We moved from Austria to Canada and now have a very different life! We're finishing our house, we are trying to provide as much for ourselves as we can, and we homeschool. It is all an adventure!
Harvest on the Ford farm was mere hours from being finished when....it started to rain! So we will leave tomorrow with the work almost done. Dominik has had a great time driving the truck or the combine, helping Paul and Dwayne (son-in-law) and the kids have enjoyed riding along! Combining is peaceful, maybe monotonous work, until something happens. Let's see...you could drive into a slough (water), plug it up and have to manually empty it, you could (as one neighbour did) drive over the land where the oil company recently installed a part of the pipeline, and sink the combine! Occasionally nature sends something alone like a deer or two....or a moose! Why isn't there a 'Farmer at Harvest' reality show? It would be as exciting as the others!
J, R & D saw a Moose checking out the field.
Our days have taken on a bit of a routine here, as they should. We have concentrated on homeschooling in the mornings, sending Elena, Jeremiah and Josiah outside to play. They're much less of a distraction that way, and outside with the kittens is Josiah's favourite place! He has even been sharing his snacks with them! Because Jonathan and Rebecca worked so hard at getting the bulk of their schoolwork done here they went out with Dominik tonight for their first (in their memory) visit to Dairy Queen! Jared met them there and they enjoyed talking his ear off. Jonathan spent a day on the farm with him and has found a great role model.
The new classroom
Jared is the Alberta farm guy who hitch-hiked his way from his farm all the way to Istanbul! On his way he dropped by our place in Austria so it has been wonderful to see him here and to meet his parents and sisters. We spent last Sunday afternoon on their farm, eating bbq'd burgers, chatting and entertaining the kids with quad rides with Jared, horse rides with his sister Alana (& Jeremy!), and all sorts of things. We had a great time and I especially enjoyed seeing the cabin that Jared is building because it is quite close in size and plan to the one that Dominik is building for us. Finally I could see how ours could look!
Jeremiah, Jonathan and Jared
We've really appreciated being near the church here, not just because it's a nice and easy walk on Sunday, but because the minister and his wife have 3 kids for ours to play with. They have a Jeremiah too! Elena and (our) Jeremiah spent a few mornings playing there while we were homeschooling. Elena and Jil are only a month a part and had a great time together.
Jil and Elena, new friends.
Thinking of new friends, even Josiah has found one- and I don't mean one of the kittens! He is really taken with Rachelle and Dwayne's little baby, Amelia. As soon as she is here he wants to go to see her and will even give her a kiss, if encouraged to! :-) Babies with babies are sweet!
Amelia and Josiah
In our first week here we went to Lazy Bee Honey, run by relatives of our hosts, and had a great tour and demonstration of how they collect their honey. We left armed with honey and sweatshirts (thank you!) and some great learning for the kids- and us. Who knew that you can order bees from New Zealand??? This week we were back for a meal with a bunch of the Ford Clan and a look at the small animals. Chickens (various), Ducks, kittens, horses and a donkey made it interesting for the kids. We enjoyed the great farm-grown food and getting to know some people better.
Our next 'field trip' was to a Hutterite Colony in the area. The Hutterites are a bit like Mennonites and Amish except that they live communally. They do everything together from cooking and gardening to farming and child care. They do have their own family houses though. They were kind enough to give us a tour around their large and spotlessly clean community center, school and dairy. They have some very modern equiptment and, although they dress in an old-fashioned and 'plain' way there is nothing old about their technology. Interestingly, the Hutterites come from Austria and, when there aren't any outsiders around, they speak German together.
The day care nap room at the Hutterites colony.
A very modern Kirchen.
In the Hutterite School.
Such a clean calf pen!
Milking time in the colony.
Rebecca has been asking to sew something for ages and I've kind of put her off a bit because I'm just not that good at it. But we were in the craft section of Walmart and found some really great little fabric bundles- just enough material for a project. We bought one and she has now cut out squares to make a little quilt and a pillow! Everything is cut and she can baste things together in the car. We will see where we find a machine to sew it on!
Cutting quilting blocks.
The great thing about being here on the farm, well, one of the great things, is that the kids can go out driving in the fields on the quad! Supervised, of course (don't worry grandparents)!!! Jonathan and Rebecca have both learned how to drive the quad safely. So, when Dominik went to check on the cows he could take the younger ones on the side-by-side and one of the others could drive alone themselves. The side-by-side is also a great way for me to go visiting and Josiah even knows which button to push to start it!
Now that combining has ended for us, Dominik and Dwayne took the kids shooting today. They made a little target and put it up and took turns with Rachelle's .22. They loved it and did pretty well. Too bad that I was cooking Schnitzel at the time at the time so I couldn't compete :-).
Now our farm time has come to a close. Having a little taste of life here was great. Of course, it is great because we have been so warmly welcomed into peoples hearts and homes. Our social calendar has been full. We're thankful for the fellowship here and hopefully we can return the hospitality when people here come to see the beauty of Austria! We are off know to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Southern Alberta, and then, on Tuesday, we go further and cross over into the States in Montana. We will be posting more often then, we hope, writing as we go. Thanks for reading this- we hope that you enjoy the journey!
