Up in Smoke October 29, 2008

Last week-end, some friends of Dave and Sue’s came out to help us cut firewood so we could be spared from having to do it in the middle of the winter.  Justin and Shannon (Witmer) Bolog, and their children, Jordan (10), and Ashlyn (8), spent a winter out here a few years ago, actually living in our house.  They furnished several stories about pipes bursting and showers leaking, and confirmed that our stove will adequately heat the house at -60 C!  They recently moved into a new place on a town lot in Taylor, a few miles south of Ft. St. John, so maybe they missed the fall wood ritual.  Whatever the reason, it was a a very neighborly thing to do, and their help and extra chainsaw was much appreciated as we hauled several hefty trailerloads to our house.  The pile we were cutting from a logging load of poplar which had been sitting probably six years.  It was very dry, and some of it on the rotten side, though there was still plenty of good wood.

Around six p.m., as I was putting the finishing touches on a dinner of roast chicken, roast baby carrots and potatoes, Nick had to run an errand up to camp, driving close by the woodpile.  He was up there maybe 20 minutes, and when he stepped back outside, he saw against the dark sky the bright light of a huge fire.  He told someone at camp to call Dave and Sue’s, and headed back.  At first, he thought it was our house, but as he got closer, he saw it was the old woodpile.  When we got the call, I looked out the kitchen window, and for maybe a second thought our place was on fire. That was a sudden insight into how attached I am to my possessions.   In a matter of minutes, the whole pile was ignited; completely unstoppable.  That morning, however, we had had a small snow which still lay on the ground, and the grass around wasn’t burning.  Also, the wind which had been blowing the last two weeks, was remarkably still.  The woodpile was not close to any buildings – the nearest being the old tack barn and our house – but a wind could easily have carried such a hot fire away.

The men took off as soon as they got a call, and once they had assessed the situation and decided it was under control, actually seemed to enjoy the blaze.  I mean, what else could you do?  The winter’s supply of wood was burning all at once, but to look at it philosophically, it was no one’s fault, there was nothing that could be done, and it wasn’t the greatest wood anyway.   It was a spectacular fire, wood and waste aside.  The children were scared but fascinated.  We went out on the porch and watched for a few minutes, and Marley decided it was ok after all.  He didn’t want to come back inside.  Lyra, on the other hand, couldn’t bear to watch anymore, so we went down to the basement with Megan, who doesn’t enjoy fires, either.  Megan stayed with them while I went to have a look, and by the time I got back, Lyra was looking on the bright side and decided we could roast marshmellows once the fire burned down.

How DID the fire start?   I have never heard of a post-woodcutting fire, but I guess I haven’t lived in the north all my life.  Towards the end of the afternoon, some of the wood was actually smoking from the heat of the blades.  Chainsaws have spark arresters, so there shouldn’t have been any sparks, but between the heat, the dry sawdust, and maybe some gas or oil, there was combustion.  By morning, there were just a few wisps of smoke and a pile of ashes.  We were thankful nothing valuable was lost, no one was hurt, and we are also thankful for that big pile of wood outside our door.

Zia Silhouetted

When the Lights Go Out October 25, 2008

I don’t remember fall winds when I lived here as a child, but there must have been. The winds blow down from the mountain southwest of us (which doesn’t mean they are warm), or else they just blow all directions. The last couple of weeks the winds have been blowing, and when this happens, you can guarantee the power (or hydro, as it is called in Canada) is going out. With a 100 miles of lines between here and town, a tree will go down somewhere, and the farther out you live, the longer it takes to fix it.

The longest Dave and Sue have been without power was eight days last spring, when a power pole fell into the river during spring floods. They borrowed a generator from a neighbor. Camp wasn’t running, however, so it wasn’t a big deal. Thanksgiving Day, the power went out here and was out for most of the day. At the Smith’s house, the stove is propane, a gravity-fed water tap in the basement provides water, and the old kerosene lamps come out once more to give light. The twenty men down at camp weren’t so easy to take care of, though. Dave recently bought a generator large enough to provide power for the entire 42-man complex, and it will be in place next week, so these episodes will not be so inconvenient.

We got to experience our first power real outage yesterday. The power went out about noon. We left our dirty dishes, and closed the lid on the toilet. Nick couldn’t run his power tools in the afternoon, so he found something else to do instead. I had plenty of time to dig out the candles. By the time we arrived at Dave and Sue’s just after six, it was getting dark. We heated up leftovers by the light of a lamp and some candles. After supper, Lyra suggested Hide-and-Seek, and the darkness certainly added an element of excitement to the game. The kids used to be scared of the dark when we first arrived. Marley talked about owls, and Lyra about bears; now they run on ahead, or in Marley’s case, dawdle behind, singing to himself.

