A visit from Joe and Christian
November 27, 2010
My grandfather loved his axe, and throughout his long life he wielded it with skill and pride. He heated his home with wood he split himself until it made sense to put in an oil furnace. Then he retired his axe and adjusted the thermostat.
My father never thought much of oil heat because it relied upon too many outside factors and might someday let his family down in a crisis. From the time I was big enough to lift a chainsaw I worked with my dad cutting firewood for heat. Much of the time we spent together over the year was devoted to this vital task. By the seventies it made sense to switch to oil heat, but he still insisted upon having a wood stove in his living room.
But during the ice storm it wasn’t the stove that allowed Mom and Dad to stay in their home, it was the generator that electrician Les Parrott bestowed upon them on the first day of the storm. From that time on my dad cherished his 5 kw Honda and the stove sat unused.
It turns out in the last year my sister and I have separately looked into the feasibility of buying solar equipment. As peak oil approaches it just makes sense to have an alternative energy source lined up.
Then realtor Allan Earle sent me an email this week asking me to meet with his clients who would be in the area for a day, so we set up an interview. I wanted to hear what they had to say and possibly get a column out of it.
I had done some reading about Northland Energy, a solar company developing three projects in the Newboro area, and I just assumed these guys would be representatives of this company. No. Joe’s from Tenedos Energy, of Toronto and London. Christian represents JCM Capital of Toronto, which provides funding for Tenedos.
They haven’t bought any farms in the area. That’s another company again. By now I had figured out that they have nothing to do with Renewable Energy, the developer of several projects just outside Smiths Falls.
So my first question was, “Why are you interested in this area, and this property specifically?”
Joe Lasko responded, “Tenedos Energy goes out and locks down sites. JCM provides the money to do that. We identify areas which are the most suitable. This location is of interest because it offers Class 4 land, and a spot close to a transmission station with capacity available.”
Rightly or wrongly, eligibility for Feed In Tarrif funding under the Green Energy Act is contingent upon locating the solar fields on land which is not classified as Class 1, 2, or 3.
The first thing I had done after Alan Earle visited the farm a couple of weeks ago was locate a soil map. Surely enough, on the Canada Land Inventory Agricultural Capability Map (31C9) the area around Young’s Hill is coloured white, indicating Class 1, 2, or 3 land, but Young’s Hill itself is brown on the map, and thus is eligible for FIT funding, regardless of the soil’s fertility. You can find this map quite easily on the Internet.
The Green Energy Act has produced a gold rush in Ontario. The Feed In Tarrif Program has succeeded in attracting world attention and companies such as Tenedos have sprung up to take advantage of the development opportunity. Tenedos personnel branched off from Greta Energy where they had specialized in wind power installations over the last five years in Bosnia, Estonia, Russia, Germany and Vietnam.
The rush is to secure access to class 4 land and a dwindling supply of unused capacity on transmission lines.
I asked Christian Wray what his firm brings to the table. “JCM Capital helps to fill a funding gap in Canada. European capital is cheaper for us because solar has a track record in Europe and there’s just more money available. Germany and Spain have had FIT programs for a decade now. They’re familiar with solar energy and not afraid to invest in it. There are solar farms in Germany that have been operating since the sixties.
“At JCM we have deep finance experience and are able to raise financing in the international markets through a deep network of relationships in this region. We understand what makes renewable projects bankable and can help smaller developers get to this quality threshold.
“Tenedos uses polycrystalline panels, not the new thin-film panels that use less silicon. These have various environmental issues. They’re not as green as the polycrystalline panels which are a proven technology, around since the 1960’s.
“Each developer has its own philosophy: we are focused on using green, proven, financeable products in our projects.”
I fired off a much less theoretical question: “A home generator usually produces about five kilowatts of power per hour. Assuming an hour at mid-day on a sunny day in July, how many sections of solar panel would it take to match that output? How many of these would be mounted on a single pole? Per acre?”
Christian responded, “Canadian Solar on the Internet will give the specs. We use a 230 watt panel, so that would be 21 panels. Various combinations of them get put together, depending upon the engineering of the site. We work with the engineer to determine the best solution for the site.”
