The Wood pile

by The Sound Garden Retreat | Oct 1, 2021

When we moved here in 2018, the previous owner had left a massive pile of wood in the wood shed. We have a wood burning stove in the studio which is in the basement of the house but were too nervous when we moved in to fire it up, which seems kind of funny now.. But we were city folk and not familiar with these things.. Once the Fall hit, we switched on the furnace heating, easy-peasy just like in our Vancouver house, right? Except this furnace is electric, so when that first Hydro Bill came in we nearly hit the floor with shock. It’s a big house, granted, but that bill was huuuge. We were still in touch with the previous owners, who had built the house in 1990 and he gave us a quick overview of the wood stove, and how it heated the bulk of the house.

And there it started… the cycle of resource gathering. The first year was easy really – the wood pile was huge already, we just had to lug it into the studio area to replenish every few weeks – Bingo. 
Now, heading into the 4th winter its all got pretty old hat and I actually love the challenge of sourcing the wood and prepping it…

Here’s the order of things: 

• find wood 

• buck it up 

• haul it near the woodshed 

• split it 

• stack it

• dry it 

• carry it to the inside wood storage 

• burn it

• clean the fireplace 

• rinse (well not rinse coz, ya know) and repeat

Finding the wood to buck up is the hard bit – I don’t want to haul it out of the acre patch of forest we steward, unless it’s fallen in a storm or is looking to be dangerous soon, and even then we try to leave as much as possible to regenerate the forest floor.

But in the countryside you meet people who have wood or will help you get wood, so that’s pretty amazing. I’ve gone from hiring people with chainsaws and renting massive log splitters, to having friends with chainsaws, including my neighbour Richard who taught me how to use one a couple of months ago (I’m a bit addicted to it now), and recently buying an electric log splitter, which is a game-changer! 

Last xmas I got a nice electric pruning saw for my main gift, which is great for anything no bigger than about 4″ in diameter, but I think I know what I’m going to ask Santa for this year and am scouring the internet for a pink chainsaw with sequins, because, you know, you still got to bedazzle even in rural settings (OK, I was kidding, but then I just googled and yes… they exist. Are there no original ideas?)

Anyway, it’s a lot of work getting the place ready for winter – an ongoing task and I’ve learned the hard way that I should really get started on this in April (left it way too late this year) but all the hard work is so worth it.

The heat from the wood burning stove is so warm and toasty and as one fella at my first songwriting workshop said “it warms the bones of the house” which is true.. that forced air heat doesn’t come close. Plus when we have a power outage, which is pretty frequent in the winter, we can boil a kettle or even make a stew on it. 

We’re loving living here and feel very grateful and fortunate to have made the move when we did. Of course there’s been more than wood chopping going on, but the wood chopping is such a great tonic from the busy studio.

So, as we move into the Fall we have a batch of the dry stuff ready to burn from October, and we’re also getting ahead for next year from a large pile up the road where someone needs it gone and we have the tools, energy and equipment to shift it (thanks again to my neighbour Richard!).

We’re still learning lots about living rurally (the mysteries of rural municipal government for one!) and fine-tuning it with every trip around the sun.

Life After Lockdown

by The Sound Garden Retreat | Mar 5, 2021

Well, we made the move and started living the good life! Sure there are bears to get used to, which was terrifying at first and no street lights, but we’ve adapted. The bears are something that everyone will tell you about with ominous tones and then finish their story with “… but, hey, we live in bear country!”

Our property had not been lived in for a few months and so it was on one particular bear’s route. One blazing hot afternoon my son said “mum, there’s a bear…” I thought to myself, “I’ll bet he’s joking”, then I thought, “what if he isn’t joking”. I got up and as I did I came to look around a bush to see the most enormous bear standing right in my garden looking right at me. His expression seemed to say, “Ugh, there’s a bigger one, now I’ll have to change my route”. As per drilled-in bear protocol, our son, who was only 5 at the time, did not scream or run, but went inside (walking backwards slowly) whilst I shouted at it irrationally “we live here now!” I’m sure it understood. It left disgruntled. 

Lin’s Note: Carol is totally sugar coating this 🙂 That bear came back the next day with its family, it did the rounds in our neighbourhood and the large bear charged an elderly neighbour.. (he was fine, but conservation did have to take that bear away)…. Also a couple months later, we found a severed deer leg at the entrance to our woods, quite possibly left by a passing cougar… That said, since we got Ollie there’s been much less wild animal activity – he’s part Ridgeback which were bred to protect the family and take down lions, so we’re in pretty good hands (paws?!)

After that life has been going pretty much to plan. Our house and garden is amazing – we even have an orchard. I’ve spent many afternoons swinging my (finally useful) wicker baskets around picking up apples, grapes, pears and raspberries, thanks to the efforts of the previous owners.

We got used to no street lights because, hey, we live in the country – who goes out at night? We absolutely love the people here. It is a very creative community. There’s also everything you actually really need here: post office, grocery options, yoga studio and a million cottage industries from pottery to eco products and more. There’s even club nights, if we ever get brave enough to go out after dark!

