Penny Caldwell

One of our terrific Forums members noted that we just passed 8,000 posts on the Forum since it relaunched in January 2007. Wow, that’s a chatty group of cottagers!

Guest post from cottagelife.com Online Manager, Sharon Donaldson: Ah, those crisp fall days. Or not. How did you feel about the the weather over Thanksgiving Weekend? Instead of the traditional apple picking and pumpkin...

That’s what we like: readers who are passionate about their cottage area. For Gilbert, who rides his motorcycle around the North Bay area and beyond, that would be Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. As soon as the October issue of...

“It’s a good thing I came up,” DH says on the phone today. He tells me there are large claw marks in the back-porch screen, which he found on the ground in the woods behind the shed. We knew there had been a bear prowling...

Cottage Life’s Senior Editor Martin Zibauer became interested in solar ovens last year. This summer, he took one on holiday and he shares his experience in a guest blog: For a camping trip a few weeks ago, I brought along the...

Protecting the environment is about self-preservation, according to Robert Roach, the Canada West Foundation’s director of research. A self-confessed city slicker, he explains his observation in his “Letter from the Editor”...

A friend tells me there is a new cottage activity for teenagers: paintball. How do we feel about paintball at the cottage? Personally, I hate the idea of being hunted through the woods and then pelted, when I least expect it, with...

Is anyone else having trouble getting the dog to come home from the cottage? When we call Taylor to hop in the boat, he lies sadly at the top of the stairs to the dock. Then he slinks reluctantly to the bottom and plants himself,...

This was the summer of our content. At least, it was our first summer sans kids in 19 years. Not that we didn’t want them at the cottage. I would have loved the girls to be with us. But one had her dream job as a counsellor at...

Why you shouldn’t throw out single socks: Because their lost solemates will turn up years later under the bed in the sleeping cabin. Cleaning is a rainy-day activity for sure. But when our children were young we had more fun...