When we returned to Canada early this year, we decided that it would be a good idea to take advantage of the ecoENERGY Retrofit Homes grants that have been made available by the Canadian and Alberta governments in an attempt to encourage homeowners to reduce the amount of energy used in their houses and thus reduce the production of greenhouse gases.

In order to qualify for the rebates, the first step is to have an energy audit done by a certified energy advisor. When that was done, we were happy to learn that our house already exceeded the average energy efficiency rating for a house of its age in Alberta. In fact, the advisor told us that it was as airtight as a new construction. He did, however, make several recommendations to help improve its energy efficiency.

The biggest potential for energy savings and, therefore, the biggest rebate available, involves replacing an old gas furnace with a newer high efficiency one.  Our house is 29 years old and until a couple of weeks ago, it still had the original furnace. It was working fine but we knew that, at it’s age, something could go wrong at any time and it only made sense to replace it this year while the ecoENERGY program is in effect and the rebate available. We had a furnace with a 92% annual fuel utilization efficiency installed by a local heating and plumbing company.

Though we’ve had most of the windows on the main floor replaced in recent years, when the audit was done we discovered that a great deal of heat was being lost around the windows. Richard removed the trim from around all of them, insulated the cracks and sealed them with caulking. Though we expected the energy advisor to recommend that we replace the basement windows, he didn’t.  The rebates available for replacing windows are small and he didn’t feel that replacing the them would be wise financially. He did, however, suggest that we seal the two that are not needed for ventilation or as possible emergency exits closed. Richard has done that as well as replacing the weatherstripping around both outside doors and installing foam pads behind all the electrical outlets on the outer walls to reduce leakage there.

We completed our energy upgrades today by blowing an additional layer of cellulose insulation, made from 100% recycled paper, into the attic. Though Richard thought it might take all day, with the help of a friend, we finished the job in four hours including time for a coffee break! Once we figured out a routine that worked well, the job went very smoothly. The insulation comes in tightly compacted bales of approximately 25 pounds each. Louis & I worked out in the front yard tearing the bales apart and filling the machine which was on loan from the Home Hardware where we purchased the insulation. Up in the attic, Richard spread it around and ensured that an even depth was maintained.

The final step will be having a follow-up evaluation done. At that point, the energy management company that does the audits will file the necessary paperwork and eventually we’ll receive the rebates.  I say eventually because we understand that we might have to wait quite awhile. Apparently, the ecoENERGY program has been so popular that both the energy management companies and the governments have been having trouble keeping up with the demand.

I’m not at all fond of winter and I hope that it doesn’t arrive for quite some time but when it does, I’m happy to know that we’ll be snug and warm in our energy upgraded home. I’m also hopeful that the gas bills, which were already lower than many people pay, will be even lower.

The phone rang one morning a little over a week ago. It was Richard’s brother, Fred, wondering if we had time to spend a few days helping put up silage. This was a phone call that would never have come a few years ago but since I started helping out on our friend, Louis’, farm during seeding and harvest, Richard’s brothers no longer see me as a city girl or a school teacher.  Now, I’m a potential worker! We made the four hour trip to the family farm near Barrhead after church last Sunday and started work on Monday.

Silage is a combination of grasses, in this case oats and barley, that are cut and preserved as feed for cattle or other livestock. The grasses are swathed, or cut, just before they are fully mature when their nutrient levels are highest. The cut grass is then chopped into fine pieces and compacted in a large pit where it is allowed to ferment. Once the pit is full, it is covered with heavy plastic sheeting which is weighted down with old tires. The process requires at least four workers; one on the swather, one on the cutter, one hauling truckloads of cut grass from the field to the pit and finally, one in the pit on a tractor spreading the grass and driving back and forth over it until the pile is firm.

Richard and Fred took turns operating the swather and driving truck while our nephew, Shane, drove the cutter. Packing the pit was my job and not one I particularly enjoyed! It was more difficult than I thought it would be, mainly because the gears on the old Versatile 875 tractor were very hard to shift. Because I spent all day going back & forth, back & forth, I had to change gears constantly. It felt like I was tearing my right arm and shoulder apart! In addition, I had to learn how to use a blade to push the silage around & smooth it out. That was frustrating at times but by the time we finished, I was getting the hang of it! It also didn’t help that, for the first two days, I was battling nausea much of the time. I never did figure out whether that was caused by the stress of trying to do a difficult task well, the back and forth motion of the tractor or a stomach bug of some sort. Fortunately, it settled down by the third day. I also quickly realized that one of the things I’ve loved most about farming is being out in the open fields under the big Alberta sky. I missed that this time. My favourite part of each day was supper time when my sister-in-law, Ronali, picked me up at the pit and we drove out into the field to join the guys and eat together.

the silage pit, almost full

We were slowed down a couple of times by minor breakdowns and trips to town for parts but the job was done by supper time on Friday and we covered the pit as the sun went down. In spite of the fact that I was never really sure if I was doing the job well enough, Fred was very happy to have the help and I must have done alright as he’s already talking about us coming back next year! I’m not so sure, but we’ll see. In the meantime, we’re back at home and as soon as the crops are ripe enough, I’ll be out on Louis’ combine helping with harvest again. I can hardly wait!