Joe and I branched off into an animated discussion of Hunter Thompson’s writing. He did his master’s thesis at Brock on the guy. Allan grew quite restless at this, pointing out that they had other meetings scheduled, and they’d better get under way.
So away they went. Joe and Christian, two bright young guys. Smooth salesmen or business leaders of the future? We’ll have to see.
What it really means to have a Managed Forest
October 24, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I noticed something had broken a number of the white pines we planted just before the Plowing Match back in 2007. I suspected something had knocked them over, but when I examined another tree that looked sickly, it tipped over at my barest touch, severed neatly across the trunk about half-way up. With lots of sap around the wound and evidence of insect activity, I figured some sort of weevil had hit, so because these trees are part of a managed forest under the MFTIP plan, I dashed off an email to Martin Streit, Leeds Stewardship Co-ordinator, and asked for help.
Resource technician Donna O’Connor responded to my plea, combining the visit with a survival assessment of the new seedlings planted last spring as part of the Trees Ontario program. She listened to my theory that somehow the western pine weevil had made its way east and vectored in on my trees, then suggested that this looked more like white pine blister rust, a common affliction in white pine stands in Eastern Ontario. It’s a fungus which settles in on the trunk of a pine and causes a series of little holes to appear in the bark. The holes, of course, fill with sap. Secondary insect infestations likely account for the boring through the trunk.
While there’s no real treatment for blister rust, it’s not a new problem and the stand will generally survive it. Donna will definitely report the problem to Martin for further investigation, though.
Then she moved over a couple of rows to the new seedlings the crew planted this spring. I’d kept them mowed quite carefully all summer, so they looked pretty good. She was pleased with the survival rate, which she placed at 98% in the first field she examined. It seems that pine seedlings in good soil are pretty resilient: until I bought a narrow tractor and mower, I had stubbornly tried to mow the plantation with my 5 foot Rhino. This produced several rows of seedlings just as lively as the others, but several inches shorter (oops!).
This summer the Roundup ran out long before the grass quit for the season, so I had to mow the new trees out of overwhelming vegetation a couple of times. By this time of year, though, the 5000 young pine, tamarac and hardwoods were clearly winning on the north side of the property.
Donna applied the same survey method to the five-acre walnut/pine patch on the south face of the drumlin. The survival rate for the white pine seedlings there was considerably lower, almost entirely due to my mowing habits. A walnut field must be mowed both down and across. I avoided all the pine seedlings I could with the narrow mower on the cross cuts, but the walnuts came first. To my credit, Donna admitted that the pines still standing are in excellent health. “Mind you, if you couldn’t grow trees with the climate this summer, you can’t grow trees.”
She checked the progress of the butternuts. The hundred or so viable trees from the 2006 stand are doing very well, with good growth on the trunks. Of the thirty blight-resistant stems I planted three years ago, all but two remain healthy but most are in serious need of pruning. “These butternut have excessive lateral bud growth due to twig borer attacks on the branch leaders, Rod. Butternut don’t normally have the kind of sprouting that yours are showing.”
Because these are test trees Donna suggested I contact the Butternut Lady, Rose Fleguel, for further instructions about a pruning regimen for these valuable young trees.
Back in the woodlot Donna wanted to see the cherry and red oak we planted four years ago to see how they are doing in the clearings we created for them within the canopy. Red oaks are easy to find at this time of year because they retain their dark red leaves. Most of the oaks are hanging on, but could use more sunlight, so she suggested cutting some of the tall ironwood and basswood to allow more light into the two cleared areas. The young maples in that area are fine trees and we should be able to work around them.
Donna found a group of young cherry which have grown much taller than the others. She used them to illustrate how the seedlings will grow if they get the correct amount of sunlight. Some of the little bushy ones will either need more sunlight or perhaps relocation to the front lawn. “They grow outward looking for the bits of light instead of upward. We use the term ‘umbrellaing’.”
A quick lesson on pruning the double-stems of some new spruce seedlings, and away she went to meet with another landowner. These visits from Donna O’Connor and Martin Streit give me much of the support I need to look after the property, and to my mind they are the biggest advantage of the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program.
