Chapter 61: At Time Out Farms

The first farm that I’m staying at is in the Fraser valley, close to Fort Langley, which is about an hour from Vancouver. It is called Time Out Farms, and it’s inhabitants are Diane and Willie, the hosts, four dogs, four cats, twelve horses, three ponies and an everchanging number of wwoofers.

When I arrived, there were four Germans here, but already the next day, an additional Spanish couple arrived. That means that there are a lot of people and a lot of animals around, always someone ready for a chat or a cuddle or an intense game of chase the toy mouse.

The main house is a one storey building with a large wooden deck on the back facing the horse paddocks and sunset. Diane has a large, newly renovated kitchen that I would just love to sink my teeth into – but as Diane really loves cooking, I haven’t had the opportunity yet.

I sleep on a queen size mattress on the floor of the wwoofer room – a kind of activity room with a large flat screen tv, a piano and a lot of cozy furniture  where we wwoofers usually spend a couple of hours after dinner. For the first four days of my stay here I slept in the wwoofer room together with Peter (one of the German guys), the Spanish couple, the old majestic dog Sally and three of the cats, but now that Diane and Willie have left for a one week stay at their lake cabin and the Spanish couple and Sally have moved into the master bedroom, it’s only me, Peter and the crazy cats.

But really, it doesn’t feel crowded. It’s a huge room, and I have a chest of drawers (only half filled with ALL of my stuff) with a banana plant in a huge pot on top as a kind of semi-wall between my bed and the rest of the room. It’s only when the nine months old crazy cat Leo comes and jumps on my feet or the split-peronality cat Alex comes and just lies down on my chest that I feel a little claustrophobic. But it’s cozy, too, with the purring and the softness. I like cats.

Eleven of the horses live in a row of outdoor boxes with doors that open to paddocks in the back and the remaining four in larger paddocks with sheds for shelter from the rain. Because rain they do get alot here. Due to the circulation in the northern Pacific, even the winters are mild here – but as a trade-off, the ocean currents make it rain almost every day.

There are big meadows where the horses go in the summer, a lot of cars and tractors and sheds for Willies business and three trailers, two of which are occupied. The first impression might be that Time Out Farms isn’t a very big place, but once you start looking around, there are a lot of things to discover.

Victor the rascal watching over the farm