It looks like the gypsy blood has been passed on to yet another generation. My 19 year old niece, Emily, left today on what might very well become the adventure of a lifetime. She plans to spend the next two years serving on the missionary ship, MV Doulos. Following a ten day conference in the Netherlands, she’ll join the ship at Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. We’re not certain where the next two years will take her but the ship is scheduled to spend the remainder of this year visiting Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Emily isn’t the first of her family to set foot on the Doulos.  Before she or any of her five siblings were born, her parents, my sister, Linda, and her husband, Jeff, spent time serving on both Doulos and her sister ship, Logos.

Originally launched in August 1914, the Doulos is recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest active ocean-going passenger ship. Originally a freighter, she was converted into a passenger ship in 1948 and in 1952, further remodeling transformed her into a first class luxury liner. In 1977, she was sold and altered once again. Renovations included the removal of the swimming pool to make room for a covered book exhibit.

The name, Doulos, is Greek and means bond servant or slave. Volunteers on board seek to serve God and the nations they visit. We aren’t sure yet what Emily’s role will be but, according to the ship’s mission statement or purpose, “Doulos visits port cities throughout the world, supplying vital literature resources, encouraging inter-cultural understanding, training young people for more effective life and service, promoting greater global awareness, providing practical aid and sharing a message of hope in God wherever there is opportunity.”

Known for her floating book fairs, she also carries donated books to schools, libraries, colleges, churches and universities in developing countries. Conferences and workshops are held on board and Doulos volunteers engage in a wide variety of relief projects on land including constructing orphanages, building shelters for the victims of natural disasters and distributing medical aid, food and supplies where needed.

Over the years, Doulos has visited over 100 countries and more than 20 million visitors have been welcomed on board. Over the next two years, not only will Emily learn to live in very close quarters with an international family of volunteers, she will also see many new and exciting places and rub shoulders with people of many different cultures. I have no doubt that it will be a time of great personal and spiritual growth. What an exciting opportunity!

We woke up to a steady rain yesterday morning. Thirty-six hours later, it’s still raining! I don’t remember the last time I saw a rain like this one here. We were supposed to golf in a charity tournament yesterday afternoon; a fundraiser for two local hospitals. It had to be postponed until next week but nobody’s complaining!

We could have used this rain back in early June. Instead, severe drought conditions have left the area with the worst crops since the 1930s. This rain’s not too late to be of some good, however. It should help the grain that’s there fill out, especially if it’s followed by more heat.

Canada switched to the metric system almost 40 years ago but in the farming community rain is still measured in tenths of inches. Every farm has a rain gauge and comments like “we got seven tenths” are understood by all. Though we weren’t involved in farming until recently, we’ve had several rain gauges over the years but they always seem to get broken. The last one disappeared during our year away. I bought a new one today, however, and it’s now attached to a fence post and collecting rain. It’s too late to measure how much has already fallen but I’ve heard reports of approximately two inches and it isn’t showing any signs of stopping yet! Hooray!

The first time I went camping I was seven years old. My parents packed everything we’d need for a week into the very small family car, tied the rowboat that my father had made on top and off we went. I remember sitting on top of a pile of lifejackets with my head almost touching the roof!  I also remember looking back and seeing my grandmother, with my baby brother in her arms, waving good-bye.

We weren’t in the car very long. Arriving at Okeover Arm, a long inlet near our hometown of Powell River on the BC coast, we piled out of the car and into the boat.  Dad rowed us across the water to the rocky point that would be our campsite.  My mother, my older brother, my younger sister and I waited in anticipation as Dad rowed back across the inlet to get all of our gear. What an adventure!  There was nothing but the ocean, the rock, the forest and us.  There wasn’t even a bathroom!

I learned to row the boat and caught my first fish that summer.  I also slept in a tent for the first time. In fact, this was the first of many tenting trips.  We had such a good time at Okeover Arm that we returned to the very same spot the next year.  Later, as we children grew older, the trips took us further from home.  Twice we went to California at Christmas and one summer we drove all the way to Alaska. We wandered many of the backroads of British Columbia and camped in all sorts of out of the way places. On one of my favourite holidays, we chartered a small plane and flew into Garibaldi Lake with all our camping gear. We hiked out a week later. I climbed my first mountain on that trip.

