Trees

Apple tree in fog

"Trees, trees, stern majesties, I rely upon you, place my reliance on you," sings Veda Hille on her album This Riot Life.  She hails from Vancouver and the trees I imagine she is referring to are massive mountain pines and firs.  The trees of eastern Ontario are different but equally impressive for their colour.  I am from Alberta where the trees are fewer and further between.  Maples still remind me that I am not from here; I didn't grow up with them and they still feel foreign.

The central fixture of our treeline is the apple tree that is set apart from the others, beside the road midway between the highway and the house.   It is healthy and full-figured.  The apples on this tree are good - they are sweet and abundant.  Thus far we have managed a good batch of hard cider, a few yogurt tubs worth of apple chips and a few jars of sauce.  We have saved about a bushel of fresh apples that will relieve our fruit budget for a while.  

XB picking apples, climbing the apple tree with cat-like agility

Frontenac is promoting its eco-tourism appeal:  fishing, hiking, ornithology, tree-gazing in fall...and most Frontenacians are pleased with the fact that this has not brought hordes of tourist buses.  There are few resorts, though there is a handful of bed and breakfasts.  North Frontenac is designated a Dark Sky Preserve.  It has a low population and is far enough away from any urban area that its skies keep pretty much unblemished.  South Fontenac is close to Kingston and the southern edge of the sky is generally glowing slightly, but the stars are still quite spectacular here.

Back to trees.  They are valuable in many ways:  they retain moisture, produce oxygen...okay, I am not revealing anything groundbreaking.  They are a good way to produce mushrooms and we will be growing some Shiitake and Oyster next season.  This invloves drilling holes in the logs, filling with spores, and then waiting and watching, ensuring certain moisture and shade conditions remain stable.  There aren't a lot of farms around that are devoting their energies to this, but mushrooms, while not as beloved in Canada as they might be in parts of Europe and Asia, are loved greatly by those who do love them.  I would recommend "Know your Mushrooms" to get a taste of what true enthusiasts look and sound like (they are interesting) and what mushrooms are really like, beneath the superficial experience most of us have with them (they are interesting).  I learned that they are the oldest living organisms recorded in the history of the earth, and they are cleansing:  it is said that oyster mushrooms can clean oil spills, and make all the toxic waste disappear without a trace.  And they are nutritious too.  And, they are delectable.  And underneath the ground, they are everywhere.

A section of the woodlot

Chickens II

The chickens we have are a variety called White Rock, which are probably the type most commonly raised and sold for meat.  They are designed to mature in 10 weeks.  Ours quickly outgrew their cardboard box and are now in a plywood contraption in our garage, with high ceilings and a pine-shaving strewn floor.  They have a branch in the middle on which to perch and are brought outdoors on these Indian summer afternoons to learn how to peck the earth for supplementary food and to learn to be real, old-fashioned chickens.

As a child, I was a renovation assistant to my dad.  I witnessed framing, flooring, drywalling, the installation of exterior siding and I held one end of the tape measure a fair bit.  It made for long and cumbersome Saturday afternoons and until last week, the thought of taking on a home renovation project of my own would have made me sick to my stomach.  I don't like hardware stores and I don't enjoy handy work.  However, a mixture of the urgency of getting the chickens into a bigger space that could still be temperature controlled (they are not ready for the barn), along with the sense that maybe I could actually pull something like this off (given that we'd managed to spruce up the barn quite nicely with some scrap wood) made for a sort of exciting challenge.

We rented a U-Haul, since, unlike proper farmers, we don't have a commercial grade vehicle of our own, and went to Home Depot.  We piled two-by-fours onto a trolley until it was full and then got another for a door and some plywood.  I brought the truck over to the loading dock, we loaded it up, went back in for a circular saw and a ladder, brought it out, went back in for some insulation and gyprock for the cold storage room in the basement, which will be the next project.  We ended up at the same cashier on each trip through and she gave us a bemused smile the third time.  We don't look like construction contractors (let alone farmers); most often people assume we are students at Queens.

A day's hard work paid off and while the doorway isn't exactly straight and some of the framing is a touch off, the coop looks decent and was satisfying to build.

