Duncan Diary Installment 4 – New Kitten

It’s been a long time since we’ve heard James’ tales of farming and gardening. He’s been very busy but has recently given us an update on life in Duncan on Vancouver Island.

Spring 2005

Living in the country means looking at life from a different point of view. When I lived in the city I read three newspapers every day, four on weekends, and I couldn’t go to bed before the late late news on the television. Nowadays I pick up a paper on my weekly visit to the coffee shop… Most times it’s two or three days old. Sometimes more. Doesn’t matter. The politicians will continue to do what they always do, the economy will go up or down, the weather forecasts, seen in retrospect, will be as wrong as usual, Donald Trump will marry Paris and then leave her to move in with Michael Jackson, green vegetables will be found to be very bad for you and the tobacco firms will discover that two year olds who smoke could live to be a hundred… Same old same old.

But there’s one newspaper no self-respecting farmer could do without. Tuesday mornings at 7 a.m. 300 copies of Buy and Sell arrive at the gas station. An hour later they’re all sold. You may not immediately need a 1931 Massey Harris tractor or a pair of Sicilian donkeys, a hydraulic winch, a manual posthole digger, a pregnant pig or 20 bales of weathered hay, but you might want a floral patterned English bone china chamber pot, “very little used”, or (this weeks favourite) “a pair of young gerbils, trained, healthy and friendly, complete with pink harnesses and leashes, $25 OBO. “. The local topsoil supplier suggests a yard of chicken manure as a desirable present for Mother’s Day, and a wedding dress (” never used, still in box, pink, size 20″) is offered at the same phone number as an exercise machine, (” used twice, as seen on TV”).

I seem to buy my share of these things. The wooden rowboat (“needs paint and some repairs, only $50″), still sits in front of the house still needing paint and repairs, and still, two years later, without the load of topsoil in it that would grow the petunias that would flower so beautifully all summer. The potter’s wheel (” needs TLC)” hasn’t moved from where it was unloaded last year in the barn, along with the paint sprayer (“needs cleaning, good for fences, was working, husband died “)

But country life is a lot more than buying and selling stuff. The rabbits are eating my lettuce, the deer are eating my grape vines, the mink are eating the chickens and the bears are waiting to eat the corn. The barn swallows are waiting for the exact moment to push their babies out of the nesting box – too early and they can’t fly, too late and for some reason they won’t, meaning, in both cases that they fall to the ground and make quick snacks for cats. The hawks, in their turn, circle in the sky, waiting for rabbits, or cats, or small Shi Tzu dogs, and I wander the kitchen garden, looking to pull up the right lettuce. Country life is all about eating.

And sleeping. The sun rises just before 6 a.m. So do the roosters and the donkeys and the cats and the dogs. And me. Two hours on the tractor before breakfast, three hours before lunch, four hours weeding before supper, feed the animals, talk to the pigs, and suddenly it’s late. 8.30. Bedtime. Because tomorrow morning the sun rises just before six. And so it goes. Life is different in the country.

I have a new kitten. Mostly Himalayan, 2 ½ pounds, white with violet ears, sharp teeth, a climber — legs, curtains, bedposts and trees. My other cat, once a 2 lb kitten too, is now a 15 lb black rabbit hunter of rabbits. She thinks the kitten is a rabbit in disguise. So the kitten hides all day. It wakes up at night, as soon as I go to bed, comes into the bedroom and climbs the walls for half an hour, then crawls into bed and hunts my toes, then goes to sleep for a few minutes (just long enough to let me go to sleep again) sits on my head and purrs in my ear until I wake up. To watch her climb the walls.

The sun still gets up at 6 a.m. Life is different in the country.

James Barber