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!
The children have been looking forward to today for a couple of weeks now. We woke up to a snowy, windy day and so they are full of ideas of how we can mark today. What is today? Why is it special? It is exactly one year ago today that we arrived in Canada from Austria.
When we were planning to come to Canada we had a lot of dreams and ideas. There are sports and activities here that we didn't have access to in the countryside in Austria. We wanted to start our own little homestead where we could grow as much food for ourselves as we could. Dominik would homeschool the kids and be in charge of the farm. I would start a Life Coaching business to have a flexible job to earn a bit of money for the family. Some of these dreams have been realised, but the larger dreams haven't. Because of that I want to look back and see just what we have accomplished this year.
So, first...here are a few things that we left behind.
Looking across the road to Schloss Klaus- employer for 12 years.
Jeremiah and Emma- riding at the Hauber's is missed!
The Herzog's- we're waiting for them to come here!
Tanja and family.
Elena and I went alone to Vienna for a mum-daughter outing.
And saw the Lippizaner Stallions!
Miri, Kerstin and I in Rome.
Nesrin, Jasmine and Sara plus two brothers and parents. Our friends from Syria.
The Kirchdörfer kids came to say good-bye.
The OLD Jugendteam. How many years together? SO good!
Kerstin and I took the train at 3:30am (or something equally early) to get to Vienna as there wasn't room in the vans!
Settled on Turkish Airlines. It was a great flight.
It was great until Jonathan threw up. This is a 'before' photo. You don't want to see the 'after'!
First thing on the first day, what do we do? Yup- Tim's. :-)
We arrived to a cold but snow-free November. After a few days of enjoying time with my parents, Tim Horton's (Canadian coffee and donuts) and getting over jet-lag, we set about looking for either land to build on or a home to renovate. Within our budget. Fairly soon we had seen all that was to be had within 45 minutes of Brockville. In fact, when we went to see a real estate agent we knew more about the various pieces of land then he did! So, on that score we keep praying and looking. Maybe we will find something through a personal contact rather than in the official sales listings.
Looking at land.
Looking and looking for lan- and no snow! This piece is still for sale!
After two weeks of looking around and adjusting to being in Canada, we got on with homeschooling. This involved another period of adjustment. None of us had done it before and so we have gradually found a rhythm which works and have decided what to include and what to exclude from our curriculum. We were able to finish homeschooling about a month before schools were out, and so we were able to spend some time at our cottage property- which was in the process of being built. The mosquitoes in June were horrible, but fortunately we had a screened tent for eating meals and in the evenings we just simply went to bed early. Another note about homeschooling- it has been really good to be able to focus with the kids on areas where they might have been a bit behind. Jeremiah especially has benefited from this.
In January we all got a membership to the YMCA. Mainly for swimming lessons. But every Saturday we came for squash lessons. When the teacher is sick Domink will play with the kids. It also was fun doing some other things.
During the winter we watched hockey, went skating and tobagganing (sledding) and had a great time building a snow cave in the back yard! We used that as a part of a video when we made a submission to a contest for a television renovation/building show. It was interesting to see some of the other videos online, but, sadly, we didn't win anything!
Our back yard snow cave.
In December Jonathan and Rebecca were invited to go to a youth group with friends and so they did that until the spring. They actually attended two youth groups for a while and so they were able to meet quite a few kids in the area.
At the end of February we started attending Thousand Islands Baptist Church. There we found a group of friendly, enthusiastic people. We have a lot of things in common there, including our dream of homesteading. There is a small group of young people but a youth group started there this autumn and more kids are coming out to it. Dominik is involved in that.
In March we made maple syrup- for homeschooling and for homesteading! We are still enjoying some of the syrup now. It was a really short season on our property in Lanark and we hope that the weather will cooperate more this coming spring that we might have the chance to make more this year!
In the winter we also went skiing once to Calabogie. We couldn't let the winter pass by without being on skiis!
And, to add to our skills and to save money, Rebecca has learned how to cut the boys hair. She gets better and better at it and seems to enjoy it too. Okay, when the boys sit still!
