We’ve become “those” neighbours. The neighbours who let their grass grow out of control, forget to water the flowers, and (gasp!) leave growing piles of rubbish on their front lawn.  It’s not that we’re lazy, we’re just too busy ripping the guts out of our house to fuss over exterior appearances.

Today another one of our neighbours dropped by to introduce himself. Usually I’m not fazed in the least about the state of our place, but this neighbour is unique. His lawn is immaculate. Roddy and I are certain he goes out every morning at dawn and vacuumes his turf grass. It was lovely to chat to this man who lives at the bottom of our road whom we’d exchanged many waves with. But when the conversation turned to his lawn, for a brief moment I felt a little ashamed as I looked at the shaggy grass at my feet. I got over it quickly enough to remember I had ginger tea burning on the stove.

The tea was for my tummy, which is in knots today. When my stomach is queezie I gravitate toward what my mom fixed for me when I was wee: Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, plain Premium Plus crackers, and ginger ale. But this won’t do anymore. I need to stock our larder and freezer when I’m spritely with healthy homemade comfort food that has a locavore flair. I’m too weak to brainstorm right now but if you’ve got ideas, please inspire me!

So I’m curling up in my “cozies” and loving the fact that I have a reasonable excuse not to mow the lawn. Roddy has shifted us into our fourth make-shift bedroom to clear space for new renovation projects. He vacuumed. He washed the sheets. He lit candles and incense. And now that I’ve had the chance to sit back because I’m nursing a sore tum, and really take in what we’re carving out for ourselves here, I feel more at home than ever. Long grass and all.

It was a weekend of wicked thunderstorms, bouncy music, wellies, and local fare. Hillside Festival on Guelph Lake Island couldn’t be a better introduction to our community. It takes place just 5 minutes from our farm, usually sells out soon after tickets go on sale, and draws revelers from all over Southern Ontario - many of whom camp out for the three days.

Roddy and I hadn’t treated ourselves to a festival since 2002(!) and it was fantastic to soak up the vibe, take in some excellent Canadian indie bands (Hey Rosetta and Grupo Fantasma stole the show), and be surrounded by smiley happy people lapping it all up.

There was something uniquely special about Hillside, and it’s tagline says it all: “celebrating music and community.”

More than music alone, the festival hosts workshops that cover everything under the sun: urban homesteading, the joy of poi, fermenting, faeries 101, perception through creativity, tatooing and piercing, solar hot water, getting the sex you want, and embodied dreaming, to name a few. Artizan tents dot the paths from one music tent to another, with the food bazaar anchoring the festival serving up tantalizing dishes from local vendors. A locavore’s dream, the festival also only sells local ice cream - Mapleton’s Organic - and local beer - Wellington, Stone Hammer and Mill St Organic.

An aprentice from Everdale Organic Farm & Learning Centre flanked one of the neighborhood tents. The centre is 15 minutes away from our farm and has an enticing repertoire of workshops, including straw bale building. Their snow peas are delicious, and I love their rustic farm stamp and slogan… similar to what I have in mind for our own produce when we get there.

Hillside is also a kid magnet, which sets it apart from the UK electronic music festivals I’ve been to. Happy-go-lucky kidlets seem to outnumber adults (their parents obviously attended ‘Getting the sex you want’ in past years). Youngins certainly add dimension to the woodland meets lake setting.

We bumped into a few friends who pounce on weekend-long tickets the day they go on sale every year. Now I understand what all the fuss is about. One day is not enough.

Welcome to our dining room. Allow me to take you on a little tour of the tear down. This is the site of our future kitchen - the place where magical flavours will come to life and our diligent kitties will keep the mice from our cupboards.

This is our dining room the day after we arrived. We weren’t fans of the 1970s linoleum, so up it came.

Underneath the lino was a layer of ply board with hundreds of nails. That came up in a day with Roddy’s heft and his new crowbar.

