Alex Carrick’s Blog

My wife and I had kind of a unique wedding. We sort of eloped, but then we also bought the farm on the same day –  literally, not figuratively. And our only child at the time, Tom, aged 12, was my best man.

Donna and I were due to get married, so we arranged for a service in Midland, Ontario in the middle of summer. We didn’t tell our plans to anyone, neither friends nor family – with the exception of our parents and siblings the day before.

We knew that if we invited even one person beyond the three of us, the ripple effects would demand we invite a whole host of people and that wasn’t what we wanted.

At the same time, we’d been looking at property in the area and settled on a 63-acre former Christmas tree farm. The deal came through on the same day as our wedding.

That’s why we spent part of our wedding-day afternoon in a lawyer’s office, the real estate agent’s office and a donut shop, discussing and finalizing all the details of our property transaction.

That made us the owners of 13,000 scotch pine. There was already a contract in place for a last harvest, at no financial gain to us and over the intervening years these trees have just grown bigger and scruffier.

But that doesn’t take away from how beautiful the farm is when you walk around it.

However, scotch pine in North America aren’t substantial enough to be used for lumber. It’s an oddity of nature, having to do with soil conditions and quality of light, that scotch pine in Europe, their place of origin, are much hardier.

While we’re basically content with leaving nature as is, I did recently learn our trees could be fed through a wood chipper and turned into wallboard. Donna and I joke that while the rest of the world is following gold and silver prices, she and I are tracking returns on particle board.

We do, indeed, lead glamorous lives.

How Donna and I met is also an interesting story. It was at work, but under special circumstances.

I don’t know how other couples are managing to get together these days. It often seems to be through dating services or the Internet. But this can lead to some very strange encounters.

There are a lot of crazy people out there. We just thank our lucky stars that by the most extraordinary of circumstances, Donna and I were stalking each other.

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If you have children, you’ll be sure to recognize some of the amusing dilemmas presented in High Finance, Carrick Family Style.

Or, if you wish to jump forward 20 years and see how we’re “making out” now, there’s My Wife and I Argue over our Travel Plans (Hey, I’m not Cheap, but…).

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For my first book, “Two Scoops” Is Just Right, please click here for the paperback version and here for the Kindle e-book version.

For the sequel, “Three Scoops” Is A Blast! (with the award-winning “Size of the Skip”) click here for paperback and here for Kindle.

For “Four Scoops” Is Over The Top (containing Hemingway short-listed “Caboose Follies”) click here for paperback and here for Kindle.

And finally, for my latest book, “Five Scoops” Is An Addiction!, please click here for the paperback and here for the Kindle digital version.

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