On Easter Sunday we were invited to friends for a brunch. In the afternoon Alex looked at Dominik and Richard (from Austria and Holland) and asked them if they might want to be in a local theater production. They were needing some German soldiers. They both ended up with parts in 'The Diary of Anne Frank'. There were more rehersals then we had expected, especially as their part came right at the end of the play, but it was a fun experience. Especially when a man came and offered to help Dominik with his german!
Once spring came they both wanted to try their hand at baseball and so we signed them up. They were on two different teams- Rebecca's team always played in Brockville and Jonathan's had a lot of away games. This was a great experience for us to meet more people, to see more of the countryside, and to enjoy time in the car just with the older kids as we drove to Jonathan's games. They both enjoyed the experience and learned a lot! There was a huge learning curve, even about Canadian phrases and vocabulary. Jeremiah, meanwhile, decided on soccer. He has always been good at sports and he enjoyed being on a team and having competition.
Rebecca at bat!
Yes- all three were number 5!
In the spring Dominik and Elena build six bee traps. We wanted to keep bees so, even though we don't have our own place, we thought that we might try it. The traps just provide temporary housing to a wandering bee swarm. We managed to catch one, having put the traps up at various friends houses throughout the area, and we then (eventually!) relocated them into a horizontal hive on a friend's farm. During that process some comb broke and we ended up harvesting 5 cups of golden honey as well as 245g of bees wax. The honey was delicious and we have some craft plans for the wax. The bees are now settled down for the winter and we are already looking forward to next year's harvest!
Building the traps.
The trap in the tree.
Suiting up!
Ready to transfer the bees from the trap to the horizontal hive.
Elena and the honey.
At the beginning of July Dominik and Jonathan flew over to Austria and had a great reunion with friends. Dominik went to work at Schloss Klaus for Teenweek and the Ten English Days, and Jonathan was able to attend both camps. In between the camps Jonathan stayed with friends and with Oma and Opa. They both had a fantastic time! We would all have liked to have gone, as we all miss our friends and family there, but we had things to do here too! Soccer went on until the end of July. The Vacation Bible School at our church needed some volunteers. I drove with the four kids to Michigan, via St. Jacob's, to visit our missionary friends from Iraq. After the VBS we drove up to Sault Ste Marie to stay with other friends. We always enjoy this trip as our friends have goats and chickens, turkeys and dogs and a cat. We always have a year of talking to catch up on too!
Rebecca sewing her sleeping bag for camp.
Keeping busy while Daddy's gone.
Visiting the St. Jacob's market with Mary.
Swimming with Miss Laura in Michigan until the sun goes down!
Becky and I with our ice cream.
Friends in Michigan (closer than in Erbil!)
Elena and her VBS experiment.
Lori, Ruth and I. From high school until today...
Pen friends meet at last.
It's a silky!
Crafts at the Hurley's.
And then- I almost forgot! The girls went to Circle Square Ranch in Arden, Ontario for a week. Although Dominik and I met at Camp Iawah, the girls wanted to ride so they went here. They had a good week and Rebecca is already planning to go with a friend from England this year!
So, we kept busy while Dominik was away. Finally he and Jonathan came back! Uncle Severin came as well to help build our cottage. These two weeks were very intense as it was such a short time for building! Dominik and his brother completed as much as they could- all the things that Dominik needed help with, and then we continued building into the fall. Just a week ago Jonathan and Dominik put up the eavestrough on the cottage. They have it all closed in now, although the downstairs walls are temporary until the cordwood walls are built. Still, we stayed there for 3 nights when it was about 1 degree outside at night. The woodstove kept us toasty and warm inside. Especially upstairs where it is insulated! It is going to be such a lovely cottage when it's finished.
Welcome home!
Taking a break.
No walls yet!
So happy to have a brick wall done and the woodstove almost ready.
Josiah's birthday party with Grandma and Aunt Martha. Grandpa was there too.
Our cabin now- with the stove going.
One last autumn boat ride.
Our living room.
Looking up at the loft.
We moved the kitchen inside as it was a bit cool outside.
Reading Roald Dahl and burning brush.
Our sleeping loft.
