hen party

The adventures never stop around here. Fresh off the heels of my last house-sit, I was asked by a friend of I would house-sit for her, for a month and a half, at her house which is a 45-min drive from my work. I'd have to take care of chickens, a rabbit and a cat, as well as use a woodstove to heat the house.

Of course, I jumped at the chance. "Yes!" I wrote back as soon as I got her email.

Oh and I have to use the Englishtown Ferry to get to and from work, every day. (This is it the other night, when I was waiting on the Englishtown side for it to come back over. I loved how the lights were reflecting off the water, and the evening was coming on.)

This is the view from my new bedroom. The Cape Breton Highlands in the background, still covered in snow. Mm hmm.

Eggs wait by the front door. Every morning I collect between four and six eggs, and I let them pile up before I wash them.

When going to the barn to check on the chickens, you've got to unhook this latch.

There's just something about latches, isn't there?

 In Australia they call them "chooks". Wait, that might be the chicks. I don't know. Anyway, I love their clucking sounds.

 Doing dishes, I put down this dishcloth to put drying dishes on. More chickens!

 

 

Four to six eggs a day adds up pretty fast, especially when I'm away all day working and get back in the evenings and just eat toast and yogurt, and go to bed so I can do it all again the next day. Come the weekend, it's time to wash eggs, and I find myself with two dozen. There's just something about the shape of eggs, isn't there? So beautiful, especially in the grey winter light coming in the window over the sink.

an accomplishment of apples

On a sunny day in September, two young women -- myself and a friend -- picked some Whitney Crab apples from a neighbour's orchard. It was a good time and we chatted as we worked the trees. My friend would climb up into the central boughs of a tree, and shake the branches, joking, "Feel my wrath!" Apples would tumble down, falling "plop plop plop plop!" all over the grass. After she'd shaken a good amount, I'd go around with a plastic bag picking them up. We talked and talked and shook branches and picked up apples, not realizing how many we were picking, until we'd run out of the bags I'd brought. It didn't seem like that much at the time, but then once I got them all home I realized what I'd set out for myself: something like 12 or 13 full-size plastic grocery bags filled with apples.

September and October, I'm realizing, is still full-on food production and processing time, in the Maritimes. I don't know where I got the idea from, but I had held the notion that things wound down in September. Nope! Our slow spring and summer mean that a lot of crops come to fruition in the Fall, not just the usual root crops like winter squash (including pumpkins), turnips, potatoes, carrots, and onions. There are also crops that in more Southern climates are all summer long, like tomatoes, zucchini and corn. And if you're into apples, as I am, increasingly, then Fall's the time to get busy!

So I looked at the grocery bags full of apples. I started to freak out a little. I said to myself, "It's OK if I only process some of them. Whatever I don't process can go into compost, or maybe I can even take them over to Murdoch's and give them to his horses."

When I did actually start processing them, I wrote down each day I worked and how many hours I was working. So now, I have the statistics, ready to present.

Over a period of nearly two weeks (September 27th to October 10th), one woman (that'd be me) worked a total of thirty-one and a half hours making and then either freezing or canning:

• 9 quarts of spiced applesauce
• 14 pints (7 quarts) plain applesauce
• (1 gallon of cider that went into making cider butter, which made)
• 8 half-pints of cider butter
• 5 and 1/2 Liters of cider (additional)
  

For the non-Imperial minded in you, a quart is equal to four cups of liquid measure. A pint is equal to two cups, and a half-pint is equal to one cup. Also, one Liter is equal to four cups, and one gallon is roughly equal to eight quarts, or eight Liters. So to convert my production to the cup measure, we have:

• 36 cups spiced applesauce
• 28 cups plain applesauce
• (32 cups cider that went into making cider butter, which made)
  
• 8 cups cider butter
• 22 cups cider (additional)
  

This is not including the apples which rotted along the way and had to be tossed out, which wasn't a large percentage, but did account for some. So that's between 31 and 32 hours of work, spread out over two weeks (because real life is still existing, with other, paid, jobs to do, as well as chores around the property and home, and oh yeah, down time), to process what took two women just two and a half hours to pick. That means about 12.5 hours of processing work for each hour of picking time.