The only place anyone gets feisty is on the highway which has taken some getting used to but I think we’re used to that too now. The only things we miss about the city is Costco and Value Village and a couple favourite take-out places 😉 We’d always joked at the time of moving that if the proverbial ever really hit the fan, it would be better to be amongst less people but still with people who had survival skills, power tools and were generous enough to share them! This was a half joke. Little did we know what was coming next…

We all find ourselves living in a global pandemic. Something that only a few uber-smart scientists knew was a potential reality. I thought it would be more like an earthquake (western Canada is overdue for one) or a war. Never did our half joking scenarios include a global pandemic. How are we doing in these uncertain times? Well, we join most of our neighbours and friends when we say we are so lucky to be living this out in such idyllic surroundings. We have space, nature, a good community but also enough of a civilization to include a hospital, air helicopter and emergency services. 

When we first moved, we renovated part of the house and set up the business during our first year. We advertised workshops and were successful in attracting people to attend them. We renovated a stand-alone workshop into a cottage and opened it up in June 2019. We had a short season as we were busy visiting Europe and family and then adopting our daughter. A lot of the pieces of the puzzle were in place and things were going well. 

This past year has been very different. We are still doing well but the timing of some of the workshops meant that the teens week-long Spring break one had to go virtual half way through. It then felt strange even advertising for the summer ones as everyone was so preoccupied with living a different reality and staying well away from each other. Online shopping and car park pick-up has become the norm. People here have been really good about physical distancing and wearing masks when that became the recommendation. Home-schooling was a challenge as we were both working from home by that point. There were occasions when I was on a zoom meeting as was Lin, as well as our son having a zoom class while our young daughter ran riot around the house. I take my hat off to any single parents out there or people with kids living in a condo – I honestly don’t know how you did it. It was hard enough doing this living in paradise and we would often chastise ourselves and stop any complaining as we took a moment to remember just how lucky we are, especially since the kids have been safely in school, daycare etc since last June.

Moving to the country has been one of the best ideas. We have and are still assimilating into the environment. Lin is currently doing some really creative music projects. Song writers are using this unusual time to create and put their feelings, thoughts and experiences down in a song and perhaps even have more time to focus on that now that we are out of severe lockdown at the moment at least. International travel isn’t taking up anyone’s time or money and we are all exploring ’local’. 

We’ll have to see where this unusual time takes us. There’s the new strains of COVID which have made their way here, which is concerning but we’re opting to not panic. Still, we’re getting almost used to the new normal. Wallet, keys, mask…

The Grass Is Greener

by The Sound Garden Retreat | May 26, 2019

Are you sitting at work or in your home office right now thinking, “I wish I could see more trees and breathe fresh air with space instead of living like an animal in a cage!” Well that’s how I felt… often. I would say to Lin “I love our home, but I can’t look at the neighbour’s vinyl for the rest of my life!” We’ve had discussions for years about where our next move would be. Both originating from England (a small, busy little country where the pace of life is fast and furious) we came to Canada to live life in the slower lane. It was my idea and having persuaded Lin to take the leap of faith with me we’ve made it work.

Our next adventure after ten years of being settled down was centered around the same question… “Where next”? We considered going back to the U.K. Anyone who has emigrated knows that elastic band pull back to the home country. Our families are there and we thought it would be good, responsible even, to live closer to them, especially to our mothers and to give our son (who we had along the way and was now a major part of the decision reasoning) a close bond with them. But going back to the U.K. felt like going backwards, and our adventure shouldn’t be over yet.

We seriously considered the South of France (doesn’t everyone) and for quite some time became obsessed with the beautiful and surprisingly affordable reno’s, tiny cottages and, as the years went by, fully liveable properties with large, established gardens near cute villages. Then life took a different turn and we made the decision to stay in beautiful B.C.

A big part of our yearning (call it ambition, passion, some call it unrealistic) was to create a good life. Not that ours was bad and we were grateful for what we had – but both of us realized we wanted (or at least, we thought we wanted) to live in the country (my big thing), grow things and make music (Lin’s big things). We, like millions of others around the world, are choosing to “up sticks” and move on for a better life. I feel that there is a trickle that is turning, not into a flood, but more of a steady stream of people who are choosing to move or being pushed out of big cities into the country. House prices, rental prices, child care options, traffic and a yearning for us and our children to live a life at a more ‘human’ pace and scale are making a lot of us seriously consider and even make the move.

So how do you and how did we, make the decision of “where next”? Well, like many before us we took holidays that looked suspiciously like the life we wanted to create. Cute cottages in sleepy villages that were accessed via tree-lined highways and days that involved tasks that were no more complicated than what to eat or which walk to take. After a few vacations we, like many before us, started to fantasize about living permanently in the lovely oceanside community of Roberts Creek on the  Sunshine Coast in western Canada. We got a referral for a good Realtor and upped our fantasy to pseudo-research, getting on her email list for properties for sale. We still were not completely sure if we could leave the city (all those children’s activities, shops and people nearby) and live in the country (the dark, unlit streets, no shops or restaurants on our doorstep, the wildlife!). But every time Lin had a frustrating day I would forward her an amazing house, with an amazing price tag and type “just sayin!”. We kept holidaying here and viewed a few more properties. Then, we found a dream property, put in an offer… and lost it. We were so disappointed that the very next weekend we planned to ‘get back on the horse’ and look again. On my birthday, no less, we viewed seven properties and found our real dream home. It had a huge (and I mean huge) main house with over 2.7 acres of land with a separate building that could be converted into a cottage and space for Lin to create her own sound recording studio. This time we were not going to miss out. We put in an offer, which was accepted. We were on our way!