Pioneer Village

July 4, 2019July 4, 201936 Comments

Last month I blogged about a Victorian tea party I attended on the grounds of a local museum. If you are a history lover, please join me for part two of the tour, a visit to yesteryear.

While the Victorian cottage is one of the original buildings on the museum site, there are many others. Most have been moved to the site, including a one room schoolhouse, a small church and a log cabin from the days of the early settlers, as well as a local lighthouse.

The 1919 church with the original pipe organ in the corner.

The one room schoolhouse.

At the risk of sounding like someone from Little House on the Prairie, I seldom admit I once attended a one room schoolhouse. It was located less than half a mile down the road from our farm, within walking distance even for a first grader, and was the same school my dad and all his ancestors had attended. In 1963 the government closed all the remaining rural schools, and our parents drove us into town to the Catholic school until the bus system was started a few years later.

What do I remember from my year and a half there? Not much, as I was only six. The big wood burning stove, so hot you could cook hot dogs wrapped in tin foil on top for lunch,

games of baseball for all ages at recess, getting the strap once (just a little tap on our hands) for talking in class and being made to stand in the corner with my cousin – much more humiliating. The teacher was always yelling and in a bad mood – can you imagine trying to teach 40 kids of all ages. It may sound archaic, but I suppose it would be similar to home schooling now, with different age appropriate lessons. As there were only three of us in grade one, myself, my cousin and an unkempt boy whose family no one knew, we did not get much attention, but I must have absorbed something from listening to her teach the older grades, as when we were given tests at the new school I passed with 92%. (They thought we were country hicks who would have to be held back a year). My new grade two teacher was pleasantly surprised and told my parents I was smart, a moment I remember to this day. I always had a friendly rivalry with the boy sitting in front of me over who would get top honors, sometimes it was him, sometimes me, and as I went on to graduate from the University of Toronto, it didn’t to me any harm, although I admit some kids who needed extra attention were not as lucky.

Compare this slate with the tablets of today. I vaguely remember the sound of the school bell being rung.

At the one room schoolhouse the grade ones were let out half an hour early, and my cousin, who lived next door, and I would dawdle along, catching tadpoles in the ditches, playing in the snowbanks and making up fairy stories, the road being lined with beautiful trees, (channeling Anne of Green Gables here), and arrive home the same time as my siblings. It seems I remember more than I had thought.

Here is a picture of the class of 1934, with the school in the background appearing larger than I remember.

This is a log cabin from 1874, not a replica but an actual cabin moved to the site to preserve a part of history.

My great-grandparents John and Ellen were married in 1870 and I try to imagine my Irish ancestors living in such a small drafty house during their early years on the farm. The old white farmhouse I grew up in had two parts, the initial smaller dwelling and a larger addition with bedrooms upstairs to accommodate their growing family of nine children.

This picture of an old stove certainly puts my complaints about the ongoing delays in my kitchen reno into perspective. What my ancestors would have given for such modern conveniences as a stove you could turn on with the touch of a button.

Not too keen on the sleeping arrangements, a loft accessed by very steep stairs. I remember my dad saying some of his uncles slept upstairs in the granary when it was new, which probably looked like this. I imagine it was freezing in the winter, hence the quilts.

Open concept floor plans were popular back then too! We have an antique farm table dating from 1870, longer than this one.

While most farms had large vegetable gardens, including rhubarb, and were mainly self-sufficient,

there were times you simply had to go into town for a few provisions at the general store,

and perhaps a new hat.

The model train room, which boasts three large train sets, is always a hit with the guys.

As well as the individual buildings, there is a large agricultural building full of old farm implements such as this cutter/sleigh. We had one just like it and my dad sometimes took it for a spin behind the Clydesdales.

There is also a large exhibition hall, with a marine room and different display rooms and lots of historical archives. It does seem strange that my Barbie/Skipper carry case has now achieved vintage status.

I remember playing with this doll house too.

Several volunteers were setting up the loom for a display of weaving the day of our visit, a time consuming process. There was no fast fashion back then.

And of course, I always enjoy looking at old medical exhibits, such as this infirmary,

and pharmacy.

The tools of my trade

Perhaps somewhere among those antique bottles is a clue for my (long neglected) murder mystery? Agatha Christie used the knowledge acquired during her days as an apothecary apprentice when writing her books.

When I think back to the changes in my profession over the past one hundred years – the invention of penicillin and antibiotics, vaccines, insulin – these are discoveries which saved lives. In my student days pharmacy labels were prepared on typewriters, not as ancient as this one as ours were electric with correcto-tape.

The last forty years of my career has seen the implementation of computers (a massive improvement for record keeping, drug information and drug interactions), clot-busters for preventing damage in heart attack and stroke, palliative care measures for end of life, improved chemotherapy, drugs for depression and mental illness, biologicals for autoimmune diseases, and more new drugs on the market than you can possibly keep up with. When I think of the future – targeted chemotherapy, gene therapy, cures for diseases never thought possible – it is amazing the amount of change that can happen over the course of a century.

One Christmas my father was given one of those autobiography books to document your life for the grandchildren. One of the questions was what are the most important changes you have seen in your life as compared to that of your grandparents.

“When my grandparents settled here the land was all bush. Roads were Indian trails. People lived far apart. They had to build houses, barns, roads, clear land. Walking and horses were the main modes of travel. Machinery was crude or non-existent. Since then tractors and combines have been invented. Hydro, paved roads, cars, radios, toasters, tvs, micowaves, computers. Household goods and furnishings have changed such as washers and dryers, refrigerators and stoves, air conditioning in summer and furnaces in winter instead of a wood stove. My mother churned butter and we had an ice box and a root cellar for vegetables, an outhouse, no running water in the house and having to heat water on the stove for a bath. Materials are softer now than the scratchy clothes I wore as a child. You have toys now that we never dreamed of. The biggest changes are education and modern schools, and medicines and childhood diseases.”

