How to Pick Amazing Neighbours

When we first moved from our cute townhouse in the ‘burbs to our older bungalow in town, we instantly noticed how fabulous our neighbours were. They gave us the history on our house and were so happy we weren’t crack heads. They are funny and helpful and look after our cat. They have even cleared our driveway of snow on more than one occasion. We genuinely couldn’t imagine better neighbours. And as luck would have it, when we purchased our homestead in Vavenby, we won the neighbour lottery again!

As an adult from Ontario living in Alberta, I sometimes find that I am alone in my leftists sentiments. For the first time in my life I longed for the company of like-minded people. And this is part of the reason that my partner and I are seeking this homesteading future – so we can connect with like-minded people who feel the same way we do about working hard, growing food, and enjoying our natural environment. And as I explained in an earlier post, we did establish that there was at least one person in the area that was like-minded (aka the cord lady), but we had no idea to what extent we had found like-minded people. You see, after we returned from the farmer’s market we met our neighbour from across the street who can build log homes and owns a tractor. That day he took us for a walk around our property to show us our cedar shake mill (we did not know we owned,) our coyote den, our trickling stream, and our extensive trails throughout the property. He is retired. Reads probably more than you would think a librarian would. Makes wicked cherry pie and does not believe in working for money in his retirement years. He is awesome. He has been looking after our house for the four years before we owned it and continues to look after it even now that we own it. We have had long chats about having a neighbourhood where each home would contribute in its own way to the community. For example, I was thinking about making cheese and that could be my contribution, and another neighbour could fix tractors, and maybe another could grow the garlic and asparagus. You can see how these conversations would be so thrilling for us leftists who have been submerged in a more right-wing city lifestyle for so long. And it does not end there. Our other neighbours up the street have a home with geothermal heat! Renewable energy is my middle name. And that’s not all, there is a couple at the end of the street who make just about everything you can think of from scratch. They grow everything. They lend us brilliant books like Keeping The Harvest, (which is also listed as one of my bookshelf staples – until I have to return it, of course,) and they have a million copies of Mother Earth News. *

Lent to us from one of our neighbours. Amazing juicing methods inside.

I think one of my favourite things about this fantastic neighbourhood, is that in the few trips we have had down there, we have had so many neighbour get-together. It could be at the end of our driveway, at someone’s house, or on one of the trails. And we just all talk and talk. We talk about tricks and tips to using up all the apples on our trees or growing garlic, we talk about our dislike of fancy pants lifestyles or how to make a good batch of wine. We just talk and talk. Life moves at a different pace down there and our neighbours know how to do it. They are living THE life and we want to hear all about it.

Apple tree from our property.

So it isn’t just about that land, it’s about the people too. And they are awesome.

And you know what, until we live down there, we really do have it made. Our one set of neighbours up here plans to have a country lifestyle one day too AND her sister did homestead for a short stint so we gab about that as well. Our other neighbour has great gardening tips on growing the best tomatoes, which he generously shares (meaning the tips and the tomatoes). Unfortunately, we don’t see our neighbours up here as often as we like; my partner works really long days, for long periods, and so this cuts in to my neighbourhood dinner party plans. But that’s okay, we still get to chat at the end of our driveways while we shovel the daily snowfall. Which reminds me, I better get out there to clear the sidewalk…

*I could list the hundreds of other great things about our neighbours in Vavenby, but that would be far too long and indulgent. I will just mention a very few things I missed: lending us their juicer, cutting down our big trees that were about to hit our power line, checking our oil tank to make sure the house has heat, making jam, more jam, pie, coffee, borscht lending us cutlery, chairs, and even more books.

**This post isn’t how to pick amazing neighbours, it is more about how they pick you.

My future friend I haven't met

My partner was concerned that I wouldn’t really like the community where we purchased our homestead. He mentioned the town was a blue-collar town that was in a recession since the mill closed. But we toured the community a bit before buying and I saw they had a yoga studio and coffee shop and I knew it would be great. JKJK, well not really, but sort of. I did a bit more research than that, but it was the yoga studio that sold me. Of course I still had some doubts in the back of my mind that maybe my partner is right and it would only be after we lived down there full time that I would discover that the community is filled with some grumpy rednecks and that the yoga studio only offers yin yoga and I would feel like the only left-wing homesteader in the area. Luckily, I am now quite confident that the community is perfect, and there are some like-minded people there already.  I figured this out after spending our first night there…