Canine encounters
October 3, 2010
September 10, 2010:
The young coyote visited the orchard at suppertime today, sampling the fruit of every tree, but returning to pick up fallen pears several times. I moved out on the elevated deck to try for a photo and to my surprise she co-operated, then began a game of peek-a-boo with me. She stepped behind a trunk. I moved for a better angle. She looked me in the eye and stepped behind another tree, but she kept picking up windfalls throughout the game. Coyotes really like apples, but the one I’ve named Erin seems fond of pears as well. She must have a sweet tooth.
I’ve watched Erin and her two siblings play tag and hide-and-seek quite often during the summer as they grew up in the field just below the orchard. They love to dodge around the bales of hay and climb on them.
The best episode of the summer had to be the day four turkeys decided to forage in their field. I looked out to see two adult turkeys flying and two half-grown chicks running behind, chased by a young coyote. The birds could easily outdistance their foe, but there were large windrows in the field and traffic became a bit confused. At one point the coyote got ahead of one of the young turkeys, but by the time the bizarre chase passed out of sight of my window, the bird was doing its best to catch up.
Only later did Dr. Bill Barrett explain to me that this family of coyotes have decided defend their field. “Near Forfar I had sea gulls all over the place when I was raking and baling, but the in next field the coyotes came out and wouldn’t let one land. The mice in the windrows were theirs, and they weren’t going to share them. When I moved up to the field above the barn they didn’t follow, but that big gray hawk kept me company all day.”
Construction on the garage is an ordeal for the coyotes. The nail guns must be too loud for their sensitive ears because they disappear until they are sure no more loud bangs will come from the human’s den.
October 2:
Coyotes certainly can adapt. After I devoutly claimed that the nail guns had scared the coyotes away, on Friday Erin resumed her afternoon visits to the orchard while I banged away on the roof of the garage. Bet watched her languidly select each apple, return to her temporary nest, lie down and chew it up with great enjoyment.
But today took the cake for coyote sightings. As I drove out the lane on the Ranger this morning I spotted two little heads peeking out of a bush in Laxton’s fence row, 400 feet to the north. The two heads were very close together, as though the pups had lain down shoulder-to-shoulder to enjoy the show. I shut off the UV to watch. One pair of ears tracked every sound. The other was so still I became convinced it was a bunch of leaves. Eventually the still creature stood up and walked away, leaving Mobile-ears to keep watch on the noisy human.
In the afternoon I was mowing the orchard when my peripheral vision picked up Erin, seated just out of the way, clearly impatient for me to leave so that she could have her afternoon meal. I explained to her that I needed to cut the grass and she retreated a bit, but returned.
“You want an apple? Here!” And I fired an empire I had picked off a passing tree at her. She fielded it like a shortstop and wolfed it down. Next apple, same thing. Erin seemed to like this game. Over the space of five laps of the orchard she snagged the five apples I threw her way, and also four mice she found in the grass. Then she disappeared.
This evening behind the garage I was explaining to Martin the habits of the coyote family when the large male raised his head from the foliage to the west of Laxton’s bush, yawned, and resumed his nap. He seems curious to identify new voices, but very calm in his demeanour. He looks and acts very much like a middle-aged German shepherd.
October 3:
This morning produced a canine encounter which proved much more frenetic than the coyote visits. Towards the end of her walk, Bet came around the end of the barn and spotted “two beige bullets blasting down the lane from the woods. One jumped up on me and then collapsed on the ground, wiggling in excitement.”
She rolled me out of bed to deal with the crisis. I nabbed the male, Georgy, and Bet located his sister, Gillie, who was raiding the cat’s food dish. Keen on a Ranger-ride, the west highland terriers nodded eagerly at the scenery as we drove up the hill to their home.
With a population of at least four coyotes in the neighbourhood, these little bait dogs (and four turkeys) seem to be able to share the territory without ill effects. The resident coyotes don’t behave at all like the pack of four furtive strangers I saw in the quarry last fall. They were scary, but didn’t stick around.
October 12:
My mother spent the afternoon in and around the orchard, so Erin’s schedule was off today. At suppertime I noticed a larger and furrier coyote in her usual haunts, but with Erin’s characteristic markings around the muzzle. Apparently she’s experimenting with her new body after the growth spurt, because windfall apples no longer appeal to her. Now she stands up on her hind legs to pick fresh apples off the trees, often settling down on her haunches to leap straight up to snap fruit from higher branches. She seems curious to see how high she can jump, an adolescent testing her limits.