My father was a child of the Depression, and one of changes he recalled was hydro. The farm didn’t get hydro until after WW2, 1947, and all of a sudden you had lights in the barn and weren’t milking cows by lantern light, and you could stay up late with hydro in the house. Worth thinking about the next time I grumble because the power is out a few hours due to a storm. As to the future, he commented on computers and the internet which was just starting up. In the twenty years since he died we now have – Google, Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Skype, Instagram, Twitter, Siri, Spotify, Netflix, IPods, IPads, GPS, digital cameras and clouds which are not rain clouds, although we have plenty of those too! We are now testing cars that drive themselves, robots and artificial intelligence. It feels like something out of the Jetsons – that old 60’s cartoon about a futuristic world which was very predictive. Does anyone else remember the theme music?

What will the future hold? Maybe someday my old 1986 DOS computer, currently residing in the basement, with it’s orange blinking screen and large floppy disks, will be on display at the museum, resting behind the electronics exhibit, along with a Sony Walkman and a ghetto-blaster.

As a history lover, I feel it is important to preserve our heritage, and I hope you have enjoyed this peek into the past.

Postscript: My mother painted the log cabin (two versions), but she placed it in winter time, as my ancestors arrived here in late October, not expecting snow. Is the lighthouse a beacon to the new world? You can tell I’ve been hanging around the art world too much…

Beacon to the New World

The Log Cabin

Postscript: This is my 100th post. I never would have imagined that!

A Victorian Tea

May 24, 2019May 24, 201920 Comments

Every May 24^th weekend one of our local museums hosts their annual Victorian Tea, complete with freshly baked scones, white tablecloths and fine china.

The May 24^th holiday weekend in Canada is called the Victoria Day weekend, because May 24 was Queen Victoria’s birthday. Older people may remember the schoolyard rhyme children chanted years ago – “the twenty-fourth of May / Is the Queen’s birthday; / If they don’t give us a holiday / We’ll all run away!” Now many people don’t even know who Queen Victoria was, unless you watch the PBS TV show Victoria, but she was Britain’s longest reining monarch, although Queen Elizabeth surpassed her in 2015. She became Queen at age 18 and reined over the British Empire for 63 years, from 1937 until her death in 1901, a period known as the Victorian era. She married her cousin Albert, had nine children and survived 20 different governments and 11 prime ministers. After her death, her birthday was made a federal holiday, which was eventually was moved to the Monday preceding May 24 because of the weekend. Queen Victoria most likely would have approved as weekends were an invention of the Victoria era. This May 24th marks the 200th anniversary of her birth in 1819.

Note: the Union Jack (Canada did not get it’s own Maple Leaf flag until 1965) and the old fashioned lilac bush (see Lilac Time).

The Victorian cottage is one of many buildings on the museum site, whose mandate is to display our past customs and heritage. Many have been moved to the site, including a one room schoolhouse, a small church and a log cabin from the days of the early settlers, but the cottage was part of the original grounds. It is a small one floor dwelling, built in 1893, which was used by a Detroit woman as a summer home until her death, when it was donated to the museum. She was known as the cookie lady, for her kindness in treating the neighborhood children to sugar cookies on the veranda when they were passing by.

It consists of a good sized dining room, living room and kitchen and two very small bedrooms.

The inside still looks as it did during the time she lived there, floral wallpaper, quilts and all.

The problem with the Victoria Day weekend is that the weather is usually guaranteed to be cold, rainy and miserable, which does not deter the campers, as it is considered the unofficial start to summer. It seldom fails, whereas the following weekend, the US Memorial Day is often quite nice. Still, not one to let a bit of rain (or even forty days of it like this spring), get in the way of a good tea spread, I decided to attend. The last time I was there, it was miraculously a warm and sunny day, with a pleasant breeze coming off the river, and we were able to take our tea outside on the veranda, as opposed to inside huddled beside the stove. It was such a fine day we lingered over a second cup.

Although the day started out warm and sunny, the forecast was rain by 3pm, (I’m quite serious about the forty days of rain), so we set out early and decided to tour the buildings first (my friend had never been there), as we could always sit inside later if it started to pour. On our walk about, I noticed a big patch of rhubarb growing beside the log cabin and took some pictures which I could have used in last week’s Rhubarb Lunar Cake blog. (It’s never too late to edit!)

There’s something so civilized about a tea party and the clink of china tea cups, shades of Downton Abbey. Each small table was laid with white tablecloths, cream and sugar sets, crystal butter dishes, jars of strawberry jam and a colorful mixture of china cups and plates.

The servers, young and old, were dressed in the costume of servants of the day, complete with frilly caps and white aprons. The wind was so strong, their aprons were billowing in the breeze and the tablecloths were threatening to blow away, so we decided to sit inside.

The only occupant of the veranda was a bird nesting high up in the rafters, most likely anticipating left over crumbs.

Even inside, with the veranda doors open, it was so windy that our vase of flowers blew over soaking the tablecloth, which they removed and replaced with one even more exquisitely embroidered. Our server, a charming young girl of about ten, inquired as to our choice of tea and scones – raisin, rhubarb, orange or apple cinnamon.

Such a difficult decision, but my choice is always the rhubarb – it was divine, light and fluffy, and I am still trying to get the recipe, a carefully guarded secret. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it before it was consumed!

