The First Annual Tired Iron Tour
October 18, 2009
There we were, cruising along the shoulder of Highway 15, weekend traffic buzzing by, when the Massey’s engine faded and died. Burt managed to get his McCormick stopped before punting me into the traffic, but there we were, stalled. I could already hear the comments at lunch: “Nobody but Rod can foul up a three-tractor parade!”
I bailed off the tractor, seized the offending battery cable and twisted it to within an inch of its life. A touch to the starter and the thing was running again, so I gratefully remounted and rushed to catch up with Peter’s Deere.
Our leader, Peter Myers, seemed unaware of my nerve-jangling delay. Two minutes of full-throttle vibration and the Massey was back in position in the convoy and I cut back the throttle before the engine grenaded.
Burt and his grandson Rick followed in my dust, a bit slack-jawed at the burst of speed from the antique. Of course I guess in this crowd a 1947 isn’t all that old. Burt Mattice’s ride, a 1939 McCormick-Deering W30, and Peter’s 1951 Model B Deere are both so carefully groomed as to make my Masssey Harris 30 look like what it is, a trailer-puller invited to a tractor show to make the others look good.
What’s more, the Massey’s a cranky beast. A loud growl from the starter is its trademark scare tactic. Another favourite is to throw off a spark plug wire just when you need full power.
The Tired Iron Tour began when Peter finished work on Lloyd and Grant Stone’s massive old Minneapolis-Moline. Someone suggested a road trip around the township would be a fine way to introduce the western tractor to the hills of the Rideau Lakes. Word went out and various passers-by were drawn into the plan, but a family reunion took the Stones out of the tour. In the end Burt and his grandson Rick joined Peter and me on this first attempt. Grant showed up to see us off, and my pal Tony Izatt took charge of photography, deftly working his way through weekend traffic as he documented our passage.
I read somewhere that you can’t enjoy scenery while trail riding on a mountain bike because almost all of your attention is needed to control the bike. “But a tractor is plodding along down the shoulder of the highway,” you say. “There should be plenty of time to relax and enjoy the splendid autumn scenery.”
You haven’t driven between Peter Myers and Burt Mattice. Without instructions, I tried to position my tractor properly in the parade. Burt lagged way back. O.K., we leave long intervals along the highway. I did my best to fit in. But then Burt would come racing up behind me, setting off a concertina effect (not easy with a three-tractor convoy). I would speed up and then slow down to avoid collision with Peter, but then he would forge on ahead, and I had a hard time predicting where he would drive. I would check back, see Burt in the driving lane of the highway, look back ahead and there Peter would be on the shoulder. I would adjust and then Peter would be out on the lane as well, adhering to some system which made sense to the experienced, but was Greek to me.
Then they began to speed up. As illogical as it may seem, the tractors were surprisingly difficult to keep at a constant speed. My throttle boasts the “Dual Power” feature. That’s a hand throttle set up so that the cogs end at ¾ power in favour of a flat area on the throttle plate, and only provides full revolutions if I push it through this “gate” and onto the upper set of cogs, at which point the whole machine begins to feel rather like a seat on a jackhammer. Peter’s preferred speed nestled my throttle firmly on top of the gate where it was loathe to stay. The engine would run smoothly there for a couple of minutes, and then cut the power without warning. All I could do was hold the throttle in place. That left one hand for steering. The Massey is no Porsche in the steering department. It handles pretty well if I have one hand on either side of the wheel to pull in the direction I want it to go. Controlling the Massey’s directional urges with one-hand steering is less precise and a lot more tiring.
And this was all in the first half-hour. We made our way to the Gananoque turnoff by way of Jones’ Falls, joining our pit crew for lunch. On the return trip we toured Lyndhurst and enjoyed the golden maples of the Beverley hills.
It was a beautiful fall day. A pair of eagles courted high above our heads. Drivers were quite tolerant of our presence on Hwy 15, though more inclined to risky passes on the Lyndhurst road.
Next year we’ll have to invite more tractors along on the tour, design a set of instructions for driving in convoy, and perhaps reduce the cruising speed a little so that my poor Massey doesn’t have to give 110% to keep up.