In August we had to start thinking about winter activities for the kids. The sign ups for some of them start in the late spring- which we didn't know. Fortunately, there were still spots for Jonathan and Jeremiah in the Christian Hockey League and they play in consecutive hours every Thursday. They are both increasing in skill and are thrilled every time that they make a goal! Jeremiah even had a two goal, two assist game. Jeremiah was even the goalie for a couple of weeks, which was interesting as the equiptment is so large and he is so small!
The girls are taking Irish Dancing lessons and both love it! They have picked it up quickly and are frequently dancing their dances around the house. This Saturday they will dance on a float in Brockville's Santa Claus parade. Rebecca can start hard shoe dancing after Christmas (think Riverdance) and she can't wait!
So, we haven't been idle. There has been a lot going on. I keep thinking of more things that we've done. But I won't put up any more photos. You get the idea. We're busy, we just haven't found our own land. Fortunately, my parents have tolerated us being here and we have all fallen into a comfortable way of living together. I do most of the cooking, my parents clean up. We bake Mohnflesserl every Friday morning and pizza every Friday night. We finally even made Erdbeerknödel! Strawberry dumplings. :-) We hadn't as we can't buy topfen (quark) but we made it with a potato dough and it was actually really good. There are so many things that we miss from Austria but at least these things we can make ourselves!
Finally, what about work? I completed a Christian Life Coaching course in the spring but didn't have a very good experience with it in the end. Maybe because life and values in big-city America (where the course was based) are different than small-town Canada. Having spent months then in Brockville it seemed that our area is fairly poorly-off financially and that few would actually give money out for a Life Coach. In April I was hired to be a Norwex Consultant. A very enthusiastic friend does this and the Norwex products are amazing. They are household products which can be used to clean with only water, but at the same time they remove up to 99% of bacteria from a surface. But that didn´t work either. Some people were interested, there was nobody who wanted to tell other people about it though. Now I have started something with a friend called "Agape Senior Services". We offer to assist seniors in their homes with things like meal preparation, housekeeping, laundry and even gardening, snow shovelling or small repairs. I look forward to being able to use this service as a ministry as well as a job!
So how did we celebrate today? Even though we aren´t in the mountains, we can still go sledding on a hill nearby. We went there today and afterwards came home for hot chocolate with cream, candy cane and sprinkles.
Where will we be in one year? We don´t know. But we trust that God has a plan! We would love to hear from you if you'd like to leave a comment!
We were back up at the property last week. Besides getting some work done like taping, spray foaming, cleaning, organizing and collecting firewood, we also had fun like reading, kneeboarding playing baseball, board games, boating, visiting friends and swimming. Three days wrapped up into one sentence. Not bad. The building inspector also came up to do a final examination. He drove a half an hour from Lanark. He was on our property for LESS THAN 5 MINUTES!!! Then he drove another half hour back to Lanark. Well, that was a surprise. Now that he did the final check we can use the woodstove. The insulation is done in the roof and we have put vapour barrier and boards up. Before this winter we will have temporary walls up, but the cordwood won't be finished. We also have not quite finished the brick wall yet. We will need only one more day of work and then we´ll be ready for the winter.
The days are getting cooler, but soon we´ll have a nice warm cottage. We won't be living there, but it will be great to have a gettaway spot!
Because it´s cooler the fishing is getting better. My dad caught the biggest fish of his life just a few days ago. It was fighting and trying to get away, so we thought it was a pike. When it was beside the boat we realized it was actually an enormous bass. It was so big it didn´t even fit on the fish stringer!
A new quick renovation has taken place. We took everything out of the little kids room and pulled up the carpet. Now we're working on the walls. It will be a brand new room when we're done with it!
The girls have started to learn Irish dancing and they love it. My mom said: ``The teacher likes them and says they are very well spoken.´´ I guess they know how to speak english. ;-)
More to come on dancing!
Meanwhile Jeremiah and I have started hockey. I have discovered that it´s a bit harder than you think. The professionals make it look so easy. Well, I hope that we are not terrible. At least we will improve over the year. And it´s fun. That´s how it´s supposed to be. Right???