And in the end, I actually did process nearly every single apple, even though along the way I kept telling myself, "If I don't process all of them, that's fine too!" It taught me that for a big project, one where you can't see the end after a day's work, it's best to keep your head down, looking at the part you can see for now, and pace yourself. That's really the only sensible way to get through it.

Now I think: imagine if I had to live, for the winter and early spring, off what I and my family could preserve in the summer and fall. And not just that, but imagine how it was when people around here did live off what they preserved. There'd be more than 9 quarts of applesauce going into the cold room, that's for sure!

It's all food for thought, while I learn how to preserve the real food.

feelin' hot hot hot

It's been hot here this past week. After a cold and wet spring, which fostered no end of complaining from just about everyone, suddenly summer is here: temperatures between 27 and 30ºC, lots of sun, high UV index, the wind pushing clouds over the sky. The plants have been taking advantage of all the sun and building more leaves to produce more chlorophyll, so the seedlings I showed you in May are now substantial plants, no denying it.

Farmers across the island are making hay, and Mat and I have been helping a neighbour with his haymaking, Mat more than I. Although, I must say, I definitely hauled and heaved my share of bales the night I helped, and got quite red in the face for my efforts! Not to mention the scratches on my arms. However, I had forgotten how sweet it is to ride back to the barn on top of a swaying wagon piled high with hay bales. And this farm in particular has a gorgeous view of the Bras d'Or lakes, so while I was rocking back and forth with the wagon, which was moving slowly along the field, I was able to take in the view. There was a misty haze fuzzing the lines of the land forms, and an almost-crescent moon jauntily sitting in the sky above. Pretty damn sweet.

A few days ago an older female friend, who I'll just call "M" for privacy's sake, took me to lunch in the village. It was warm, and sunny, and windy. We remarked fairly often on what a beautiful, hot day it was. After lunch, we did a few errands, and were just about to leave the village when M remembered she had to gas up, so we turned quickly into the little gas station there at the entrance. While she was filling up, I glanced across the street and saw some men at work painting an old house. Most of the men were maybe in their mid-fifties and wearing tee shirts, but what caught my eye was the young, incredibly buff man not wearing a shirt at all. He was tanned, and had a smooth, hairless, tattooed and muscled torso, and honestly he looked like some guy in a calender. Now, I'm not saying that's necessarily my type, if I even have a "type", but he was definitely eye-catching. I stared for all I was worth!

M got back in the car, started the ignition, and was about to leave the gas station. I pointed to the men working.

"Look at that guy, look how hot he is!" I said.

M glanced over, then watched traffic, then pulled out.

"Yes," she said absently, "Some people have a much different internal temperature."

"No..." I said, puzzled, "I mean, he was HOT! Like, attractive!"

"Oh!" She said, laughing. "Oh my god, can you tell how long I've been off the market?" (She's been married 35 years.) "I thought you meant, that older fellow who looked like he was really warm!"

So as you can see, no matter what "hot" means to you, Cape Breton's got it!

seedlings in may

The seeds are teaching me something about myself.

You wouldn't think so; they're only tiny seeds, after all. But there you go: the seeds are teaching me that deep down, I like things quick, I like things NOW, I like to set the pace. And boy, is that not possible with these little guys!

Last summer, I saved the seeds of two different types of cherry tomato, Tumbler and Cherry Grande. (How that is done is a topic for another post, perhaps this coming fall.) I saved them in two small, black film containers and waited for spring. Then when spring came, I planted them into eight pots, four for each kind. I mixed dirt with manure, and loaded each pot up with nutritious, delicious soil. I set them in the oven to germinate, as tomatoes need darkness to germinate, and our propane stove's pilot light provided just the right amount of heat. And germinate they did! After several days, during which I (of course) checked them every few hours, up came little green leaves.

Excited, I set the pots onto a tray and sat them by the sunny windows, rotating them every so often when they would start leaning too much towards the sun. And in a week's time, they put on about an inch or an inch-and-a-half worth of growth! It was fun to watch them coming along, the speedy little dudes. (Or dudettes.)