Back at our house, the half dozen candles we lit didn’t brighten up the place much. Nick held a flashlight for our evening stories. Lyra carefully carried a candle up the stairs, and she and Marley snuggled down in bed, watching the flame flicker. Fortunately, the battery on our laptop was at 100%, so Nick and I snuggled on the couch and watched a movie until the lights came back on around 10 pm. I was glad we would have lights and water in the morning, but it is nice to know we can do just fine without being tapped in, for a little while.

I think I will see if I can dig up some of those lamps, though. And buy some lamp oil, a less toxic alternative to kerosene. I HAVE heard of people using homemade biodiesel, made from recycled cooking oil, in lamps, but I don’t think we’ll be producing any of that around here for a while.

Thanksgiving in Hazelton, BC October 21, 2008

Mom and Dad's house below the wild Roche de Bole Mountains

Last Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving. The reason we celebrate more than a month earlier than those of you down south has to do completely with our northern latitude. If you don’t have your harvest in by the second week of October, it is probably frozen in the fields.

We made the long-anticipated trip Smithers and Hazelton BC to spend a few days with my family. My brother lives just outside Smithers, a beautiful, clean little ski town nestled in the shadow of the Bulkley Range. From his house, three mountain ranges are visible. My parents live an hour north a few miles from the little town of Hazelton on a 28-acre homestead, where they built their own house and have lived for the past ten years.

Smithers is about a nine-hour drive from Graham, if you take a one hour shortcut on gravel roads to Hudson’s Hope instead of going to Fort St John. It’s a little over 500 miles by road, but just over 200 miles as the raven flies, west, over the Rockies. I haven’t lived this close to my parents for over 10 years, and it is comforting to know that they are only a day’s drive.

We spent a few days in Smithers with my brother, Josh, his wife, Laura and Ava(2) and Jesse – their children. I hadn’t met 3 month old Jesse yet. He loves people already – very open and personable. Nick and Josh smoked the hams one day. We enjoyed Americanos and European pastries at our favorite coffee shop on Main St, bought the kids a long-anticipated marble track, visited the pool, and did “town stuff”. Josh and Laura’s house is quite large and open with lots of room for the children to run around. Lyra, Marley and Ava played “house” downstairs for a couple hours while the adults enjoyed their coffee one morning. The ensuing mess was on a grand scale, but it was worth it to have some time to visit.

Our time at mom at dad’s was quieter, but special all the same. Whenever I visit their home, I always spend the first few minutes just looking. The walls are usually different colors; there are new paintings of my dad’s hanging on the walls, and their eclectic collection of furniture and various treasures appear in different places. Mom had several fall arrangements that I liked: red willows, dried grasses and herbs in pitchers. We’ll have to go out and pick some before it’s too late.

Mom keeps a small flock of Muscovy and Rouen ducks. Muscovy are meat birds, and the Rouen are faithful egg layers. She has several good setters, including one called “MamaDucks” who hatch litters of up to 15 ducklings once or twice a year, keeping her and dad supplied with young birds, and some to sell as well. Quite close behind their house is a small seasonal stream, with their hand-dug well close by. The water usually runs out for a month or so in the summer, but this year, the fall rains were late and they had been without running water for three months. They mostly use rainwater, then haul water for drinking/cooking. My parents have an unusual way of doing most things, but it works for them, so we just try to adjust when we visit.

Josh and Laura joined us for a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner at mom and dad’s house on Monday. After a wet and gloomy start to the day, the sun came out mid-morning, and we all got out for a rather wet but beautiful walk. Mom roasted one of her ducks, stuffed with a wild rice concoction which she and my dad put together. We had brusselsprouts and potatoes from my friend, Hannah. I made a salad with the last of the fall lettuce including a few peppery pieces of arugula. Our late morning walk yielded some high bush cranberries and rosehips, which I boiled with a few raspberries, put through a sieve, then sweetened and thickened a little for a tart and delicious sauce. The best part was a wild blueberry pie with whipped cream. Mom had bags of blueberries in her freezer. I guess she hit the motherlode patch this year. The kids were quiet as they sat licking their spoons long after their plates were clean. No one moved. “I think I’ll just sit here and enjoy another piece of pie,” said mom, who has not an ounce of fat on her body. Nick joined in, the whipping cream bowl was scraped, and only when the pie was all gone did we leave the table.

