What a Wild Year!

Looking Back at 2023

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I like to look back at New Year’s resolutions and reflect. What did I succeed in doing? In which ways could I improve? What do I want to do more or less of in the New Year? Looking back at 2023 Mountaintop Goals, I said:
‘This year I’m hoping to slow down a bit and take time to have some fun.’
You likely haven’t heard my maniacal witch laugh, but this makes me cackle. Though I had a lot of fun, it was the farthest thing from slow.

I love learning about these older Toyota engines

Motorsports

Maybe I need to be more careful about how I word my New Year’s resolutions. Call me superstitious but when I wrote; ‘Curt and I love motorsports. More specifically, we love engines.’ I didn’t realize that meant my head gaskets would calve in my Tacoma and we’d spend a week rebuilding it. We also rebuilt a friend’s Toyota, and Curt fixed one up in Langley. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I wrote that we love motorsports and engines, but it was fun nonetheless.

We brought Shibby to the local car show and had a good day watching people admire it - which was a ton of fun and rewarding to see people enjoying the hard work that we’ve put into it.

Mmmm Fireweed

Gardening, Greenhouses and Foraging

The greenhouse did even better this year. Some plants re-seeded on their own which I find exciting. Anything that persevered through winter is a hardier plant and better adapted for my climate. The seeds we started indoors survived and produced - a first on the mountain. Last January I wrote about creating an in-ground greenhouse, which hasn’t happened yet but I hope to do that in the new year.

Foraging was a highlight this summer. I explored all sorts of new and interesting mushrooms, plants, berries and roots. It was so good, that I wrote a 4 part series about the many wild edibles that I had the pleasure of exploring.

Better Tracking/Paperwork

Ha! Wishful thinking. I was hoping that Curt and I would get better at bookkeeping. That simply did not happen. Not even a little. As with many New Year’s resolutions, I thought it - then discarded it in exchange for fun, not to think of it again until just now.

Not far from the property is this abandoned mineshaft .. full of water (unfortunately it’s downhill)

Uphill Water Sources

No luck yet on finding an uphill water source. We dug weird little holes all over, to no avail. Curt got brave and went down into the strange hole surrounded by willows at the top of the property and did some digging - but never struck water. I’m still convinced that it’s there, but maybe a bit deeper than we anticipated.

In the meantime, the spring did well this year and we were able to move water in the back of a truck. It was a lot easier than in previous years and saved a lot of time. Also, my springtime water catchment experiments were a huge success. Water is slowly becoming less of a focus.

The beginning of a long day of hiking in Tofino

Hikes

Are there ever enough hikes, really? We hiked mostly in the spring, carrying backpacks and foraging as we went. In the mornings I enjoyed walking the goats while sipping my morning coffee. When in Tofino we also got to hike the Tonquin trail where the evergreen huckleberries were ripe! Though I’d like to hike more next year, I got lots in. Now that I’m thinking about it - isn’t every trip to the outhouse a mini-hike?

2023 Was Wild

Far from slow, this felt like my busiest year to date. I didn’t succeed in getting better at paperwork and have yet to find that pesky uphill water. I worked on vehicles plenty, and have foraged and gardened food stored on my shelves. Now it’s time to start writing a more carefully worded list of goals for the New Year (haha).