About

Me
There is the “we” of this blog, which is our family of four – more on us below. There is also the “me” of this blog, who does all the writing and takes most, though not all, of the pictures. At midlife I’ve discovered that good, hard work outside is much more desirable than long hours at a desk job; I do my best to combine the two. If I had my druthers, I’d go just for the outside work, but that’s part of a longer term plan.

We
We’re a family of four that has moved from the “perfect” inner suburb in Ottawa – where we could walk or cycle almost everywhere, and where we successfully lived without a car for a year- to a parcel of land adjacent to a small town west of Canada’s capital. Where, amazingly, we are still able to walk or cycle almost everywhere we need to go on a daily basis. Except we will also be able to grow more of our own food, raise chickens, and provide our children (and ourselves) with the outdoor life that they (and we) crave.

Mucking around in the dirt and getting close to nature makes this family function at its best (which doesn’t mean you’ll always find us doing this). Our other big love is books, which make their way into the blog from time to time. As the person charged with reading aloud in the family, at any one time I am likely juggling six to eight books: the family book; the book that my husband, older son and I have on the go; the novel that I read nightly to my youngest son; the book(s) that my husband and I are sharing (in the past this was frequently science books and the odd mystery; these days it’s more often gardening books); and – last but not least – the two or three books for myself that I usually have on the go. I also love to read cookbooks on the side.

Our younger son, who is the child in this family more likely to mimic parental interests – at least at this stage – has morphed from wanting to be a “web designer” (when we lived in the city) to wanting to be “a farmer and a web designer”, which is roughly what my husband and I are doing now. Our older son, who plans to be a pilot, definitely marches to his own drummer, but has his own affection for our land and what we’re doing here. He is active in Scouting and is extremely adept at campfire making and all things outdoorsy. He’d be my desert island companion of choice if I (a) wanted to survive while staying on said island and/or (b) wanted to escape said island with my life.

“Wuppenif” was coined by our youngest son and is a contraction of “What would happen if?”, something that I think we all need to get better asking as we get older. Some of life’s best journeys start from this basic question.