 10th
This morning we got up early to pack (which we did quite quickly again). We had fried eggs for breakfast again then got a lift to our new farm, which was only a couple of miles away.We had a quick tour of the farm when we arrived. They have 70-80 chickens and quite a big vegetable and fruit garden. We tidied up a bit, then chased some of the chickens back into the run (they roost in the trees, then fly down outside the run in the morning and don’t know how to get back in). Then we went in to have our second breakfast! After a quick drive round the local area we had lunch - fried eggs on toast (again! a good job we like them). In the afternoon we pulled up all the dead tomato and cucumber plants from the greenhouse as it was sleeting outside.
In the evening we cooked spaghetti bolognaise and over dinner our host told us “all he knew about farming” which was:
· There’s no money in it.
· Start small and build up slowly
· Build a greenhouse. It’s much more efficient for a given area of soil, it’s easy to work in (warm, dry, fewer weeds), and you get a handy storage area in the winter. Make sure you have ventilation (automatic ones are good) and water sorted out when you build it.
· Keep chickens (or ducks) because they weed and tidy the garden and you get eggs and meat and manure. He said they are particularly good round cane fruit and fruit trees because they keep the weeds down and eat the larval stages of many insect pests.
· Permaculture is a good thing.
Then we watched TV for a while. We are staying in the basement, which is the only part of the main house that is finished. Our hosts live in the guesthouse next door while they're rebuilding the main house.
Saturday 11 November
We herded chickens, collected eggs and fed the chickens before breakfast again. After breakfast we washed the eggs and went for a walk round the outside of the property. Sophie took some last photos of the turkeys in their live state.
WARNING TO THE SQUEAMISH OR VEGETARIAN: YOU MAY NOT WANT TO READ THE NEXT 4 PARAGRAPHS
After lunch we went to prepare for the turkey slaughtering. We had a sinister-looking black plastic-covered table, a dustbin of hot water and five buckets which we had cleaned (in nearly freezing meltwater) ready for cold water. Our host, Bryce, caught the first turkey (a huge male – 45 or 50lb dressed) and did the work while we watched. He carried it by the feet to the greenhouse, then we hung it by its feet by a string from the roof. Fortunately, being upside down seems to calm turkeys – they flap about a lot when you’re catching them, but are quite still once they’re upside down. He trussed the wings up with duck tape (turkey tape?) to avoid us getting injured by their flapping, then held the head down and cut both sides of the neck just above the red skin. The blood runs out pretty fast if you do it right and get the carotid arteries (there was a bucket underneath to catch it all). The bird stayed still until it was almost dead, then started flapping its wings furiously – the turkey version of the running headless chicken. One of the wings broke loose from the tape so we retired to a safe distance. Once it was still our host cut off the head. With the head gone, it started to look more like food and less like a creature, which helped. He dipped the turkey in the dustbin (no buckets were big enough) of hot water. You’re supposed to use water around 180°F (80°C) and dunk it until the tail feathers come out easily, but this bird was so big that he had trouble getting all of it in the dustbin. Then it went on the table and we started plucking the feathers. They came out fairly easily after the dipping, apart from the wing and tail feathers, which we had to get out with pliers, and turkeys seem to be quite sparsely feathered so it wasn’t a bad job. After plucking it definitely looks like a roast, not a bird. Next he cut off the feet and started eviscerating it. Sophie finished off the main body cavity, then our host came back and removed the crop with Rowan's help. Rowan had been particularly nervous about the eviscerating stage, and it was unpleasant but not as bad to watch as he had imagined. The fact that most of the blood has been drained off helps. Once it was done, we tried to put the carcass in a bucket of cold water to cool down, but there weren’t any buckets big enough so it ended up in the bath in the area we’re staying in!