They make up to 400 scones for the day, using the cottage’s own wood-fired stove. (Note the mirror at the top – I guess that was to check your appearance after slaving over a hot stove all day?) The cost of the tea was $7.50 with donations to the museum fund, ordinary admission being $5, a bargain for the price.

Exactly at 3 pm as predicted, the skies opened up and rained on our lovely tea party. Oh well, there’s always next year…I’m sure I’ll be back.

Postscript: Easy rhubarb scones, only for truly lazy cooks or those whose kitchens are about to be torn apart. Mix this, with this,

bake as directed, and you get this.

Enjoy with a nice cup of tea in a china cup!

Rhubarb Lunar Coffee Cake

May 16, 2019May 20, 201919 Comments

“Mission Control to Earthlings: Volunteers needed to test Lunar Cake recipe. Only rhubarb lovers need apply.”

Rhubarb is one of those foods you either love or hate. I never liked rhubarb until a few years ago, but then my entire culinary experience consisted of a very tart rhubarb pie my mother would make for my dad once a year. We had a big rhubarb patch on the farm, and no matter how much sugar she used in the pie, it was so sour no one else would eat it. The rhubarb patch was rectangular in size and was beside a row of red currant bushes, with one black currant and one gooseberry bush at each end. Behind it, the odd spike of asparagus would appear in the early spring, these all being old-fashioned farm staples from a century ago. Today they would be considered heirloom varieties. Once established, those old rhubarb patches would live forever. I would sometimes volunteer to pick the red currants, as my dad would get his very own red current pie too. In retrospect those pies must have been something his mother had made, nostalgic reminders of childhood. We just thought they were sour.

Because the patch was so large and prolific and had been there for many years, people from town would stop by and ask if they could buy some. If you are a rhubarb-lover you always know where a good patch is. We would see the same people year after year, so one day we kids had the ingenious idea that we would have a roadside stand and sell bundles of rhubarb for 25 cents – a country version of a lemonade stand.

The rhubarb stand lasted all of one Sunday afternoon. There was little traffic on our dusty country road and we soon grew bored laying on a blanket under the big tree out front. On the rare occasion someone did stop, we would run to the house to get our parents, because we had been drilled in school not to talk to strangers, even those innocent souls out for a Sunday drive. (Makes sense right, well in the mind of a child). I think we grossed 75 cents.

Luckily we had our guard dogs to protect us and the rhubarb patch!

Now as an adult, count me in as a rhubarb fan too. I especially love strawberry-rhubarb jam, rhubarb scones, and most recently a rhubarb coffee cake, which I’ve made the past few years from a recipe a dietitian friend gave me. This Canadian recipe is called Lunar Rhubarb Cake and was developed by an editor of Canadian Living magazine back in the 1980’s. It was so good, it went viral before viral even existed, with everyone saying they got it from their mother, aunt, neighbor. (A recipe which promotes sharing like that, is one small step for food-kindness). According to the food column in the Ottawa Citizen, the name lunar comes from the appearance of the top of the cake, similar to the crater-like surface of the moon.

CAKE INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup butter (softened)

1 1/2 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

1 Tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup sour cream (you can use 2% if you wish)

2 cups chopped rhubarb (you can increase by 1/2 cup more if you wish)

1 tbsp. floor

LUNAR TOPPING:

1/4 cup butter (melted)

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 tsp. cinnamon (I omitted this, as in my opinion cinnamon goes with apple pie, not rhubarb)

DIRECTIONS:

Chop the rhubarb and toss with 1 tbsp flour. Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Mix 2 cups flour, soda and salt together. (I buy the premixed flour with the baking soda and salt already in it which is more expensive but saves measuring). Alternatively add the flour mixture and sour cream to the creamed mixture. Add the rhubarb to the batter. Pour into a buttered 9 X 13 inch cake pan. Mix the topping ingredients and spread evenly over the top of the cake. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, until the top is pitted and crusty and a skewer comes out clean. (It was 15 minutes longer for me, as my oven always cooks slow). Recipe serves twelve hungry astronauts.

Some versions of this recipe call for buttermilk or sour milk instead of sour cream. The batter will be quite thick with the sour cream.

The cake keeps well in the fridge and was incredibly moist even after a week. It transports well too, should you wish to take it to a party in another galaxy. I think it would work well with blueberries when the season arrives, because as we all know rhubarb season is way too short!

Maybe if my mother’s old-fashioned rhubarb pie had a crumble topping we might have eaten it too, as the sweetness balances out the tartness of the rhubarb, similar to the popular combination of strawberries and rhubarb. Although I’m not a huge fan of strawberry-rhubarb pie, mostly because of the pastry, I have made a compote by stewing equal parts of rhubarb and strawberries on the stove and adding sugar to taste. It’s nice mixed with vanilla yogurt or ice cream or just eaten plain.

I’ve been envisioning my own rhubarb patch in the backyard, so I bought home this last week, although it’s been too cold to plant it.

Although eaten as a fruit, rhubarb is actually a vegetable. While the stalks may be edible, the leaves are toxic to humans and animals due to a high concentration of the poison, oxalic acid. It is a perennial which likes cooler climates. Plant in full sun, spacing 3 or 4 feet apart in a row. Patience is required as you can’t harvest the first few years until established. Newer varieties last about 15 years. You can also divide existing rhubarb plants (root balls) in early spring, so I might be on the hunt for an old patch down a country lane….

Flash forward to 2025 – mission accomplished….hopefully?