It is now a week since we arrived here in Irma. Tonight it hit me both how fast this week has flown by as well as just how far from home we really are. And I'm not talking miles! Here you can walk out in the road and usually there just isn't any traffic. Unless you count the large flock of Canada Geese flying overhead, noisily making their way south for the winter. Occassionally they will stop in the pond in the field across the road, refueling for the next leg of the journey. You can see the length of this dirt road stretching out for miles, just as the gently rolling prairie seems to go on and on forever. And the silence. It is oh-so-quiet. That's what I remembered from last time: the peace of standing out in the field and hearing only the wind. Not the distant hum of the autobahn or of airliners passing. Just the all-encompassing silence. I miss that in Europe. There I sometimes feel claustrophobic and crowded.
We have been working a lot on the kids schoolwork here, especially as it has been a cold and rainy week and so there was little field work. Being busy with that, and cooking up schnitzel and then a curry for a crowd, I have picked up a Louis Lamour novel to relax with before bed (OK, when ALL are sleeping)- "The Man from the Broken Hills". I'm a bit nostalgic about these books because my Dad collects them and I used to read them here and there. Well, the hero is down in the States, acting as a cowhand, trying to gather cattle back into the ranch.
Lo and behold, what were we doing one day with our hosts' cousin and his sons? Trying to gather the cattle in from the fields! And what were they talking about? How some times the cattle were easy and cooperative and that sometimes, no matter how much herding you try to do, they just won't do what you want. Exactly what Milo Talon (the cowboy in the book) just said. Well, this time they didn't want to go our way. Never mind that these Cowboys wore hoodies instead of Stetsons and that then rode quads and dirt bikes instead if horses, it was exciting. The kids loved it!
Tonight I was indulging myself in the webpages of The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond. Beides fantastically mouth-watering recipes, she has beautiful photos of what? Rounding up cows, among other things. Reading her blog gives me another dose of this feeling of 'other-worldliness'. I was excited to see her show on the Food Network too!
Jonathan had decided even before we came here that he wanted to learn to throw a lasso. Well, our hosts here have a lariat (lasso) in the shed and he has been diligently practicing. It took him a little while to get going but now he can even catch Jeremiah on the run! It helps to have a little brother to act as the moving target! :-)
We have a chance here too to go on the quad or the side-by-side, driving around in the field which has already been harvested.
Life is just so different here. It feels like a totally different life than our life in Austria. And I guess that it is. It is amazing to think of what our life would be like if we lived here instead of where we do. Or if we were in Africa.....or Australia...or anywhere else in the world. What makes us into the people that we are? It is a great opportunity to see what these other cultures are like and to have a little taste of them!
What a drive it was! How would you travel 2500km with five children aged ten years and under? Colouring books, cheerios, Trail mix, apples, children's radio cd's and even a few kids videos on the tablet. That was our method. That and a few Tim Horton's stops for us! :-) We left our friends in Northern Ontario at 5:40 on Friday morning. The early start is great because then the kids all fall back to sleep and we have a chance to put in a few good hours of driving in peace. We started in the rain and then, as we left the rain behind us we saw a baby black bear cross the road.
Leading up over Lake Superior was beautiful!!! The lake is so large- it has the same surface area as Austria! When we reached Thunder Bay we found a spot on the Lake so the kids could dip their feet in while we got lunch ready.
Since things were going well we set our goal for Dryden and then as far as we could before finding a cheap motel.
After a nice chili and soup dinner at the Tim Horton's in Dryden, the kids put their pyjamas on and brushed their teeth....and Josiah took his first steps!!! Not at the Hurley's or at the Ford's but in a parking lot!
We pushed on and decided to stop near Winnipeg but we had a terrible time trying to find a motel! We looked for well over an hour- it was after midnight and we had been driving for nearly 20 hours. We found a couple of funeral homes that looked like motels and a few more expensive chain motels, but nothing cheap and non-descript. How can that be? We were on the Trans-Canada Highway leading into a Provincial capital!!! Maybe we should set one up along the route! :-) Finally we took the first one that we found on the NW side of the city.
Then I tried to chat with the desk clerk, hoping that he wouldn't ask me how many children we have because I didn't want to have to pay for two rooms instead of one. He didn't ask and we had a short but good night.
The next day we headed out, but not quite so early and so we had more stops that morning. We were all a little travel weary but we managed, after lunch at A&W and the kids first sampling of root beer, to make it to Irma in time to watch grain being stored and the setting of the sun. We were all very happy to have arrived! We were also thankful that we didn't have a third day of driving as we had first planned. Now we begin our short little stint of farm life here in Alberta.
We want to say a big Thank You now to my parents- Don & Betty Weatherhead- who insisted that we borrow their new 7 seater van for our trip. After so many km and with so many more to come it is nice to know that we have warranty to rely on. We are grateful for their generosity especially as we couldn't have this family adventure as easily without it!
