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February 2008 |
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22 February - Back to Canada
We both finished up with work at the beginning of the month, repacked our bags, which was easier said than done what with all the stuff we had accumulated over Christmas and for my birthday. Managed to squeeze it all in and after some tearful good byes we headed back to Canada where Isabelle picked us up from Montreal along with a lot of snow!
We have settled back down to life on the farm, things are pretty much the same as they were before we left apart from the fact that the horses only get fed twice a week now with the most enormous bails of hay you have ever seen. All the hay that we prepared in the Autumn is long gone. Also the huge pile of wood that Stuart and Lucien cut up in the Autumn is also completely depleted and we are now burning the wet wood that was stacked outside to dry for next winter.
Our routeen is pretty much the same though, we get up in the morning, put the ponies out and feed them for the day and Isabelle puts Passion out, then we clear up their stall and prepare them for the evening when they all come back in. The rest of the day is filled with jobs around the farm, mending fences, cutting down trees in order to create space for a new fence to go up in the spring. We have helped with an operation on Dagobert to remove a large mole from his leg, I was lighting and Stuart was the leg holder-upper! It was a little scary at one point when the horse stopped breathing half way through the operation, but a whack on the back made him remember to take another breath! Then he managed to wake up half way through the operation and wanted to get up, but the vet quickly increased the anesthetic and he dropped back off to sleep. He must have through that he had a bit of a weird dream that day as he was right as rain when he got got back up again, he seemed to have no recollection of what had happened and didn't even seem to notice the wound on his leg!
We have been fixing mangers and pulling nails out of all the scrap wood. Old fence posts and all sorts to chop up to feed to the fire, to keep us warm, we need it at the moment as we experienced our coldest day yet last week at -22°C.
Last weekend we tried skiing for the first time on some local slopes. We managed to pick some second hand ski's up from the local charity shop (its a little Aladdin's Cave!) £10 for 2 pairs of ski's, 2 pairs of boots and a pair of poles! Needless to say I was pretty terrible and it reminded me of my one and only snowboarding holiday where I spent most of my time on my bum!! We had a really good time though and Stuart seemed to get the hang of it pretty well. I keep getting scared that I am going to fall and break a leg or do my knees in as everyone we know has done one or other of these things whilst skiing and I am rather accident prone!! I think I finally progressed a little by the end of the day and hope to be able to give it another go at some point. Andre and the others were really good with us and after Andre taught us the basics they stayed with us all day helping us out. Thanks guys :0)
After skiing we went back to Pierre's house by the lake for a warm up by the fire and a lovely meal. This place is amazing and definitely the sort of place you would imagine for your ideal winter home. The whole building is centred around a wood burning fire place which reaches up to a tee-pee like cone in the ceiling where the smoke escapes. He built the place himself and dinner and tea is all served on hand made crockery, its idealic. It looks out over lake Champlain which at this point in time is frozen over and everyone is shacked up on the lake ice fishing. It is very strange to see cabins, cars, 4 tracks, ski-doos and planes landing on the ice in place of the boats that we were used to seeing in the Autumn!
Click here for pics of Skiing and Ski-doo-ing
Hopefully things will start getting warmer soon and we will be able to get some work done on poor Marie. We have been to visit her a couple of times since we have been back and she is doing ok, the tarp that we brought to cover her is now full of holes and she is covered in ice but she is still standing! A little colder than the weather she is used to. When we are outside working in -15°C we do sometimes murmur to ourselves that we could be bobbing up and down in the warmth of the Bahamas, with a cool rum in our hands right now!!