We’ve been cooped up for the last week, scooping chicken poop and doing chicken jigsaws. Apparently British Columbia is closed. Grocery stores are operating on a one-in-one-out system and people are following the physical distancing advice below. Apart from missing our Tim Hortons fix, we’ve not really noticed the difference. We haven’t been out for any hikes, but that is mainly because Rosie is still on a RICE diet, nursing her poorly ankle back to health. She’s managed to hobble around and do her share of the jobs, but isn’t pushing it unnecessarily. Lots of knitting progress has been made!

Last weekend Ollie made sure to get out for daily exercise: Golf on Saturday (if you can call that exercise) and mountain biking on Sunday. It was easy for Ollie to stay more than 2 metres away from other people at the golf course, as his balls were being hit into areas other players didn’t venture.

One activity that Rosie could take part in was pottery. Our hosts have a wheel and let us have a go. We’ll allow you to decide who’s finished product is whose.

Our Last Week on the Nanaimo Farm

This week was our fourth and final week living and working on the small hobby farm near Nanaimo. Something about the mini-apocalypse encouraged our host to get started on the veggie growing season. Ollie has been rototilling a grassed area for crops. We’ve planted enough potatoes to rival the Baldock allotment production (minus a few that were eaten by sheep because we didn’t cover them up quick enough). Rosie has filled 24 trays worth of pots with soil ready for seedlings and we’ve finished insulating the greenhouse.

On top of that, we scooped 9 wheel barrows full of sheep poop, repaired some fencing and helped build an area for new bee boxes (featured previously) – we learned that bee hives have to be split every year to prevent them from swarming. Ollie got to drive the tractor (about 2 feet backwards) to pull out some brambles. Our host cut some dead cedar trees down in the same area to make room for a new boundary fence. Finally, we have transplanted about 30 baby maple trees to a different field and built some sheep-proof fences around them. These will help retain water, provide nectar and pollen for bees, their leaves will add nutrients to the compost and they may even be used for maple syrup.

Happy Ending (until he becomes a roast dinner)

Remember Finn, the special little lamb who couldn’t figure out where the milk came from? Well, after our host had the great idea of dipping his mother’s teet in molasses, he has finally got the hang of feeding by himself! It did take him quite a few attempts to get good at it – we have seen him sniffing around between the legs of Malachi the ram. The good news is our host doesn’t have to get up in the middle of the night anymore. The bad news is that Finn now knows he is more sheep than human, so no longer follows us around the farm. Good luck little Finn!

So What Next?

Fortunately, despite COVID-19 doing its best to ruin everything, we have found another Workaway placement to go to. Next Monday we will be moving onto a smaller island just to the east of Nanaimo – Gabriola Island. It’s one of the Southern Gulf Islands and has a population of about 4000 people. We are going to another farm, where they have Icelandic sheep, chickens (about 1/3 the number they have here, so should be 1/3 the amount of poop right!?) and pigs. One of our main jobs will be getting the vegetable gardens going, but hopefully Rosie will also be able to help care for the retired horses they house there. The couple who run it work in emergency services so are still working hard. We are really looking forward to keeping busy and experiencing the secluded island lifestyle. Tune in next time to see how our move went!

We would like to reassure our readers that we will continue to provide great content on a weekly basis in these difficult times. We will strive to maintain a high standard of blog hygiene to reduce the risk to you, our valued reader. When we started this blog, coronavirus was only a problem in a very far away place. Now it is everywhere, including Vancouver Island. We have had to rethink our plans to visit the east of Canada. Even if it was possible, we are not keen on sitting in a train full of humans for 5 days, or even a plane full of humans for 5 hours. So for now we are staying put, but there are definitely worse places to be stranded! We would like to preemptively apologise for the lack in variety of the following posts. Everyone has to make sacrifices, so you will just have to put up with more pictures of mountains, beaches, forests, boats, sunshine and unidentified wildlife.