The heavy canvas tent that first went with us to Okeover Arm continued to be our home away from home until the Yellowknife years when my father built a cabin on a small lake 27 miles from town. When Richard and I married, we bought a tent of our own. An experienced wilderness camper, Richard didn’t think we needed a camp stove but on our first trip, after a night of heavy rain, we couldn’t get a fire started. We had to go to a restaurant for breakfast! After that, we traveled with a Coleman stove.

We camped that way for several years. I clearly remember our first trip with our daughter, Janina. She was just a year old.  The first night out, we tucked her into her miniature sleeping bag, said good night and left the tent. A few minutes later, we heard the zipper open and out popped her smiling face! After putting her back to bed several times, we decided to join her in the tent.  Richard lay in front of the door to keep her from escaping and she happily crawled over us and played for what seemed like hours before finally falling asleep!

By the time our youngest child was born, we’d purchased our first tent trailer. Though it had a stove, we continued to carry the Coleman and do most of our cooking outdoors. We’d moved up in the camping world, however.  Now we had a fridge!

The old trailer took us to many places including the northern tip of Newfoundland where, even in August, it was very cold at night. The canvas, which had been repaired many times, was wearing out and we began to think that the next trailer ought to have a furnace. It was then that we began to look for the ‘gypsy wagon’ which served us until this summer.

Now, we’re pulling a full sized trailer! It seems a long way from the canvas tent on a rocky point overlooking Okeover Arm. It has a queen size bed and better kitchen facilities than we had for the entire year that we lived in Japan! The main reason we decided to upgrade, however, was the bathroom. We no longer camp in the wilderness and use the bush to do our business. We don’t have a problem using campground bathrooms during the day but we’re both in our 50s and getting up during the night is becoming the norm. Those nocturnal walks across dark campgrounds were taking the fun out of camping. So, the way I look at it, our new trailer is a bathroom on wheels that just happens to have a kitchen and bedroom attached!

Though the trailer looks big sitting in our yard, it looked small next to the many larger units on the RV lot.  I don’t foresee us ever wanting or needing anything more, however.  While we were trailer shopping, I looked into a few of the bigger units just for fun. Believe it or not, one of them had an indoor gas fireplace! Our trailer may have a fridge, a stove, a microwave, a furnace, an air conditioner and a three piece bathroom but our campfires will always be outdoors!

Have you ever slept in a back alley?  We did!  Of course, I should mention that we were snuggled into the queen size bed in our new trailer which was parked in the alley behind our daughter’s home in Calgary! We were on the way home from the DeBock family reunion which took place over the August long weekend at Richard’s cousin’s place near Beaverdell, BC.

Beaverdell is located in the Kettle Valley south of Kelowna. We were far enough away from the forest fires to be out of danger but there was plenty of smoke and ash in the air on Sunday.

This was our first trip with the new trailer.  We enjoyed it thoroughly and were delighted to find that the Trailblazer had no difficulty pulling it over the steep mountain passes of southern BC. It was also our first road trip with our grandson, Drew.  At 15 months old, he proved to be a good little traveler. Considering the fact that we spent more time in the car getting there & back than we did at the reunion itself, he did very well with only a few really fussy moments. He clearly enjoyed stopping at the beach at Christina Lake, a favourite spot of ours, on the way to the reunion and again on the way home.

The reunion itself was a fun time of relaxing, visiting, and catching up on family news.  Four generations of DeBocks were represented with Drew being the youngest one there and Richard’s aunt, his father’s last surviving sibling, being the eldest.  While most of the family lives in BC and Alberta, there were also relatives from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Wyoming in attendance. Highlights of the weekend included Sunday’s potluck dinner and the wild and crazy auction that followed.  A wide variety of donated items were auctioned off to raise money to cover the expenses of the next reunion which will take place four years from now at Richard’s brother’s place near Barrhead.

Personally, however, the biggest thrill of all was when Drew began to call me Am.  We decided before he was born that I would be called Gram as his other grandmother already had several grandchildren who call her Grandma. Although he didn’t say it while we were together, Melaina tells us that he also started asking for Pa (Grandpa) after we left them in Calgary. Definitely a thrill for grandparents who missed most of his first year while we were in Japan!