The Focus Group
July 5, 2010
Scott Davis sent me an email a couple of months ago asking me to a meeting in Almonte which had potential to be interesting. Scott’s with the Eastern Ontario Model Forest, a non-governmental organization which works as a go-between among industry, government, and woodlot owners.
Elizabeth Holmes is a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph as well as a member of the Model Forest staff. Her research concerns woodlot owners and what motivates them. This meeting of the first focus group for Elizabeth’s project involved a dozen individuals Scott rounded up. We would meet for a day while Elizabeth and Melanie took copious notes on the issues we raised in response to general questions about the provision of ecological goods and services through woodlot ownership.
Turns out the meeting was at the Union Hall in Tatlock. Many years ago two townships combined their efforts to build the hall: hence the name. It was a pleasant drive up through a well-treed landscape.
By the time the introductions were complete I realized that this would be a very informative discussion. The people in the room had unique perspectives and lots to say. The only thing they held in common (apart from availability on a week day) was a deep attachment the land they tend.
A few inherited their land. Some bought a hunting preserve and discovered its year-long appeal. Families discovered that the woodlot met their needs better than a cottage or golf course. Fleeing city concrete figured prominently in the introductions. Everyone plants trees. Maple syrup, of course, was mentioned often. Most were eager to recount their stewardship activities over the last few years or generations.
The first common concern to emerge had to do with passing our life’s work on to the next generation. Government recognizes the value of privately-held forest tracts by reducing the property taxes on managed properties. Tax breaks are also available to tree farms, though the same issue comes up: at some point the woodlot must begin to pay for itself. Otherwise the landowner or the family members who follow will be unable to keep it.
Elizabeth leaped in with the purpose of this first focus group, to define the terms of the dialogue which will emerge in the next few years between the public, government, and the land owner.
She explained that in Costa Rica, Bolivia, England, the United States and Australia, government or charitable organizations have launched programs to pay landholders for ecological goods and services. At least three similar programs are in early days in Canada.
These ecological benefits (I’m reluctant to use the acronym) are much easier to understand in a county like Bolivia where burning the forest for livestock grazing is a major environmental problem. A beehive (cost: $3.00) can protect ten hectares for a year. In-kind payments are more acceptable to landholders than cash, because with cash comes the perception of lost control of one’s land.
New York City discovered it was cheaper and easier to pay the farmers upsteam to improve the quality of the rivers than to build a new water treatment plant.
The Australian government has little trouble politically with the funding of water improvement programs, but how about in Canada? With so much of it around us, it’s hard to imagine paying for water (unless it’s in a ½ litre bottle). In Canada most ecological spending is based on guilt and goes to organizations. None of it currently gets to the provider of many of the goods and services, the farmer or woodlot owner.
Elizabeth’s study is to identify the issues and begin the dialogue for the move to recognizing and rewarding landowners and farmers for the critical role they play as environmental stewards.
Elizabeth Holmes:
The Eastern Ontario Model Forest is exploring ways to recognize the contributions that farmers and landowners make in providing ecological goods and services. Over the next year we will host a series of focus group sessions with you to identify how best to develop a workable EG&S program framework for eastern Ontario.
Here are a few questions we’ll explore with you in focus groups:
1. How might the responsibilities and costs for providing and safeguarding EG&S be shared among institutions, taxpayers, consumers and landowners?
2. What constitutes going “the extra step” towards providing EG&S, and how can that be translated into payment?
3. What types of incentive or forms of recognition are most valued by landowners?
4. What best EG&S practices and stewardship programs might we use as a base?
5. How do we generate and sustain funding in support of incentives?
6. Given the sheer complexity of ecosystems, how do we measure or verify that environmental goods and services have been provided or safeguarded?
We are very interested in the views of woodlot owners and farmers in eastern Ontario. If you’d like to participate in a focus group session, please contact Elizabeth Holmes at eholmes@eomf.on.ca or (613) 258-8415.
Getting the seeds in straight
June 6, 2010
As you approach Crosby from the east on Hwy 15 you can’t help but notice the precision lines drawn with corn in the huge expanse of land to your right. The whole field is as straight as a die, quite a piece of work.