Lilac Time

May 9, 2019May 10, 201948 Comments

Our old white farmhouse was surrounded by lilac bushes, which were often out in time for Mother’s Day, an occasion we always celebrated on the farm with a big family meal which my mother prepared. Looking back, it seems strange we made her cook on Mother’s Day, but then my grandmother always came over, so she probably considered it her daughterly duty, and was happy having all her kids home, even if it did mean we ended up doing two hours of dishes by hand in the days before the dishwasher. Out would come the lace tablecloth and the good china, and the long farm table, dating from 1870, would be extended to its maximum length, with later another set up in the kitchen for the ever-growing collection of grandchildren. Of course, this was in the days before going out for brunch became popular, which we tried occasionally but which was often a disappointment, restaurants always being so busy that day, and the kids not being able to play outside, where the lawn and orchard would be sunny with dandelions.

Those old farm lilacs were common in the countryside, with almost every farmhouse (which back then only came in two types, white clapboard or yellow brick), sporting a bush or two. But ours were special, as they surrounded the house on three sides. If it was a nice day with a south breeze and the windows open, the smell was heavenly. The fragrance would waft in through the kitchen and living room windows, and also the upstairs bedrooms, as the bushes were quite tall.

We also picked some to bring inside and put in vases, something I still do to this day. Even when I was older, I would always take a bouquet or two home, wrapped up in tinfoil, to put on the kitchen counter.

After my father passed away and my mother moved into town, my sister brought her two lilac bushes as a house warming present. They lasted about fifteen years and then had to be cut down. I planted two lilac bushes in the corner of my yard ten years ago, and they are now starting to look spindly. One bush smells like what I remember, the other does not. Of course, they are late this year, like everything else, so these are pictures from last year.

There are over 2000 varieties of lilacs, according to the International Lilac Society, in a wide range of colors, sizes and blooms. Common lilacs generally prefer cold winters, well drained soil and full sun. They are low maintenance and require little watering, once established – my kind of plant!

My neighbor has the darker purple kind, which does not smell nearly as nice, but then maybe I’m just being nostalgic.

All lilacs are lovely, (except those four foot Korean Dwarfs, my Miss Kim never bloomed once), but it is the old-fashioned kind I love the most. While the nursery sold me the variety known as “common lilac” they certainly don’t seem as hardy as those old farm lilacs, which must have been heirloom stock, as they were still going strong at eighty years plus. (Some varieties only last 10 to 15 years.) The “common lilac” has the largest and longest blooms and the most fragrant flowers and can grow up to twenty feet. Ours would be pruned back once in awhile when they got too tall, (only prune immediately after the spring bloom), but they were always leafy and full, and the branches made excellent spears for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over a backyard bonfire.

I was told my grandmother planted them sometime in the 1920’s when she was newly married, after the house was raised, a basement put under it and a veranda added. She also planted a row of white spirea bushes beside them, so it formed a little alcove. I would sometimes take a book or magazine there and sit and read, sheltered from the wind, stopping once in awhile just to breathe in the scent. Here’s the view, looking out.

Someone needs to cut the grass!

After my mother moved, the house and the lilacs were bulldozed down to make room for more acreage – a sad fate after so many years of providing beauty. I wish I had thought to take a cutting or two, but I was busy with life and not much interested in gardening then.

Last fall, I bought two Bloomerang Lilacs on sale, a variety new to me, but then I’m always behind on the latest gardening trends. (Here’s a link to more info.) They are similar to the popular Bloom Again Hydrangeas, and will rebloom in the summer and fall after a short rest. They will only grow to 5 feet, making them more like a shrub than a tree. Mine seem to have survived the winter nicely and even have buds on them. I like the idea of having lilacs for three seasons, as a week or two in May seems much too short.

This would make a nice Mother’s Day gift!

If you’re ever in northern Michigan in early June, check out the famous Mackinac Island Lilac Festival (link – added to bucket list). No cars are allowed on the island, but you can cross on the ferry and stay at the Grand Hotel (where Somewhere in Time was filmed) and tour via bike or horse drawn carriage – now that really is going back in time. Visiting this lilac paradise is a nice way to welcome summer after a cold and snowy winter. Here are a few pictures from Victoria Magazine, May 2000 issue.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Farm Lilacs

The Skating Rink

January 29, 2019January 29, 201919 Comments

One of the best things to enjoy about winter is skating. In fact, years ago you wouldn’t have been considered Canadian if you didn’t like skating, my generation having been raised on hockey and a daily dose of outdoor exercise. If you were a true Canadian, you never missed watching Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights. I admit I haven’t skated in years and thought to take it up again in retirement, but my last Bone Density test was not good, so I fear my skating days are over. Watching the neighbors kids through my kitchen window is the closest I have come to the sport lately, and although I might have been moaning about having to do the dishes by hand at least I had a pleasant scene to gaze upon, especially after school when the spotlights were glowing, and the flurries flying. Still, I was wondering, what if I built my own skating rink? I have such a big square rectangle of a back yard, that it seems a shame to waste it.

Now that the neighbors have moved, I seldom see any children playing outside in the winter or in the summer either. When I first moved to this subdivision there were always games of street hockey after school, now everyone is inside on their video games. I grew up skating on the farm. There was a low spot behind the barn which made for an excellent skating rink when it was flooded. Here is a picture my mother painted of it, complete with the family dogs. My brothers and cousins would sometimes go to the pond at the back of the farm to play hockey, but it was a long way to walk, there and back, in the cold.