The next turkey was our big chance. Our host caught it and killed it, and we did the rest while he went to help his son with some building. You have to cut up the belly from just above the vent to the ribcage, being careful not to cut the intestines underneath, then cut around the vent, using the other hand to keep the end of the intestine clear of the knife. Then it is a case of sticking your hand in, grabbing bits, and pulling. Rowan did the cutting and Sophie did the gutting bit again because Rowan was still a bit squeamish – he tried getting the lungs out but they are hot, bloody and unpleasantly squishy so Sophie had to take over. The heart, gizzard and liver can be eaten and are saved but the rest is thrown away. The gallbladder has to be cut away from the liver without breaking it, and the gizzard is sliced open just to the outer of the two inner membranes, then peeled away leaving the inner sac intact with its contents. Once the main cavity is empty, a cut is made in the skin from the neck to the top of the ribcage to remove the crop (a large, thin-walled bag). The oesophagus comes out with the crop, and the trachea is pulled out either from the neck or from inside. Our host came back, impressed by our work, and put the turkey in the bath with the other one. We cleaned up a bit but left most of the slaughterhouse set up for the next day’s killing.
After dinner we bagged up the turkeys and left them in the barn (you have to leave poultry for 24-48 hours after killing before freezing or cooking otherwise it’s tough) while Sophie cleaned the bath.
Sunday 12th
After breakfast we started on the other three turkeys. This time, we did the whole thing, with our host only supervising. Rowan caught and killed another big male. It was actually quite hard to cut the neck deep enough but he didn't do too bad a job. He felt a bit shaky afterwards, with the hot blood soaking through his gloves and splattered on his coat. This time Sophie did the cutting and Rowan did the disembowelling. It was unpleasant but not too bad – most of the entrails feel drier and less slimy than you might expect. Again, the worst was the lungs, but Sophie’s tip (get your fingers between the ribs and go in from the side) helped a lot. This time we had a dustbin full of cold water so we didn’t need to use the bath. Sophie caught and killed the next turkey, Rowan did the cutting and she did the guts, and for the last turkey our host caught and killed it and Sophie did all the eviscerating (Rowan had had enough of entrails for the day). We each shared the plucking and the feet (one each) for all the turkeys. Sophie didn’t find the killing part as bad as she’d expected, maybe because she was concentrating so much on doing it right (so as not to make the bird suffer more than necessary) that she didn’t have a chance to get emotional about it. The blood didn’t flow as quickly as the ones our host cut, but it was dead pretty quickly and didn’t flail much. It did seem to be full of blood inside though, and the lungs were almost scalding hot.
Once we had cleaned up we had lunch. Surprisingly we were hungry after all that. Our host was impressed that we’d been able to go through with it.
We had the afternoon off and got a lift in to Winlaw (the nearest small town). We looked round a couple of craft shops and a bookshop, then went into the grocery store/gas station for snacks and a beer as our evening treat. By the time we came out it was almost dark so we had to hurry. We had to ask at one of the shops for directions to the path back (an old railway line), but once we found it it was easy to follow.
Monday 13th
We helped Bryce move some things in preparation for renovation work on the house and put yesterday’s turkeys in the barn, then because the weather was sunny we switched to outside work. So we dug up some fir and spruce saplings from the chicken lot and Bryce drove us down to a plot of land he owns and is trying to make usable. We planted some of the saplings to form a hedge along one boundary. We came back and had lunch, then did some more furniture moving. We made ourselves dinner (Bryce had gone into town to pick up his wife Julie) then came back down and watched the Simpsons and read books about farming till late.
Tuesday 14th
We met Julie this morning, which was nice. After breakfast we cleaned a couple of the kitchen cupboards, then stapled the polythene roof up in the chicken/turkey coop, and started shovelling out the manure. It was hard work, and when Bryce came back we’d only taken about 3 inches off the top (still a lot of manure!) He showed us how to use the fork to get right under the compacted layers, got us a better wheelbarrow and generally sorted us out, so it went faster from then. We were exhausted by the time Julie called us in for lunch. We went back out to work after lunch but were told we'd done enough for the day soon after. We came in, had very welcome showers and read farm books again. Rowan fell asleep just before dinner (too much hard work). After dinner we read more books and planned our future farm.
We leave here on Sunday and go to Vancouver Island (back to where we went on honeymoon) before our last farm.