We drove home on Thursday, stopping in Prince George, a mid-way point, to run some errands. Nick found the homebrew store, and I was delighted to find the health food store just a few doors down. Shopping in Northern Canada is quite a different experience from Santa Fe. More on that later. This post is quite overdue, and long enough. We crossed the Graham River under a full moon close to 1 am, and experienced a feeling of homecoming.

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Butchering the Pig October 17, 2008

The definition of “butchering” in this case is cutting up, not the actual slaughtering. When we arrived at Bruce and Hannah’s around noon a few days later, Bruce had already taken care of that part. It had hung overnight, gutted and skinned, so the meat would cool, making the butchering process easier. Bruce was clearing off the big table inside, and Hannah was mixing a large batch of playdough. She placed it on a low bench in the living room along with a tubful of farm/jungle animals, and the children were busy for the next few hours. Bruce brought in half the pig and laid it on the table. It was over four feet long. Bruce asked us what kind of cuts we wanted, then drew light lines on the pig with his knife. The hindquarters was the ham. The sowbelly, which is trimmed off the ribs becomes the bacon. The ribs underneath were cut into manageable sizes and packaged as spareribs. Above the ribs along the backbone is the loin of the pig, the most tender part, which can either be sliced into porkchops, or deboned and packaged as loin roast, which is what we opted for. We got three good size loin roasts from each half of the pig. Towards the front of the pig are some not so tender roasts – good for making green chile stew – and the front leg can also be smoked as smaller hams. All the scrap meat went into a sausage tub. The large chunks of fat also went into a separate tub to be rendered into lard. The best fat lies along the back and the belly. This pig, however wasn’t particularly fatty. This is quite a simplification of the butchering options – merely the choices we made. The book Bruce had (The Art of Chacuterie, an out-of print book by the English Jane Grigson – I want it!) showed diagrams of the American, English, and French usage of a pig.

Bruce butchered the first half. I trimmed, and Hannah wrapped. Nick tackled the second half under Bruce’s supervision. They mostly used a hand-held meat saw for cutting through bones, though Bruce has used a band saw which he said was the best way to cut steaks and chops. The meat saw left little chips which we scraped away with a knife before wrapping. All the meat to be brined was put into a large tub. Sausage scraps and fat were bagged separately. I froze the sausage scraps and will make sausage later when I have a leaner meat such a buffalo to combine it with. Bones were also bagged, and I will combine them with beef or buffalo bones to make stock. The whole process from start to finish, took less than two hours, and we were sitting down at a clean table eating fresh tomato sandwiches by 2 pm.

Buckets of brine

Brining the Pig

The reason I said that butchering was not as simple as it seemed is that the task did not end there. We took our meat home, and froze the packages. Then we mixed a brine using Hannah’s recipe – water, salt, brown sugar, bay leaf, and peppercorn – placed the meat in buckets, poured the brine over top, and carried them to the root cellar to maintain a 40 F temperature. It would have been much easier to put it all in one barrel or tub, however, we were leaving in a day to spend Canadian Thanksgiving with my parents and brother’s family in Smithers, B.C., about an nine-hour drive. The meat needed to brine for at least two days before smoking. Yes, we like to make things complicated for ourselves, but my brother Josh loves a project (like myself), and we thought between he and Nick, they could rig up something for smoking.

Grinding Fat for Lard

Rendering Lard

I decided to try my hand at making lard from the pig fat. My reasons: I don’t like to waste any usable part of an animal; I am a purist when it comes to fat (the less processed source, the better – I would rather use my own lard for cooking than most other fats available ie, vegie oil, shortening, even canola); I think there is a wisdom in the way people USED to do things; and the French, who hold animal fats in high esteem, just can’t be wrong when it comes to food. So, I will now proceed to tell you what NOT to do when making lard. First, we resurrected a meat grinder from the basement of the old dining hall. It was covered in dust, and a bit rusty. Nick took some steel wool to it, and gave it a second life. He is quite attached to it now. I took the fat out of the fridge, and left it out at room temperature for an hour or so while we work working some kinks out with the grinder. First lesson: never grind warm fat. (You can also cut the fat up finely, but you get more volume in a shorter time if you grind it.) It was tough, and really messy, but we managed. Lyra and Marley were helping.

Marley: What if you were inside there? That would be scaaaaary!
Lyra: You would come out in lots of little pieces!

Mid-morning, I put the fat in a stainless steel pot with a little water in the bottom. The water keeps the fat from sticking, and evaporates as the fat heats up. Second lesson: keep your heat as low as possible. I had it to high at first, and my lard turned kind of grey and blobby. It turned it down, but wasn’t off to a great start. It would have been better in cast iron, over a wood stove. Third lesson: be prepared to take all day. It was 11 pm when I finally washed my last dish. From maybe five pounds of fat, I was left with two quarts of satisfactory-looking lard; the second quart darker than the first, as it darkened with cooking time. I can’t wait to try it in tortillas… the way they were meant to be made!

