I found the following story while cleaning out my machine. I had started writing about my first weekend at the farm, but didn't finish... I thought I would share it anyways, so enjoy!
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Farm Life
When my mother called me a few months back to tell me that she and my father were thinking of buying a farm and asking me if I wanted in, I answered yes before she could even get to the details. With 3 dogs, a rabbit and a horse I had felt somewhat out of place in my smallish yard less duplex in Verdun for quite some time.
After listening to her plan, it seemed almost too good to be true, and definitely something only my mother could come up with. She and my father want to leave a legacy for my brothers and I. The plan was to by a farm with a decent amount of land. They would use it as a summer cottage (which they were looking to buy anyways) and someone would have to live there to look after the place (me). The rent from my apartment in Verdun would cover my rent at the farm, and I would continue to pay my mortgage on the duplex. My older brother and sister in law would get to share in the joy of the farm as well along with my nephew to be, in exchange for maintaining the Verdun property and dealing with the tenants. And they have a right to some of the land when they are ready to build a house.
Following a farm search, a bidding war, and a fiasco involving the previous owners and some equipment they wanted us to buy from them but weren’t willing to negotiate on, we became farmers… and the excitement began.
The first real adventure was the weekend my horse and my brand new pony (and myself and Todd) moved up. Due to a misunderstanding between myself and the man who was transporting my lovelies, this happened a week earlier than expected. The horses were to arrive on Sunday morning at 10:00, and as of Saturday we had no fences, no shelter, and no hay. My parents, my little (17 year old) brother, Todd and myself went up Friday night and got an early start on Saturday morning. By 8:30 my father and I were at Home Depot buying lumber for the shelter, and by 9:15 we were at the fence depot buying… the fence stuff. To my relief, the fence depot was also the co-op, so I bought my grain, and wood shavings, and a 50 kilo bag of rabbit feed. We were ready to go.
We got home, had a coffee, and got ready to start. My father gave us all tasks and very specific instructions for putting up the fence. We had an area mapped out and were satisfied with our plans. The idea was to fence off an area alongside an existing out-building, saving us money on one of the side of fencing, and allowing us to build the shelter in the building so that the horses could go in and out as they pleased. As my father and mother drove off to go to an auction to look for a ride on lawnmower, Todd, Kevin and myself got to building the fences. We measured and marked off two feet on the posts, as this is how far they needed to go into the ground. According to my father, with two people banging it in with the post banger, it should go in very easily and wouldn’t take long. Todd and I place the first post and started banging. It went in about 4 inches and then stopped. We scratched our heads for a minute, and then decided we must be hitting the concrete foundation of the huge Quonset building. So we moved the post back a few feet, and tried again. Four inches in the post stopped moving. We moved the post again, this time about 20 feet away from the building, same story. Meanwhile, my brother had been digging a trench to to run the electricity. He came to tell us that he couldn’t dig the trench because he kept hitting rocks.
Great.
After listening to her plan, it seemed almost too good to be true, and definitely something only my mother could come up with. She and my father want to leave a legacy for my brothers and I. The plan was to by a farm with a decent amount of land. They would use it as a summer cottage (which they were looking to buy anyways) and someone would have to live there to look after the place (me). The rent from my apartment in Verdun would cover my rent at the farm, and I would continue to pay my mortgage on the duplex. My older brother and sister in law would get to share in the joy of the farm as well along with my nephew to be, in exchange for maintaining the Verdun property and dealing with the tenants. And they have a right to some of the land when they are ready to build a house.
Following a farm search, a bidding war, and a fiasco involving the previous owners and some equipment they wanted us to buy from them but weren’t willing to negotiate on, we became farmers… and the excitement began.
The first real adventure was the weekend my horse and my brand new pony (and myself and Todd) moved up. Due to a misunderstanding between myself and the man who was transporting my lovelies, this happened a week earlier than expected. The horses were to arrive on Sunday morning at 10:00, and as of Saturday we had no fences, no shelter, and no hay. My parents, my little (17 year old) brother, Todd and myself went up Friday night and got an early start on Saturday morning. By 8:30 my father and I were at Home Depot buying lumber for the shelter, and by 9:15 we were at the fence depot buying… the fence stuff. To my relief, the fence depot was also the co-op, so I bought my grain, and wood shavings, and a 50 kilo bag of rabbit feed. We were ready to go.
We got home, had a coffee, and got ready to start. My father gave us all tasks and very specific instructions for putting up the fence. We had an area mapped out and were satisfied with our plans. The idea was to fence off an area alongside an existing out-building, saving us money on one of the side of fencing, and allowing us to build the shelter in the building so that the horses could go in and out as they pleased. As my father and mother drove off to go to an auction to look for a ride on lawnmower, Todd, Kevin and myself got to building the fences. We measured and marked off two feet on the posts, as this is how far they needed to go into the ground. According to my father, with two people banging it in with the post banger, it should go in very easily and wouldn’t take long. Todd and I place the first post and started banging. It went in about 4 inches and then stopped. We scratched our heads for a minute, and then decided we must be hitting the concrete foundation of the huge Quonset building. So we moved the post back a few feet, and tried again. Four inches in the post stopped moving. We moved the post again, this time about 20 feet away from the building, same story. Meanwhile, my brother had been digging a trench to to run the electricity. He came to tell us that he couldn’t dig the trench because he kept hitting rocks.
Great.
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