Roz and Charlie discover real food
October 11, 2009
All summer when Roz came to the farm she would spend just enough time with us to be polite, and then she would disappear. Occasional searches would turn her up in the garden, sitting or lying in a row, plucking weeds from around her cherished plants. Roz had never been around a garden until she discovered Forfar.
So this year I involved her in the seed purchases and even put up with her desire to have green beans (too much work), peas (blow over in a good breeze), and beets (yuck!). Kohlrabi and butternut squash made it into the basket as well. Roz is very fit and relentless when it comes to work. Bet and I didn’t resist when Roz read the instructions on the seed packs and methodically planted the seeds in the rows I had laid out in the garden.
This task requires more than my personal capacity for patience and bending. Other years I would stuff a package of seeds into a seeding wheel, take aim down a row and walk until the seed gave out. This could occur anywhere from three feet in to halfway to the stake at the other end. So I’d start with another packet of something from the other end. The large gaps in the middle of the rows were ideal areas for melons to spread, so it usually worked out fairly well in my tangle. I also discovered that volunteer tomatoes look much less weedy than other weeds.
This year Roz showed up each week to check on the progress of her seeds. The rain wiped out the cucumbers, tomatoes and melons, but she lovingly tended the surviving root vegetables, communing for hours with her charges, plucking the weeds from their midst with a delicate, two-fingered grip.
And then came the harvests. The girl was so delighted with her first bowl of peas that I couldn’t rain on her parade. And she didn’t mind the work of picking the string beans. But the beets! Oh man, the beets! The rest of the folks at the table were raving about these bleeding red things, and Bet had shrewdly added some feta and garlic to the mix, so I ate a few slices. The horrible-taste memory of my childhood fell away in an instant and I very much enjoyed this new food.
After losing a war with the raccoons I vowed never again to grow sweet corn. But Roz had never had a corn patch, so we put in five rows. The raccoons struck on schedule, but Tony helped me build an electric fence around the patch. It worked. We saved the rest of the crop.
Roz remembered her garden: “I enjoyed it all far more than was reasonable. I don’t know why. I love picking raspberries. Maybe it has to do with pride in something you think you have created. Even though I know it’s cheaper to buy any of those foods than my time is worth, there’s something that makes me incredibly proud when I make a dish from ingredients that I’ve grown. I confess more than once I ate beets and raspberries until I made myself sick on them, especially the raspberries. But it’s because I enjoy collecting them so much.
“At Thanksgiving dinner in Ancaster when I told Papou* about my vegetables, my grandfather immediately insisted that we make the trip to his house to see his garden before the sun went down. He does so much. He gave us eggs, figs, pears, oregano. With the language barrier when I was a little kid I never really paid attention to him, but now I wonder if there is something hereditary in the pride he takes in his self-sufficiency, because I really enjoyed the garden and I have no idea why.”
Charlie and Martin’s syrup-making exploits last March continue to reverberate in the family as we work our way through their product. I asked Charlie what possessed him to take on such a project.
“The trees were there, and the stuff costs fifteen dollars a bottle. Roz makes me pancakes on Saturday morning and she kept sending me to buy the syrup.”
Of course Charlie and Martin had many commitments during the day so they did all of the work at night. Charlie didn’t see anything particularly unusual about that. “If you only have a two week season, odds are pretty good you’ll work most of the day on it.”
I asked him to explain the essential difference between maple syrup and corn syrup, the current nutritional public enemy #1. “Syrup is a lot more expensive and dangerous. You create it by boiling something over open flames. And inherently less is produced, so it’s less fattening. There’s also something exciting about making it.”
Roz is already making plans for next year. “I found myself thinking that the peas were more work than they’re worth, so I’ll plant more beans next year. Yesterday my grandmother dismissed rutabagas as cattle feed, but I found that you can make a rutabaga pie, and even a carrot pie. You cannot, however, make kohlrabi pie, so I think we can do with fewer of them next year and more carrots.”
*This is the simplest of five or six different spellings of the Greek term of endearment for grandfather, each of which someone on the Internet claims is correct.
Hunting Season
September 20, 2009
For most Canadian boys the great coming of age occurs with the driver’s permit, but for me it came a year early with my first hunting license. I remember George Curry, the licensing instructor, and his conversation with my father while he skinned three pounds of bullheads for him. “I’ll bet he’s been out around these hills with a gun ever since he could walk.” My dad nodded. “I guess he’ll be all right, then. I’ll write him a license without an exam. That’ll be $1.50 for the bullheads.”
