What I’m doing today!

I was hoping to be writing up a post about the fruit tree grafting workshop I attended on the weekend, but instead I’m going to be attempting to take apart my Mac computer in the hopes of ejecting the stuck DVD that is preventing my computer from starting up! Ugh. I’m not even going to attempt to do a post on this. If you are interested in viewing a good video on the topic and get an idea of how I’m spending my day, check this site out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVgL9u7ySUk&NR

Will let you know how I do, wish me luck! Believe me, I will need it to get through this.

The taste of place

The Essence of Canada

Birch syrup rendering over an open fire.

Well, it wasn’t exactly cost-effective, but we did taste the terroir of our own birch/maple syrup for the first time yesterday. Yes, that word ‘terroir’ extends beyond wine to other earthy products, because syrups do have local flavours, too.

Most people think of maple sugar production as quintessentially Canadian, and located either in Quebec or Ontario. It’s just not an activity one associates with the prairies or here on the western Cordillera–but we did it! We found six birch and three maple trees in our front yard which looked likely producers, and tapped them last week. Over the weekend we continued to clear the front forty, and in the process of burning the small dry sticks and undergrowth, we rendered down our first batch of maple/birch syrup. The rendering ratios are 40 and 100 to one respectively, and because the maples produced more sap, the ratio of syrup was about 40:60, so by my calculations (and believe me, during the day we had time to calculate!) we ended up with a mix of about 20% maple,  80% birch.

My friend Clarence came by and stood amazed at what we were doing, never having witnessed this activity in this valley. As I looked across at my little yellow buckets hanging from their spiles in the tree trunks, I wondered why we are not all harvesting from our woodlots in this serene, labour-free way. Much of our radio news these days is filled with so-called ‘catastrophists’ predicting global economic ruin, and advocating getting out of cities, and I’m glad we are in a place where there is still so much knowledge of how to fend for oneself (Clarence’s friend supplied me with the spiles, buckets and advice on which trees were best), and enough space to do so.

Birch syrup rendering continues inside for the final stages.

I had read that you can easily burn syrup in the last stages. Mind you, you can easily boil it all away thinking it’s still just water, because it looks that way for most of the process: no amber colour, no viscosity. We had been away for a few days and weren’t sure how much of the buckets was in fact rain water–but we remained hopeful. After a day’s boiling, I brought the pot inside to complete the task on the stove. Sure enough, miraculously, at about one inch depth the liquid suddenly thickened, darkened, and looked like maple syrup. I took my first, tentative, frugal sip. Delicious! I read that boiling over an open fire imparts a camp-fire, smokey taste, and that’s true; this seems to enhance the caramel flavour, while underneath (almost literally) is an earthy, mineral flavour. I contrasted this with the more ‘clear, crisp’ taste of some birch syrup we buy in Quesnel, a town northeast of us, up on the plateau.

So, after a day and a half, I had about a quarter of a cup of pure gold in a jam jar, and we’d burnt all our windfall sticks and branches. We’d also shared two days outside under grey skies with temperatures heroically hovering just above freezing, but we were able to celebrate our ‘spring’ break pleasantly warmed by the fire and dreaming of future spring days, when the air will smell of turned earth and chlorophyll rather than smoke and birch sugar. My food sovereignty year started with gathering fiddlehead ferns in early April, but this new discovery has extended my growing season into March. My attitude towards time has shifted; as a self-provisioner, it is now geared to food availability rather than the clock and the calendar. I used to regard my year of activity as beginning on May 24, the traditional date for beginning safe frost-free outdoor gardening; with the discovery of fiddleheads it regressed, and now it has regressed even further. My world is measured by food: not only in time, but in space also, because wherever I walk or drive I remember what food I gathered there, or what i might gather in the future–that berry patch, that bend in the river. This must be how animals map their worlds, too. Last week while clearing the front of our property I realized from their trails that bears travel east/west and deer travel north/south, because their food sources lie in those directions (the bears follow along the streams to the salmon rivers via the berry bushes, the deer to the meadows via my vegetable garden). Like the Aborigines of Australia with their songlines, I am making my own tracks across this valley. Like the deer and bears, my map is taking shape along paths of sustenance.