Because farm supplies can be costly (I had a vertiginous feeling going through the checkout again and again, the tab soaring) we have been experimenting with rural farm auctions and garage sales. The people who operate and attend most of these are rural to the bone (lots of camouflage clothing) and are likely a bit surprised to see two young Queens students stopping in.  One has to sift through piles upon piles of junk to find anything worth buying (or at actions, one has to sit through hours of bidding on thing like old dolls and candy dishes) but there are good finds if one looks long enough.  XB managed to find a chainsaw in good working order at a country yard sale for $10.  A good new chainsaw starts at around $200 so I was pleased with the find.  Meanwhile, at the auction I attended that same morning, a lightly used Stihl chainsaw sold for well above its retail value.  When people get into a bidding war, the adrenaline starts surging and reason slips.  Beware.

I am not comfortable with sharp power tools, but after using the circular saw for the chicken coop project and coming out of it uninjured, I will give the chainsaw a try.  Winter is coming.

Chickens

We have baby chickens that arrived last week and are sitting comfortably under a heat lamp, in a cardboard box that is set up as what would, in the world of chickens, amount to a luxury spa. These birds are pampered. As first time chicken minders, we are vigilant. We check on them every few hours to make sure their water containers are topped up. We keep them well fed with organic feed and sand (it helps them digest) and we keep their room as clean as is humanly possible (they are worse than the grossest rock band in that regard). We've even been bringing the box out in the afternoon so that they get some real sun and fresh air (and to give the heat lamp some respite).

Fall is a challenging time to start chickens, especially with our fickle weather patters. Within a span of three days last week, we went from heat advisories to frost advisories. A month from now, the birds will be living in a barn in the stall next to the pigs. They will not be crowded into a warehouse like those in bigger commercial chickens operations. But they will have to be tough birds.

As we tend to our domesticated animals there are all kinds of wildlife living their wild lives. The land we have has not been sprayed with chemicals in years, perhaps never has been. We have unimproved hay fields and woodland and a lot of brush. Every step on a walk through the grass seems to summon a frog's leap. The other day I was walking along a path and came upon a grass snake with half a frog sticking out of its mouth. The rest was bulging in his neck as he slowly swallowed it.

There are also lot of wasps and hornets around. Frogs and snakes don't bother me, but furry yellow insects that fly and sting and don't even pollinate do.  Recently, I woke up in the night, to a sound I couldn't identify. It was the faint whir of the traffic on the highway which I couldn't help mistake, in my semi-conscious state, for the whir of hornets presumably nesting outside the window. I spent the next while wishing they would disappear. Go away! I thought, as I drifted back into a fitful sleep.

It has been almost a month since the move. Among farmers in this area, I don't hear talk about Toronto so much as southwestern Ontario, as in, "well, we couldn't compete with the greenhouse operations in southwestern Ontario" or "we just don't have the kinds of soil they have in southwestern Ontario (or population density or climate, etc.)."  I, however, am far more aware of the difference between rural and urban life, Toronto and South Frontenac Township.  At times I get nostalgic for the bustle of the streets, a workplace with friendly kitchen banter and the constancy of social interaction that the city offers. I got an email from my old TO badminton club informing us all that the club was full and that it would be a busy fall for Wednesday night play. It got me itching to stop in, see the gang, play a few matches before walking back to the subway.

Pigs

We bought two weaner pigs last week from a permaculturalist a few kilometres away. When the two were culled from the herd of a dozen or so, the squeal was deafening. The first couple of days they darted when I came near them and looked at me with what appeared to be resentment. Pigs are smart, sensitive animals, but not in the same ways that dogs are. They do not respond to a call and they don't show emotion. The pigs like to dig, eat, sleep and oink.  Their intelligence, in my experience, manifests in demonstrations of rebellion.

The third day we had them, we came home from a farm auction after having been gone a few hours and found the door to their pen wide open. They were nowhere in sight. The rain had started as I hurried around the perimeter of our property, looking and listening, treading through prickly brush at some points, exploring spots I didn't think I would ever bother exploring. I ended up back at the house where XB was waiting, having given up searching. We visited our neighbour, an older lady who was friendly and who said she hadn't seen any pigs, and hadn't noticed any unusual cars driving up (we thought they might have been stolen). In fact, bewildered by how the door could have been opened, we became so sure they had been swiped, that we called a friend for advice on what to do in cases of animal theft. He didn't pick up, nor did the staff at the feed store. We thought about reporting it to the police but decided to hold off, thank God.

