Winter officially starts tomorrow, but you wouldn’t know it by looking outside. Mid-Canada (and the states, I guess too) got the snow for the past couple of days and it’s blown in over Nova Scotia right now. My sister and I were chatting on the phone when I mentioned that I kind of wanted to go outside in it, just for fun- it’s extremely, extremely windy out there, so she suggested we shovel in front of our house (I’m guessing, 15 minutes later, all of our hard work is gone) and we broke out into snowball fight immediately. Her boyfriend got involved from their second story window and I was successful in throwing one at him, making him duck and having it land inside, on their bed. HA! He shut the window and didn’t want to play anymore for some reason. HA! HA!
There is something utterly precious about having a fantastic and solid relationship with your sibling as adults. I love that we can play together and enjoy that time, but also be able to reminice about everything that we experienced as children too. I cannot fathom not having her in my life. I wish I had a stronger relationship with my brother for this reason too.
When I was younger we lived on 30 acres of land in a seven story log house (the original house had three levels including a crawl space, and my step father- my sister’s biological father- built an addition onto the original half that was four stories, basement included. All the levels were on.. er.. different levels, so that’s why I describe it like that. It was a pretty big house), huge gardens, a large barn with goats and pigs, a chicken coup with egg laying hens, a woodshed, playhouse, treehouse, workshop and an outhouse we had to use for the first year of living there when I was very young, and then every summer when our dug well would dry up, and a couple of rikity old storage sheds around the property. We had enormous gardens with everything from two-foot long zucchinis to peas and carrots and pumpkins, corn and lettuce and tomatoes and beets… we had maple trees that provided us with maple syrup every winter and an orchard with at least a dozen apple trees. We had big yards and lived right on a lake that was clean and private that allowed us to swim in the summer and skate and cross country ski in the winter. The front field was great for tobogganing and the rest of the property was thick forests where we built forts all the time.
I didn’t really like where I lived back then. I craved to live in a subdivision like a lot of my friends because they were able to play with each other every day. We lived 2.5km back a dirt road in the middle of nowhere and it took a lot of work and planning in order to see friends, if they even wanted to make the journey. My sister has always been my best friend, it comes more naturally to us now- back then we didn’t really have a choice.
It’s interesting looking back at my life growing up, because it’s my dream life now. I’d love to live on a farm again, live off the land and have to work really hard. I’d love to have lots of animals to care for and a garden to keep. I love wood stoves and miss them incredibly (for many, many years it was our only heat) during the winter. I remember climbing out of the bath and heading straight for the wood stove, same with getting up in the mornings or coming into play and hanging my soggy mittens on the side of the stove and huddling around it, fingers outstretched, fighting with my siblings trying to get the best spot (the front).
I doubt I’ll ever live on a farm- I do not deal well with death (that’s the only reason why I’m a vegetarian), and it’s an inevitable occurance with farm life. Chickens will stop laying after a while and then they just become a useless animal that still requires to be fed. Clive is not a handyman, and farms require a lot of work and innovation and tools and he’s a city boy and has never been taught those kinds of skills and it doesn’t come naturally to him. I doubt we’ll stay in the dead centre of a city for the rest of our lives, but I don’t think a farm is right either. Shame.
