Revelstoke

I have arrived safely in Revelstoke. The weather was mild and the highways relatively clear on my drive up from Vanouver this past weekend, which put my mind at ease for not having any winter tires or chains in my possession should the alipine passes get a little hairy. However, when I pulled into Revelstoke, there was a man on the highway stopping everyone to inform us that the highway between Revelstoke and Golden was closed due to avalanche and slide hazards. Luckily I did not need to go further that day. However, when I leave Revelstoke to drive to Calgary, I will need to surmount Roger's Pass, which was apparently the last hurtle that had to be overcome to connect eastern and western Canada and is still considered one of the most dangerous parts of highway in Canada. Great. I'll deall with that obstacle when I get to it, but first, life in Revelstoke.

I have been here less than a day and already I feel home again. Home being a lifestyle, a way of living and a way of seeing your daily existence. I live in the basement (on a single foam mattress) of a cabin style home with my friend Nadja and her two roomates that are here right now, Eric and Connie. Nadja will be starting her organic farm here, and Eric and Connie run the dog sledding business.

The home is in the middle of the property. In the back are twenty or so dogs in a paddock that each have their own snoopy-style home that they live in. It was pooring rain yesterday (which hopefully means dumping snow in the alpine) so the dogs were all hiding in their little homes. Today when I got the farm tour, I got to meet the dogs. There are 22 in total. Most are rescued dogs from other operations and all come with their own emotional baggage and quircks. Five of the animals though were bred at the farm and are less spastic than the others. The dogs are: Emily, Chevy, Oreo, Hawk, Pam, Orange, Sapphire, Lily, Jasper, Jake, Chaos, Flip, Nibbs, Tiny, Penny, Keeno, Griz, Spock and the pups, Bandid, Pepper and Gary. I can recognize most of them, but mainly when they are sitting in order at their dog houses. That'll change soon.

Today I worked with Nadja raking leaves and fall debris to pile onto sheet mulch (namely cardboard) which we then sprinkled with lime and manure. She is hoping that this mix will decompose into great soil to grown food in the next five months, and I will be interested to see the success rate of the various permaculture methods she is employing. Though she has access to a lot of organic matter on the property, she still had to buy her manure and straw. For a dumptruck of manure it cost Nadja $200.00 - it came from one of the local horse stables. When raking, we also raked up a few bones as the dogs survive on donated meet and bones from the local game butchers.

I am really eager to be learning again, to be living with positive young people that are making their dreams come true. I have a feeling I am going to know a lot more about dogs, dog sledding, dog sled guiding, cutting dog food, permaculture, herbal tea blends, skiing, touring and Revelstoke! What fun :)

Pictures to come soon.

Country Living: Cherry Pie; Fishing; Friends; and Apricot Jam

In order to supplement my frugal living, I decided to buy a freshwater fishing license this year. After weeks of being indecisive about which rod to purchase, I finally just opted for the cheapest rod I could get at the local hardware store in the hopes that I will be able to make back all the money I spent to 'save money' on fish by the end of the season.

Yesterday was my first day out, and we caught a fish! I went up to Yellow Lake with some friends after work and we all took a shot at trying to catch dinner (literally at the time.) We are still having some troubles with flotation and the weights on the line, but regardless, we pulled in a fish. We had crafted a makeshift float out of a stick on the line, which kept the line just a little bit higher in the depths of the water. The lucky catcher was my roomate Manon - of course it was her first time fishing and only her second cast! The fish we caught was a nice sized Brook Trout which we have since eaten for lunch.

My friend Adam made it to our farm on Sunday night. He had asked to take part in the farm work on Monday, and was even convinced by everyone to stay a second day. It was really neat having Adam around, because I was already able to see how much I had learned in eight weeks as well as how much my values have changed. For example, Adam felt it was very quiet in our town, whereas I feel like it is bustling with people now that all the pickers are hanging around and tourist season has begun.

Adam was also amazed how much he learned in such a short time. He had never really considered how intimate organic farmers are with their food, and he says he now fully appreciates the cost and the quality behind the organic name. This too led into discussions that had not previously been brought up on the farm, which was how many of the more 'intimate' jobs, such as pruning, desuckering, thinning and picking get done on industrial farms. We were surmising that being in such close proximity to plants that would have been sprayed with toxins incessantly, could not be very good for a persons health. This is when we started to hear horror stories.

Cherries. It is currently the beginning of the cherry season. I have learned, that some pickers will not take contracts at certain farms because of the chemicals they use. Effects on the pickers often include skin aggrivation, nausea and laboured breathing at the end of a day picking sprayed fruit. I have even learned that some farmers will give their pickers tips on how to minimize (not avoid) any adverse affects from working on their farms; these include wrapping their finger tips in electrical tape so as not to come in contact with the chemicals on the cherries and keeping their clothes outside their tents at the end of the day so as not to fumigate their living spaces. Keep in mind, THIS IS FOR FOOD WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE EATING!

