Well, we never forget our first winter here in Ontario.
Coming from the Netherlands where they give a code red for 2 inches of snow already. And maybe have 5 days with snow altogether it was quite a challenge to stay positive during our first winter here.
November and December were not too bad actually. The first serious snow came when we returned home from the Christmas eve service at the church we attended. With 5 inches of snow in our van without winter tires and passing a car in the ditch, it was a pretty scary drive home.
Christmas day was our first serious white Christmas we had. I send a little video to my parents with a view from our house at the beautiful wintery scene outside while dreaming of a white Christmas played in the background. Not a good idea because our parents got pretty emotional about that. It was, of course, our first Christmas away from our family.
But then Christmas ends and it is back to work. But no worries we had a lawnmower with a snowblower, so we’re good. Jan started very optimistically clearing a path to the barn. After 5 minutes he came in to put on more clothes and ski goggles and went on blowing snow. The farther he went towards the farm buildings the less I saw of him. And soon the snow was higher than the little lawnmower. So that is what they call snowdrifts and they are much deeper then the amount they tell you came down that day. Lesson learned. It didn’t take long to make the decision to buy a real tractor with a real snowblower. We had no time to spend half a day clearing a path to the farm.
We also discovered that the weather network and other helpful weather info is very important to consult before you leave the house on a winters day. In the morning beautiful sunny weather but in the afternoon snow squalls with whiteouts. And we learned a lot of weather-related forms of precipitation like sleet, windchill, flurries, squalls and black ice and may more.
We decided that if winter here is last at least 4 months we might as well have fun too. So we went to the Blue Mountains ski area and signed the 4 of us up for ski lessons. That was a good decision. We had many years of fun downhill skiing at Blue as a family.
Grey Highlands is in our opinion the perfect balance between work and relaxation. And we love all the outdoor activities that are possible here in the winter like Snowshoeing, skating,skiing and tobogganing.
Jan and Silvia