Although skating was one of my favorite winter activities, I was not thrilled about having to wear black skates. They were hand-me-downs from my brother, but my mother probably figured it didn’t matter as who would see us, way out in the country,

But even at age six I knew that black skates were for boys – girls wore white skates, for figure skating. By the time the arena was built in town and free skating hours were held on Sundays, I had a pair of white skates as I simply refused to go otherwise. The best thing about skating in the arena was the music blaring from the loudspeakers, but it was the sixties and we had the Beatles and other groovy tunes. While cleaning out the basement a few years ago I found the diary I got for Christmas the year I was eleven. We had a skating rink at school that January, courtesy of some long forgotten but dedicated teacher, and practically every day the entry is the same – “went skating at lunch hour”. Re-reading the diary, I seem to have been obsessed with skating, but maybe I had nothing else to write about – our lives were simpler and more uneventful back then. By the time the February thaw came I had given up on both the skating and the writing and the rest of the diary is just a series of blank pages.

The winters were colder too and longer, at least it seems so in retrospect. I remember my cousin and I once skating over the fields when we were teenagers – there was such a hard crust of freezing rain and ice on top of the snow that the whole farm was our skating rink that weekend.

My dad remembers a few years where the winter was so cold and the ice build up so thick that it was possible to skate on the river. That would be dangerous now, and probably was then too. My mother lost a childhood friend, a teenage boy who fell through the ice. She was to go with him and another friend that day, but she didn’t have any skates. My dad saved up $5 in the Depression to buy his first pair of skates.

Skating must be in my genes, as my maternal grandmother hailed from Holland, where she remembered skating on the canals in the winter. While every small town in Canada has an indoor skating arena, there are very seldom any outdoor rinks anymore, and by outdoor rinks I mean big community rinks, not just a small square of ice in someone’s backyard. Occasionally someone’s attempt to build a backyard rink gets shut down because of zoning bylaws or neighbors complaining about the noise, but kudos to the brave dads who attempt it, as they are the ones standing out at midnight in the freezing cold flooding the thing every night.

Being outside in the fresh air was always part of the fun, layering up with double socks and mittens and thick scarfs around our necks and faces…..and then coming in hours later with red cheeks and frozen fingers to warm up over hot chocolate. Some winters are just not suitable, it’s too mild or rainy, or just not cold enough – you must have a consistent spell of below freezing weather….the old six weeks of winter thing. We did not even get our first major snowstorm this year until January 19, so this has not been the best year for making ice, but we are now in for a prolonged spell of below freezing windchill weather, so why don’t we have more outdoor rinks? I see parcels of empty land here and there around town and think now that would make an ideal skating rink. It seems to me that it wouldn’t be that expensive to build a temporary ice rink, and think of the fun the kids could have. We have splashpads now that cost $150,000 instead of swimming pools. You can skate in an arena where ice time is rare and always scheduled, but there’s nowhere to play a pick-up game of shimmy. Many larger cities have skating centres, like Nathan Phillips Square in downtown Toronto. You can skate on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, but the weather is much colder in our nation’s capital. If I’m ever in New York in the wintertime I would risk falling and breaking a hip just to be able to skate at the Rockefeller Centre – but first I would make sure I have travel insurance!

Having a backyard rink would be fun for the adults too. I’ve often thought a skating party would be nice idea for a New Years Eve party, for all ages – the music – the outdoor lights – a bonfire – hot drinks – good food. Chili and potato soup, or lobster Newburg and champagne if you want something fancier. I used to talk sports with one of my work colleagues, who was a real hockey fiend. Every year I would joke, “Bob, do you think this is the year I will have a skating rink?“ and he would reply, “If you build it, we will come.”

I still have my skates – they are in the basement somewhere. Am I brave enough to take a spin? I wish I had a rink outside my back door….

Song of the Day: Joni Mitchell – I Wish I Had a River

Beverage of the Day: Hot Chocolate made with imported Valrhona French cocoa….at $20 a box it’s expensive but worth it and not at all bitter as dark chocolate can sometimes be.

Gourmet Hot Chocolate

Snow Day

January 23, 201914 Comments

There’s nothing nicer than a snowstorm in January, especially when the early morning news is telling everyone to stay home and take a snow day, and the local radio station is listing the bus cancellations, and school and business closings. There’s no second guessing, should I go out or not, when they start telling everyone to stay off the roads. When I was working, I dreaded winter as I had a long commute – it might be bright and sunny when I left home but by the time I got to work in the snowbelt region it would be a raging blizzard. If you didn’t go in, you were home safe but sorry as you would inevitably feel guilty about leaving your colleagues with a skeleton staff and/or a 24 hour shift. When I worked in a small rural hospital if it was an exceptionally bad storm, the staff who lived in town would be collected by snowmobile – no need to stay home, we will come and get you! Many a snowy night I drove home in whiteouts over unplowed country roads where I was the only fool on the road. A friend of mine once ran into a pack of wild dogs/coyotes on her drive home – they must have been disoriented in the blizzard to have come so far out of the bush and refused to get off the road. After I changed jobs, it was even worse, as there was no backup staff or plan. I only remember my workplace being closed once due to snow and only then because my boss had wisely but reluctantly made the decision…..but that was the year we had a snowmageddon and the national guard was called in to deal with all the stranded cars on the highway, many of whom had been there for over 24 hours. I did not even get a snow day as I was called in to cover a shift near where I lived for someone who couldn’t get in. It always amazed me how busy we would be on those days, and how many people would be out and about during snowstorms, even when they were telling people to stay home. Of course, there would be the expected increase in emergencies – car accidents, heart attacks, pneumonia and such, but then there would be the others. I reached the conclusion that there are people who just do not like being stuck at home during a snowstorm, they must be out and about…to the grocery store for milk, the library to return books….any excuse will do. Personally, now that I am retired, I am grateful for the opportunity to stay home when the weather out there is frightful.