Three years ago, I lost a very dear friend to inflammatory breast cancer. Joan and I were in high school when we first met and were roommates for one year in college.  We saw one another through times of heartache and times of great joy.  When we married, our husbands also became friends and eventually we became Auntie and Uncle to one another’s children. Though, for most of our adult lives we lived a long day’s drive from one another, our families got together at least once a year.  Our oldest sons are six weeks apart in age and our next children are almost as close.  In fact, Joan used to jokingly tell people that we planned our pregnancies together!  At the time of her death, we had been friends for 37 years.  I still miss her a lot but life goes on.

After Joan’s death, we continued to visit her husband, Rod. When he first began to see other women, he worried about how I would feel. Richard assured him that it was okay; that we both recognized that life must go on.

Now, Rod has a new woman in his life and in his home. We met her for the first time last week when we spent a night with them on our way to a family reunion. I wondered how it would feel to see another woman in Joan’s house. I wondered if all traces of Joan’s presence there would be gone.  I needn’t have worried. When I saw how comfortable Rod and Eunice are together and how she so clearly cares for him, I knew that this was a good thing and when I went upstairs to bed, there at the top of the stairs, was the framed photo of Joan and I that was taken shortly after her cancer was diagnosed.

I think poor Eunice was much more nervous about meeting me than I was about meeting her but by the time we stopped again for coffee on our way home yesterday, she had relaxed.  She showed me how, with a few changes, Joan’s craft room had become her sewing room and she offered me one of the lovely crocheted afghans that Joan had made.

Yes, life goes on and I think that’s a very good thing.  When I think of the pain that Rod went through during Joan’s four and a half year battle with cancer and his devastation at losing her, I’m delighted that he has another chance at happiness.

When another friend of ours remarried about a year after losing his first wife to cancer, tongues wagged. He isn’t honouring her memory, some said. We had watched as he tenderly cared for his wife during her several years of illness and we were there to witness his tears the day she died. We knew that choosing to share his life with another in no way diminished his love for his first wife.  In fact, he told us himself that if remaining alone for years on end could somehow bring her back to him, he would wait but, of course, he knew that couldn’t happen.

It was during the drive from this friend’s wedding ceremony to the reception that Richard turned to me and told me that if anything ever happens to him, he wants me to feel free to marry again. I told him that I wouldn’t wish years of loneliness on him either. Hopefully, we grow old together but if we don’t, life must go on for the one who is left behind. I’ll always miss Joan but I’m glad that Rod has found someone new and that his life is moving on.

We were only home for two and a half days.  Just long enough to do the laundry, weed the flower beds, play a little golf and give the dried out lawn a good soaking.  Then it was off to Calgary to spend the weekend taking care of our grandson while our daughter and son-in-law were out of town to attend a wedding.

On the way to Calgary, we stopped at several RV dealerships to look at trailers.  We saw so many that I began to lose track of what I’d seen and my brain began to turn to mush.  After all that, we decided to buy the second one we’d looked at! The basic requirements were that it had to be small and lightweight enough to pull behind our Trailblazer. In addition, we had a fairly lengthy list of features that we were looking for.  The one we finally decided on is a 2005 model, 21 feet from hitch to bumper and in absolutely excellent condition.  It has everything we were looking for and more! It’s not quite as lightweight as the brand new models but we’re getting it for an excellent price and it falls within the weight limit that the vehicle can pull. I can hardly wait to pick it up but first we have to get the finances and insurance in place.

Once we got to Calgary, the fun began!  Fourteen months is a wonderful age.  Drew has changed a lot since we last saw him two and a half months ago. No more tottering baby steps; now he practically runs. He loves to go for walks and the playground is a favourite stop along the way. While the swings and the slide are fun, it’s playing with the gravel that holds his attention the longest! I guess the world looks a lot different from his perspective.  Grass that we barely notice is a thing of wonder to him!  Playing in his pool is also a favourite activity on a hot afternoon.  After all, you can do a lot with water.  Drinking it is part of the fun, of course, and since Mommy’s tomato plants share the balcony with his pool, they are very well watered! Visiting with his best buddy, the dog next door, is also lots of fun.

Drew did very well while his parents were away.  We were with him for a full day before they left; long enough to become familiar with his routine. He missed his Mommy, of course, especially when he woke up in the morning and she wasn’t there, but he was secure in his own surroundings and totally comfortable with us. Mommy did well too, only phoning home three times to see how things were going!

Now we’re home again for a little while; catching up on a few things that need to get done and playing a little more golf.  Once we have that new trailer, we’ll be back on the road again on our way to a family reunion in BC.  Yes, retirement definitely agrees with us!

After six weeks and a little over 13 000 kilometres, we arrived home yesterday.  We put in some long days on the way back across the continent but we also enjoyed a day with Buck and Chrissy (our “other daughter”) in Winnipeg and a weekend with my brother and his family at their new home in Irvine, just east of Medicine Hat.