While we stood in the kitchen with no appetite, chopping vegetables for lunch, XB noticed something odd. “That wasp nest that was on the back deck, it's gone.” We couldn't imagine that it would have blown away, given that it was a calm day, or that the wasps would have flown away with their next. Nor could we imagine that anyone would want to steal two pigs and a wasp nest. It was then that we saw two piglets dart across the path from one patch of woods to another.

These pigs can run, but they get distracted every few dozen feet with roots they can't resist digging up.  We scrambled out and XB went in on their left and I from behind, both of us a rake in hand. We found them quickly and began our effort to herd them back the several hundred metres to their pen, a task that would only work if the two of us worked out a strategy. When they walked towards me, I backed off a bit so they wouldn't dart past. Then XB would come behind them and steer them towards the edge of the forest and then our roles would switch. We carried on with this pattern until after a half hour they were back inside. Along the way, they would repeatedly run off into another patch of woods, delaying the inevitable capture.  Whenever they did this, they would first huddle together, as if to discuss their own footballesque play, and then would wander on but in a more skittish fashion.  Then they would dart in different directions, as if to fake us out.  Eventually they would find a safe spot in a patch of bramble and we would have to wait them out.  They are rebellious.  My assumption is they ate the wasp nest on their jaunt, just to be extra cheeky.

Since then we have been pasturing them at mealtime. They eat their hog mix and apples that fall from our tree and dig the earth while we watch. It's a bit like the supervised hour that inmates get outside. They remain unnamed and, as cute as they are, I have not become so attached to them that I won't be able to bear their being hauled away for slaughter. They don't have idiosyncrasies that I can detect that would endear me to them. But I hated the thought that they had been kidnapped or hit by a car or shot by a neighbor who saw them digging up their garden. Though they are just pigs that eat, sleep and escape when they can, they do bring out a protective impulse. Furthermore, they are our first attempt at raising farm animals, and I would be a boost of confidence to be able to raise them right and see two healthily fattened pigs a few months from now.

Leaving TO, Becoming Rural Folk

We loaded up a 24-foot Uhaul truck and, with it filled to the brim, bolted to the 401 in hopes that we would beat rush hour. We got caught up in accident traffic just the same and that had us lumbering along for the first hour of the drive before the frenzied pace began, the truck swaying in the current of passing semis, until soon we reached the more leisurely stretch toward Frontenac. We got in around sunset, unloaded what we could until sometime around midnight, at which point we called it a day.

We woke up the next morning rural folk. The sunrises are generally beautiful here.  But we did not take a leisurely breakfast on the porch that first morning. We got back to unpacking. And hammering nails, and calling farmers and feed dealers and custom ploughers.

After a long second day of unloading countless boxes, the burden of a hectic urban routine fading, the stillness struck me and a fear set in. It was mostly neuroses, but it went deep. The question “What on earth am I doing?” which I'd asked myself in a flippant tone many times before the move, suddenly weighed a ton. Bell (the phone company) revealed, after bouncing us from department to department and giving contradictory information, that, though they had confirmed weeks before that they would be installing our internet connection at the new residence, it turned out they didn't actually offer service where we were now.

I read Thomas Pollack's War in the Country recently, which reveals much about the divisions between rural and urban Canada and the fact that the “country” is increasingly forgotten because it is seen as dying and irrelevant. This news furthered the revelation that only cities matter (I should point out that since then I have been recommended a few providers that are quite competitive and widely used where I am. It's not really out of range of the internet.)

But the fear of having grossly miscalculated on my life change still creeps in every day. For a little while that evening, I felt a dread at the image of myself 10 years from now – a sloppy yokel with junk piling up in the yard. 

Despite the general anxiety of living in a new place (which, in my experience, tends to be full of exaggeration and worst-case scenario creation) we are in a community that seems to value community. While we are in a politically conservative rural riding, where anti-government and anti-urban sentiment are not uncommon, and a smattering of xenophobia and homophobia exists, people here are mostly friendly, approachable and laid-back. There is a spirit of the back-to-the-lander movement, though nobody likes that term except me.

