COVID CLICHÉS

Submitted by Robyn Hewer, 460 Realty

Due to poor timing, the Hewer Family found itself living out many of what have now become “COVID Cliches” over the last 7 months. We bought our Great Big Project Home last summer and moved in at the beginning of September 2019. We had big plans for the house and the yard, but I was also 7 months pregnant at the time that we moved so we knew a lot of our renovation and gardening plans would be on hold until at least the Spring.

Fast forward to March of 2020; our beautiful daughter had been born, we had spent Christmas enjoying our time with family, my husband started a new job and now we were ready to get going on some of our ideas!

First up – the chicken coop! We retrofitted an old lean-to attached to the shop and Jackson (Mr. Hewer) built the birds a run that was predator proof and had a viewing window so the kids could sit and watch the chickens do their thing. But alas, here we hit COVID CLICHÉ #1 – backyard chicken tending was trendy now that everyone was spending more time at home with their families, and no birds were to be found. It was a sellers market for chickens for sure, and I saw bidding wars on Facebook groups, people jacking up the prices, starting side hustles of selling chicks and fertilized eggs – oh boy! We finally were able to track some layers down and now are the proud owners of 17 hens.

Having worked out of town for most of our adult lives, and then living on a very busy road in Nanaimo when we first moved back home, we knew that one of the first priorities would be getting a family dog when we moved into our forever home. We looked at rescues across the province with the hopes of getting a socialized young adult dog who was good with chickens, feral cats and young kids…… Turns out that dog doesn’t exist and that is how we ended up with COVID CLICHÉ #2 – our pandemic puppy Kevin, who joined our family when he was 8 weeks old, at the end of April.

If you’ve been keeping count, you would now realize that I am at home with a four year old and a baby, a coop full of chickens, two feral cats, a new puppy. Oh and working from home! Weekly Zoom meetings to try to keep up with the real estate market and the industry changes, virtual showings for clients, and even re-marketing properties that were listed right before the pandemic hit. The weather was warming and I was ready to get started on my sanctuary – the vegetable garden. I pruned back the overgrown area where the previous owners had their garden, pleaded and begged family and friends to help us build a garden fence to keep critters (both ours and wild) out, and was ready to get planting. AHA! COVID CLICHÉ #3 – everyone else at home was also starting new vegetable gardens, or expanding theirs, even starting container gardens on the decks of their condos and townhomes. Stores were selling out of seeds, couldn’t get stock fast enough, or just weren’t open, and later in the season the canning sections of all stores were empty – no jars, no lids, no canners! Thankfully my parents and I had some seeds from the year before and lots of neighbours planted too much of this and that so I was able to get some starts from people and have a fairly successful garden, with some variety of vegetables from my usual plantings. (Does anyone need Leeks? I have a surplus!)

It was a wonderful Spring and Summer at our home, even if we did run in to some unexpected roadblocks caused by COVID. I am grateful that our family and friends are healthy and that I was fortunate enough to be able to stay home with my kids (and the rest of the funny farm) during those first few months of the unknown. We’ve embraced being stereotypical COVID homesteaders but hope that our efforts continue way beyond the pandemic and that we can soon safely invite others over to check out The Hewer Homestead!

Vancouver Island: Mixing Business with Pleasure

Submitted by Jordan Becker, 460 Realty

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough” – Mae West (1893-1980)

I used to have a tradition of committing to a new activity every January. I’d give it the year to see if I liked it enough to incorporate it into my life. I was in my early 20’s, living in Vancouver, I had just put that tiny, Saskatchewan farming town in my rearview and the world was my oyster. The options for adventure seemed endless.

As a flatlander, it was only natural that it started with hiking. There were plenty of local mountains to explore, and plenty of viewpoints from which to snap a grainy, almost unrecognizable, 1.3 megapixel photo.

As I started to meet more like-minded people, each subsequent January brought new activities; kayaking, then martial arts, then downhill mountain biking, then indoor rock climbing and so on. Some of these new hobbies evolved throughout the years; casual ocean kayaking (well, let’s be honest – floating in the ocean while sitting in a kayak and sipping a cider) turned into rolling lessons and weekend trips to Hope to brave the turbulent white waters in the Vedder and the Skagit. Downhill mountain biking brought back a familiar feeling of speed and balance, but the stretched out acres of farmland where I used to ride my dirtbike were now 2,000 kilometers away, so a street bike was the obvious choice. Some of the hobbies gave me just a taste of something new and exciting, and would have me searching for the whole pie. The half second of freefall found in rock climbing led me to a dropzone then called Pacific Skydivers, where I would do my first of many skydives from 12,000 feet.

I’m not sure how many January’s had come and gone, but at some point I looked back and realized that I hadn’t put a single activity back on the shelf. I had kept them all. Thinking about it now, it’s clear that it had become an obsession; I had subconsciously tasked myself with trying everything I could; everything that wasn’t available to me as a teenager in a prairie town of 1,400 people. I was gathering up experiences, and I had amassed quite a collection.

Fast forward a few years, one wedding and two pink lines. It was obvious to my little family that we didn’t want to stay in Vancouver, and while Vancouver Island offered some attractive qualities, I just couldn’t picture my life without the 6am motorcycle rides on the Sea To Sky highway, or my home dropzone where I learned to pack parachutes, or those spur of the moment – “I’ve got a free morning” hikes up Shannon Falls or The Lions.

It took coming over for a friend’s wedding for me to open my gaze and consider life on the Island. I was chatting with some fellow guests, many of whom had wisened up to this very idea years before me, and moved over from Vancouver. Every point that I had was met with a Van Isle solution. Predictably and eventually, I had to throw out my hail mary – “I just didn’t want to feel so detached, I wanted to be able to get over to the mainland on my own schedule”, which was then met with the truest remark of the evening – “Once you live on the Island for a minute, you won’t care about going back”.

That was in 2016 and it’s as true today as it was then. Everything that I thought used to tie me to Vancouver had far less to do with the actual city, and so much more to do with it’s West Coast placement. All of the activities that I picked up in my 20s, the ones that shaped and molded me, are still available to me here; the biggest difference is that I fight far less traffic on my way to enjoying them. Things are no doubt different now in the way that I split my time between business and pleasure, but finding adventure will always be a defining characteristic in my life, and adventure is something that Vancouver Island has in spades.

Learn more about Jordan in the links below, and don’t forget to follow him on social media!

Website: www.jordanbecker.ca 

Facebook Page – Jordan Becker Real Estate

Instagram Page – Jordan Becker