Here we have the floors as they still are today: tongue and groove pine(?), painted dark brown along two edges with a big stain on the top right corner. These aren’t the final layer - the original pine planks lie beneath. We could just keep the cover-up layer, but we’re too curious about the original boards. We’re also throwing caution to the wind and mining away until we get things to the state we want them. This mindset carried over to the walls.

Roddy’s brother Andrew didn’t want to miss out on some good destruction fun, so he came down from Ottawa for a weekend to help Roddy tear down the painted wood paneling. We knew it was risky - who knew what disaster it might be hiding? - but we’re risk takers.

Wallpaper isn’t for us, especially wallpaper from the 1950s. This pale pink paper looked a bit like my Grade 8 graduation Laura Ashley dress… not something I want to be reminded of everyday. So off it came too after lots of Mackenzie sweat (don’t tell Andrew we ended up trashing the plaster it was glued to).

The walls were too far gone to preserve, so Roddy pried them off and we entered the dusty lath and plaster phase. Dust aside, it was very atmospheric to live for awhile with a skeleton of a room.

My sister Tori thought the space was brilliant: “there must be something you can do to keep these walls intact?! This looks SO cool!” She’s an image artist.

Roddy and I liked the raw, barn gallery look, but it wasn’t very practical for a kitchen. So when Victoria came to visit from out west we finished the job of ripping out the lath and plaster.

And this is what we’re left with now. Roddy is in the midst of rewiring before we put drywall up and dream of our new kitchen layout: a deep and long country-style sink, hodgepodge cupboards, butcher block counter-top, fresh cut flowers, pantry, big old table with mismatched chairs, yellows, old tins… can you see it?

We could’ve just followed advice, painted the wood paneling, and added layers to the lino. But we never would have been satisfied; dogged by that nagging voice that says: “this isn’t you. This isn’t what you want!” We haven’t pulled up the second layer of pine floors yet and every time I cross the floor I cringe a little as the “cover up floor” creaks. All I hear are the original boards screaming to be released from the weight of an unnecessary layer.

Peeling back the layers of your house is a cathartic process. The walls that others have tried to build up around you come crumbling down as you dare to create the space that you want.

Our first veggie patch is an experimental garden. I sowed 300 seeds into flats on May 18 and 21st.  When we moved to the farm on June 11th the garden was a mass of weeds and very dry, compact soil. Some serious prep work was needed before we could spread manure, hand-till, and transplant my wee ones.

They didn’t get into the ground until about June 30th. If you’re doing the math, you’ll be shaking your head. Yup, some of my seedlings remained in teenie tiny trays for over a month. Bad news for radishes, which mature in 25 days. Mine bolted almost as soon as they went into the ground and now we’re admiring their pretty white flowers instead of feasting on them in salads. Our zucchinis and cucumbers started to flower a couple of days ago, but they are dwarfed by the monsters growing at a local CSA farm. The beets and kale are a third the size, the onions a couple of months behind. It’s the same story for our poor peppers, whose stunted fruits haven’t grown from their thimble size for a couple of weeks.

Not all is pint sized in the garden though. Our beens (not shown) are doing well, and the two tomato plants we bought from a Mennonite farmer at the Guelph Farmer’s Market are doing well. The star of the garden, however, is our lovely lettuce mix, and today we had a head for lunch and another for dinner.

With so much on our minds in the way of home renovations, our lettuce meals passed without much pomp. I’ve been a bit dissappointed with my attempt at a garden. I knew that we were off to a very late start, but I had high hopes for being able to feed Roddy and I (and 4 other hungry family members) this summer. I also pictured myself throwing on a heavy sweater in the snowy months, grabbing a basket and skipping down to our cold cellar to pick out a couple of large, crumply skinned onions and a squash for dinner.

