Ice Report Continued: Frost and Little Trees
May 13, 2010
Last Friday a heavy frost blackened the leaves on many of my two-year-old walnut seedlings in a south-facing field. The mature walnuts were in their male flowering phase at that time, and I won’t know until late summer if they will bear this year. Last year a late frost killed the flowers on all but the trees on top of the hill or those sheltered by the house, so the harvest was much lower than expected. To my count this year there have been three frosty days so far in May.
The damaged foliage grows back quickly on older walnut and butternut trees. Some of last year’s seedlings died, though, either from the frost or a clumsy Roundup application.
The cool temperatures have been good for tree planting, though, and the first two weeks in the ground have been pretty good for the new batch of trees. 7700 white pine, shagbark hickory, yellow birch, white oak and tamarack seem to be doing quite well so far.
The Leeds Stewardship Council had a few extra white spruce and a handful of butternut seedlings because of a last-minute cancellation. Strenuous work, planting trees by hand. I have worked up from fifty the first day to 90 yesterday, but I had to take a three-hour break between planting sessions to achieve that number. Old and out of shape, I guess. Another solid day’s work remains. For a retiree that means the rest of the week and part of the weekend. So? The seedlings are comfortably “heeled in” in a shady part of the garden. They’ll wait.
10. Among the injured in the blowout on the Deep Horizon drill platform were a number of British Petroleum executives on hand to celebrate seven years of accident-free operation on the rig.
9. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, damaged 1300 miles of shoreline and exacted a terrible toll on the ecosystem. All economic indicators, though, listed this environmental disaster as a boon for Alaska. The field of economics does not have a way to put a value on degradation to the environment.
8. CBS News reports that 15 years after the event, of the 11,000 workers employed on the Exxon Valdez cleanup, 6000 were dead. 21 years later many Alaskans are still waiting for Exxon to pay up. British Petroleum has promised to pay for the costs of the Gulf of Mexico cleanup, but Dick Cheney got a law onto the books capping liability for oil companies at $75 million per incident. President Obama promises to raise that limit, but mid-term elections are coming with expensive campaigns to fund.
7. Dick Cheney’s deregulation of the oil industry during the Bush administration allowed oil companies to cut corners on safety. According to lawyer Mike Papantono, if the Deep Horizon oil rig had been set up off the coast of Denmark it would have been equipped with an acoustic switch for the blowout protector, a fail-safe mechanism which costs an additional half-million dollars. The year they opened this well, BP profits shot up an additional 3.9 billion dollars. They could have afforded the safety equipment, but corporations won’t do what legislators don’t require, and Big Oil has a history of spending money on politicians rather than on environmental safeguards.
6. Last week Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor spoke to reporters after flying over the oil spill:
“This isn’t Katrina. It’s not Armageddon,” Taylor said. “A lot of people are scared and I don’t think they should be.” He described the spill as a light, rainbow sheen with patches that look like chocolate milk. He did not see any traces along the Louisiana shore, near the Chandeleur Islands in Louisiana or the barrier islands in Mississippi. He said the closest he saw oil was 20 miles from the Louisiana marsh and that it was further than that away from the Chandeleur Islands and even further from the barrier islands. “It’s breaking up naturally; that’s a good thing. The fact that it’s a long way from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, that’s a great thing, because it gives it time to break up naturally,” he said. (sunherald.com/2010/05/01)
Later in the week the estimate of the oil flow rate increased five-fold, the slick reached shore, and much less was heard from Congressman Taylor.
5. Notwithstanding Rep. Taylor’s optimism, BP seems overwhelmed by the magnitude of their mess. So does the Obama administration. Yet oil companies continue to drill, and industry analysts complain that the modest drop in the price of BP stock is out of proportion to the company’s potential loss.
4. Shell has recently paid the United States Government $2 billion for licenses to join BP in drilling in the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean.
3. Paul Watson commented in a recent Toronto Star article: Stephen Harper insists his government won’t let Canada suffer an offshore oil well blowout like the one threatening the Southern U.S. coast. “As we’ve said before, the National Energy Board is clear: there is no drilling unless the environment is protected, unless workers are protected,” the prime minister told the House of Commons Monday. “That is the bottom line and this government will not tolerate the kind of situation we see in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Harper sounded as confident as Gene Taylor there.
