Making New Friends

It's that time of the year - writing my Field Notes column for the summer issue of At Home On the North Shore. Along with an article about labyrinths. It's a challenging spring to be creating pieces for a summer issue; with more rain than sun, nothing has greened up or bloomed out enough for decent photos.
Everyone's covered in mud and wearing rubber boots.
But what a great photo! There's something so sweet about this child in her rain gear looking at her baby goats (whose names, I can tell you, are Beans and Boots).
This is the daughter of a young woman named Shannon who, along with her husband and daughter, moved onto a property along the River Philip and are working hard to create a property that will support them. The goats are for milk, cheese and butter.

Inside the house, I was green with envy over Shannon's sour dough starter. Right next to a rising loaf of sour dough bread! At some point, there is going to be a sharing - I just have to come up with something with which to barter.
After our conversation and a flurry of messages from Shannon of all the answers she thought of after I'd left, I gave her some unsolicited advice: Document everything! Journal her gardening, journal her chickens and goats and working pony, journey the baking and the cheese making. Write it all down, even if it's just brief notes in the busy months -- she can spend the winter filling out the details.
I think she could publish a book about homesteading.
Of course, I start to think, "Workshops!" but for once I kept my enthusiasm in check. She's a busy woman, building gardens and greenhouses, milking goats and collecting eggs. To be self-sufficient means working every day to build up the resources.

This is Schmidt, her cat. Not only is he big and handsome, as well as polydactyl, he's SNUGGLY. My favourite kind of cat! On my recording of my interview with Shannon, there are periods of me chatting to Schmidt.
Really, I'm a terrible interviewer. Not at all efficient. But come on, look at that face. I'm a shameless snuggler of other people's cats.
I couldn't work Schmidt into the column so let me tell you that he was found under a bushwhacker as a one-week-old kitten. His eyes weren't even open! Lucky for him, Shannon and her family found him -- and that little girl is his best friend.
I love happy endings. So does Schmidt.