I was seriously shocked to hear these stories. I for some reason had it in my mind that if chemicals were used on a farm, essentially all the labour was done mechanically including harvesting, thinning and desuckering. I now realize how naive this thought was, and the impact of realizing that the current food system is seriously threatening the health of the people that are enabling it to exist as it does is not very reassuring.

At least at our farm we have a few rogue organic cherry trees from which we have started to pick the cherries so we do not have to worry about chemical covered fruit - Manon even made cherry pie this week!

Today I also learned how to do a new task - process apricots to make apricot jam. In Annamarie's kitchen, we sanitized the work area then set up four stations: 1) apricot chopping and measuring, 2) apricot boiling and stirring, 3) jam jarring and 4) jar sealing. Annamarie has definitely built her kitchen to accomodate mass production. She says if she is going to take 2-4 hrs to make jam, she wants to make a lot of jam in that time, and so she has it down to a science.

We were chopping the apricots from frozen. Tip for jam from frozen fruit: If you cut them and cook them right away while still frozen, they will not oxidize and turn brown. We had three big boiling pots going: two could take 40 cups of apricots and 1 could take 32 cups of apricots. The ratio of apricot, to apple juice (from the farm), to pectin is as follows:

4 cups of apricots
1 cup of apple juice
.11 grams of pectin

The jam we make doesn't contain any sugar at all and it is still so sweet. We are fortunate that we grow all our own fruit for the jam as this is normally the most expensive ingredient. Though I had seen the jams at market, now that I realize how healthy (comparatively) they are for you, I think I might have to add the jam to my list of farm favourites.

One of the nice tools that Annamarie has too is a steam oven. Instead of having to submerge her jars into boiling water or a canning pot, she is able to seal them in the steam oven in 10 minutes on its 'canning' setting. Though you will pay a penny or two for this appliance, it totally seems worth it.

Tips for making sure that your jam seals are to heat the jars in the oven (which can be reused from year to year), boil the lids in a pot (which cannot be reused), whipe the rims of the jars before putting on the lid, steam the hot jar, hot lid and hot jam for 10 minutes to seal.

Tomorrow I am off to another music festival with some friends to have a mini-vacation from the farm. I am already sad that I might be missing the first harvest of our apricots which could potentially be ready for the weekend.

This week in our meeting we discussed the practice of fruit picking. One of the girls here used to be a picker. She and Annamarie shared that you have to think of picking as a sport, always anticipating the next step, your next position, your comparative advantage to your competitors. This conversation came up in response to one of the newer girls who shared that it was nice to 'zone out' in the field. The feeling was however, when you zone out, there is no way you can be effective at the work at hand, especially when picking. The trick is to be utlra-present and constantly thinking where you are going to put your hand next to save time; know whih fruit you are going to pull off five steps ahead and how you are going to get there. I am eager to give this 'competitive athletic picking' a try.

(Sorry my camera is not uploading photos today. I do have some good ones I will share as soon as I can get them loaded.)

Goats and Milk; Compost and Manure; Chicken and Eggs; Seeds and Weeds

Life on our modest homestead has been quite relaxed so far. Our hosts have allowed us a very flexible schedule as long as we get our chores and jobs done in a reasonable time. As many of you know, Bonnie and I work very well together, so our jobs are getting done in no time at all! Nonetheless, I do enjoy every minute of our time working and can't wait until my job at Klippers Organics begins and my farm life becomes a full time gig. In the interim, I will continue to play at Elizabeth's Tlell Bay Farm.

Goats and Milk

We have three goats on the farm - Molly, Sanga and Busa. Only Molly and Sanga are producing milk right now, but man do they produce a lot of milk. The goats are milked twice a day at 9.00am and 9.00 pm (Elizabeth is retired and likes to sleep in so she has trained the goats to work on her schedule since she was on their 5.00am schedule for many years). The goats have a little pasture beside the house where they eat the bottoms of the trees and then also have access to their barn which was especially designed for them. The barn is quite novel with a swinging door that during the day time locks away the milking station and food, and in the evening will swing around and lock the goats into their pen where they get their food and have water.

As I said, right now only Molly and Sanga are being milked, but this still produces about 4 - 5 litres of milk a day. That is a ton of milk and quickly takes over all the fridge space. So, the tennant living in the basement, Brian, has been using it to make cheese. Now for those of you who have never met my friend Bonnie, there are two things in this world for which she is crazy - cheese and cats. For this reason, Bonnie has slaved herself to Brian to learn and make as much and as many different types of cheese or milk products during her stay here. If Brian calls, I know that Bonnie will be out of commission for some hours.