It's a place where, if you go up and knock on a stranger's door because someone told you she would be a good resource for learning about raising sheep, you will be greeted with only mild caution and then within seconds a warm conversation will have begun and before you know it, she will have given an hour of her time to explain her methods and happily put you in touch with several friends who can help further. And then the friends recommend more contacts. And suddenly you have learned a great deal about sheep and you sense that soon enough you will have landed a small herd because someone will connect you to a breeder who has none at the moment but who knows someone who does and will be happy to connect you.

I am encouraged to see signs of community. In the evenings, of course, I am reminded of the fact that I'm far from the distractions of the city.  I'm far from grocery stores, coffee shops, pubs, neon. The traffic zips by on the highway a few hundred metres away in one long strand and otherwise, it is quiet.

Harvest Thickens

We had another successful visit over the August long weekend:  a couple dozen cherry tomatoes; the usual abundance of lettuce; herbs; a couple of Brandy Wine tomatoes that have ripened; a pepper and a zucchini.

Our eating habits lend themselves well to a local diet so a harvest like this is not just a pittance in our food consumption. Last night, we made a dish of cooked lettuce and another of eggs and tomatoes and basil, with rice.  Now.  It can be tiresome hearing people insist that organic food just tastes better, more natural, more wholesome.  I've tended to brush this kind of talk off.  I've assumed that it was wishful thinking and that while fresh pesticide-free foods would be much healthier, they wouldn't necessarily taste any better than factory farmed vegetables.  But the tomato we used was infinitely better than any store-bought tomato I've used ever has been.  I don't expect that every time I eat produce I've grown myself that I will have this kind of reaction, but this is one that will stick.  For me, it is a new benchmark for what simple healthy food can taste like.

Without those moments, it might be easy to lose interest, especially when the imperative to grow my own food for survival isn't there, what with grocery stores packed full of food.  My grandparents ranched near Waterton, Alberta, raising sheep and growing vegetables and hay.  I've been told that my grandmother would get weary over the course of the winter, having to cook boiled cabbage and lamb for the hundredth time in a row.

The other image that comes to mind when I think of food scarcity is from The 100 Mile Diet, in which the authors find themselves at the end of a long weekend, out at their northern B.C. retreat, with no grocery store around and only a head of cabbage.  With this head of cabbage they struggle to entertain their guests, serving a fairly paltry locavore supper.

I'm not gunning for a subsistence life, but I would also like to be more involved in my own food production, to know the contents of my food beyond the country of origin label.

First Lettuce

We arrived at the old plot after a bout of rainy weather and not only did we have far fewer weeds than our neighbours, we had a few fledgling tomatoes…and a few basil plants with four or five storeys of leaves…and some healthy lettuce.  I took out the video camera and began filming but only got as far as a couple of seconds of XB telling me he was still unimpressed with the progress, as he dug up weeds around the carrot patch, when the battery died.  I wanted to get a shot of us in our first harvest, but I’ll just have to remember the not overwhelming but genuine satisfaction it brought to pick the leaves in the semi-darkness.  

There was a lot to choose from; we barely made a dent in it.  I wondered though, if we were selling it, how perfect would it have to look?  How much would we have to grow to make money?  How do you wrestle for market share, when he majority of the population wants cheap food and doesn't care about pesticides as long as Health Canada hasn't banned them, and the few who want high quality produce have plenty of savvy, small-scale farmers with clever farm names to choose from?

We are slowly approaching that leap from the casual excitement for the fact that anything has produced to the more preoccupied condition of wondering how to take the produce that has produced because it had to, and make it marketable to a public that expects organic local food to be charming and wholesome and sure of itself.  There is pressure on farmers, especially those who show their faces and whose products end up on a table in a market, the famer and the product exposed to the browsing public. 

I have years of open stage experience, where I’ve stood up and played my own songs to strangers.  I’ve had nights where people have given me genuine compliments and others where the crowd has smiled and clapped and looked at me uncomfortably.   I expect selling vegetables has some parallels.