I tracked Bob Chant down and asked who was the craftsman on the corn planter.
“Burt Mattice does our seeding for us. He sights on a tree and drives straight for it. Then he follows a line the guide on the seeder makes. We have used that 1948 John Deere to do 480 acres of seeding so far this year. I think it’s important that we farmers take pride in our work, and sometimes the old equipment is what you need to do the best job.”
I put up a bit of film on You Tube of Burt in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3YWG4x1sBA
http://picasaweb.google.com/rodcros/PlantingTheCornAtChantlandFarmsCrosby#
I hope neither Bob nor Burt gets a look at our garden before I can trim the rows up with the tiller. This year I suggested that Roz plant the root crops in the grooves left by the disk. They were generally running the right direction, and this saved a lot of tedious measurement and stringing of twine from stakes and such.
Our young friend Roz is a much better seeder than I. Addicted to tools, I can’t resist using this wheel-on-a-stick arrangement my dad tried once and discarded many years ago. It consists of a small aluminum wheel with a box attached with adjustable holes from which the seeds drop as it rotates. Most of my planting efforts result in a dense tangle of growth in the first three feet of the row, then nothing. To compensate I usually start another packet of something at the other end of the row and run back. Squash and melons go in the middle of the garden where there is ample space to spread because of the absence of other seed.
Surprisingly enough, when I look back at photos of gardens past, it seems as though things grow quite well with this system. For a few years the mild winters allowed volunteer growth of tomatoes so dense that they choked the other weeds out. For the indolent gardener the cherry tomato is definitely the weed of choice. Who can fault lush tomatoes growing all over the place?
Anyway, Roz is keen and inexhaustible. She carefully planted individual carrots and beets, using up an amazing amount of garden space with two packets of seeds.
The goal this year is to have orderly rows which can be cultivated well into the season with the 1979 Troy-Bilt ‘Horse’ I found near Peterborough. It’s a smoke-belching monster, but man, can it till! The operator’s manual for the “Horse” runs to 180 pages, including a 40-page section on how to grow a garden. The Garden Way Corporation of Troy, New York at that time took the job seriously. It’s hard to imagine this kind of effort put into a product for sale in a box store today.
The sweet corn in the lower garden refused to sprout this year until I followed Peter Myers’s suggestion and stomped the seeds down into the dry, fluffy soil so that capillary action could draw moisture up from below and allow the corn to germinate. Maybe those two rains helped, as well. The late corn is now well ahead of the early corn.
My big task this summer is mowing around 8000 new seedlings. Jane McCann’s crew popped the pine, tamarack, white oak, shagbark hickory and yellow birch in with a mechanical planter in a single day of work. Another contractor had sprayed herbicide last fall to prepare the rows for the seedlings. Leeds Stewardship Coordinator Martin Streit arranged this project through the Ontario Government’s 50 Million Trees Program, one of Mr. McGuinty’s green initiatives. The program runs for another twelve years, offering installed seedlings to landowners at very advantageous prices.
Donna O’Connor dropped by with a half-bag of white spruce and a few blight-resistant butternuts left over from another Leeds Stewardship project. These 200 trees took me four days to plant with a shovel, though they are all growing nicely now.
I have gotten a lot better with my electric sprayer after a losing some little walnut trees to overspray mishaps last year. Mom or Bet now drives the Ranger and I walk along beside with the wand in one hand and a plastic deflector in the other.
Saturday evening on the way in from a fishing trip I discovered the downside of a spring of landscaping and mowing with a tractor. As I approached my slip in Newboro an untidy patch of weeds lurked in my way. Without much thought I swung the stern of the Springbok in to chew the weeds up and blow them out into the bay. “Clunk.” Just a little clunk, nothing like the “SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!” which comes when I whack a rock with the blade of the bush hog, but it was sufficient. That little deadhead ripped a chunk out of my prop, so I had to haul the boat out for repairs. I must remember in the future not to confuse an outboard motor with a bush hog.