2. The Exxon Valdez spill was a large, but finite amount of oil in a confined area on a rocky coastline. The Louisiana coastline is not sharply defined, with thousands of miles of bayous, rivers and swamps which are the nursery for much of the aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the richest seafood producing areas in the world. When they get the gusher stopped, cleanup of this area will make Alaska’s two-year effort washing rocks and birds look like a cakewalk.
1. And they have no way of knowing where the end will be. (Tom Foreman, CNN)
Tree Planting Day
April 29, 2010
Leeds County Stewardship Council contractor Jane McCann demonstrates how the mechanical tree planter works.
Jane and her crew put in about 7,500 trees today, primarily white pine, but with sizable clumps of tamarack, white oak, yellow birch and shagbark hickory as well.
The Spring Goose Hunt Report – by Martin Mallet
April 27, 2010
With no word from Martin for a couple of days after the much-anticipated expedition, I sent him a query, and the following is his response. – Rod
TO: Rod Croskery, Vanya Rohwer
FROM: Martin Mallet
RE: Goose Hunt
I picked up the car Saturday evening and could barely contain my excitement for the drive up Sunday. As both of you well know, I had been absorbed in Greater Snow Goose statistics for the past several weeks, reveling at the sheer number (over 1.4 million at the last census) and extraordinary bag limits (20 per day) associated with this species.
I was to meet up with my cousin at a sporting goods store in Quebec. It was like a cross between a Cabela’s and a Mountain Equipment Co-op store. Heaven. There I learned two things: 1) gun cleaning kits are ridiculously overpriced — $60 for a rod and a couple of brushes? and 2) no one shoots 2 ¾ inch shells anymore. I stocked up on the steel BBs we had successfully deployed at the farm this fall, and off we headed to Cap Tourmente.
We wanted to check out the site the day before our hunt to make sure we knew where to go and modulate our expectations, if need be. Let there be no doubt, snow geese are an overabundant species! We saw thousands upon thousands in a very small geographical area. Most were on the water, but we also encountered several hordes in fields and in the park proper. Here they were unafraid of humans, both on the ground, letting us approach to within 15 yards with no problems, and in the air, frequently buzzing us. It was fun to visit the preserve, wolves among the flock, mixed in with the tourists and birders who were there to take pictures and stare at the geese.
Needless to say I did not sleep well Sunday evening. By 2:30 a.m. I was wide awake, and woke up my hunting partners at 3:00. On the drive up to our hunting site we again saw thousands and thousands of snow geese sleeping on the river. When we stopped for coffee we could hear them chattering, probably deciding which poor farmer’s field to decimate that day. We were at the blinds at 4:20, ready to help our guide set up the decoys, all fifty of them. As any Google search will tell you, fifty decoys is by any account a paltry number, but we figured there were so many geese that there were bound to be some stupid ones out there. Right.
As it turns out we arrived at high tide and the blinds were flooded. We couldn’t set up the decoys at all and had to resort to pass shooting for the first few hours. Unfortunately, the long-term forecast I had consulted when booking the day was off by 24 hours: the high winds were present but the clouds and rain had been crowded out by clear skies. As a result we saw lots of high-flying geese in the early morning and few shots were taken (none reasonable).
We finally got the decoys deployed and our blinds pumped out (each individual blind is like a giant rain barrel) by around 6 a.m. We still had fourteen hours of hunt ahead of us, so a small missed opportunity in the morning didn’t seem like the end of the world.
Then we spent the day staring at geese in the distance. They either avoided the decoys or that particular field like the plague, constantly tormenting us with 100+ yard overhead flights. When the tide came down the mudflats were exposed, and we were soon treated to the spectacle of a sizable feeding flock developing about 200 yards directly ahead of us. Shooting in their general direction in an attempt to flush the group produced no response whatsoever. Our only hope seemed to be to wait until high tide, when a few of the hundred and fifty birds might be driven up to shore.
Eventually a lone runt of a goose decided it needed some friends and cautiously approached our decoys. Encouraged by the electronic goose call, it eventually settled into a leisurely descent. At about thirty yards the three of us opened fire. The result was a dead snow goose containing a mixture of BBB, BB, and Blackcloud ammunition. Another pair passed within range later on and we took down one of them as well.