Who doesn’t recall the excitement of an unexpected day off school when you were a child. I think we remember them because they were so few and far between. Last year there were about ten days when the buses didn’t run here and another five or so when the school was closed altogether. Snow, fog, freezing rain, some of which never even materialized but the school board must make the decision at 5:30 in the morning and there are liability issues. I remember one year our rural bus was cancelled for several days. We made snow angels, built snow forts and snowmen, played fox and the goose in the pristine whiteness and had hot chocolate (the real stuff with cocoa and milk) when we came in from playing, and usually grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch.

Blue Snowman

My dad would plow out the lane-way with the front-end loader on the tractor but basically we were snowed in until the county roads were cleared, which was never a priority for the township. My ancestors went to church in this old cutter when the roads were impassable.

I guess you could say the one horse open sleigh was their backup plan! (This picture is from the 1940’s when my dad still had the big Clydesdale horses).

The month of January can be quite pleasant, once all the stress and merry-making of Christmas is over. The days are quiet – it’s a good time for personal reflection, journal writing, and soup on the stove. You don’t have to socialize if you don’t feel like it, you can read and watch movies and putter around the house with no agenda in mind. You can bake and eat with no thought of exercising off those calories. It’s much too cold and icy to go out, although you might be brave enough to shovel the driveway if no one volunteers to do it for you. It’s a time of year to be savored. All is white without, all is warm within. You can go to bed at night and listen to the wind howl and be grateful for hearth and home.

While a snow storm can be a blessing in disguise, a forced stop to our constant whirlwind of activity, if the storm goes on too long cabin fever can set in. I tend to feel a bit claustrophobic if the driveway and street aren’t plowed out after 24 hours. I want to stay home but I like the idea that I can get out if I need to. Of course, if the hydro or heat goes out or the pipes freeze that is a whole other story…..not fun at all. And if the winter drags on too long into March that can be depressing indeed.

So, what are the ingredients for a perfect snow day – comfortable clothes, but you don’t have to get dressed at all if you don’t want to, stay in your PJ’s. A nice pair of thick socks is a requirement and you must have a stack of books or magazines. I always have some books on reserve for just such days.

A cozy chair in front of the fireplace or in front of a window where you can watch the snow softly falling is ideal. Add some soft pillows and a comfy throw, plaid is perfect.

A cup of spiced tea is lovely to sip while you read…and if you get sleepy while reading, simply move over to the couch for a long winter’s nap. But first throw something in the crock-pot so you can awaken to the delightful aroma of homemade stew. If you feel like baking, chocolate chip cookies or brownies are always a good choice and much appreciated by the neighborhood snow shovelers. I always enjoy watching the kids on the neighbor’s skating rink from my kitchen window while I do the dishes, twirling around in their colorful Nordic coats and scarfs like a real-life Gap ad. Somehow the weather is seldom too bad for a game of ice hockey. Sometimes there is even night skating under the spotlights, the flurries falling, the slam of the puck against the boards, he shoots, he scores. After supper, it’s movie time – and popcorn and hot chocolate. Later you can watch the storm highlights on the evening news and be glad you are not out in it – and so, to bed. Tomorrow all will be sunny and bright like a winter wonderland…..and regular life will resume, refreshed by this quiet moment of winterlude.

Quote of the Day:

Brew me a cup for a winter’s night.
For the wind howls loud and the furies fight;
Spice it with love and stir it with care,
And I’ll toast our bright eyes,
my sweetheart fair. (Minna Antrim) Song of the Day: Snow – from White Christmas – Bing Crosby & Co.

After the Harvest

October 15, 2018October 15, 201814 Comments

After the Harvest – An Update on the Potager plus what to do with a twelve pack of snakes.

I had high hopes for The Potager back in June, but there may have been a reason my dad planted his garden in the corn field where it could sprawl among the rows of corn. Sprawl is the key word here. My potager was a testament to good soil, it was so prolific, but then it was a hot humid summer with lots of rain, ideal conditions for a rain forest.

Where are the monkeys?

It rained every weekend, and during the week, every few days in fact. This made the mosquitoes plentiful, and some new species of tiny black bug called no-see-ums appeared and left bites which itched for days. I had never seen a no-see-um before, but they left a lasting legacy of scratch marks. I gave up and refused to go out. Luckily, I did not have to water as Mother Nature did it for me, even as she left us bereft of any beach days.

The romaine lettuce was bountiful, and after the first crop, I replanted and it was bountiful too.

Three cucumbers sprouted from the small-garden plant, just the right amount for a Greek salad, with some tomatoes if only I could find them, and when I did find them, many had split from too much rain.

The tomatoes threatened to strangle everything so in early August I gave it a haircut. By mid-Sept it had grown back, requiring a regular trim every 4 to 6 weeks.

I untangled the sole squash, mistakenly uprooting it’s lifeline, and leaving the fruit to wither on the vine. Not deterred, it re-blossomed, producing a final harvest of five smallish orbs.

I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the multi-colored carrots, and so were the bunnies. We were both disappointed.

While the tops were luxurious, the carrots were sparse, spindly and white, (and maybe useful for the Simply White Dinner). They say you reap what you sow, except I planted three seed potatoes, and got two.

In mid-October (no frost yet, leaves barely changing), I dug up the rest of the russet gems. Not bad for a first crop, but hardly enough to get me through the winter like my Irish ancestors.