Unfortunately Workaway opportunities are diminishing, as people are shutting businesses and choosing to isolate themselves. Our next host has cancelled, but our current host has agreed to let us stay until the end of the month so we can find something else. We have mostly had negative responses, but one “maybe” with another farm on a smaller island, Gabriola, not too far away (Rosie is hoping for this one because they take care of retired horses).

Just to make life even more difficult, Rosie stepped off some decking into a hole and sprained her ankle. It’s a bit swollen and bruised, so she has been resting it and not pulling her weight around the farm. Double work for Ollie!

We’ve done lots of work since our weekend away to Tofino and not been out much. Some completed tasks:

• Collecting waste food and coffee grounds from local cafes for feeding the chickens and composting
• “Broad-forking” vegetable patches to open up the ground and let in oxygen
• Weeding weeding weeding
• Insulating a new greenhouse and blocking holes where birds were getting in to eat the seedlings
• Planting garlic and peas
• Chasing the escaped dog
• Digging a hole to bury the escaped dog’s victim
• Screening below the decking to stop animals crawling under it (mainly the dog)
• Wrapping an apple tree in wire to stop the sheep eating the bark
• Pruning the apple tree
• Beekeeping (inspecting the colonies, cleaning out dead ones and feeding)
• Building bee boxes
• Transplanting maple trees
• Making a goose nest
• Sorting seeds
• Shovelling chicken poo
• Tidying the garage
• Building fences to keep rabbits and sheep away from different areas of the farm
• Spreading a lot of compost!

By the next blog, we will hopefully have secured another Workaway to take us through to mid April, when we can reassess the situation. We hope all of our readers can remain safe and sane during the next week. How about playing one of our favourite board games…

We were lucky enough to get to borrow a car from our host for our days off last weekend so we could head even further west to Tofino, a surfers paradise. The 3 hour drive flew by along the scenic mountain roads. During a break at Cathedral Grove, we saw a tree that is 76 metres tall. We arrived at a quiet hostel right at the northern tip of Tofino, with great views over the water. But within minutes chaos descended as the University of Victoria’s surf club were holding their annual trip in our hostel. Imagine Rosie trying to cook and wash dishes with 20 dopey surfer dudes standing in the kitchen!

Over the weekend we did a lot of hikes in Pacific Rim National Park, through large temperate coastal rain-forests and along plenty of varied beaches (imagine Cornwall and Norfolk combined, but with big trees and the threat of cougar attack). We also visited the towns of Tofino and Ucluelet, which means ‘Safe Harbour’ in the local first nation dialect. Just outside this ‘safe harbour’ we spied spouts from migrating gray whales. Unfortunately they were too far out to see any of the actual whale, but it still kept us mesmerised for a good 15 minutes.

We were very lucky with the weather, but didn’t actually do any surfing. The rental was quite expensive and there was so much exploring to do on land that we will save surfing for a future trip!

Please click on the photos below to see some of the views from our time there.

We arrived back at our Workaway, not quite refreshed, but ready for another week of work. However our host had other plans for the Monday – cross country skiing at Mount Washington (about an hour and a half away). Ollie was ecstatic at the prospect; Rosie was not. But she dutifully agreed to try it out and we had a great time on the snow. We even have some video evidence.

Again, for the wrinklies reading this post, click on the pictures below to enlarge them!

Additional Farm News

On Wednesday we awoke to the news that a baby lamb had been born over night. Unfortunately he was not in the best condition and neither him or his Mum knew how to sheep. He still hasn’t been able to feed by himself from his mum, so some intervention was required. The ewe is being milked and the lamb bottle fed. Rosie has milked the ewe once, but our host is much better at it! We took him out for a run today. Let’s hope he can gain some strength and the mum can work out what she needs to do.

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We’ve obviously had to do quite a bit of work on the farm too, but we will save that for next weeks blog. Enjoy your weekends!

