File thirteen
There’s a pile of bank statements, receipts, T-somethings and charitable donation slips resting, quietly, on our dining room table. Our bookkeeper has taken some kind of leave of absence and we are faced with the possibility of doing our own taxes. Doing the taxes shouldn’t be a burden, right? It should make us feel like […]
Farmhouse cider
Yesterday, far from the County, I met Derek. He lives on a farm outside a small village in a forgotten corner of England. His cidery, Hartland, doesn’t get many visitors. I wish it did.We followed hand-painted signs down weaving, narrow roads. Derek emerged from the barn and smiled. His cider is stored in 300-litre barrels […]
The old-fashioned way
Two old-fashioned methods of communication— the typewritten letter and the handwritten letter—are making quite a comeback. The typewriter has been endorsed by celebrities such as Tom Hanks, and a documentary movie (California Typewriter) has been made about people who swear by the typewriter as a creative tool. And you can’t escape the deluge of paeans […]
A house that is home
Affordable housing, in Prince Edward County, appears to be a very hot topic these days. It seems to me there are a lot of people who, deep down, feel as if they are to blame for the inflated market. If you’ve moved here to retire from the hustle and bustle of the city, you are […]
Bottled up
Did you catch that item a couple of weeks ago about a couple from Western Australia who found a message in a bottle washed up on the beach—just like in the stories. The message, somehow intact, was written in German, and contained an excerpt from a sea captain’s log, together with the coordinates of his […]
A place to call home
“Buy real estate. They aren’t making it anymore.” Any time my dad said that he’d laugh. I never really understood what it meant until LOML and I decided to buy a home of our own. At the time, we couldn’t believe how much money we’d be investing in our piece of real estate and how […]
A communal place
I visited the Three Dog Winery sugar shack about two weeks ago. Bakkus, a rescued golden retriever, kept watch. John fed the fire while Sacha tidied up after the day’s visitors. I wanted to learn about boiling sap, but instead learned of a school fighting to survive. Three Dog Winery got a new maple syrup […]
Becoming a fiction guy
I used to call myself a nonfiction guy. If somebody wrote an inside poltical memoir laying out incompetence and mean-spiritedness behind closed doors, I would be the first to read it. If someone wrote a book about about a world in crisis laying out a five-step plan to fix it, I would be giddy with […]
Grateful
While driving to KTown on Saturday afternoon with LOML, I had lots of time to think about my life. About an hour, actually. Mostly, I was thinking about all of things for which I am grateful. No, wait a minute, people and things. That’s what I meant to say. To begin, I’m grateful I decided […]
What price for your craving?
That’s the question a village full of ice cream enthusiasts will shortly have to ask itself. The Nice Ice Baby premium ice cream outlet in Wellington is threatening to close its doors—unless the owners can raise $200,000 (or more). The Nice Ice Baby people—who now call themselves The Urban Collective, bringing a catering service, a […]