The Smokehouse

Smoking the pig

This is getting really long… so I will be brief about smoking the pig; the last step. We transported the brined meat with minimum mess. On a cold and grey Saturday morning at my brother’s, Nick and Josh took a look at Josh’s smoker. It was an old fridge, converted to smokehouse, with an electric hotplate at the bottom. We couldn’t find any alder (what Bruce uses), so Nick bought a bag of cherry and a bag of hickory wood chips. They loaded up the smoker, put some chips on the plate and plugged it in. It took a while to get the system down, and the temperature up in the smoker. Ham and bacon are best “cold-smoked” – when the heats hovers around 80-90 F. The first batch was in maybe eight hours, and got a little oversmoked. The second batch, hickory, went smoother, and was ready in about five hours. We tried some bacon right away. It was fabulous. The next night, we cooked a small ham and took it to a friend’s house. The flavor and the aroma were haunting. The project was a grand success, and we will be repeating it next year!

A Visit with Homesteading Friends October 10, 2008

Old Friends - Haidi and Hannah

A few weeks ago, I called an old friend who happens to live in this area. She was, in fact, my best friend for most of my teenage years. We both lived in the Yukon, although about 300 miles apart. We only saw each other a couple of times a year, but in between, wrote enormous letters about everything. Epistles. I think my record was 26 pages. We went our separate ways towards the end of high school, and sort of lost touch.

We visited last year, when we were in the area, and found we picked up where we left off. Although we had both grown and changed, we still understood each other. She is now married, and with her husband, Bruce, and five children, ages 10 to 2, lives on 160 acre farm in Buick Creek, about an hour and fifteen minutes from here. We spent the day drinking tea, cooking together, and talking gardens. Nick and Bruce talked about building, solar energy, and drank lots of French press coffee.

When I called Hannah a few weeks back to see if we could give them a hand with harvesting, I found out that they were moving in a month to Ohio, where Bruce grew up and his family still lives. Last year the spring was so cold that only about 1/4th of Bruce’s wheat crop sprouted. Both farmers, they want to live where they can grow more variety. I was sad to hear the news, but Hannah said she would put aside some vegetables for me and we set a date for a visit. Last Sunday, we drove out to Buick Creek to spend the day. Hannah and Bruce are hardcore homesteaders in a way that Nick and I will never have the guts to be, but it still inspiring. They built their home using wood harvested from their property which Bruce milled himself, using a small sawmill which he is taking with him to Ohio, and he plans to do the same thing there. Their house runs on solar power almost completely, with a generator for backup in the winter. They grow or raise almost all their own food. We sat down to a supper of roast chicken, potatoes, and carrots, caesar salad, and rhubarb/raspberry juice. I commented that with the exception of the dressing on the salad, they had grown everything on the table. Hannah said that most of their meals are like that; they don’t even think about it any more.

After lunch, the kids disappeared outside and were not seen again for three hours. I could hear the occasional whoop from a windrow in some small poplars, so at least we knew their location. Hannah and I walked her garden and did some gleaning. Despite several hard frosts, she still had romaine lettuce growing, and the greenest spinach you ever saw. I picked brussel sprouts, cabbages, and a sackful of beets as well. She had mostly cleaned out her huge greenhouse, but we still found a tubful of tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, zucchini, and one green pepper. Nick and Bruce loaded up four sacks of potatoes and two of carrots. I was thrilled to find her electric grain grinder was for sale, so we loaded that as well, and she gave me four bushels of wheat to go with it. (A bushel is sixty pounds). They were so incredibly generous.

About teatime, we checked on the kids. They had built an amazing fort in the windrow, and only the promise of the carrot cake I had brought lured them away from their play. After tea and cake, no one was hungry for supper, so we visited some more, had story time with the children, and didn’t eat till after seven. By this time, we had learned that Bruce had a pig for sale, and was willing to teach us how to butcher it. How could we refuse? The only catch? The only day they could do it was on Wednesday – and we were leaving on Friday to spend Thanksgiving with our family in Smithers, about 10 hours away. Still, we couldn’t pass up that great opportunity, so yesterday, we again visited Hannah and Bruce. In our next blog: butchering a pig – not as simple as it seems.

