The Newboro Ice-Fishing Derby
February 14, 2010
UPDATE, 10 February, 2011:
According to The Review Mirror, the derby is on this weekend, but cars and trucks will not be allowed on the lake due to the dangerous ice conditions. Organizer Doug Burtch encourages entrants to walk or use their ATV or snowmobile to get to their favourite spots, though.
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Lots of ice out there for the Newboro Ice-fishing Derby today. The turnout was very good, and the parking lot around the weigh-in station off McCaskill’s Island would put a local supermarket’s to shame. No sign of movement from the ice, though.
The fish actually bit this morning, with the winning northern pike weighed in at about five and a half pounds, if memory serves. A few good black crappie and perch came in, as well. To save space on the leader board, Doug Burtch, the organizer, will only write an entry up if it exceeds the weight of the current entry in that category. Thus my fishing buddy Tony’s 2 lb 13 ounce pike, like many others, failed to get onto the board.
The social part of the event centred around Mrs. Helen Burtch dishing out a pickup-truck-load of door prizes from local contributors. From a large barbecue a guy named Andre served a variety of hot dogs, chili, beef stew and such. Spectators and diners alike gathered downwind to enjoy the aromas. A charming young border collie named Molly had pulled her master’s sled to the festivities, then held court while the weigh-in ceremony revolved around her.
Not a bad morning, all around. Here’s hoping we get enough snow this week to allow the dogsled races to run next weekend.
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.
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.
Stone House Reno: 1. Notes from the rubble
April 5, 2009
It’s been nearly five years, but it seems like yesterday that we started to empty out the old stone house attached to my parents’ home on Young’s Hill. The plan was to renovate the space and for Bet and me to move to the farm when the project was complete. We vowed to build it all, floors, doors, windows, cabinets, but first we had to clear away thirty years of accumulated stuff which filled the building.
After a summer of trips to the dump with overloaded trailers, we looked at the dark, empty house and decided to make every effort to bring natural light into the building. Partitions had to go. We settled upon a cluster of cabinets and a bathroom around the central stairwell, and the rest would be open on the main floor.
In the early seventies my dad and I had replaced the staircase, a window and a few walls when my sister moved into the house. The previous renovation had come in 1953 in the aftermath of Hurricane Hazel. The Youngs had done extensive work to the plaster, dormers and upstairs windows at that time.
According to the evidence, though, the most significant event in the life of the house had occurred long ago, during the time of square nails. At some point a major fire burned through the floors and charred half of the timbers in the house, as well as darkening the stone behind the plaster over a wide expanse of the southern wall. Apparently the fire put itself out, because wide tongue-and-groove boards were quickly nailed into place over the scorched timbers, the hearth was torn out of the west wall (leaving a huge cellar-to-attic gap behind the plaster), and new brick chimneys (and stoves, I guess) took over the heating duties.
Not until 1854 did Ontario laws change and allow a full second story to go untaxed, so upstairs the late 1830’s stone cottage had a roof line sloping down to within three feet of the floor. What’s worse, the ceilings drooped downward toward the centre of the house, increasing the claustrophobic effect.
The upstairs was also a warren of little rooms, a useless hallway, and decayed, 1950’s casement windows. We decided to gut it all, raise the ceilings with new joists, put in insulation and a good vapour barrier, and then devise a new floor and heating plan to make better use of the space.
When we started in the basement you could have thrown a cat through one hole in the northwestern corner. The cement truck operator showed me how to run concrete into the forms and then build a wooden funnel so that the wall would fill right up to the stones above the gap. It had never occurred to me that concrete won’t flow uphill.
The only real insulation around the old windows was generations of wasp nests. The wasps had done a pretty good job of filling up some large cavities behind the panels, but didn’t seem all that annoyed about having their ancestral homes removed. In three seasons of work around the wasps I don’t know of anyone who was stung. Wasps are a docile lot.
One interesting item as I tore away at the old walls was the studding and lath with which the walls were built. The hemlock studs averaged about 2X3 in profile, but the back side of each was fitted to the wall with a few chops from an axe or hatchet. A nail into the floors, top and bottom, and friction against the stone behind secured this portion of the wall until the lath went on. I would love to know from where that sawed lumber came in the late 1830’s. Some of the roof planks are 20″ white cedar, but they show the definite tooth marks of a circular saw.
To my amazement the original lath consisted of 6″ hemlock boards, split several times at one end and then nailed to the stud. The builder apparently worked his way along with the hatchet, spreading the split board as he went until it covered an area about double its width. Then the plaster oozed into the cracks in the board. I had never seen such a thing before, but Curator Anna Greenhorn was pleased to show me similar lath in a preserved ceiling of the Old Mill in Delta.
The new wall studs came courtesy of Rowswell Lumber. At the time Ed kept full-length pine logs in a beaver pond, and thus could cut stock to order. I needed a lot of 9 ½’ studs, and Ed said, “No problem.” Lacking hatchet skills, I used my trusty band saw to fit the new studs to the walls. That winter I discovered the laser. If nothing else is straight in the building and you have to start somewhere, a laser level screwed to a stud in a corner can be made to provide a vertical line from one end of the building to the other and can serve as both a line and a plumb bob if you know enough to start fitting the studs from the other end. By the time I got to the last wall, I had figured that one out.
For other articles in this series check:
https://rodcroskery.wordpress.com/category/renovating-a-stone-house/
the Walnut Diary 