Meat Fest

Last night I participated in Meat Fest.

After dinner Eric, the new roomate Len and I went out into the garage to morsel up the meat that the local game butchers had donated to Eric for his dogs of Revelstoke Dogsled Adventures. We spent two hours in the cold listening to an old wedding tape over and over cutting and sawing apart deer and moose. The boys smoked and drank as we cut the remaining carcass, muscle and fat apart for our dogs. I really felt like I was living a country life.

I liked the work and understand how it could be a much more challenging job in the peak of hunting season when the weather is still 10 degrees instead of minus 3 degrees. The meat yesterday evening was not overly bloody nor were there flies anywhere to be seen.

The entire time Eric, the dog owner, exclaimed how meat fest means so much to him not because he is able to get out and be productive, not because he is saving some money in feed, not because of the tunes, drinks, smokes or even the company, but because he is able to feed his dogs such good meat. He knows that the fat, protein and bones he is preparing for them keep their primal instincts alive and makes them better sled dogs.

The chopping up of the meat may seem like a courtesy, back in the day Eric used to actually grind the meat for his dogs, but the hassle became too much given the dogs don't care how their meat is serve, but it is also a screening process to make sure we get any small bones or bullets our of the feed before it goes to the dogs. Unfortunately sometimes some pieces are missed, and a dog has been known to poop out a bullet before.

Once the meat is chopped we bag it into 4 lbs bags to freeze. Handling cold moist meat freezes your fingers quickly, but we ended up bagging about 50 bags of moose and deer, which is about 200 lbs! And then we had the bones on top of that. When I told the boys that I was going to put dog food bagger on my resume, they said I should put moose bagger, because some of the meat was were handling was definitely human food grade. Lucky dogs.

Today my wrist hurts. Apparently after two and a half hours of cutting meat and fat with a moderately-sharp knife in the cold has its repurcussions. (I may have also been trying to fill my bucket faster and fuller than Eric, so it was an intense cutting session.) Either way, I would gladly participate in another Meat Fest.

And that's how I spend my Friday nights :)

Life in Revelstoke: Puppies, Skiing, Dogsledding and Mountain Weather

Look at these puppies above. They look pretty cute right? Pepper, with the brown eyes, desperately wants you to play with her on the carpet since she is afraid to walk on the laminate floor. Bandit in the background just wants to wrestle.

My life seems to have been consumed by puppies. You need to have your eye on them at all times pretty much, they bark, they howl, the romp around and somehow I always end up on the ground with them playing or tenderly petting them.

But then there is the bad side of puppies - they destroy everything when NOT carefully monitored. Keep in mind that they pups will be working dogs and are not meant to be indoors. They are currently inside because of their recent surgery which has proven tiresome for us two-legged house tenants. See here how Pepper got loose while we were all out skiing and I was the lucky one to come back to a house destroyed by puppy mischieve.

Next skiing! I am currently undertaking a ski marathon where I am hoping to ski every day for 18 days. I am unsure if my legs and back will be able to take it, but I bought myself a season's pass to the mountain in an efforts to encourage me to take advantage of the awesome snow and beautiful ski conditions available to me. (Don't worry I only need to ski 9 days to have the pass pay for itself, so if I need to take a day off it won't be the worst thing.)

Revelstoke is fairly new mountain. It consists of only two chairlifts, The Stoke and The Ripper, and one gondola. These were put in about 5 years ago, so the mountain is still known for a lot of backcountry touring. Here you can see on day 2 a group of ski enthusiasts were heading past the ski patroller at the roped off terrain into the backcountry. All are supposed to have avalanche training, proper safety equipment (such as shovel, beacon and a probe for avalanches), knowledge of the weather conditions and reliable partners to name a few. Learning to do this type of skiing, to find those perfect lines, is definitely something I look forward to learning more about.

I on the otherhand am currently learning the in-bounds side of Revelstoke. Day 1 was a full on powder day all day long! The snow was so soft and fluffy, and the depth was quite impressive for opening day. We are still not able to ski to the bottom, so we focused our play in the alpine.

At the end of the day, neither of us could complain :)

Before skiing began, I tried to stay homebound so as not to spend too much money. This again involved lots of dog-related activities. I was able to go out earlier in the week to help run the dogs to help get them into better shape for the rest of the season. Each dog will lose about 5 lbs during the season from all the running. They only weight about 45 lbs each so this will be a lot!

To get them to the logging roads where they run the tours, the dogs are loaded into their boxes on the back of the truck. You would think the dogs wouldn't like this, but they are so eager to please, that they are literally jumping up for you to lift them into their boxes. The dogs also are really excited to get to run.

There is one dog though that is claustrophobic, Chaos, and he gets to sit in the backseat of the truck with the passengers. Spoiled dog.

Running the dogs was really fun. They are really strong dogs and meant for speed. I even got to lead the sled for a while with Eric in the passenger seat. It's tough when they get speed to keep everything in line and I even was launched into the snow at one point, but a worthwhile experience for sure.

And even though there was snow in the mountains, it was nice and sunny most of the week on the farm.

So as you can see, life in a small town, especially a small ski town in the winter, is pretty much what you would imagine it to be.