Today, March 20th, marks the vernal equinox and the first astronomical day of Spring.
And we have waited for this day! Shortly after we arrived here at the campground this Summer, people kept asking us, “Are you fellas going to live down here for the Winter?”
For those that don’t know, they were asking this question because the campground sits at the base of a 100 foot hill. No one has ever resided on this property before, it was only utilized seasonally. The little house here is not winterized, and thus people were asking us plenty of questions around insulation, heat and water.
Now that we have officially survived the Winter, we thought we would share with you all how it all went…
The best decision that we made this year was to trade in our tractor. The second best decision, to buy chains for said tractor. Having a piece of equipment that could get up the road in all conditions and physically handle the volume of snow was a blessing.
And the snow piles it made around the campground were Tundra’s favourite!
Another preparation we did for Winter was installing Heat Line to prevent the main water line from freezing. This product that allowed us to have running water all season, funny enough, was developed by a childhood family friend of Kalen’s back in Ontario!
We did have a handful of inconvenient days where the water line into the house froze, but this will be something for us to set up properly for next year.
Speaking of inconvenient… We learned that the power goes out fairly often in Nova Scotia! We were thankful it was typically restored quite quickly, but were some glad that we had our generator and solar panels on our school bus to run off of in the meantime. Especially when the Olympics were on!
We also learned that Nor’easters and Winter storms like to roll in just in time for the weekend BUT that if you can safely venture out, FirkinStein Brewing in Bridgewater has $5 Nor’easter beers haha.
And the final thing that we have learned is just how much we love a wood burning stove and all of the work that goes into it. Stacking wood quickly became a family favourite chore and Kalen has been enjoying the repetitive task of wood splitting. You can’t beat a dry wood heat in the house after a cold day of working on the property, or how nice it is to cook a long, slow meal over the fire!
Coming out of Winter, most of the snow has now melted and the river water levels have decreased. The days are getting longer, the birds are chirping, and we can start to picture having everyone back enjoying the property with us again.
The quiet Winter has been nice for hunkering down on renovations, as well as getting out for snowy walks, campfires, outdoor hot tubs, and daytrips to nearby towns. But Spring is in the air and we are quickly gearing up to welcome you all back this May!
Happy Spring equinox everyone, and here’s to enjoying more light than darkness in our days.