#0480 "Home, Home on Mo-Raine"

This is the Watershed Farm homestead as it appeared in the late spring of 1993 when we bought the farm so to speak. No one died though in this grand adventure. The farm house had been vacant for a few years and needed a lot of love. The only access to the home and barn was along a muddy lane beside the fence posts. The new gravel lane from the 12th Concession had not even been thought of yet.

The house was very, very rough with a stream running across the mud floor basement with dead mice and frogs and toads as well. I watched a garter snake crawl through a crack in the foundation to bask in the spring sun. The furnace ran almost all of the time except when if conked out and needed to be primed to be restarted at which time it belched black, sooty smoke. The heat exchanger in that furnace was cracked. The water pump was in the basement and was rather noisy after the lone toilet was flushed. There was no insulation in the walls and many things did not work - if they ever did. The chimneys were unsafe and needed to be removed or replaced. They were on the verge of falling into the house. We would need to put another lane into the property but I knew a local genius for that kind of work - George Craib. The family loved the challenge and by the middle of March, it was home.

My friend George Craib (a more honest or hard working man would be hard to find) offered to blend the farm into the landscape... so that we could build fresh. We had no money... but he was right and we should have lived in the barn with the raccoon too. At least for a while.

Note how small the spruce and two jack pines were back in 1993. They have grown a lot in the last several years. The title is a bit of a take on "Home, Home on the Range" which was popular song of the cowboys and cowgirls from the 1950's. My Brother and I watched all of those early cowboy shows. It seemed appropriate for me especially since the farm is at the very top of the Oak Ridges Moraine which is becoming under increasing pressures for development as Toronto surges northward.

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