An encounter with the Long Gun Registry
April 24, 2010
Martin and a few other grad students have been planning a spring goose hunt for some time now, so a couple of weeks ago he showed up at the farm with two class-mates, a box of clays and a hand-held launcher, determined to practice his marksmanship before the climactic day. The three of them came back to the house, crestfallen. They couldn’t hit anything with his single shot Cooey.
I dug my Remington pump out of a cupboard in response to his hang-dog look, and away they went. They quickly ran out of shells, but progress was good.
Time passed, more clays were broken over the walnut field, and then came the email: “May I please use your gun for the goose-hunting trip? I checked the regulations and I need to have the original of the registration form with it, so could you dig it up?”
This proved a problem. Over the last twenty-five years as computer records improved I became less and less concerned about keeping track of specific pieces of paper. Whereas in 1975 looking after a single copy of an essay from a student was of critical importance, by 2004 when I cleaned out my desk I routinely required a printout of an original on the school computer with a backup or two on the student’s disk. As well, over the course of the writing process I would have looked at anywhere from three to five versions of the work.
After reading, marking, and returning well over a million sheets of paper over three decades, I wasn’t about to be bothered by a specific piece of it any more, not when a simple computer search can produce a pristine copy to everyone’s satisfaction.
This mindset no doubt governed the purge of the large filing cabinet the day I moved it from my study in our last house to its current residence in the barn, empty of all but tools. I carefully saved income tax forms and personal correspondence. Everything else went for disposal.
A search through remaining documents produced no registration sheet for long guns. Fine, I’ll call and have them send me another copy. That’s the point of a gun registry, right?
The OPP guy gave me the number, so away I went on my own wild goose chase, not nearly as pleasant as Martin’s planned expedition.
I landed in the middle of one of those telephone menus. None of the many selections had anything to do with what I needed, which was simply to ask them to print a copy of the list of guns I have registered with them or send it along by email so that Martin could legally take my shotgun into Quebec.
I punched button #5, and waited until an operator answered. First I had to convince the woman that I was not a criminal looking around for a nice cache of guns to steal. I don’t know if she ever got past that impression.
Eventually after I had given her every piece of information she requested and discovered that I had offended her by not notifying the Registry within thirty days of a change of address (even though she had somehow obtained my unlisted cell-phone number), I realized that this operator had no intention of helping me at all. This was a one-way information tap, and the only direction for the flow was away from me, towards her.
She directed me to the registry’s website to download a file and make a written application for a copy of my registration, “Which is to be kept with the gun at all times.”
Fine, lady, but that wasn’t what they said in 1995 when I was one of the first to register a firearm online. Do I need to keep a copy of a book if I have donated it to the local library?
We ended the call with her assurance that there was no way on earth I would get a registration certificate replacement within a week. “I don’t do that. You have to send down-east to have them print certificates.”
“Where are you?”
“Orillia,” I think she said.
On the website nothing applied. From the looks of their forms, having guns already registered doesn’t mean a thing if you wish them to provide a replacement copy of the certificate. Looks as though you have to go through the whole registration process again. This does not make sense.
Based upon this experience I have to conclude that the current Long Gun Registry is a dead list, poorly conceived insofar as it does not serve the needs of those who contribute to it, and the bureaucracy that I have encountered actively resists citizen interaction with the list.
I explained to Martin that he was out of luck. A day later he proudly informed me that a prof sold him an almost new Remington 870 which had been used for a research project a few years ago involving the destructive testing of snow geese.
As for the Long Gun Registry, that is one sick puppy of an organization. Put a hunter in charge of that office for a month and things would be a lot different.
An evening walk along Beverley Creek
April 12, 2010
The sun felt a little warm this afternoon for a few minutes, so I decided today would be a good time to visit the pool below the Old Mill in Delta and see if the shiners were up yet. For those of you not raised along the Rideau, “shiner” is a local name for the black crappie, a delicious panfish which runs in mid-spring below dams and locks.
In my experience the crappie run after the perch have spawned at Delta. No perch were in evidence yet, just bluegills, an occasional rock bass, and a few large smallmouth getting dibs on early spawning beds.
As I worked my way down the broad creek into Beverley Lake Park, my attention wandered to the new plantings along the shore. They’ve really been working on the trees this year. I guess you’d call it a shelter belt along the sod bank: they have little spruces, white cedars, and several different deciduous trees and shrubs in a ten-foot band along much of the creek.