Jeremiah almost scored a goal. He was the only one in front of the net and he had the puck. The goalie was standing in the way. Or else he would have scored. I have gotten an assist and a few goal chances as well. Eventually I´ll score.
We haven't yet found land, but hopefully I can soon say: "We have got land! It is here and we are going to start the building or renovating and then we will get our first animals. Besides bees!
I am very excited today to share this blog with you! I'm excited because, although we still don't have land to start our homestead on, we do have bees! Dominik and Elena built 6 bee traps late this spring and we put them up at friends places around the area. One of those traps (it is more like temporary accommodation when the bees naturally swarm- they can freely come and go from it) attracted a lovely swarm of bees! The bees moved in while Dominik and Jonathan were in Austria, so by the time that they returned the bees had already built up a lot of comb and were producing honey. Dominik managed to get the trap down out of the tree, despite the weight, and we relocated the trap to another friends house then, for various bee-keeping logistical reasons.
Normally the swarm should be re-located from the trap into a hive within a week or so of being caught. However, as we have a few projects underway (like building our cottage), we were quite late in the job that we did today. We came back from the cottage on Wednesday afternoon and, after a slew of activities, Dominik and Elena built the hive for the bees. We are using the horizontal hive method, as explained by Layens or Langstroth, and currently popularised by the Russian scholar and naturalist, Leonid Sharashkin. In this method we won't have boxes being stacked on top of each other, rather we will use a hive which is quite large width-side (i.e. horizontally). We have placed a divider in the hive now and as the bees expand their numbers we can then take the divider out and give them more space. We have trapped local bees rather than paying for imported bees, and we will be trying to treat them in as natural as way as possible. They should have a live which mimicks that of living in the wild.
We had prepared ourselves with bee hats and suits and gloves. We were amused to see that the bee suits were made of Tyvek- the same material that we were using to wrap our cottage up when we didn't have walls. Having moved the hive near to the trap, Dominik proceded to open the trap. The bees were flying in and out and were crowding around the opening slit of the trap. It is a lovely, healthy hive. Once the trap was open he had to take a scraper and pry the frames apart from each other. It was then that he realised that our delay in moving the swarm over meant that they had produced a LOT of comb and honey already! We are using foundationless frames, meaning that they have wood only on the top and part-way down the sides. The bees build the comb straight up and down, no matter how the hive or trap is sitting, so it is important that everything is level or else it would be difficult to get the frames out. Isn't it amazing that bees know how to build on a 90 degree angle?
So, we had a lot of comb. Some of it broke off as he moved the frames over to the hive. This caused the death of a bunch of bees who were either under the comb or were then drowned in honey. Yes, we learned a lot from this first experience! We hadn't smoked the bees and at first they were quite calm, but as the moving process continued the did become somewhat more agitated. Our bee suits did their job and we weren't stung. I have to say that it was a bit un-nerving to be surrounded by swarming bees. When I helped Dominik move the hive over a bit at the end of this process, the bees were everywhere and the sound of the buzzing was quite loud when you're surrounded by them.
My Aunt Martha did, however, have a bee fly under the brim of her hat and as she removed it she was stung on the finger. She was very calm and pulled the stinger out and now we've treated it with baking soda. Dominik went back this evening and added some more frames to the hive, on a lower level so we will have less comb and hopefully then less breakage next time.
Sorry it's blurry- it was a glove problem!
Horizontal hive with a divider in it.
We did have some broken comb to deal with so we put the larger portion of it in and near to the hive, as the bees will clean it up and use it. We did bring a smaller portion home and we squeezed it, strained it and put it in jars. We harvested 5 cups of honey!!! This was a completely unexpected bounty and it is such an encouragement to us! My Aunt and Parents have found the entire process interesing, as none of us have any experience with bee keeping. The children are learning so much about bees and honey and now we have the wax to use and make things out of. We are really loving having the bees and it makes us look forward to other projects when we do finally find a piece of land on which to build a homestead to call our own!
Now we will let the bees recover and reproduce and we will look forward to a plentiful harvest of honey next year. :-)