The first night we arrived I did partake in the fun. Bonnie made yogurt and I made quark (mainly found in Germany and could be described as a medium between yogurt and goats cheese). The quark was easy to make and a success too! However, not all of the cheese ventures this week have been so. Bonnie and Brian undertook the challenge of making mozzarella three days ago, and on hour 7 of 8, a cheese failure happened. Cheese making is a very labour intensive and time consuming process. You have to babysit the cheese throughout its transformation from milk to cheese and ensure that the temperatures stay or rise at exactly the right amount in exactly the right amount of time otherwise, failure. This is where the mozarella went wrong. However, the next day Bonnie was right back at it and was pleased to report after 8 hrs that she had succeeded at producing the cheese.

Bonnie is already trying to figure out how she will be able to make cheese in Toronto. Here it is fairly easy because we have raw milk, lots of it and it is essentially free. Not only do we have the goats milk, but our neighbours have a cow which is also producing a ton of milk for us to use. I have told Bonnie that she should take up guerilla cheese making - where you break into cow pastures (or sheep or goats) to milk the animals and take their milk for the purpose of making homemade cheese. I think it would be a hilarious undertaking.

Compost and Manure

One of the jobs that Bonnie and I had to take care of was reorganizing the compost bins. We have six compost bins onsite all in different stages of maturity. Two were essentially empty from being spread on the garden plots, two are almost ripe and the last two we were told had died - this means that they no longer were composting. Our job was to move the to move the two dead piles into the almost empty bins thereby breathing new life into the stagnate process of decomposition, and then fill the bins they had occupied with the manure pile and bedding from the goat barn. This was a big project. First of all, the dead piles really did look and smell dead on the surface, but once we got the first layer off, we realized that they were as alive as ever! The bins were saturated with wriggling worms just munching away at the goodies that had been sitting there undisturbed.

Now I have always had a big fascination with worms - by that I mean I am captivated by them for some reason. In Vancouver, whenever I were to see a worm on the sidewalk I would without fail bend down to pick it up and move it out of harms way. One of my favourite parts about the rain in Vancouver is actually that it brings all the worms to the surface. Only a few times have I been lucky enough to be walking late at night and stumble upon hundreds of worms that have come to the surface to escape the rain that I imagine was drowning them in the soil and see them all recoil into the ground once they felt my presence. It might seem like an obscure experience to enjoy, but everytime I felt like it was a special moment. It could also be a scene from a horror pic, but I'd prefer to call it special.

Well it turns out that the chickens also share my fascination with worms, except for very different reasons. The chickens were going insane with envy that we were stomping around in bins teaming with worms, while they were stuck on the other side of a very thin fence. I took pity on them and did toss them a shovel of 'the good stuff' here and there for them to devour.

Since the compost was not dead in the end, we decided not to mix the goat manure and hay with it. Instead we started two, which turned into three, brand new piles for the goat barns waste. Bonnie and I made a good team throughout the project, but about a third of the way into the goats she was called to make cheese - so I decided to finish the project on my own. There is something therapeutic for sure about shoveling, using a wheelbarrel and seeing the results of your labour. Plus I knew the goats would be really happy they had a clean barn to sleep in that night. Still the smell was putrid especially because there was not way to allow for a cross breeze in the small barn. Of course I got used to the smell, but you have to wonder if it is at all toxic to your health. Hope not!

Chicken and Eggs

We currently have 24 chickens including two roosters. Almost all the chickens lay an egg every day which means, as we were quickly told upon our arrival, that we can "eat as many eggs as we can stuff into our mouths." We also package up dozens of eggs a week to sell at the local store about a five minute walk from here - we get $4.00 a dozen and the store sells them for $5.00. Food on the island is not cheap. There are a few special things about the chickens. First, we have one chicken that lays blue eggs. It is quite unusual and Elizabeth the farmer is hoping to be able to hatch some of this specific chicken's eggs in an incubator so that we can have more. To date no luck. Next, everytime I see the roosters, I want to kill them. Not for the reason you might imagine, which would be the loud crowing in the morning, instead because I want to make earings from their feathers. When in Whistler, I was captivated by these beautiful rooster feather earrings made by a local girl. I learned she got her feathers from a farm in Quebec. At first, I thought I would be able to get the feathers without killing the birds, but learned that that would inflict too much pain. So instead I want them dead - not really, but I am on the lookout now for anyone hoping to have some chicken for dinner and can pass me the feathers when they are done. Until then, I will see walking earrings everytime the roosters pass by.

Seeds and Weeds

The majority of our work this month will be getting the garden plots ready for seeding. This means a lot of weeding, adding peat and compost, testing soils to see if they need to have their ph adjusted, and reorganizing the spaces between the beds to facilitate the garden management in the summer. The soil is very sandy in Tlell because we are so close to the beach I imagine. So on day one, we started by getting the greenhouse beds ready. First we soaked and turned the soil already there twice. Then we filled the beds with peat moss and a layer of organic fertilizer then soaked and turned the entire mixture twice again. Last, we scatter seeded the beds - one with mesclun that I had brought with me an the second with arugula. We should see results very soon!