And so I became an adult member of my clan, entitled to join Grandpa Charlie, cousin Jim, and my dad on duck hunts and legally provide meat for the table. That summer I worked at Genge’s Red and White and Drury set aside a large portion of my wages to pay for a brand new Remington 870 Wingmaster.
I don’t recall if I actually hit anything that first opening day, but over the years my success increased as I gained experience at the unique style of shooting beaver-pond hunting in Bedford Township required.
Trees hang over the ponds. The ducks drop over the trees from behind you and then glide away. Your only shot is a hurried stab at the bird before it disappears behind a dead soft maple a second or so later. You hear a little whistle of wings, and there it is! Pick it off or it’s gone!
Shooting from this position is anything but easy, but it can be done, and with practice, done well. All you need are lots of ducks, lots of shells, and a good retriever. I had Sam, a demented Chesapeake. When Sam found a duck he would retrieve it eagerly, but then he would keep going with his prize until he found an island where he could pluck it with great enjoyment.
I remember Frank Green telling Jack Dier about Sam: “The dog goes and gets the duck and then Rod has to go and get the dog.” Of course when I missed a duck, Sam would search anyway, and eventually come back to me with the look on his face of a man who had just lost his religion. If I put him on a leash he was even worse. Sam would suddenly get a chill and start to shiver. His teeth clacked when he shivered, and he could flare a flock of ducks a half mile away with his chills. Sam was a good deal worse than no dog at all, but he was my faithful hunting companion for my first nine years.
Then there was the sunny afternoon in the sugar bush of the old homestead when Bet volunteered to retrieve the ducks. A mallard soon flew by and I dumped it on the shore of the pond. Bet brought it back. A little miffed that I wasn’t paying as much attention to her as she expected, she consoled herself by petting the poor, dead duck. Then she started to scratch. I confess I had forgotten to tell her about the lice. I assured her they were harmless and would die within the hour, but I must admit it was a funny hour. That was it for Bet’s career as a retriever, but she had won my heart with her antics and we married a few years later.
Then came Jasper. Marge and Ken Bedore had given us his father, a black cocker spaniel named Smokey. Smokey wasn’t much of a hunter, largely because he had no sense of direction and kept getting lost in the woods. Jasper, on the other hand, was a natural. Once while shooting teal below Edmunds Lock, I downed two and went home with five. He had spotted two swimming cripples and brought them back, and finished the evening by tracking one I had winged into a twenty-acre corn field and bringing it back after a long search.
But Jasper was at his best flushing grouse. He was the only dog I had known who had enough sense to get on the other side of the bird and flush it back to the hunter. Mind you he only did this in the winter, after the season had ended, but it was fun to hunt with him. With Jasper I had my best season ever as a grouse hunter. I got eight. Mind you, four of those were road kills and two hit windows, but two I actually downed with birdshot. One was a hunting accident, though.
Behind Peter Myers’s shop there are some old apple trees and one afternoon Jasper put a pair of grouse up. I aimed at the one on the right, but the stock snagged in my vest and the gun went off, knocking the grouse on the left out of the air. So that left one legitimate hit for a year of grouse hunting, you ask? Yeah.
But you guys who have to realize how hard ruffed grouse are to hunt early in the season. They’re genetically programmed to avoid hawks, so a grouse never flushes except when it has a tree between itself and you. The leaves make them impossible to see. The one I actually shot somehow got confused and flew up above the canopy. I spotted it through a gap in the leaves and dumped it, the first clear shot I had had at a grouse that year.
My most memorable grouse? I was driving home from school in Carleton Place and the Honda ahead of me hit one with the tip of its antenna. The bird exploded into a cloud of feathers and dropped on the centre line of Highway 15. The driver behind him in a Mazda jammed on his brakes and started a u-turn, as did the Dodge mini-van next in line. My SUV had rear wheel drive and I could do a tighter u-turn than the other two, so I got there first, leaned out my door and picked up the bird. The other two waved and grinned, turned around again and went on their way. The grouse was delicious and I had won it with a neat bootlegger turn.