But now... they've slowed down. They're taking their sweet time, and only putting on a millimeter or so a day. (Not that I'm measuring...) And this is how the seeds, now seedlings, are teaching me about myself. I've realized that I see tiny seedlings and I start thinking ahead, all sorts of grand thoughts about how they're going to grow into big, bushy tomato plants, dripping with little red globes. I see the first rapid growth spurt and I think, "Wow, this will only take a month until I'm eating cherry tomatoes on my salads!" (And I'm only exaggerating my thought-process slightly.)

But, no. Life works differently. Nature works differently. And for sure, tomato seedlings work differently. They work at their own pace. This is only May, they keep reminding me. Relax. Sit back. Have some tea, and watch the rain falling on the sodden garden. We will make cherry tomatoes, but it's going to take a bit of time.

I do still check them often, rotating them on sunny days. But now I look at that checking time as an opportunity to just appreciate the little spunky seedlings, instead of bemoan what they aren't, just yet.

***

In other news, my brother Mat is home now from college, and he is working at his co-op job. So now my "office" is back to its previous function, which is his bedroom, so I'm not online as much, now that I have to dig under piles of clothes to even find the computer. (I'm mostly kidding. Mostly.)

I'm also not online as much for a few other reasons: one being that since Mat is home, I hang out with him more, and when I'm not hanging out with him, I tend to be doing my own thing, but not wanting to be on the Internet. Another reason is that the weather is nice now, or at least, it's not sleeting or snowing, so there is outdoors stuff to be done. And by outdoors stuff, I mean the gardening, but I also mean the very necessary "task" of sitting on the deck with my big sun-hat on, reading or listening to my portable radio. Ah, it's rough, this life.

One more thing: I recently finished two really good books, pretty much one after the other. The first one is "The 100-Mile Diet", a book which has gotten a lot of press over the last year, but which I hadn't yet read. So I requested it from the library, opened it to the first page, and didn't leave until the last page, give or take a few trips to the bathroom, and sleeping. It's a fantastic book, but rather than get into an in-depth review, I'll just say, you should check it out.

The other book really, really worth checking out is "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was also published in the last year, and has gotten a lot of press. Different people have recommended it to me, but it wasn't until I heard the author speaking with Shelagh Rogers on Sounds Like Canada that I thought, OK, I really need to read this book. So I went on the library website and looked it up. The regular-print version had a waiting list 40 people long. The large-print version had 3. Guess which waiting list I put myself on? So that's how I came to be reading "Eat, Pray, Love" in 16. pt lettering, which is a little hard on the eyes after a while, but not so bad if you hold the book far away from you.

Anyway, I inhaled the book. I started it Friday night and finished Sunday morning. I laughed, and though I didn't cry, I did take in an awful lot of an amazing journey to the center of the self, to God, to the bliss that is possible. I found I had a lot in common with Ms. Gilbert, and I also found she had a lot to teach me. So now the book is on my "Gotta-Buy" list, which I'm compiling until it goes over $40, at which point I can get free shipping at the Chapters-Indigo website.

So that's our news of late: it's been raining a lot, the garden and lawn are greening up, Mat is home now, and we're here, breathing and reading, loving one another, and eating as much delicious, local food as possible.

How about you? What are your thoughts? What green things are you watching? Have you read either of these two fabulous books? Do tell.

rise up!

I wish I could show you how beautiful the garden is. I think even photographs taken by someone skilled would fail to do the plants and the sunshine and the fresh breeze justice. Sometimes when I'm in a cranky or desultory mood, I go sit outside, somewhere on the deck, and look around me. It is July, and I am home, and this is what I wanted. This is what I dreamed about in February and March when things were so miserable, and this is what kept me afloat through April and even May, with the snowstorms and slow growth. Things may not be perfect, there are still issues to deal with, and my energy is still low. But it is July and I am home.