Out of sheer stubbornness we stayed until 8:08 p.m., a full sixteen-hour day in the field. We slept very well last night. I came home today with the two snow geese (my partners generously offered me the group’s bag), one of which was in good enough condition to keep whole. I should also mention that, due to the wind direction, the geese we shot plummeted straight into the mudflats, which made for some pretty miserable plucking. On the drive home I hit a major snowstorm, traffic in Montreal was awful, and some idiot almost drove me off the road.
Yet, oddly, I am still happy. And now I know why snow geese are so abundant…
Martin
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.
The Final Taboo
April 19, 2010
In 1988, trailing badly in the polls to Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, Republican George H. W. Bush reluctantly allowed a line to remain in the final draft of a speech: “Read my lips: no new taxes!” That sound bite (and attack ads questioning his opponent’s sanity) won him the election, but then he was forced to impose a 10% income tax surcharge to cover the cost of the Persian Gulf War or face a bankrupt administration. In the 1992 election Bill Clinton made Bush into a one-term president by forcing him to eat his no-new-taxes pledge.
George W. Bush started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as American president. Unlike his father, “W” made no effort to pay for his foreign adventures. While traditionally governments have called for a strong commitment from the citizenry to support wars, Bush recognized the paper-thin public support for his projects and avoided seeking a visible public commitment such as a tax levy or a draft. Instead he ran deficits while pumping up military budgets and even cutting taxes. The cost of the two wars has almost hit a trillion dollars ($985 billion), and there is no plan to pay for it. It costs a million dollars per year to keep a U.S. soldier in the field and Obama recently sent 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. The fiscal abyss looms, but few dare gaze upon it.
George Sr. had been forced into this tax position by the right wing of his party, and from that point on national campaigns in North America have been more about getting elected than laying the groundwork for a successful administration. In fact, the disparity between what it takes to run a country successfully and what it takes to get elected to the position soon widened to the point that tactician Karl Rove Jr. is afforded the sort of respect in the media formerly reserved for senators who had championed important legislation. All Rove has done is get George W. Bush elected through dirty tricks.
What does this have to do with Canada? I fear the Republican’s fiscal recklessness has made its way north. In Diefenbaker’s day it was said that the party ruled which marched to the left while proclaiming it marched to the right, and claimed it would never change while adapting to every eventuality. Harper’s government seems to have adapted the rule to: “Crow about how prudent Canada is fiscally while spending like a drunken sailor.” Or perhaps it involves warning Canadians about the threat of socialism while nationalizing GM and Chrysler.
The recession of 2009 struck and stimulus funding was needed to protect the minority government from the opposition. Free market principles be damned, away went $65 billion dollars to Conservative discretionary spending projects. With the GST reduced to 5% and the $13 billion surplus from the Martin administration spent, there’s no real prospect of balancing the budget without increased revenue, but with the Bush taboo, no politician can admit to a plan to increase taxes and win an election. Look what happened to Stephane Dion with his carbon tax. Thus Jim Flaherty clings doggedly to the party line and insists that growth will take care of the deficit within five years…. or fourteen.
Most likely Canadians will face a federal election within the year. That will mean another round of attack ads. Rumour has it that the favourite Conservative attack line this time will be: “Ignatieff: we just can’t afford him.”
Why? When asked by a reporter if he would raise taxes to pay off a deficit, Ignatieff once said he couldn’t rule it out. That’s it. A $65 billion dollar Tory war chest and millions more spent on American-made signs, and airplanes to fly MPs around to hand out cheques with the Conservative logo illegally attached. But an attack ad blaming the other guy for trying to balance the budget will probably work.
The No-New-Taxes pledge – I’ll call it the Bush taboo – means that no potential leader can honestly speak to voters, because voters themselves are dishonest. They commonly vote their prejudices and their wallets, and only on rare occasions, their aspirations.
So what’s a voter to do? Reject attack ads. Say an ad comes along during a hockey game: “Stephen Harper. The way he’s handled the Guergis situation, if he were a school principal he wouldn’t last a week.” Change the channel. Don’t change your attitude toward Stephen Harper, even though you know in your heart it’s true.