Last summer we booked two weeks off work and went down to the property for a nice holiday/mini reno, but that is another story (the story of the mold room…) So after arriving late on Friday night, we awoke hungry and decided to nip in to town for a nice breakfast. On our way in we saw a sign that said the farmers market was on that day. Those that know me, know that I love farmer’s markets. It is this fantastic place where like-minded people get together to sell local food and talk about ethical farming practices. Aka. Heaven. So we get to the market, and I am already on cloud nine. They have all different types of booths: baked bread, dried garlic, veggies, samosas, fishing lures, essential oils, and really I could go on and on. And what do I see, a lady with cords on and I knew I was right at home and we had probably picked THE best community to live in (near actually, about twenty minutes). You see, she wasn’t any lady with cords on, she also had on an old t-shirt, she was carrying a basket for her farmer’s market pics, she didn’t dye her hair, and she had a couple of kids in tow. This is like the trifecta of the person I would want to be friends with; I too don’t die my hair, I also have a basket for my farmer’s market goodies, I like old t-shirts, I don’t have cords, but hers were cool, and I don’t have kids, but I hope too when I live there. So yeah, a ten on the potential friend scale. And no, I did not creep out and try to befriend her, but someday I am sure we will be besties and we can laugh about that fateful day.

So my friends, you can see how the lady with the cords, combined with the farmer’s market, really solidified my contentment of our location selection. Prior to this, we had also met our super awesome neighbours, which was actually enough for me to know it was home, but the cord lady really locked it in. And another time, I will tell you about our awesome borscht making, bean growing, log home building, home brewing neighbours.

Later on, at the cute café, I overhead some young families (mid-twenties) talking about their backyard chickens, cool right?

How to Skin a Rabbit

My partner and I have a fun game we like to play. We have about a million homesteading books and what we like to do is ask each other a homesteading question and the other has to find the answer in one of the books.  For example, how to build a gate? And the other would go through one of the books to find the answer. Another gem is “how to skin a rabbit?” and you can find anything in these books. There isn’t anything you can’t find. Well, at least anything about homesteading. And skinning a rabbit is in there. In two books actually. Same technique though, in case you were curious.

Don’t be confused, we aren’t homesteaders. We aren’t living off the grid, churning our own butter, and growing all of our own food,  but gosh darn it (insert knee slap here), we want to be! So we buy up all the books we can, read some, skim others, and hope that by having these books in the house, the words will transfer into our minds and we will “learn” everything they have to “teach” through some sort of osmosis. Bookshelf osmosis. And then one day, when we have figured out how we can make it as homesteaders, and we are ready to build gates and skin rabbits (or not) we will give it a go. But that of course will take more than learning about homesteading, it will also take some planning and saving, mostly saving. We think we have the plan part down. Wanna hear the plan?

The Plan

Our master plan has changed about a dozen times since we first dreamt it up, but I will fast track and give you the current version. To start, we already bought our homestead, Ferngully, at least that is what we call it. It is 84 acres of river front that has a quaint old home on it. The property is a mix of cedars, cottonwoods, and other green trees I can’t name, and between all these trees are ferns! They are everywhere. It makes you feel like you are in some sort of semi –rainforest part of Canada (which I nto didn’t think existed). Basically you feel like you are straight out of the movie Ferngully and Krista (the fairy) is going to fly into your palm at any moment. At Ferngully we plan to build a shop where my incredibly talented cabinet making partner will be able to work doing what he loves. As for myself, I know I will find some sort of work, whether it is selling eggs, berries, honey, or something else that I can do from the property. And that’s it really. We look forward to drinking tea and coffee on the back porch and watch the birds and spending our days working doing what we want.

We have a couple more years of saving to do, but we plan to be down there before I turn thirty five, and I am thirty one right now.

Yes. Yes. There are way more details and ins-and-outs of this plan, but that is the gist.

*I should mention that my partner wanted to me to explain that he knows exactly what he is doing and also grew up on a farm… so we aren’t going in to this completely blind. And I might be the one buying up the homesteading books at a rapid rate since this is all new to me, but he likes to play that game too;) And he does admit that he does learn new things from time to time.

Here is what we have we have on bookshelf

• Farming the Woods by Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel
• The Hive and the Honey Bee Edited by Roy A. Grout (collection of authors, not listed)
• Natural Timber Frame Homes by Bingham & Pfeffer
• Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway
• Growing Gourmet and Medical Mushrooms by Paul Stamets
• The Resilient Farm and Homestead by Ben Falk
• Keeping the Harvest by Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead (this is ours neighbours and it is THE best)
• Building Green by Clarke Snell & Tim Callahan
• The Essential Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal
• Country Wisdom & Know-How from the Editors of Storey Books
• Concrete at Home by Fu-Tung Cheng
• Concrete Countertops by Fu-Tung Cheng with Eric Olsen
• Get In The Van by Henry Rollins (not a homesteading book)
• Illustrated Guide to Gardening in Canada by Reader’s Digest
• Natural Healing: Remedies & Therapies by Mark Evans

And this isn’t all of them. I think that I may need to post of my books in order of preference at a later date.

Do you have a favourite homesteading/back-to-the-land book?