LIFE UPDATE | CANADA | FARM LIFE

Basking In Canadian Farm Life On a Multigenerational Farm

Life Update — September 12, 2023

I still remember the first time I visited a farm. Well, maybe it wasn’t entirely the first time, but it was the time that I was old enough to remember. I was 8 years old and at a family reunion in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. My mom grew up in that area and on a farm that was miles from anywhere. As soon as she was old enough to leave, she did, and she never looked back.

She would marry my dad, a British mountain climber, and eventually move into Banff and the Canadian Rocky Mountains. This is where I was born, and I grew up just down the road in Canmore. Surrounded by tall majestic mountain peaks, it was the furthest a person could get from farm life.

This year, we spent our summer in Canmore. It was the first time that I had spent that much time there in over 20 years. I relished being back in the mountains and we took full advantage of the breathtaking nature. We walked through the trails as much as we could and made a point of appreciating our surroundings.

But Canmore is not the small town that it once was. These days there is a constant hum to the valley as the cars and trucks on the Trans Canada Highway zip past. It is a hive of tourist activity and people are seemingly always in a rush, no matter where you look.

About a month ago we left there and started making our way out to the flat lands of our country, the prairies. As we inched our way further and further from the mountains and the hectic pace of Canmore, I started to feel more peaceful, less anxious and more grounded.

We have been staying on a 6000-acre farm in Eastern Alberta for the past two weeks.

Our connection to this farm goes back about 30 years and 581km from here to the town of Lafleche, Saskatchewan, where Chris grew up.

If you read my last life update, you will know that Chris’ high school sweetheart now lives here with her husband and three kids. Her husband's family has owned this farm for over one hundred years.

Just a one-hour drive from here is where Chris’ mom now lives. We originally went to visit her, but when we realized that Naomi, Chris’ high school sweetheart, lived just an hour away, he decided he wanted to check in with her and pay her a visit. He hadn’t seen her in 25 years and neither had his mom.

And so, while staying in Daysland with his mom a couple of weeks ago, we took a day trip out here to say hi and see what her life looked like now.

Entering onto the property, one immediately sees numerous solar panels lined up on the hillside facing south. I was already impressed. But I still had no idea what was to come.

After introductions and a brief hello, Naomi offered to show us around the garden and the immediate farm area. As we entered the garden, I truly felt like I had died and gone to heaven.

Rows upon rows of incredibly healthy produce greeted us. Crisp romaine lettuce, stalks of corn, huge spinach leaves and the remnants of the season's onion harvest.

The next section brought us to huge beets, carrots, broad beans, green beans, rhubarb, herbs, zucchini, cucumber, melon, squash…….the list goes on and on.

Oh, did I mention the apple, plum, pear and cherry trees? Honestly, it truly is heaven.

Naomi’s mother-in-law has a masters degree in soil sciences. So you can imagine how wonderful and healthy their soils are. The manure from the cows that they raise is the primary fertilizing ingredient and it is composted for 1 year before they turn it into the soil.

When she moved back to the property as a young woman and took over the farm from her parents, she decided that she wanted to make it self-sufficient. These days they are 98% of the way there. The solar energy that they harvest provides all the electricity they need to run the farm, with the exception of December and January when the sun dips low on the horizon and doesn’t quite charge the panels up enough.

They have their own wells dug on the property and they have maintained their water levels well despite the recent drier years that they have been experiencing. They raise their own cattle and have numerous freezers full of meat, and the garden provides pretty much every vegetable you could dream of.

It truly is its own sort of paradise.

While touring the garden with Naomi on that first fateful day, she pointed out an extra house on the property that nobody was living in.

“We keep it for guests these days.” She said after explaining that the previous renters were a nightmare and they couldn’t be bothered to deal with that anymore.

I noted the house and the situation and immediately knew that this is a place that we would love to hang out at for a while.

“You know, Chris and I volunteer in places like this as we travel. We are happy to help out around here in exchange for food and a place to stay if you are ever in need.” It was an off-the-cuff comment, but I was dead serious. I was in utter love with the peaceful vibe of the area, and that garden! It is truly any gardener's dream.

We enjoyed our day with Naomi and her family then headed back to Chris’ mom’s house where we were currently staying. We were waiting for a heads-up from a friend of mine up in Grande Prairie (more north in Alberta) to let us know that she was ready for us to come up there. Initially, we were to head up to see her in mid-August. But she had some dramas come up and told us to wait until September. She claims she has some work for us, but we have no idea what it entails just yet.

After about three more days in Daysland, Chris got a message from Naomi.

“If you guys have time and want to help out here for 3 or 4 days, you are welcome to come and stay at the house.”

Do we have time? Ha, I laugh in jest. OF COURSE, we have time! These days we have all the time in the world.

As mentioned, our initial arrangement was to come for 3 or 4 days, but after only a couple of days, we knew that we wanted to stay longer. Simply put, we love it here.

We finished the small tasks that they had asked us to do in the first two mornings. We assisted in harvesting items from the garden (150 cobs of corn on day one alone!), helped bring water to the cows, and scraped some old caulking off of one of the grain bins so that they could re-seal it from getting moisture inside. After we finished that, we were told to just take food from the garden and do what we wanted with it. They told us to enjoy our time in the house.

We immediately set about making fruit leather from the abundance of apples, plums and rhubarb that we had picked. Plus, we picked a bunch of vegetables to put in the fridge for safekeeping. We quickly realized that we had picked more than we thought and wondered if we would ever be able to eat it all.

In the meantime, we spoke to Naomi about the potential for us to stay longer. We are willing to work for our keep, and our combined talents really make us an all-round handy couple to have around. Being a huge farm, I knew that it was likely that they had things for us to do and we wouldn’t get bored. She said that we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted and that they were sure to be able to find tasks for us.

We’ve been here for two weeks now and we are not in any rush to leave. Thankfully, the wildfire smoke that hung in the air for a while has now moved on and we are enjoying blue skies and beautiful sunny fall days.

And we had a beautiful clear sky to take in the almost full moon.

No words can ever capture how at peace I feel out here on this farm. There is no constant barrage of people and traffic, no constant buzz of activity. The hawks circle and swoop down as they chase their pray. The wind gently brushes through the trees. The land is vast. A person can breathe.

But it’s not just the surroundings that bring peace, it is the lifestyle.

Words will also never capture how much we enjoy grocery shopping from a garden that lies about 100m from our front door. Or eating meat from cattle that we know is treated well.

Turning on the tap and not feeling like we are using up a reservoir of town water, knowing that it is clean and fresh and comes from deep underground.

Or using the stove, oven, and washing machine knowing that the sun is powering our actions. Not some corporate monster that keeps upping their electricity rates, bleeding citizens dry of their preciously earned money.

Having everything we need right here, and not needing to go anywhere to get anything if we don’t want to gives us the ultimate freedom to really enjoy life. Self-sufficiency is the answer to this, for sure.

Of course, we have taken a bit of a look around at the nearby towns, just to check them out. But we really don’t need to leave for anything. At least for now.

I haven’t even mentioned our lovely farm friends that we have made here. Beyond making fast friends with the family, we also have taken quite a liking to the pets. And I think it’s safe to say that they like us as well.

We honestly have everything we could ever need to make us happy within a very short distance, and we couldn’t be more grateful.

I’m sure when the snow flies around here, life will be different. It is this magic moment, this time and place, that is just perfect.

And we are basking in it.

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