On my return along a new road cut through a trimmed-down soccer field I discovered a very ambitious project: they have moved in about four dozen ten-to-twelve-foot trees with a tractor-mounted planting spade. The builders used these young trees to define a number of new lots for camping on the property and a boulevard which will soon shade the road access. They even mixed in a few spruce with the maple and ash in the planting.
At the end of the playing field I admired the rows of nannyberry and high-bush cranberry. (Those were the two shrubs I could identify.) My cranberries went into soggy soil and aren’t doing as well as these planted on the end of a soccer field. Whoever planned this area obviously knew what he or she was doing.
Over by the Bradford Pavillion I noticed 18 new floating docks, recently constructed. From the new gaps in the cattails along the bank, it looks as though they will be used to create slips for more campers along the creek. That’s the advantage of Beverley Creek as a place to keep a small boat – it’s very well sheltered from wind and waves.
With an abundance of docking on both sides of the creek and ready access to Lower Beverley Lake, Delta must be a great place to keep a small boat. Pontoon boats with upscale outboards seem to be the vessel of choice for waterfront property owners.
As I picked my way down the bank of the creek, I couldn’t help but notice the care and effort both campers and management lavish on this park. The people who live and work here obviously love the place.
The land is dominated by massive trees. Where else can you fish or stroll along a stream with 100’ pines towering above? Go a little further and you are into the crown of the deciduous forest, with oaks at least ninety feet tall meeting overhead. I looked for some time at a young black cherry which has managed to reach the top of the canopy for its share of the sunlight – an area about 4’ by 6’ – but that’s apparently enough for this magnificent young tree.
Almost no one was around at the time of my evening walk, but the place has the look of a well-regulated facility. What struck me most were the signs, or rather their scarcity. One sign seemed to be enough for each rule: “No bikes after dark.” “Scoop after your dog.” Sensible, practical rules to enable a group to live together in reasonable comfort.
The swimming area looks just fine, though of course it had little appeal to me as a fisherman on the prowl. The cottages on the site look highly desirable, and so do many of the trailers, well established on landscaped lots.
As I approached the office I noticed a series of modified farm wagons equipped with wooden railings and school bus seats, ten per vehicle. A sign on one advertised “Wagon Rides, Saturday night.” I wonder where they go and what they use to pull them?
At the time of my visit their leaves were formed but the trilliums hadn’t blossomed yet. By weekend they should be out. On a visit last year we observed that the hills within the park literally turn white when the Ontario’s official flower begins to bloom.
The shiners aren’t running yet at Delta, but it was still a lovely evening along the water. Every time I take this walk I leave for home thinking that the Lower Beverley Lake Park in Delta is the best-kept secret in Eastern Ontario tourism.
The trouble with Daphne
June 21, 2009
Daphne came into our lives when she was abandoned the day her mother gave birth to a new fawn behind the barn. The yearling white-tail was left to wander, and she seems to have fixed upon the walnut field next to the woods as her new home.
This has done no good for the seedlings. For a hundred-foot radius from Daphne’s bed, the taller seedlings have been trimmed back to the bark and the shorter walnuts have had their tops nipped off. For some reason Daphne prefers her meals served in the open, and from knee to shoulder height. The earlier leaves from a hundred young butternut trees kept her happy until the walnuts came on, but now she won’t be separated from her favourite food for long.
Take this morning, for example. In a rage yesterday I had chased her clean out of the field. I drove back this morning to see if this moment of uncharacteristic energy on my part had had any effect. No. Daphne greeted me with wide eyes and perked ears, but she didn’t stop munching on a tender walnut seedling until I drove up close to her. Then she moved away. I expected her to pick up my scent, flip the tail, snort and run away, hopefully to the other side of someone else’s woods. But no. She walked away about a hundred feet, then turned and started to work her way back toward me, bobbing her head from side to side and doing that alert-stupid thing deer are so good at.
O.k. It’s the running engine. I turned off the key, fully expecting this to produce panic and flight. Nope. On she came. About forty feet from the Ranger she suddenly took flight – until she thought better of it after a couple of leaps. Then she threw up her tail and dashed in a semi-circle around me and towards the woods. But she turned and came back to take up station on the other side of me. Obviously my vehicle and I were occupying the very spot on this earth where she most wanted to be, and would we please leave?
