Blueberry Farm visitation no.2

Back at the blueberry farm Santa Clausu wasn't able to eat quite as many cakes as he'd been looking forward to because the kitchen was out of action for the first three of my days. Joanne and Richard really do have a knack of drawing interesting people towards them, and Horst who was tiling beneath the stove was one of them. Having lived in Canada for about thirty years his English was still pretty non-existent, so I had to act as translator at times. If he had just spoken German it would have been more understandable, but the splattering of English words inbetween did not make it an easy task. It always strikes me as strange that people with not much grasp of a foreign language are quite adept when it comes to the swear words. His fluency in this area led me to tiptoe around the kitchen and steer clear until beckoned by Joanne to translate.

Because Santa Clausu couldn't wait much longer for his cake I went into Ashlee's kitchen (Castle East) and baked apple cake with Elena, and when the kitchen was up and running baked oatmeal-raisin cookies. Other activities included picking apples, boxing apples, cutting strings from the blueberry bushes so that they wouldn't snap under the winter snowfall, bringing firewood onto the porch, washing dishes, sweeping, dusting and vacuuming. I shied away from walking the dogs every morning before breakfast after losing them on my first day back. Buddy followed by his puppy sidekick Polly headed off into the forest on our afternoon walk, and wouldn't return when I called them. After a while I gave up and sought help from Joanne, but still they didn't come back. I was sent to run back to the house with the direction to gather flashlights and get Richard off the phone to drive round the neighbourhood in search of the troublesome two. Joanne returned to lock the chickens up and sent me ahead. She cycled back into the wood armed with baseball bats to fend off bear attack. After much calling Polly returned but there was no sign of the old chap Buddy.

In the evening while lantern walking at the children's waldorf-inspired school Buddy returned home, but with a very bad limp as though he had broken his leg. He could scarcely walk and spent most of his time lying down. We had to do our best to stop Polly play biting with him. As the days went on there was some improvement and the talk about having him put down subsided. Hopefully he'll make it through this winter, even though they had been questioning putting him down last winter.