And of course if a politician asks voters to think rationally about paying for our war and funding our pension plans and medical care instead of passing the problem on to the next generation, we would likely be wise to pay attention, rather than allowing the nearest bully to shout the idea down in an attack ad.
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.
What does an early spring mean?
April 4, 2010
On Good Friday Bet and I strolled out the lane and stopped at the deck under the maple tree. The wood was dry and ready, so Bet swept off the winter’s dust and I hauled a set of Adirondack chairs out of storage in the barn. There we were, sitting in a pleasant breeze on a warm day – on the second of April!
I still had sap boiling in the sugar shack, but wild leeks were up in the woods. A large yellow and black butterfly had kept me company that morning as I gathered the last, cloudy sap for a batch of dark syrup. This time it was hard to keep the honey bees out of the evaporator. Spring has come suddenly this year.
Only a pessimist of the highest order can still cling to the old in-like-a-lamb, out-like-a-lion adages about March weather. Last year I kept my snow blower on the tractor well into May, but the expected final storm did not appear.
If he were around today, I wonder if Grandpa Charlie would still wear his winter woolies until the first of June? It would have been a warm day for him on Saturday in the 80 -degree weather.
Early last week Peter Smolker’s tractor started changing the colour of a field of stubble. Bob Chant’s loader and spreader were at work on the large flat behind his barn. Yesterday I transplanted walnut seedlings all morning. Conditions were perfect, so why not?
As I write this on Easter Sunday, I think back to the many times we climbed up to Spy Rock for the sunrise church service with Reverend Mary Simpson. We would spend an hour looking over village, lake and valley, then troop down the steep hill and over to the Presbyterian Church for a pancake breakfast.
The many Easter mornings blend in my memory into a single picture of the scene, but in that image the lake is still frozen solid. There’s a bit of snow on the ground under the bushes as well, though the rocks we stood or sat on were clear. This year there’s no snow, and hardly a cube of ice to be found in the whole Rideau.
Generally an Easter news story about a young man in the river entails heroic rescue or tragic loss. Yesterday the Ottawa Citizen mentioned a teen jumping into the river to retrieve an overthrown football, only to be joined for a swim by his bikini-clad girlfriend. Ah, the bathos of climate change!
If our Arctic ordeal is shrinking to a Pennsylvania-sized inconvenience, then what are the other implications of the decline of winter in Leeds County?
The maple syrup run this year seemed poor, but by Martin and Charlie’s calculations we surpassed last year’s 1 litre-per-tap standard over five weeks. Mind you in two weeks last year we had had enough of smoke, exposure and late nights, so we announced that the run had ended and pulled the taps. This year’s increased production might have as much to do with improved shelter and equipment as actual sap flow. Apparently the experience was rewarding enough for the crew to make plans for another session, though. They left everything clean and ready for an early start next February, but there’ll be some wood to get out and split before then.
Speaking of the sap crew, the guy who cut and split the most firewood, Mark Conboy, has joined the Queen’s Biology Station as assistant manager. With a Master’s in biology and solid mechanical skills, he should be a great addition to the QUBS staff at Chaffey’s Locks. Congratulations, Mark.
On Young’s Hill it has always seemed as if black walnuts could only grow on the south side in the shelter of the maple bush, but in the last couple of years they’ve popped up everywhere the squirrels have planted them. They don’t seem to need the protection of the woods any longer.
Another interesting change has to do with the sudden emergence of a market for hazel nuts as legislators have wisely chased the peanut from North American schools. The company that produces Nutella is begging Canadian farmers to plant vast acreage to help meet the demand. The bushes take only three years to mature, but the problem is the blight that wipes them out. Disease and insect pests may force other nut and fruit production northward as conditions deteriorate in the south because of climate change.
As it gets hotter, the risk of fire increases. A grass fire near Hamilton this week spread into a junk yard and burned through over a hundred wrecked cars as well as the field where it had started. As we worked in the sugar bush in the last couple of weeks we noticed how quickly things dried out, and also the amount of flammable material on the forest floor. Even though it’s only April we must take great care with vehicles and open flames in areas where fuel for a wildfire is available. Check the spark arrestors on your ATVs, lads. You don’t want to burn out your favourite trail.