A disquieting view from Chaffey’s Locks
August 11, 2009
This evening we continued a 40-year ritual when I took my bride to The Opinicon for her birthday dinner. The grounds were as exquisite as ever. The oaks on this lot must be some of the largest in Ontario, and as well kept as those in Cataraqui Cemetery, another favourite tree-hugging destination.
But it was way too quiet around the Opinicon for August. It looks like a carefully-tended ghost town. That’s an oxymoron, I guess. Most cottages had no cars around them. Only a few spaces in the parking lot were taken. The dock was a quarter full. The dining room echoed. I’d think ten percent of the spaces were occupied. Yet the food and service were good. That’s not the cause.
At the store we asked. “Where have all of the Americans gone?” The answer lies in the exchange rate. At the moment the premium on the U.S. dollar is only 3 cents. The counter lady told me that when it drops below fifteen cents on the dollar they start cancelling. But this time some cancellations were because of lost jobs. There are a lot of desperate people out there who simply can’t come to Canada on vacation this year.
Sheltered by our trees and pensions, we’ve been cut off from the desperation of those around us so that we only notice when they are no longer there.
So another historic eating place is in danger. I wonder if local diners could help out? The fillet mignon was great, and prices are more than reasonable. Go have a meal in Chaffey’s Locks! We can’t let The Opinicon sink because of a bad year. Otherwise where would I take Bet for next year’s birthday dinner?
Notes from the other side of 60
August 10, 2009
They streamed in from Toronto, Lakefield, and Westport. The Kingston contingent had just gained a new granddaughter and couldn’t make it this year, but the rest of my classmates from Westport Public School, The Old Eights, sat down to a Saturday lunch featuring some of Newboro Lake’s finest bass fillets and abundant conversation. This was the year when we (all but me) turned sixty, so before we broke for an all-aboard tour of the property on the Ranger, we put together a few observations and yarns for the benefit of readers who have yet to reach that august plateau.
On Aging:
Ice cream is its own reward. Eat it while you can. Don’t go to a fortieth high school reunion without a large-print nametag or no one will recognize you. Accept the fact that gravity rules. What will fall will fall, be it body parts, kidney stones, hair, jowls, eyelids. So. We are still well and enjoying each other’s company, despite the failing parts. After all, in the book of one’s life, what really counts is the story, not the pictures. Buy your toys while you can still afford the insurance to use them. Don’t use your motorcycle to hunt with.
On our collective memory:
Date your pictures. Write down who is in them and what year it was. Newboro Lake writer Charlotte Gray said in a speech recently that we should date and label all of our photographs. Also print off all of your important emails so that there is a hard copy and our memories won’t just disappear.
No Old Eights lunch would be complete without a yarn about another local writer, Orville Forrester. His son Jim offered this one: “The only time I’ve ever been around explosives was when Dad dropped a stick of dynamite into the spring above our cottage to blow it out. There was a big white explosion — a fountain of quartz crystals and water mixed together. Then in typical fashion he dug a trench through the North Shore Road, ran a little plastic hose down the hill to the cottage, and we had running water.”
On change:
Somebody at IBM once said, “We’ll only need about two of these things.” Learn to type if you haven’t already done so. Don’t resist technology. It will keep you connected to the world and allow you to communicate in a pervasive way. Older people do well with Google. It’s good for the mind to use search engines. It re-ignites one’s innate sense of curiosity and provides new ways to find interesting things.
The publishing industry is in trouble, not from the recession, but from the spread of digital media. Universities are cutting costs by eliminating textbooks, offering course materials online. Newspapers find themselves competing with their own online editions. Are journalists a dying breed? One of the biggest worries publishers have with digital media is that if someone censors something, a single copy can be deleted and it’s as if the item had never existed. Our memory is lost, replaced by whatever the Winston Smith of the day has decided we should remember in its place.
Stuff is one of the worst afflictions:
“You are probably wondering how we survived the Toronto garbage strike. The pyramids they built were very convenient. You’d just go with any number of bags and hand them to someone else and they would end up in one of these mountains of garbage. You could give them everything, as long as it was double bagged, no questions asked. We had put an old washing machine out for pickup just before the strike, though. It’s still there. They sprayed the pyramids of garbage to reduce the smell and the rodents. The first day of garbage pickup was a bit ripe. The trucks smelled horrible.”
