Come From Away

Know, know
Know, know
Know, know, know
Know, know, know
Know your types of wood!

OK, can someone correctly identify these types of wood?

We have a beautiful black australorp hen that is now laying these huge brown eggs. She is also very tame and comes to visit when you go outside. I am sure that this has nothing to do with the fact that we are always feeding them table scraps.

Yesterday, she decided to come on the deck and have a little visit with us. She has a shimmery metallic green hue on her feathers when the sun catches the light.

Our well pump died last night around 9:30. For you city folk this means that we have no water as there is no old fashioned hand pump or wooden bucket on a rope on our well.

We had a crazy rain/wind storm going on last night, so I put some buckets under the eaves and at the end of drain spouts to catch water to flush the toilets.

This morning, I must have turned on the tap at least 10 times while making breakfast for the kids… Strangely, there was no water every time.

Hamish thoughtfully dropped by and delivered two jugs of water this morning on his way to work and I used some to have “a whore’s bath” and a shave.

The plumber was here at 9:00 and we had water again by around 11:00. I flew into town and bought a new pump and zoomed straight back to have it there for him to install.

Here’s what a dead well pump looks like:

In an attempt to get some more traffic on the site, I figure that it is the time to put up some pornography.

The Flat River Lady is a well know local landmark. Apparently, she caused quite a stir when she went up on display some thirty-odd years ago. I’m not certain of what she is made out of, but the story has it that the model’s brother did the sculpting. The house no longer belongs to the model, so no need to feel awkward when you approach the door trying to sell Girl Guide cookies.

She really is known far and wide. I was in town (about 35 kilometers from here) and the barber was teasing me that I lived where I do because of her.

She is now used mostly for giving directions… “I’m about one kilometer past the Flat River Lady” or “My driveway is the third one on the right after The Flat River Lady.”

Every morning when we open the barn door, there is an explosion of chickens and a lot of vying for rank, etc.

I am still learning to hold the video camera and get some good shots with it. Without too much shake and blurry images from poor camera operation, but here is a sampling of some of the commotion this morning!
(Click the picture)

Quinces are a heritage fruit that is inedible raw, but becomes quite tasty when cooked. Apparently, you can make quince jam, chutney, pickles and prepare them as you would any fruit recipe. I buy these apple sauce cups for the kids to bring to school, so I may try to make some apple/quince sauce for them.

You can make hand lotion out of the seeds and many homesteaders would have done so. Quince seed lotion was also commercially produced and I have a recipe for it. Given time, the kids and I may try to make some.

They look neat, smell wonderful and grow on a very thorny bush. Ouch! I have to learn how to prune the bush and our apple trees also for that matter.

The apple trees produced lots of apples this year, but they are not very good. Hamish says that the apple crops were not good this year. His tree that usually produces some very nice apples were not very good either. They have some sort of blight. We had one tree that had tons of apples on it that are “nice” except that they are very small.

Oh ya. Freaking awesome sunset!
Click on these to see them larger.

It was very windy today. When waiting with the kids for the school bus this morning, they were running around pretending to fly with their coats open. Mine was done up. It was freezing! The wind was so strong that your clothes were flapping in the wind like a flag.

Most of the chickens decided that they would be happier in the barn for most of the morning and only ventured out after lunch time. A few jumped out right away and I was concerned that they would get blown away, but was happy to see them back in the barn a few minutes later.

I went down Factory Road and took some pictures of the water. Factory Road is where you will find the Belle River Industries fish plant. It is actually a very scenic place where there are a bunch of very small cottage lots for sale. Although my initial intent was to get some pictures of the surf that was very visible from our deck, it appears that Factory Road has a bit of a protected cove that had much smaller waves.

If you click on this beautiful image to view it larger, you will see Nova Scotia in the distance.

Little “D” was with me and he asked me to take pictures of the seaweed on the beach. He then asked me to go home. I think he was uncomfortable because the wind was blowing so hard.

This is Belle River where it passes by the factory. It then lets out into the straight. It appears that boats used to come up the river to unload their catch at some point, but I have never seen any there.

This old dock that spans the river has up notices from the Department of Fisheries about it being unsafe and that people should stay off it, but it sure looks pretty. It looks like you could easily walk across it, but why risk it. There’s nothing really on the other side to get to.

We picked up a Jack Johnson CD at Indigo weeks back and it is groovy, cool. He’s a surfer dude turned rock star. A lot of his songs are about slowing down and taking it easy. Then there are the love songs with groovy naughty parts.

The last CD seems to be a bit more polished, but I’m liking the older ones also. We bought the most recent CD first, then went back there on Friday and picked up his two other albums and we are loving them. It seems to be all I listen to these days. The more I listen to them the more I like them

I highly recommend him.

Good People:
“. . .you interrupt me from a friendly conversation
to tell me how great its all gunna be
you might notice some hesitation
Its important to you is not important to me. . .”

Banana Pancakes:
“Just maybe, laka ukalele
mama made a baby
Really dont mind the practice
cause your my little lady
lady lady love me
cause I love to lay here lazy
we could close the curtains
pretend like there’s no world outside”

Bushfire Fairytales

On & On

In Between Dreams

Jack Johnson

Q: Where did you grow up?
A: On the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii

Q: When did you start playing guitar?
A: I started playing when I was 14.

Q: What was the first song you learned on the guitar?
A: I learned two at the same time: “One” by Metallica and “Father and Son” by Cat Stevens.

Q: What did you do before you put out Brushfire Fairytales?
A: I made surf films.

Q: What are some of your favorite Surf Movies?
A: The Seedling, Litmus, Filthy Habbits, Blazing Boards, Bunyip Dreaming, Green Iguana, and Endless Summer.

Q: Who are some of your (musical) influences?
A: I dig Nick Drake, The Beatles, Hendrix, Tribe Called Quest, Dylan, Ben Harper, Radio Head, G. Love and Special Sauce, Otis Redding, Neil Young, Marley, Kurosawa, Tom Curren and so on.

Q: List the 5 cds your listening to now?
A: any of the Trojan dub compilations, “Night Nurse” - Gregory Isaacs, “Yoshimi…” - Flamming Lips, “Giant Step” - Taj Mahal, and Mason Jennings.

Here is a picture of our cool pumpkins. There was one more. A tiny one that I put on top of the mailbox. it was very neat looking.

Out here in the country people drive their kids from house to house. K was off with our four and I stayed home to hand out candy. There were about 6 cars total.