Luckily the orange carrots were plentiful, if somewhat deformed from being crammed into too small a space. The bunnies were delighted, as God is my witness, they would never go hungry again. (Scarlet O’Hara – Gone with the Wind). Due to the intricate web of netting I set up, the birds didn’t get as many of the strawberries, but then neither did I – it was too much of a hassle to open and re-close all those wires to pick one or two berries. While reading about another bloggers garden adventures, she recommended rubber snakes be set among the strawberry plants and moved every few days in order to fool the birds. Thank god she told me Walmart sells them online, because I don’t know where you would buy a twelve pack of snakes, and also thank god, those birds aren’t too bright. I’ll keep that in mind for next year, or maybe I’ll just freeze some of the carrots. I also wish I had put spacing and gravel around my boxes like Empty Nest Adventures did, for easier access.

Next years orange snakes?

After the Harvest is a time to reflect on lessons learned….next year plant less, no matter how much you may anticipate the early specimens being carried off by nighttime woodland creatures.

Plant one of everything, one squash, one cucumber, if it’s something you don’t want to breed like rabbits or possibly two like Noah and the Ark, two tomatoes, two potatoes, but no zucchini – ever.

Or just buy more boxes……the New England Arbor charity sale is coming up…..

After the Harvest

PS. There is nothing so wonderful as a golden field of wheat being harvested, or so awful as After the Harvest when you would have to bale all that straw into small bales, with a baler which was forever breaking down, and then load them into the hayloft, a process which was hot and dusty and took hours. Now every time I pass a field with those really big bales that are scooped up by a front end loader, I wonder, why didn’t someone think of that sooner?

Song of the Day: Harvest Moon – Neil Young

The Farmer’s Market

October 8, 2018October 8, 201821 Comments

If you have ever dreamed of packing in city life and moving to the country then this book is for you. Canadian author, Brent Preston turned fantasy into reality in this account of starting an organic vegetable farm and ten years of trial and error and back breaking labor before finally achieving a profitable outcome.

The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution by Brent Preston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A must read manual for city dwellers and lovers of the organic food movement about a family who chose to leave the rat race and follow their dream of running a profitable organic vegetable farm. Dust off those fantaseeds and learn the gritty reality of where your food comes from.

Although he might have started out with a simple plan in mind, by the end of the ten years he had mechanized his operations, hired agricultural co-op students for summer labor, perfected a delivery service and marketing campaign, and ended up specializing in just three crops, one of which was lettuce. One of the things he did initially was to participate in the local farmer’s market every Saturday morning, but after a few years of this he packed it in. If you think about it, never a weekend off for you or your kids, up at 4 am to load up the truck and then later in the day unloading the unsold produce. Plus, while he said while he enjoyed the social aspect with the regular customers and the other vendors, there just wasn’t enough profit in it to continue. Better to cater to the fancy restaurants who would pay premium for anything fresh and organic.

There is no doubt we are what we eat and organic food is in – food in it’s natural state. Ask a person who has been lucky enough to live to be over ninety and chances are they grew up on a farm. So farmers markets are booming because organic food is so popular, but are the farmers doing well? I grew up on a farm, 100 acres, so I know how hard it is to make a living on one and how much work is involved. We had a dairy farm with Holsteins when I was a child and my dad had a small herd, three milking machines and a cream contract. He got up at 4:30 am every day to milk the cows, then he would come in, shave and have breakfast (bacon and eggs and perked coffee), as we were getting up for school, by 7:30 he would have left for his other job, home at 4:30, early supper, then milk the cows again, and he would be in bed by ten or falling asleep while reading the paper. On the weekends there were all the other chores to do. Even back then you couldn’t quite make a living on a farm without a second job, and with a growing family, he finally switched to beef cattle instead and cash cropped corn, soybeans and wheat, and while that was a lot of work too, we were finally able to take a family vacation without being tied to the milking schedule. Now farming is big business, a thousand acres or bust. There was an article in the local paper recently about the International Plowing Match which listed a combine as worth $500,000, and a tractor with GPS the same. My dad’s first tractor in 1948 cost $1000 and had a side seat upon which we kids would ride – heaven forbid, no one would let kids do that now. My elderly grandfather who died in 1951, was against the new-fangled modern machinery, as they had to sell his beloved Clydesdale horses in order to buy it. The last tractor my dad bought came equipped with air conditioning and a few years after he died, they had CD players, now they are steering themselves. While farming may be mostly mechanized now, organic vegetable farming is still labor intensive, especially during the harvest. It’s not a job many people want to do, and often the farmers must hire seasonal workers from Mexico or Jamaica to help out.

September is the best time of year to visit a farmer’s market as it is bursting with the last of the summer produce and the early fall harvest. While the peaches and berries may be almost done, the plums, pears, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, new potatoes and onions are coming in.

Our local market is open Wednesdays in the summer and Saturdays year round. Even in the winter, the inside of the old building is full of root vegetables and cheese and butcher shops, but in the nice weather the outside stalls see the most action. They really need more space, but it’s been in the same place for eighty plus years and you don’t mess with tradition. Located in an older residential part of town, there is one small parking lot and you have to drive round and round waiting for someone else to leave. With about 50 spaces for 200 people it’s kind of like musical chairs for grownups. Luckily, no one lingers long. While you can get a pour over coffee with freshly roasted beans, there is no cafe to sit in or cooked food available. We don’t see a lot of homeless people here but one day a woman with her cart piled high with all her worldly possessions asked me for some money, and with my hands full I shook my head no, but then after putting my produce in the car, I went to find her, and gave her ten dollars, which I suspected might go to drugs but who knows? A friend of mine keeps Tim Horton’s coffee shop gift cards to hand out for this reason, but there is something so very sad about begging in front of a place with so much plenty.

