Catching Up

Well, time flies when you're swamped with tax season. I finish school, but I'm still swimming with the piranha as Canada's tax deadline rapidly approaches. It sucks, but there's nothing I can do about it. Except quit working. Which wouldn't go over well with my wife, so that option is off the table.

For now.

The weather is finally nice, and we now have a trampoline in the back yard. Now, understand that when I say 'back yard,' I'm talking about roughly three acres of grass. There's a lot of room between the trampoline and the house, that's all I'm saying. We're considering installing a transit system from the house to the trampoline just to make it easier on everyone.

Farms are fun. That is a sentence I never would have even considered typing nine months ago. And yet, here we are. Anyone who says God has no sense of humor, I just shake my head at them. How little they know...

Seriously, how did I end up here? I'm a city-boy, one hundred percent. And, like everyone else in the city, I knew that farms existed solely to grow food for us city-folks. They weren't places anyone actually wanted to live on; farms were like outdoor prisons, with lots of fresh air and a whole lot of animal dung stench.

My, how a person's perspective changes.

The air is clean (although there is definitely a distinct aroma nearby), the kids are healthy, it's peaceful and quiet, and we've got garlic growing in the first garden I dug last year. That's right, we've got healthy garlic shoots coming up through the straw mulch we left on top. It's awesome. We've almost got the chicken tractor built, and the fruit trees we were waiting for have arrived.

I'm a bloody farmer. How in the hell did that happen?

Ashton and I are already planning out what we want to do with the rest of the farm; digging out dead trees, planting oats in the back field next year, extending the gardens, building a vegetable stand to bring in some extra money...it's crazy. And I'm loving it.

Self-sustainability is the goal; it's not going to be easy, but it's got to be done. There's no telling what the next year is going to look like in this country; Ontario is turning into a police state as we watch, and I thank God every single day that we moved out here. Now, we have a chance to start a new life, and make something special here. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Now, it's time to get back to writing. There's a mystery afoot, don't you know. And if you want to read something new and different, check out the first of the Cameron Vail mysteries, Final Exam, available now on Amazon.