“But the Portland dump is a lovely site. Robert Redford (a red Ford pickup) and I drove to the dump with the stuff left over from my Westport yard sale. It all had to go. The staff were very nice to me and even helped unload my junk.”
Then there was the time Jim and Stephanie had to get rid of an old, 1940’s house trailer abandoned on their property after use as a goat shed and chicken coop. Their neighbour was in charge of the operation in their absence, and he enlisted the help of a backhoe and a crane to lift the thing onto a flatbed trailer for disposal. The only suitable landing bed among the hills was the township road. As the crane swung the hulk onto the trailer, the slings pulled up through the rotten floor and out tumbled dozens upon dozens of large, shiny milk snakes. Bedlam ensued. Heavy machinery operators and farmers are as jumpy as anyone else when the road is alive with angry snakes.
How to blow up a tree
August 2, 2009
The elm had been full of health when we built the house, but the blight took it and left a huge and rotting cadaver. I was afraid to cut it. As elms often do, three trunks had grown from a common stump, then together, and apart again. The disease had shorn the heavier limbs off it by the time I had worked up enough nerve to do something about it.
Over the previous years I had cut up and burned a number of large elms, so I wasn’t exactly a babe-in-the-woods when it came to felling large trees. Still, this one gave me the willies. Most trees lean, and can be tipped in that general direction with a large notch, some careful cutting, and a steel wedge. But I couldn’t tell where, if anywhere, this one wanted to fall.
A colleague, Pat Quinn, got wind of my problem. Pat is legendary for his explosive solutions to problems. “Rod, why don’t you just blow the thing up? I’ve got some dynamite the County let me have to clear beaver dams out of culverts, and it’s getting pretty old. I should use it up because it’s starting to sweat. Want me to come up on Saturday and take care of the tree?” I nodded, a little nervously. Like most of the rookies and all of the kids at Smiths Falls Collegiate, I was a bit scared of Pat. I told him I’d be ready for him on Saturday morning, though.
That afternoon I tried to cut the tree. Even with a huge notch and deep cuts all around, the tree would not tip.
Pat drove in Saturday morning. “I was a little nervous over some of the bumps on Hwy. 15 with that dynamite in the trunk. It’s sweating, and those drops on the outside of it are nitroglycerine. Be sure when you’re handling it you wear heavy gloves. Otherwise your heart will start to race like crazy from just a touch. It absorbs through the skin.”
I didn’t know if he was doing a number on me or not, so I tried to appear relaxed. Pat looked the tree over and decided to tie three sticks to the side of the trunk just to see what happened. He sent me to put in the electric cap fastened to the 200’ of wire. We would set it off by shorting the contacts across the poles of a 12v car battery.
Dutifully I carried the cap and the wire over to the tree where Pat had made a show of tying the dynamite on with his hands encased in heavy gloves. I looked back to ask him something. No Pat. That’s strange. I followed the yellow wires over a rise and found him lying behind a boulder with eyes shut and fingers in his ears.
“All right, Pat, quit foolin’ around! I’m going to hook them up now!” Feeling none too eager to bring cap to nitro, I nevertheless stuffed the cap into the end of one of the sticks. Then I did not run. I walked back to Pat’s boulder, but he made me find my own.
He fired the shot. It went “bang”. A bit of bark fell off the trunk, but that was it. A couple of Holsteins looked up, but soon lost interest.
Pat got serious. This time he jammed three sticks into a crevasse between two of the trunks and shot that. More bark flew, but the tree barely moved.
My turn. “Okay, this is what we’ll do. Over there on the other side of the house is a pile of clay. Bring over a pail-full of it while I cut a mortise into the trunk to hold the next shot.”
I fired up the saw and made a plunge cut straight into the back of the trunk. It went in all 30” of the bar’s length. I pulled it out and made three more cuts into the punky wood, until I had created a 4” mortise straight into the heart of the tree, just at the level where I had cut the wedge before. Then I hit it with the axe and wonder of all, the square plug of rotten elm popped right out.
Pat looked really apprehensive at this, but I pushed in three sticks of dynamite and a blasting cap. Then I used half a pail of clay to seal the hole.