Five years ago the prospect of a sugar maple on the shore of James Bay was science fiction. With a spring like this one, it doesn’t seem like such a dumb idea. The old philosophical question emerges: If you were an oak with a life expectancy of 400 years, where would you want to grow?
“You have a most civilized place to live.”
March 21, 2010
“You have a most civilized place to live.” Taking into account that he had to stand in the bed of the Ranger with three others and cling to the roll bar as the vehicle lurched through mud holes, and that lunch was a venison burger fried on a corner of the maple syrup arch, I was a little surprised when Dr. Armand Leroi made this comment to Bet and me.
On a brief visit to Kingston, Armand joined Saturday’s crew at the sugar shack along with friend and colleague, Dr. Adam Chippindale of the Queen’s Biology Department. They came to see what had been dragging so many of Adam’s students out of the lab and up Hwy 15 lately. Fourth-year biology students each year get to pick a guest lecturer for their final class. They selected Dr. Leroi, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the Imperial College in London, England. His BBC4 science programs* no doubt influenced their choice.
At least those sallow moths in the sap buckets received some high-powered attention on the weekend. For an album click here. Photos:
Earlier in the week Matthew Swift arrived. Matt is a sous chef at Red’s Bistro, a restaurant in the financial district of Toronto, and has a keen interest in new approaches to local foods. He joined friend Don Kerstens, one of the sap crew, to look at the setup and taste our Canada tea.
With a hot fire rolling under the finishing pan, Martin Mallet was in his element tracking the boil until the syrup hit the proper sugar concentration. “The Brix is at 66. It’s time to take it off.” No more endless speculation and arguments: that eBay refractometer was worth the money. Martin and Matt bottled 8 litres of syrup.
Things had gone normally until they took the small pan with the syrup off the arch. Then the three foodies kept gazing at that expanse of bare, hot steel. The urge to cook had struck. In his business Don Kerstens (selectfinefoods.ca) supplies specialized meat cuts to Toronto restaurants. He happened to have some premium pork chops frozen in a cooler. Into the boiling water went the vacuum-packed chops. Too hot? Martin added two pails of cold water so as not to boil them during the defrost.
A wipe of the flat surface with a wet towel and the arch was ready for cooking. Chef Matt seasoned the “pan” by melting the fatty edges of the chops into the steel, producing a black, smooth surface. A little salad oil, and on went the chops. Matt kept feeling them with his finger, turning them frequently. Then he took them off. Martin advanced with his thermometer. “68 degrees F in the middle. They’re not cooked yet.” Unbothered, Matt waited and chatted with me about how to get syrup into the chops without burning them. After a couple of minutes he put the chops back on the stove and finished them. He later told me he likes to let pork chops rest a bit halfway through. Then he poured a bit of syrup onto each, turned them, and used his Swiss army knife to slice them into thin strips on the tray. We ate with our fingers. They were delicious: excellent meat, cooked by an expert, with very little salt and pepper added and a light maple flavour.
Red’s Bistro staff take pride in winning cooking competitions in the Toronto area with innovative entrees and appetizers. I doubt if it will be long before some combination of maple syrup and Berkshire pork makes its way onto the menu in this high-end restaurant.
Next day I tried Matt’s technique to fry a couple of Don’s chops. Even with my limited skills they were quite delightful. Premium pork may well be worth the cost, and the end of a maple syrup arch trumps a gas barbecue as a cooking surface every time.
But the highlight of the week had to be a conversation with four-year-old Liam Chippindale, visiting the farm with his father and brother. He sat down with me and explained in amazing detail how his home’s heating system works. He combined acute observation and anecdote with a fertile imagination to fill in the missing parts, but basically there’s an ice volcano outside which runs water in to provide hot air through a floor register in his room and a wall register in his brother’s. Neat kid. He invited me to his birthday party in thirty days – at an amusement park.
*You can easily find a number of Dr. Armand Leroi’s programs on You Tube: The Evolution of Music, What Makes Us Human, What Darwin Didn’t Know, Aristotle’s Lagoon. Start with What Makes Us Human.
the Walnut Diary 