Lyra and Marley learning the ropes from Nathan, David, and Alex Kimble

First Snow October 7, 2008

Fall Colour Surprised by Snow

It came. It fell. It melted. But it was here – the first snow. October 7th. When I woke up, from my bed, the light looked a little different. I went over to the window – and there it was; a world of white. Lyra was awake but unaware. I lifted her up to the window. “Snow, snow!” she cried, “can I go out and play in it?” She roused her brother, who woke out of a dead sleep to say, “Oh, we have to build a snowman.” “Snow, snow, snow in ‘Tanada,” he sang softly as I got him dressed. They were out playing before breakfast, making snowball tracks in the grass as they assembled their snow-thing. In the end, Lyra said it was a snow sheep, and took Baa, her own well-loved sheep out to meet it.

Taste of Snow

Snowsheep with Old Dining Hall in Background

Taking a Moment October 3, 2008

King of the Mountain!

It’s funny how a different setting doesn’t change the person you are.  You may think it might, but you bring your habits with you.  Once the newness wears off a bit, you go back to doing things the way you always have; unless you make a conscious choice to change.

I’m a doer, and sometimes I am so busy doing that I forget to look at the world around me – even when it is so beautiful.  The other day, I was working in the front yard with Lyra.  “Mommy, let’s go look at the river,” she suggested.
“I’m trying to get this done, sweetheart.  Why don’t you go look?”  I said without looking up.
“No, I want you to come with me,” she insisted.  Finally, I did.  We sat on the edge of the bank behind our house, and looked at the river, at the color on the hills behind it.   We talked about going swimming in the summertime.  After a few minutes, we walked back to Dave and Sue’s house for lunch.  “Thanks for coming with me, Mom,” said Lyra.

In the spirit of Just Being, I packed a picnic lunch today and we took it down to the river.  It was so warm and beautiful, it would have been a sin to eat indoors.  Lyra and Marley took off their socks and shoes, and waded in a little pool.  We sat on a rock bar by a massive log jam.  After a while, the kids took their sandwiches and climbed the logpile, barefoot.  A movement on the other side of the river caught our eye; a little black creature was playing in the water, slipping in and out, and dashing along the shore with fluid movements.   It looked and moved just like a ferret – except ferrets despise water.  I think it must have been a young otter, though I’ve never seen a black one before.   The kids didn’t want to get down from the log jam which they were scaling like master explorers, but finally we got them headed back up the hill for home.  I’m glad we broke away from all the things clamoring to be done, to take a look at the river.

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Good Music at 4 AM October 2, 2008

I heard a great song on the radio this morning which described how I feel about America.  That’s right – the United States; my other country.  Greg Brown is a folk/blues singer/guitarist with a rich, deep, rough voice.  He was singin’ a song called “Eugene” – in sort of a John Prine talking-style – about wandering around the US from the Northwest through Utah, to North Carolina, and all the wild, diverse places in between.  I’m not going to rephrase the song; you have to hear it for yourself, but  here’s to you, America, and your color, your amazing variety of people, places, and music.  I’m glad that I got to know you a little.  And Good Luck in the election.

Nick and Dave are looking forward to the vice-presidential debates tonight, for some reason.  Dave was born in the States and is pretty hard-core Republican.  Nick is a Nader supporter but loves a good mud-slinging argument nonetheless.  I will not be listening in as I am still working down at camp.

Yes, just two more days.  That will make seven mornings of 3:30 am.  Getting out of bed is hard, but I still love mornings, and that dark, starlit walk almost makes it worthwhile.  Nick lent me Sirius radio for the week (very generous), so I have tunes.  I usually get home in the mornings in time to finish breakfast with the kids, then go back at their naptime.  I have the kitchen to myself.  It’s been fun.  I haven’t fired up the fryer yet.  That’s tomorrow – fish and chips night.  It’s been LOTS of meat:  stews, pork chops, chicken, meatballs…  How is it you never see a guy get excited about a salad bar, but when he lifts the lid on a big pan of spaghetti and meatballs, there is an actual groan of appreciation, “MMMEATBALLS,”?  I will be honest though; I haven’t learned how to make a good gravy.  I mean that rich, brown, entirely artifical, MSG-loaded gravy that guys love.  I served chicken the other night.  It was chicken with sausages and peppers, onions, with a lovely sauce, and I served mashed potatoes with it .  The guys were looking for the gravy.  “Sauce” just didn’t cut it.  I can make a great meatloaf; don’t balk at cooking a heart attack’s worth of sausage and bacon for breakfast.  I even made some pretty decent bacon-cheese-egg McMuffins with homemade biscuits the other day.  But I don’t think I’ll ever make that gravy.