The results of the first rendering of my maple-birch syrup--tiny, but tasty and worth its weight in gold!

And while my project of food sovereignty is not always about cost effectiveness, this exercise renewed my appreciation for how cheap our food is: Quebec maple syrup in a jug at our supermarket is about $12. The more self-sufficient I become, the more I learn about how much effort it takes to feed myself. As with other food items  for sale in the store, I now think $12 for a jug of maple syrup is far too cheap for the resources used–even considering the so called efficiency of mass production.

I’m also looking at my land and its resources differently. What only a month ago was a tangled mass of ‘Wine Maple’ (that I was told should get taken out because it is ‘no good for anything’) has become a precious resource to me. I already have a second batch on the stove and will likely make several more batches over the next few weeks. I’m thrilled to have access to this wonderful sweet liquid–one less jug I’ll buy from the store. I feel a sense of accomplishment having added another dimension to my personal food security. I also feel a deeper connection to my land and an increasing sense of place; I now look at those trees on my place and think, ‘I know where you are and what you taste like!’

Dabbling elsewhere

Writing over at Not Dabbling In Normal today. The post is about processing and rendering down the maple-birch syrup. I’ve managed to catch a cold over the last few days and so am not up to doing much more than going back to laying in bed today (of course, after taking care of all my critter’s needs and writing the post for NDIN!). Ugh, it sucks to be sick.

Clearing the ‘front’ forty

Over the past few years a grizzly mama with her cubs beds down each summer just behind my pergola. I have watched in horror as she stole a whole garbage pale full of duck feed right out from under the ducks beaks and have been startled while hanging my laundry by her and her cubs as they raced through my front  yard having been scared off by the neighbour’s dog. I have also had them come in the yard and harvest many of my apples, breaking valuable tree branches as they go.

Because of the numbers of bears we have coming through the property each summer, one of the tasks I work on over the winter and spring is clearing the dense undergrowth from the second growth forest that is on the front half of the property. It is no where near forty acres, instead it is a two acre tangle of alder, birch, maple, fir, hemlock, spruce, and a host of dense ugly undergrowth species–the worst of which is devil’s club; a beautiful but deadly plant thanks to it vicious two inch thorns that can  take out an eye if you are not careful and has a penchant for grabbing hold of passers by and clinging to them with the tenacity of barbed wire.

What was once a massive tangle of undergrowth is transformed into a nice vista through the trees.

While this undergrowth is impossible to get through when you are a human, the bears manage just fine. They tunnel their way through it creating an extensive network of trails that, with practice, I have learned to identify. Now that spring is almost upon us, I have found myself out there again hacking and hewing my way through this barely identifiable network and opening it up for human accessibility. It is hard going without machines. A few days with a front end loader and Bobcat would be all that it needed, but I haven’t got that kind of ‘pocket change’ to hire someone to just get the job done.  So  each spring I pick away at it by hand and tell myself it is better exercise than paying to go to the gym and run on a treadmill! Blessedly, I do have a Husqvarna power tool with a chainsaw attachment which has allowed me to reach higher up on the trees than I can with my hand cutters.

Clarence came by the other day while I was hard at work. He tenderly reminded me that I should be looking up every now and then being watchful of cougars. He then took me on a little walkabout and pointed to a spruce tree, “Why just there I shot a cougar a couple of years ago.” I told him I always bring my dog with me and sometimes even the goats. (Many days I just take the dog and carry the browse back to the goats.) It is a sad but true reality of living here, that one of my animals might save my life by sacrificing theirs. “It’s a good idea” he said when I explained the secondary reason as to why the goats were free ranging that day. They are efficient browsers and would make short order of clearing much of it for me but I couldn’t possibly let them out there alone to do the work. Sadly, it would be like sentencing them to certain death. When we are out there together, I know we all stand a better chance. There is safety in numbers.

