Along with our productive week, there have been a few ‘hiccups’, of course. We decided to mow the front paddock with the tractor. Ian started it and I took over after he’d done a few circuits. He told me that he had seen voles scurrying around as he was mowing and joked about their funny long noses. Off I went, looking out for these strange creatures but only saw a couple. After I’d mowed half the field, Lauren came out to do the remainder. I passed on the information about the resident voles and stepped back as she pulled away. As she started the tractor, something wet hit my face. You know that moment, when you just freeze, scared to find out what the offending material might be…yeah, you guessed it, some mangled body part of a small animal had gone through mower blades and had been ejected all over me. I looked around to realize it was total vole and slug carnage in the paddock. The corpses lay strewed around. So there I was, in the midst of a Farmageddon genocide.
That wasn't the only unwanted animal encounter, this time we were the ones at risk. We set ourselves up with a camp fire, marshmallows and sticks ready to watch the meteor shower. All was going so well, we saw the international space center pass over and it was fantastic quality time with the family. But before we saw a single meteor, we heard howling. We assumed it was coyotes and didn’t panic but decided to take the dog and kids in as they were extremely close. As I was walking towards the house with the last few items, Ian turned around and stared at something. I didn’t need to turn around to know what he’d seen was close. He just about had time to utter “I don’t think they’re coyotes, they’re wolves” before I started running for the safety of the house. I know, I know, a bit of an overreaction perhaps, but still, nature can be scary sometimes.
So another roller coaster kinda week, from feeling like we were achieving a lot to feeling that we’d taken on too much, and as always, this evokes some reflection. It wasn’t until today that I teased out the message from our recent experiences. It was the Insurance lady who had come to finalize some details that made the metaphoric light bulb come on. Once she had lifted her head from her clipboard and truly started to look around, she began to do what everyone does when they come here, she oooo’d and arrrr’d and wowed. It made me think back to when I worked in Social Care. I always believed that you could support someone in a bad situation to make positive changes as long as they had even a tiny spark of hope. If their hope was gone, the battle was lost. One of the things that chips away at a person’s hope is their environment. Too often did we venture into grim, dark homes and find the person inhabiting the stale space had lost all motivation. And it’s that belief which makes me confident that we will succeed here. We are so lucky to have this amazing environment. A wonderful open landscape with a natural serenity and beauty about it. It’s the environment that makes people ooh and arrr when they come here. It’s the environment that keeps us working late at night. It’s the environment that makes me want to pickle and preserve its offerings. It’s the environment that makes me want to stay home instead of going out, that makes me happy and content and makes me want to share it with my friends. And I truly believe that, no matter how many mangled animals splat me, this environment will keep us plugging away to make it work.
Here’s hoping I still find it inspiring in the middle of a wet, gray Vancouver winter!
