Leaving Dodge

We tend to run a little late on our best days.  We had planned to leave for Calgary on the last day of September but leaving suddenly crept up on us and left us asking, as I'm sure everyone has at one point or another, "how are we going to get all this done in such a short amount of time?"  From there we commenced a gruelling few days of packing, squirrel prevention, securing buildings, cleaning both outdoors and indoors, moving materials, rooting out mouse entrances and filling and covering them with dirt, spray foam, and wood, and draining water systems.  We gratefully had some help from family, which we probably couldn't have done without. On the day when Alberta was getting a snowstorm, we were outside in the whipping wind and pouring rain; Jeff was cutting wood and nailing it over various holes, and I was doing things like holding a downspout so the water wouldn't soak him so completely when the wind gusted, relocating the wet and sometimes naily wood left from the porch destruction to a dryer, less in the way location, and just generally being cold & miserable. I confess that I was significantly grumpy most of those days.  I don't have many photos from those days of packing and preparing to leave.

 

Looking inside to outside.  One of the holes that got

plugged, plugged, plugged

Squirrel prevention

A couple of our buildings were left looking a little like patchwork

quilts after the repair work.

One of the pleasant jobs I got to do was harvest the carrots and turn over the garden.  I am pleased to report that we got five yellow beans, even though they were ridiculously spindly.  Our carrots were also small, but reassuringly they were larger than my Calgary carrots last year which I had started much earlier in the season.  I can attest to these acreage carrots tasting extra delicious.  Carrots are one of my absolute favorite things to eat out of a garden, and digging out the orange treasures from the ground is also a satisfaction all it's own.

By the time we left, I was just so happy to finally be on the road that I didn't really say a proper goodbye to the place.  Leaving it doesn't leave me with heartache and the bittersweet feeling that leaving some places do, but it is still a beautiful place to be.  We left it in the golden throws of fall and headed off into the sunset.  

That isn't really the end of the Saskatchewan adventure, it's just put on pause.  We tentatively plan on being back at the acreage in spring, probably planting an earlier (and hopefully more successful) garden, and tacking the house with a renewed vigor.  Now, apart from a few days of thanksgiving rest and family time, we've dived headlong into working to find a place to live here in Calgary.  Our full van sits, waiting for our success, which I'm sure it joins us in hoping will be soon.  I am also in the market for a job.  It's good to be back, working to reconnect.