This means: forget-me-nots and buttercups, delicate blue and yellow, mixed together the length of the driveway. Calvin mowing our lawn every few weeks and making the lush growth of the garden stand out. Irises a splashy dance in many colors. Scented stock and sweet rocket making the air smell of clove at night. Tall grey clouds and the sudden rainstorms they bring. My cherry tomato plant putting out little yellow trumpets that will one day in late August be little cherry tomatoes. Green, green, everywhere green, and most everything putting out buds or new growth of some kind. Sitting on the deck in the shade of the maple that grows through it, reading and drinking juice, while the cats lie splayed beside me.

Speaking of reading, what I'm mentally devouring these days is a book Grandmaman gave me last Christmas, which I'm finally getting to, called "Ride the Rising Wind: One Woman's Journey Across Canada", by Barbara Kingscote. It's the true story of how Barbara travelled across Canada when she was 20 on the back of her mare, Zazy, in 1949 and 1950. It's incredible in pretty much every way: her age, her inexperience with that sort of travel, the way people (in general) were so kind to her, not to mention her writing describing the places and people she passed. Also, she travelled at a time when horsepower on farms still came partly from horses, but this was changing rapidly to the modern, mechanized way of doing things. Kingscote thus witnessed both small, subsistence farms, which she describes as having dignity and eking out a living while respecting the land around them, and the larger operations of farming, logging and urban sprawl that were creating a space that was "an obsolete battleground where the battered corpse of wilderness lay unburied, for everyone to see and no one to mourn." Kingscote calls it like she sees it, with clear, dancing prose, and I'm only halfway through--we're just about to enter the prairies. We being the three of us, of course: Barbara, Zazy and me, riding that "rising wind".

And speaking of rising, I've been thinking about mornings, the time one rises, what one does soon after rising. I'm enjoying having time in the mornings, to do those important stretches, eat breakfast on the deck, spying on the birds at the same time. And sometimes, when I get up extra early (7 or 8 am, these days) I feel like I've done something productive just by getting out of bed. There's something special about the early morning and the few times I do get up early, I enjoy it -- there are mists that will later burn off, and shades and angles of light not seen at other times of day. Of course, my body is usually extra cranky at an early hour, so there's a pay-off.

Now it's your turn to rise to the occasion. What's your morning routine? What's early and what's late? What's so special about getting up early, anyway? Do tell.

nice rack!

Just in time for the chef's birthday! (Catriona MacInnes turns 23 on the 27th of this month.)

This photo was taken by my friend Catriona, during her final exam this year at NSCC (Nova Scotia Community College), Ackerly Campus (Dartmouth, NS), a month or so ago. Two weeks later, my mother remembered we had a rack of lamb in the freezer, which none of us know how to cook, so we asked Catriona -- home for a break between school and her summer work placement -- to come and do us the honor, not knowing she'd passed with flying colors on the very dish we were asking her to prepare for us. Serendipity in the kitchen - my favorite kind!

Catriona arrived with an industrial-strength briefcase, filled with culinary art supplies: knifes, spatulas, pastry cutters, molds, a scale, squeeze bottles, a handheld mixer, measuring cups and spoons, pliers (removing fish bones, not last minute plumbing repairs), icing tubes, and an assortment of funny-looking metal tools that turned out to be the melon ballers, a butter curler, a lemon zester, and an apple corer. Don't get in this woman's way! Ever the professional, she also changed into her chef's whites, complete with neckerchief and a digital thermometer clipped to her arm, looking like a more svelte version of Gilmore Girls' chef, Sukie: same gorgeous smile and cheery chatter.

My brother Mat became her "apprentice chef" for the afternoon, chopping garlic, mincing rosemary, mixing the rub (garlic, rosemary, dijon mustard, honey and olive oil), as per the chef's instructions. Catriona herself was involved in preparing the meat: cutting the fat cap off, then cutting spaces or "windows" between the ribs, then scraping the rest of the connective tissue, fat and cartilage off the meat. Her joy in her chosen trade was evident: when she she first cut between the rib bones and pulled away the meat to create a neat square space, she exclaimed, "Ah, look at that window!"

