Hello from Canada!

This is just a shortish update, as I’ve only been here a couple of days and there isn’t a huge amount to write about just yet.

The flight over on Friday was fine, and a lovely guy named Dave was sitting next to me.  He was a geologist and was travelling to Canada for a work trip. Turns out he was staying at the same hostel as me in Ottawa, and he very chivalrously helped carry my bags up the ridiculous amount of steps in the hostel (no lift!). Such a sweetheart.  The hostel itself was really quirky, an old converted prison and my room was an actual cell, the whole place had tonnes of character. I've never seen a hostel quite like it.

Saturday morning Dave and I walked around Ottawa for a few hours, the weather was so gorgeous, temperature in the late 20’s and perfect blue skies.

I got picked up in the afternoon and arrived at the farm early evening.  Kylah and Zach who own the farm are currently living at kylah’s dad’s farm.  They bought 50 acres from Kylah’s dad (Bob) around 5 years ago to start the veg farm, and are currently in the process of getting stuff ready to move up to their site. They will be living in a yurt, which is nearly finished, so they estimate to be moving up to their farm this summer.  So us interns are also pitched up at Bob’s farm; it’s 200 acres with grass fed beef, a goat and two kids and tomorrow around 150 chicks will be arriving also. There are also two dogs and a bunch of farm cats, one of which has befriended me. I call her nipper as she likes to play bite everyone!  We are around  5 miles from the nearest town, Cobden, which is tiny having only a population of 1,000 people.

 the very pretty Nipper!

So Saturday evening we had a big welcome group dinner. There are four interns here; Matt an intern veteran, this is his third season at the farm. Jackson a local boy who was a member of the farm’s CSA last year. Leah who is from Nova Scotia and has just completed a nutrition degree, and of course me, the random Brit.  After dinner we spent the evening chatting and drinking Jackson’s home brewed dandelion beer which is really good!  I went to bed early as having gotten about 6 hours sleep in the past 2 days was really starting to catch up with me.  All the new noises of the countryside were interesting. I heard Coyotes and wild turkey – I had no idea they had wild turkey around here until I said the next morning – ‘I think I heard a turkey last night??’ and Zach said there were wild ones.

I woke up to an incredible dawn chorus just before 5am on Sunday and went and watched the sunrise with a much needed cup of Earl Grey. We all had pancakes for breakfast together before heading off to the farm. Zach gave us a tour in the morning, explaining about all the construction and development that has been (and still is) going on and the philosophy and long term vision for the farm. (I’ll write about this more another time).  In the next couple of weeks they are having log cabins built for us interns and hopefully we will move up in June.

The afternoon saw the beginning of the hard graft – transplanting 8,000 onion and leek seedlings in around 30˚c heat!  It’s been a while since I’ve done any intense physical work like that, and after 5 and a half hours, I felt totally broken.  Zach said transplanting the onions is one of the hardest jobs; talk about been thrown in at the deep end! I crashed at around 8pm and slept like the dead until being woken up by the birds at five. Good work = good sleep.

Today (Monday) is everyone’s day off so we went into Pembroke which is the nearest city about 20 miles away to do a little shopping.  This afternoon I’ve just been relaxing and wondering around the farm as I ache so much from yesterday!  The weather is absolutely gorgeous, I really wasn’t expecting it to be so warm already. Tonight I’m going to do some star gazing, as with zero light pollution the night sky must be amazing out here.

Here’s to the week ahead

Much love

Becky xxx