When we went to bed the night before the trailer’s second lift cable broke, I’m glad I didn’t know that it was the last time I’d sleep in it.  I’d probably have been overcome by nostalgia.  The gypsy wagon, as I’ve always called it, is an integral part of so many of our family’s memories. Purchased brand new, it replaced the old second hand one that had taken us on our first few long trips and was literally falling apart.  

It’s maiden voyage in 1993 took us to California.  Camped at the KOA campground in Anaheim, the children could watch Disneyland’s nightly fireworks from their beds!  Nathan, our youngest, was born on July 24th and many of his birthdays have been celebrated in campgrounds.  Most of our meals were eaten outside at picnic tables but that year, in a crowded Santa Barbara campground, he decided that he wanted his birthday dinner indoors around the trailer table.  It was there that we dug into a rich and delicious chocolate cake.  No, it wasn’t homemade.  The trailer doesn’t have an oven so finding a suitable store bought cake was always a challenge!

The following year, we went in the opposite direction and Nathan celebrated his tenth birthday in Dawson City, Yukon with his cousin, Martin, who is one day older than him.  It was on that trip that Richard’s mother joined us for a weekend of camping, the only time in her life that she ever camped. Little did we know that she would be taken from us very suddenly just a few months later and that that would be one of our last memories of time spent with her.

In 1995, we spent our summer vacation on the BC coast.  We woke up on the morning of Nathan’s 11th birthday in Powell River where the beachfront campground is just down the street from my childhood home.

The next year, Colorado was our destination.  On the way, while passing through Wyoming, we spent one night camped at the foot of Devil’s Tower, a pillar of stone over 1200 feet high that appeared in the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.  Though some of our earlier trips had lasted six or seven weeks, this one was shorter.  It was about this time that spending the third week of July at church camp became a highlight of Melaina and Nathan’s summers.  

Before we knew it, the kids were graduating, going off to college and taking summer jobs.  Family vacations came to an end but the trailer didn’t go into retirement.  Richard and I began traveling on our own.  Our first solo trip was to Ottawa in 2001 where we set up camp on the outskirts of the city so that we could spend some time with Matthew and his girlfriend, Robin, who both attended Carleton University there and were both working on Parliament Hill for the summer.  Robin is now Matthew’s beautiful wife and soon to be the mother of our next grandchild.  

The last time a child slept in the trailer was the summer before last when our little friend, Sebastian, who lives in Hong Kong, joined us for a sleepover.  We were visiting his family at their summer retreat at Fintry on BC’s Okanagan Lake.

The trailer has a heavy duty axle that enabled us to travel some pretty rough roads like the Yukon’s Dempster Highway and the logging road to Bamfield on Vancouver Island.  It’s also lightweight and easy to pull up even the steepest of hills like the one over Independence Pass to Aspen, Colorado which crosses the Continental Divide at an elevation of 12 095 feet!

Yes, there are many memories in that old trailer.  The lift cables can be fixed but the estimated cost is $700 to $800.  If we were planning to continue using it, we wouldn’t hesitate to put the money into it. The body, canvas and appliances (fridge, stove and furnace) are all in good condition but it lacks one thing that would making camping at our age much more comfortable; a bathroom.  I also think that, after putting a tent trailer up and down literally hundreds of times, Richard deserves something a little easier.  So it is that we’ve decided that the time has come to replace it with a somewhat larger, hard sided one. We’ve also decided that, if someone wants to bear the cost of having it repaired, we’ll give them the gypsy wagon. I would love to see it resurrected and used to help another family create beautiful summer memories.

Some people love baths while others prefer showers.  Personally, I’m a bath person. When we arrived at our hotel, the tub was calling my name and I’ve just climbed out after a wonderful soak, the first in several weeks.

I’m really glad that, in this day and age, most campgrounds offer free showers.  Over the past month, we’ve used a lot of them.  Some were spacious while others were claustrophobic.  Sometimes the water temperature was difficult to control.  There was one with enough pressure to send me into the next county while another had so little that I was really glad I’d had my hair cut short recently.  A woman with a lot of hair could never have rinsed it sufficiently.  Then there’s my pet shower peeve; the ones designed for midgets!  I know I’m a bit taller than average but I really should be able to stand under a shower without hitting my head on the shower head!

I know some shower people say that they don’t like baths because they don’t like to sit or lie in their own dirt.  If that’s the case, do what the Japanese do.  Shower first, then soak in a nice warm tub and let it soothe your cares away.

Yes, I’m definitely a bath person.  What about you?