Hi Jim,
I live in an old log house, built about 1930, which i have been renovating since i bought the place in 1985. Not done yet. I have a quarter-section (160 acres) of land, with about 125 acres cultivated, which a neighbour rents, mostly for hay, sometimes oats, and rarely for barley. There is a creek which flows only in the spring, with snow melt, and on which the beavers have engineered several dams, creating long, meandering ponds which ducks seem to like. Moose, white-tail and mule deer, coyotes, foxes, and numerous other critters include my land in their wanderings and foragings. My nearest neighbour is a quarter mile away.
That's not exactly what i 'do', although all the activities associated with keeping and maintaining a place in the country occupy a fair bit of my time, especially in summer. My last 'regular' job was working as a press operator in a Louisiana Pacific OSB (oriented strand board) mill in Dawson Creek. I hated shift work, so i looked for something i could sell LP that they were buying, and found that they were sending all their saw repair work out of town. I bought some equipment, fixed up an old granary into a shop, and started trying to figure out how to repair and sharpen carbide-tipped saws. That was in 1989. A year later i quit LP, and have been doing their saw work ever since.
Being self-employed also gave me more control over my time, so i pursued another interest: land use issues and the environment, particularly the use of our public forests. When the new Univ. of Northern BC opened in Prince George(about a 5 hour drive from here) in 1994, i decided to see about going back to school. Got accepted as a conditional mature student. Working on an MS in environmental studies. Commuted back and forth for several semesters. Should be finished in January '97. Don't know what i'll do with it yet. I've gotten kind of spoiled being self-employed, and don't want a regular job again.
Sorry i can't come up with any humorous anecdotes to make this more entertaining. Ah well, some have it and some don't.
Steve |
