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It was 15 years of do it yourself heaven, fulfilling even my wildest Harrosmithian dreams. Everything was a new adventure, having children and raising them, Living in a fairly isolated rural house, interacting with my rural neigbours, dealing with garbage, water and heat rather than relying on the city, having a party line, frequent power outrages and really knowing where my food comes from. When we bought the place it was a tiny log cabin at the back of a hay field. We added an addition to the south side with big windows. Dubbed the sunroom or new room, it was a great place to start seeds for the garden as well as growing many of my increasing collection of houseplants. We added a wraparound deck which ran around the East, South and West walls of the house. I used to sit on the deck with laptop, magazine or book on my lap a cup of my favourite beverage on a table next to me working or reading. As the sun moved I dragged my chair and table to another part of the deck. I sat out there in jeans and polartec jacket in early spring, shorts and a t-shirt in the summer, bikini when it was really hot. By October I found it easier to sit inside my sunroom enjoying the sun’s warmth through the double paned windows which faced East South and West. The wood cook stove in the center of the kitchen area kept us warm all winter. Supplementary propane, forced air, heat kept the chill off the furthest reaches of the house. Cooking with this stove was always an adventure because it was an airtight. I couldn’t smell the food in the oven, which was my usual way of knowing if it was nearly done. I had to learn a whole new way to cook. Part of that method was to remember I actually had something in the oven. One memorable occasion cooking a pan of brownies, I got busy doing something else. I only remembered them when I opened the oven door to release the heat back into the house. Billowing clouds of black smoke erupted from the open door. Using several oven mitts I extracted the boiling hot pan of brownies and threw them out the back door into the snow to cool off. The oven and the stove top was always hotter than a normal stove hence,I became so used to this that I now find myself adjusting the recommended temperatures in recipes upwards by at least fifty degrees. Sometimes I forget to turn my new gas stove off. A wood cook stove is always hot and ready to go all the time. Put a pan of water on its black top or throw a tray of cookies into the oven, it cooks quickly, no need to preheat, no buttons, clocks or dials to program. Cleaning involves vacuuming the ash out of the oven, periodically painting its top and side black, daily scraping the ash from the fire box into the ash pan and empting it outside. Once a year cleaning the collected ash out of the space between the wood box and oven. This helps the hot air circulate thus spreading the heat evenly around the oven. But halfway through the cooking time I usually reached in to turn around the loaf of bread or cake pan to ensure an even brown. The thing I miss the most is the quiet and the intense darkness at night. The nearest neigbour lives half a mile a way through the trees and across the fields and there are no street lights. The only noises were the twittering of birds, wind rustling through the trees, the baa of a sheep or dogs barking, warning us of unwanted visitors, human or animal and telling the visitors they may or may not be welcome. The sound of our vehicles as they approached the house, the yellow school bus which roared up and down the road twice a day. The occasional sound of an eighteen wheeler taking the neigbour’s cattle to Pattersons Auction Mart. I learned to read the skies for the weather, tell time by the position of the sun. I knew which places in the garden were the first to be clear of snow and grew the first spears of green grass. I knew exactly where the water flowed from melting snow banks and the direction of the chilling drying winds. This knowledge helped me plan where to dig a new garden bed or ditch to direct the flow of water into a dugout. This place was my home I loved it for its inconveniences, the impassable driveway every spring and its pleasures, diving naked into the freezing dugout on a hot summers day, laying on the sun warmed porch to dry off while one of the dogs licked my face. The pictures in this gallery were chosen not becaue they were the best pictures but more because of the events and daily happeningss of our life which they represent.