The shot wasn’t particularly loud. It was more of a roar, but the hundred-foot tree seemed to lift slowly above the stump about four feet. Then it stopped and turned horizontal in mid-air before it did a spectacular belly flop into the neighbour’s quarry. It hit so hard most of the trunk broke up into chips.
When the dust had settled and the last few branches had found their way to earth, there really wasn’t anything to cut up and move, so Pat and I celebrated a job neatly done and he left with new respect for the power of dynamite sealed in a tree.
Landing craft/utility trailer?
June 7, 2009
No kidding, this morning in Portland I examined a 15′ aluminum landing craft/trailer. It was hitched to a full-size Mitsubishi SUV and had a 25 hp Merc mounted on the transom, which faced forward, surrounded by the trailer’s A-frame. The frame decoupled with pins, then a handy little hydraulic pump raised it to provide a radar arch, I guess, above the motor. Two seats at the stern protected fuel tanks and allowed for tiller steering. Amidships, wells allowed the wheels to rise into compartments which were then shielded, if not sealed, by sliding panels to improve the hydrodynamics of the hull. But the clincher came at the bow of the craft (back of the trailer). A wide, boiler plate aluminum ramp unclips and drops for beach landings. It’s all carefully sealed, but you can drive your lawn mower ashore and up onto hostile crabgrass in one easy motion if you haven’t been hit by artillery fire on the way in.
I stopped and gaped at this thing for quite a while. It’s Ontario-registered, and I think it might be Ontario-built. It’s an amazing bit of misplaced ingenuity, to my view.
Props and rocks
May 24, 2009
The ice on Newboro Lake took out more than docks this year. It also removed two shoal markers from Miller’s Bay. In my defense I must state that this was my first expedition out from the new slip at Newboro. The boat’s been used to coming from Chaffey’s Locks, and it can be forgiven for not quite knowing its way, yet.
Navigation on Newboro Lake is mainly a matter of perspective. Everyone knows the hidden rocks of the lake will reach up and bite you if you stray off certain rigid lines of travel, but I had given up my line of sight when I approached Miller’s Bay from the wrong direction.
I remember thinking, “Odd, I seem to recall a floating marker buoy in this bay, right about here”…CRUNCH—zzziiiiinnnnnggggggg—clunk. The engine flipped up after the impact, then dropped back into place and slowed to an idle as I shut the throttle down.
Hoping for the best, I reapplied the throttle and the boat climbed back up on to plane without much vibration, so I continued on my course, though at reduced speed.
This was nothing. A prop on a Merc 35? No problem. Dave Brown probably has a dozen of them.
Things used to be a lot different when I was skipper of the old wooden yacht, WYBMADIITY II. WYB could only be lifted out of the water on a travel lift, and the nearest one to Chaffey’s Locks is in Portland. That’s two or three locks away, a long, expensive tow. The prospect of a summer lost to delays and huge costs made me stick to the channel.
Sailors can afford to run aground just for the adventure, or to get a new perspective on the world in tidal regions. Their hulls and propellers are protected by a deep lead keel.
Actually, Wyb has a full keel, too, but it didn’t do much of a job in protecting the prop on two occasions during the twenty-five years we cruised on her.
The worst was during the first month we owned the boat. Bet and I had just brought her down Lake Ontario from Port Credit when I received a phone call inviting me to a summer course in Peterborough.
I had four days after school ended to get the boat from Smiths Falls to Peterborough. Brock Fraser, one of my students, volunteered to crew for the trip. After university Brock went on to a career with Parks Canada in British Columbia.
The cruise down the Rideau and west on Lake Ontario had gone well. We found the entrance to the Bay of Quinte and cruised merrily up the Long Reach as darkness fell. Then came the fateful decision: do we stay on the marked channel with its illuminated buoys, or pull into that well-lighted harbour off to the left and moor for the night? We stayed on the channel, found a wide spot and dropped anchor. In the morning we discovered the “harbour” was actually a large barnyard with no docking facilities. Good call, Brock. Proud of our navigation success, we headed on into Belleville for breakfast.
The problem came when, full of bacon and confidence, we pulled out of Belleville. Here was the Moira. There was the bridge across the bay. What we didn’t notice was a little green marker way out in the middle. No, we came out of Belleville and turned right. Before long we heard the juddering thump, thump, thump, bump. WYB has a long oak keel, and that rock ground about a half-inch off the bottom of it before she eventually floated free.