She made a couple of more attempts to crowd me out of her territory, jumping, stamping her feet, and letting out these little snorts before setting off on another hell-for-leather rush to the other side of the Ranger where she started up her inquiring looks again. With seven hundred walnut trees in this field, why does she particularly want to eat this one? And it’s almost all gone.
Eventually she gave up her attempt to frighten me off and stepped over the fence and behind a large tree to await my departure.
Daphne’s rapidly growing into a beautiful animal. Her tail’s still not fully-fluffed, but she’s the lovely tan colour of a fully-grown deer in summer coat now. We’d actually love to have her around if it weren’t for the way she Hoovers my walnuts. I have spent three summers planting, mowing, watering and coddling these little trees, and she mows through them at an incredible rate.
Even camping in the field won’t work if she keeps coming back to her spot to put me out. I remember two summers ago a young coyote had his bed in another field near the woods. I nearly ran over him with a riding lawn mower one morning while on my way to trim around a line of spruces. Young fellow was a very sound sleeper. The coyote pup, as well, deeply resented my intrusion into his territory, and when I later mowed the field, he spent the day circling to try and find a safe way back to his bed, his favourite bones, and a rubber chew toy.
But he was a coyote, and defined by society as a destructive varmint, even though he caught and ate mice everywhere he went and did his best to keep the squirrels and chipmunks honest. No fate is too terrible for the local coyote. Poison, traps, grayhounds, even running down with vehicles – all are acceptable. Daphne, on the other hand, is protected by law as a natural resource, even though she is cutely chewing her way through my livelihood. Now which one is the varmint?
Revolutionary in a gray suit and parka
May 30, 2009
Some of the dumber American bloggers have had a field day this week with comparisons between Michaelle Jean and Sarah Palin.
Animal rights activists are furious, Europeans are shocked and dismayed, and Canadians in the north now afford our Governor General the kind of adoration normally reserved for rock stars. So what happened, and why is the holder of a staid, ceremonial role in a dull country suddenly such a polarizing force in world opinion?
Michaelle Jean attended an Innu banquet on Baffin Island as part of her official duties. The main course consisted of several freshly killed seals lying on the floor on tarps. Jean participated in the feast. Using a traditional knife she sliced up a bit of the seal carcass, then ate a small piece of heart when it was passed to her. With great fortitude she joined her husband and a red-haired woman in tasting the samples, then commented on the quality of the food. She looked a little pale, but she held the food down and kept a coherent flow of polite words running for the camera. This was clearly no thrill ride for her, but she toughed it out because she had a point to make and she was determined to do so. She still managed to keep her outfit clean throughout the process.
What the film clip reminded me of was the scene in Ghandi where Ben Kingsley made salt from sea water in defiance of English rules, and it is to the life of Ghandi we must look for perspective on the decisive act of Michaelle Jean. Ghandi jolted the British public with acts of polite defiance in which he showed that the vaunted principles of the British Empire did not match their practices in the treatment of Indian citizens of South Africa and India.
Ghandi’s well-publicized acts of civil disobedience directly led to Indian independence, because he correctly reasoned that the Western people had no stomach for their own hypocrisy, and would do what they needed to get these disturbing images and stories off the pages of their newspapers.
Jean’s very public act of respect for the Canadian Innu community undoubtedly shocked “civilized” Europeans and even some Canadians, but when this act is placed in context alongside fellow French citizen Brigitte Bardot’s visit to the seal hunt (when she fled to find a bathroom) or even the McCartney’s more recent photo-op, it should stand out as a defining moment in the consciousness of the environmental movement.
Up until now the anti-seal hunt movement has been about pictures of famous and glamorous people on ice floes with baby seals, and disgusting images of blood on the snow. Michaelle Jean changed the game. It’s now about the taste and smell of a mouthful of seal heart, and about the feel of blubber, bone and skin, and the humility of kneeling on a tarp on a floor to participate in an ancient, life-sustaining ritual. Jean has announced to the world: “This is Canada. The seal hunt is a part of us. If you want to play in our league, you’d better get serious.”
the Walnut Diary 