Even in the winter I will visit about once a month, because there is still cheese, and apples and oranges to buy, but I’ve often wondered why they open at 6 am. All the vendors are yawning by noon, or closing up early as they have been up since four loading their trucks. Wouldn’t 8-2 be more civilized hours? If they are supplying restaurants do they need to buy that early? If I don’t get there by 11:30 (or I’m still playing musical chairs), I may miss my favorite cheese stall or they might be out of Gouda.

The cheese wars can be fierce. There are two cheese vendors, right across from each other, and the Battle of The Gouda got so bad last year, they both decided not to post their prices. They will glare across the aisle if they think you have abandoned camp, but if they have run out, what is the alternative? My grandmother was Dutch, so I grew up on Gouda, the mild form, not the spicy seeded variety she bought from The European Shop.

Dutch Inheritance

The market cheese is better than at the grocery store and they will give you a sample if you are undecided. Even if you know you will like it, a sample will often tied you over if you got up early and missed breakfast. Buying cheese at the market is also much cheaper than in the grocery store so I usually stock up on aged cheddar as well as the Gouda. The one cheese vendor has recently retired and been bought out by the egg lady beside them, who I don’t think has gotten the hang of the weigh scale yet as she is very generous with her pounds, or kgs. I don’t buy eggs from her though as I can’t stomach those brown eggs with the bright yellow yolks. It reminds me of the eggs growing up on the farm, but I know free range chickens are all the rage and I am sure they are full of omega-3’s.

I like to look at the flowers, the glads are out now, but I seldom buy as I have lots of flowers at home.

I have my own semi-successful potager, so I don’t feel the need to buy tomatoes, cucumbers or lettuce, but one whiff of the dill brings back memories of my mother canning dill pickles. You can get a free bunch of dill with every large purchase.

The early apples are starting to come in, which will soon mean spies and pies. I can smell the cinnamon now.

My favorite time of year is when the summer fruits are available, the strawberries and peaches. You can get a bushel of overripe fruit for ten dollars and make a whole batch of jam for what you might pay for two jars. There is a jam vendor also, for when you run out, who also sells homemade fruit pies. So definitely there is a cost savings, and the food is so much fresher and better tasting, not to mention not loaded with tons of preservatives and artificial ingredients.

Not everything is better at the market though. Sadly, it is home to the world’s worst bakery which sells the most tasteless bread ever baked, not to mention tarts with uncooked dough and a scant quarter inch of fruit filling. The next time I walk pass, the owner asks if I want something so I venture a tactful complaint – I figure if no one tells him he can’t fix it. He tells me he hired a new baker so I bought butter tarts this time. Same thing. I gave up. There must be an art to making play-doh like that? Butter tarts are a national institution in Canada but I have a fine recipe inherited from my mother. We have much better bakeries in town but I suppose once a vendor has tenure in the building, it’s for life, and so many people don’t know what good pastry tastes like. But the bread – there’s simply no excuse. Bread is the staff of life, but so is good nutritious food. If you ate today, thank a farmer!

PS. Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving today!

Wild Turkeys

Out in The Country

August 21, 2017September 10, 20186 Comments

The Homeplace – 2005

A few years ago when I was still working I took my 90 year old mom for a drive in the country to visit her farm (not the homeplace which no longer exists.) She rents the old white farmhouse (old farmhouses only come in two types – white clapboard and yellow brick), to a lovely couple and the wife showed us around her very large vegetable garden, and gave us a couple of jars of pear jam she had just made and some big fat beefsteak tomatoes. We sat out on the veranda and listened to the birds twitter. It was quiet and peaceful. I remembered thinking what a lovely lifestyle. Although my roots are rural it had been a long time since I was out in the country. I grew up in on a hundred acre farm in the 60’s and 70’s and while I hope I am not romanticizing the past, I do seem to remember it as being a simpler more peaceful time. My dad had a dairy farm with Holsteins, (which needed milking twice a day so no family vacations for us), then later beef cattle, and he also cash cropped. It was a good thing to be self-sufficient and not always reliant on a grocery store, but it was also a lot of hard work, as was canning during the long hot summer, as my mother can attest, although she also often says looking back that we had the best of times.

It was a century farm, settled by my dad’s Irish ancestors in 1849, who had escaped the worst of the potato famine just in time. They arrived in Canada penniless in October of 1846 in a party of twenty or so, three having died on the coffin ship on the way over, and they lost one young 15 year old son in the bush after having jumped ship during the cholera quarantine in the St. Lawrence River. I have a record from the National Archives of Canada for the three brothers who had to borrow one pound for water transport from Port Toronto to where they settled. My great grandfather, who was fourteen, stayed behind in Ireland because he had a chance to go to school with the landlord’s son, and came a year later through New York. An uncle was sent to pick him up, which seems amazing as the land was all trees and wilderness. My great great grandmother walked thirty miles along Indian trails to the nearest post office to get the letter telling them when and where he was coming. It was October when they arrived here, and the Indians helped them build a hut, otherwise they would never have survived the first winter.

: First Homestead – 2017

Several years later they bought the homeplace – for poor Irish tenant farmers to own land was a dream come true. The homeplace was sold and the house and barn torn down twenty years ago after my dad died and now all that survives is the silo. My mother painted it in 2005 from an aerial photograph, which is the picture above and on the home page.

While I am nostalgic for the country lifestyle, farmland today is way too expensive to live in the country, and farming is for the most part big business. One day I was driving down our old line and there were four big combines out in the field (trying to beat the rain), and I thought, well there’s a million dollars there. The small family farm is a vanishing business, to survive you have to go big. So much of life is about survival but it is a good thing to remember where you came from, and it is also a good thing to know how to make your own jam!

Song of the Day: Out in the Country – Three Dog Night