I’ve heard it said that powerboat skippers are limited to two emotions: fear and anger. For the rest of that morning I certainly had the fear part down. The boat still ran, though with a little vibration. I couldn’t tell how much damage I had done, but the scraping of the keel over that rock certainly hadn’t done WYB any good.
When we pulled in to Trenton I put on a mask and had a look underneath. The beautiful, 3” oak keel’s bottom was no longer pristine. I had run the old girl aground for the first time in her long career. The prop, protected by the keel, had only had the tips crushed, and I hoped it would get me to Peterborough and back.
At the end of the season, Ross Ayling sent the prop to be recast. The next time I crumpled it, on a log in the Mud Cut on the Lower Rideau, he pounded it back into shape with two large hammers. It turned that way without further accident for another twenty years. I had gained the essential attribute of the successful skipper: fear.
I hauled the fishing boat home on its trailer, unbolted the crumpled prop and took it in to Brown’s Marina in Chaffey’s for an exchange. Dave trotted off with it, leaving me time to gaze into the crystal clear water. Two beautiful splake darted into view. This had to be an omen!
Surely enough, Dave had a prop, and at a reasonable price. I was back in business after my navigation lesson.
When the oak leaves are the size of a squirrel’s ear
May 14, 2009
It’s time to hunt for morels, according to one Internet article I read this week. In Leeds that was the interval from May 5th to May 13th, and yes, there were some to be had in local forests at that time.
Another blog quoted an unnamed newspaper reporter on the subject of finding the tasty fungi. The article suggested that the season begins in mid-April in central U.S.A. and moves north at a rate of 100 miles per week. Apparently it continues until three consecutive 80-degree days occur. I love the author’s certainty, but when he suggested there was little point in hunting for morels anywhere except around the stumps of recently-dead elm trees, I decided to see if this was hot air or not. Off I went to check out elm stumps. To my surprise, I had to conclude the guy is right. I came up with three new picking sites in a morning’s search.
Many bloggers this year are gushing about huge hauls of morels. Around Forfar the harvest so far has been sparse, though steady, with quite a few small blacks, but not many of the larger commons. One heavy rain and strong southern wind encouraged quite a few commons to peek out of their leaf and grass cover, though, and that evening Bet and I found a hatful where I hadn’t seen any a few hours before. Maybe it was the diffuse evening light which made spotting easier. Common morels are very well concealed at the best of times, and the temptation after you find one is to peel away layers of leaves and grass in case there are more which have not quite emerged, but therein lies madness. Morels only grow where they want.
Because pickings have been too slim to justify the effort as food-production, I’ve decided to separate the sport of morel hunting from the enjoyment of processing food for the table. The challenge of picking the pattern of the sponge-like fungus out of the other cover on the forest floor is fun in itself. It’s like those eye-twister games they run in The Citizen, or those Where’s Waldo? books.
It’s funny how the mind gets trained to find them. It’s often one’s peripheral vision that gives the first indication of the presence of a prize. Then it takes some methodical searching to track down the culprit. It’s quite like bass fishing, actually, and I think I’m getting better at it.
A cautionary note from a woman in Burbank, California appeared in a blog. She commented that she almost died after eating a skillet-full of sautéed morels and washing them down with beer. According to her, excessive consumption of morels and alcohol can create a compound which dissolves a membrane which protects the central nervous system. She claimed that her neurologist found the antidote (saline drip with B vitamins) in an old mushroom book.
The vast majority of blog posts, however, celebrate the great meals to be had from fresh and dried morels, so I suspect their benefits outweigh the risks. It might be a good idea not to drink alcohol during the meal, though, and of course one must never eat morels raw, or allow pets to consume them.
Last year we discovered the new gas range does a great job drying halved fruits even though it does not have a pilot flame. The convection fan and the light are perfect to dry tray after tray of the fungi.
From last year’s bumper harvest Bet froze some of the dried morels in paper bags, and stored the others in similar bags in a basket on the bookshelves. The room-temperature packages preserved considerably more flavour than the frozen, dried product.
We’re still hoping for a major morel hatch, but the oak leaves are now much larger than a squirrel’s ear, so time may be running out for this year. Keep an eye on the ground around dead elms, though.
the Walnut Diary 