We’ve Arrived at our Next Workaway

Farmer Rollie

The farm is owned by a couple with two kids (slightly older than the last pair). The father works as a part time science/art teacher, part time ice sculpture and part time farmer. He has already spent quite a bit of time with us, showing us the farm and teaching us some new things. He even let Ollie have a go on a chain saw. Some jobs so far:

• Pressure washing the driveway
• Epic weeding in preparation for planting vegetables
• Preparing some old bee boxes for reuse by sterilising them with a blow torch
• Chipping up some old branches with the scary wood chipper
• Digging out some rotten wooden flooring from one of the barns
• Learning about grafting apple branches (we helped by fetching things)
• Regular feeding and watering animals and egg hunts
• Helping out with the creation of an ice sculpture for a retirement party (see videos below of Ollie finishing the surface and creating some snow to be packed into etched lines)

Ollie is coping quite well with the animals, but is certainly not going near Malachi the big ram. Rosie has already been pecked by a chicken, but in fairness she was trying to push the chicken off some eggs so she could steal them… We’ve been eating scrambled goose and chicken eggs for breakfast.

This weekend we have borrowed a car and are off to Tofino. A three hour drive over to the west coast, Tofino is famous for rugged scenery, sandy beaches and surfing. It’s a bit cold for us to go in the water though, we’ll probably chicken out.

Hello Rollie-Followers! It’s Ollie’s birthday! We wanted to post an update last night, but we were busy making cupcakes to take on a picnic later.

Last few days in Vancouver

Last week we went cycling along the North Vancouver sea-wall, played frisbee golf, climbed up a hill and saw some exotic birds in the Bloedel Conservatory.

Ferry to Victoria

On Tuesday, we packed up all our stuff and got the ferry from Tsawwassen ferry terminal (any tips on pronunciation are welcome) over to Vancouver Island. It was a gorgeous day and a lovely trip through the gulf islands. We accidentally went to buy chips during the most beautiful part, but they were good chips. We then got a bus for about an hour from the Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal to Victoria.

Our First Workaway

Our first workaway hosts live in the suburbs of Victoria in an old house with a huge garden. We have a small cabin in the garden to sleep in, which is very cosy. They have been extremely welcoming and we feel like a part of the family already. We’ve spent our first few days sorting out some huge compost bins, weeding the vegetable patches and hanging out with their two (very bright and inquisitive) children, lovely doggo and cat.

We have also had the chance to get out and see Victoria. It’s a small city surrounded by beautiful beaches, nature reserves and some small mountains. Later today we are going on a trip to “Mystic Beach” with our hosts. We’ll be sure to let you know what makes it so mystic. We have one more week here, before going slightly further north to our second Workaway on a small farm near Nanaimo.

So we have arrived in Vancouver, safe and sound. It’s no different to Britain, here are some queues we’ve been in:

• Passport control x 3
• Immigration – to get our work permits
• Service Canada – for our social insurance numbers
• ICBC x 2 – to trade in our rubbish British driving licenses for shiny new British Columbia ones. Then again to check we’d done everything correctly.
• Tim Hortons – for reasonably average food

Some other selected highlights from our first few days in photo form:

Terminal 3? No thank you!

— Rollie.

Hello friends of Rollie. We thought we’d post short updates in a blog, rather than to lots of different WhatsApp groups. You can now decide how much Rollie news you want to read. You can also ignore us completely if endless waffle about how we’re finding ourselves is not your cup of tea. Subscribe on the home page to get notifications when we post something new.

This first update is for hardcore Rollie-followers who want to track our flight tomorrow. It might be good for a laugh if we get stuck at the Airport due to chaos following storm Ciara. Terminal 3 doesn’t have a Wasabi or an Itsu.

We will be on flight BA 85, you can check the Heathrow website or watch our little plane on a map with FlightRadar24.

Wish us luck for a tasty Asian vegetarian meal and minimal man-spreading!