It’s only now I realize that we need to celebrate this tiny victory: this is the first edible veg that’s made it’s way to our plates from our farm garden. And it’s come so far since it was transplanted last month. Look at how dinky those little lettuces were three and a half weeks ago:

We’ll be eating lettuce for breakfast, lunch and dinner for awhile, but I hereby vow to savour every last bite. To look up from my work and take in the view of our peaceful field. To appreciate the little milestones. Here’s to bites from the garden!

How does your garden grow?

Who wants to win a prize package worth $1000? I do I do!

If you’re growing gorgeous pesticide-free veggies or flowers, why not snap a picture of your garden (if you haven’t already) and submit it to this year’s David Suzuki Digs My Garden contest?  Have a peek at the hot new website, and enter here: www.naturechallenge.org/dmg09/

I’m not a fan of the smell of manure, but when we decided to move to the country I knew I couldn’t walk around with a clothespeg on my nose. I’d have to grin and bear it.

I just didn’t expect to face it so soon.

Every garden benefits from a good ol’ broadcasting of manure, and our parched kitchen garden needed help. Before my delicate seedlings were to be transplanted, the soil needed a nutrient boost. So Roddy and I set out in search of cows.

A few miles away we hit the jackpot: gorgeous ruddy brown and black cattle munching grass in the sun, and their keeper working the field. Farmer John cheerfully obliged to parting with a (tractor) scoop or two of his composting manure. It all seemed too easy, and we’d made a new friend who raised grass-fed, hormone-free Angus cows.

But the stinking hot manure couldn’t stay in the truck bed. We had to shift it. We had to shovel it. I had to shovel shit.

It wasn’t so bad. I grit my teeth and got down to work, wishing we had three forks instead of one fork and two shovels. But then the unexpected happened. Roddy’s swift shoveling action ripped a dead animal in two.

Shoveling wet manure isn’t a day at the park. Holding the edges of a garbage bag while Roddy swings a well-preserved, severed groundhog just past my nose in the midday heat makes shoveling manure seem like a cake walk.

If you’re still reading, the shitshow gets better.

Our newly acquired pile of cow dung is still sitting next to our garden. It could not get scattered over our soil. On further investigation after all the heavy lifting, I discovered that this manure is too young. It won’t be fully composted until the fall.

So here lies our pile of poo. I can’t smell it anymore… maybe I’m just becoming a farmer?

:: Roddy waking me at 5:20 am for a mango sunrise peaking through the window

:: Roddy calling me outside two minutes later for a bright, perfect full rainbow arcing across our field (and then discovering it was a full double rainbow)

:: Rhubarb soda with first rhubarb harvest from our garden (recipe found here - although mine looks more like stringy swamp sludge than a fresh persimmon cocktail)

:: transplanting seedlings with Tori and Nancy

:: sauteed garlicy scapes from our garden

:: Roddy’s beard

:: our chilled out vermin hunters (we have doorstep deliveries at least once a day of moles, voles and mice)

:: sweat mixed with mud on my brow as I stoop to pick wild strawberries while taking a gardening break

:: antique finds: porcelain claw foot tub from one line over for only $125 (how EXCITING!!), pair of kitchen chairs from Guelph ReStore for $30, British tin decorated with songbirds and country scenes from the endearing town of Elora (a splurge at $15 - but as the saleslady pointed out: “it’s a meal at McDonald’s, and you’ll forget the meal but you’ll always admire the tin”)

:: cars slowing down as they drive by our little farm, and neighbors dropping by to introduce themselves

:: our slick new farming tools

:: Roddy hard at work sanding the pine plank floorboards

:: firsts. Near the top of the list: first BBQ on the farm with family and Foster’s Fine Hamburgers

:: my new Bikram yoga studio set in a heritage building with exposed stone walls and restored hardwood floors

:: fixed plumbing (hooray!), and fancy new hose that we no longer have to run from the basement tap, up the stairs, through the mudroom, out the door, out the yard to the garden

:: crawling into sun-dried sheets at the end of a full day and sleeping like a baby