This photo is also from Catriona's final exam, and it's the point at which the "windows" have been cut between the ribs, the unwanted tissues removed, and the rub spread on the meat. Our meat looked a little different from this, as it was grown and butchered at a small farm, not prepared for commercial use as her exam-lamb was. Also, because our lamb lived its life free-range and was fed organic feed, its fat, Catriona noted, was less stiff, and actually harder to handle.

After she had braised the meat in two cast-iron pans, and then rubbed them with the prepared mixure and set them to bake in the oven, Catriona prepared the reduction sauce. Her Scottish ancestry was evident: as she hoisted a bottle of Valpolicella, a red wine, to begin, she said enthusiastically, "The best thing about sauces is there's alcohol in them!" Later, I sniffed the pan, in which was simmering red wine, orange zest and juice, and fresh mint, and it smelled like sweet lollipops, Laura Secord orange suckers, only for grown-ups.

While we were waiting for the meal to cook, Mat wheeled into the kitchen on the office chair, and Catriona "knighted" him with the knife sharpener, a long metal dowel: "I knight you the best un-official apprentice chef ... in the world!" I was on the couch -- all the activity had tired me out -- writing notes and laughing. The house smelled divine: roasting lamb, rosemary, garlic, wine, orange zest. At the last minute we pulled together a salad of garden greens (Turkish rocket and dandelion leaves), with some chopped apple and a balsamic vinaigrette. Catriona "presented" the food beautifully, using a squeeze bottle to make a design on the plate using the reduction sauce, and arranging the lamb pieces on the plates much like her final exam. We all sat down, ready to dig in, impressed, excited, happy, and most importantly, hungry.

After our meal, flipping through the textbook she had brought for me to look at, I found a quote that I realized sums up the delight we all shared in this meal. I'll leave you with it. Also: Happy Birthday dear Catriona, on the 27th! Here's to good friends, and good food.

"Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensly to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale." --Elsa Schiaparelli, Italian fashion designer, 1890-1973).

wooster when it sizzles

Mat, Dad, Rachel and I have flown in for the weekend to Wooster, Ohio. This is a little bit different than our normal milieu, it is the middle of Wayne County, one of the top agricultural counties in Ohio. Lots of corn fields stretching off to the horizon, tall trees and farm houses, as well as the sprawl of new suburban houses eating up old fields. This is where my father's side of the family is from, Ohio mainly and Wooster partly, and where Alice Noble, my great-aunt, lives still. So this is where we have all gathered to celebrate each other and honor her, who at 91 is still the matriarch.

It is perfectly lovely to be here, though of course a little tiring, with so much planned. We got in last night after flying all day from Cape Breton (and seeing CB from the air at 7 am as the sun rose over the Highlands and we flew over North River was absolutely priceless) and went over to David and Gayle's, a big new home in a nice area. All the guests were there, getting name tags, having a few drinks and milling about. The kids lit sparklers and danced around the lush lawn, looking like the fireflies that were also flitting through the air. I drank a nice Pinot Noir, ate a few squares and caught up with cousins I haven't seen in a year or so.

Today, we got out of our oh-so-comfortable beds and headed to the baseball field, playing a game of softball. We had tee shirts and hats for the Red Sox (gotta be on the East Coast team) and played against the Mid-Westerners, the Cleveland Indians, who trounced us after a 2-2 tie. Then it was lunch at the Alice Noble ice arena (www.nobleice.com) and ice skating. I came back here to the hotel to nap, and now I am going to take a quick swim in the hotel pool before getting ready for the big dinner. Finally, a reason to wear those shoes from New York!

We're having a good time but also learning to pace ourselves. With such a short time and so many people to see and catch up with, you realize that you can't do it all. Gayle Noble can, though. Kudos to her and the rest of the gang for putting all of this together.

Tomorrow: flying home! Mat and I are going back to work, and Dad and Rachel are staying on for some travel to Michigan and parts of Ohio. One of these days I'll stay here longer, I'll drive around (in a biodiesel van, hopefully) looking up old ancestral sites, checking out farms, and enjoying more of Wooster, when it sizzles.