Another bear trail system opened up for human use. Notice the water source on the left hand side of the photo.

On the one hand, I’m clearing the brush for the sake of clearing the brush and on the other I have more than bear dissuasion in mind. Now that I have the area developed to a stage that I can walk through, I have begun fantasizing about a cow. While I would love to breed my goats and develop a dairy based on them, the cougars and bears make such a serious investment in goats much too high risk.They are not only part of the cougar prey profile, they are considered a gastronomic delicacy to cougars and because of this people keep telling me to “enjoy the goats while I have them.” Thankfully, cows are not part of the grizzly prey profile so farmers tend to lose few of them to those predators. It would be nice to have an animal that I don’t have to worry quite so much about. Rumor has it that there are a couple of dairy cows in the valley and that one of them is pregnant…

It is interesting to see the choices in direction made by the bears. This path goes past several different native berry species, an ovbious food source for the grizzlies.

When I am doing this clearing work I always build a huge bonfire to clear the brush away and at the end of a hard day’s clearing I sit by the last of the glowing embers and enjoy a whiskey and roast some marshmallows. Someone asked me how I plan to render down the Birch & Maple syrup. This year, instead of just enjoying the fire at the end of the day, I intend to use the fire to boil down my sap transforming it into syrup.

A spoonful of sugar

As part of my ‘Year in Provisions’ project–which isn’t really a year long gig at all but rather a complete change in life-style and way of being in the world–I have wanted to extract myself from the dependency of store-bought sugar. One way of doing this would be to get bees (which is on my wish list and my list of things to do!) The other way, and the more traditional in my part of the world, is to tap trees, extract their sweet sap and render it down into a sweet, tasty syrup.

The kind of spile that was lent to me by a local man.

This year I  managed (finally) to get organized enough before the trees were out in leaf, and it was all too late. What spurred me in to action this year was the two weeks of really warm weather we experienced at the end of February. I suddenly felt behind in everything during those ten or so days and realized that if I wanted to give tree tapping a try, I’d better get moving. Luckily it got much colder again (luckily?… did I actually say that out loud) and the trees have remained in their hibernation state.

Traditional tapping, first cut through bark with a knife.

Last week I found a local man who has experimented over the years with both maple and birch syrup making. Not only was he kind enough to tell me about his experiments and provide advice, but he also  lent me 10 spiles (the official thingys you tap the trees with) and ten ice cream buckets to catch the sap in. Not wanting to inadvertently poison myself,  when he dropped off the tools I showed him what I thought were my Douglas maple trees. I needed the verification because locally they are called ‘Vine Maples’ and not being a woodsman, I really wasn’t sure if I was on the right track or not.

He assured me they are indeed a Douglas Maple and that they are repudiated to be one of the best sugar maples in terms of flavour. Such good producers, he’s stopped tapping the birch trees altogether and is now focussing on just the Maples. He told me excitedly he’s found a few Norway Maples and he is going to experiment with that type this year.

Traditional tapping with live branch from parent tree.

Yesterday, I tapped the three maples on my property and seven of the birches. I have found  through internet research that you can mixed the two saps and form a uniquely flavoured syrup. The maple provides a better conversion of sap to syrup than the birch (40 to 1 versus 80-100 to 1). So the blending of the two saps should make the rendering process less time consuming than straight birch sap–or so my theory goes!

Birch tree tapped with its own branch and bucket ready to collect the sap.

Sadly, I found my camera is on the blink so I don’t have pre-syrup pics for you of my own tapped trees. However, I found a very interesting set of photos and gleaned them, and this idea, from the web. It shows the traditional way (without metal spiles) of tapping trees. Just goes to show how simple this process can be! I just might try it as well and not bother to buy spiles.

If you are wanting to try the Birch Syrup without having to do it all yourself, here is a list of possibilities:

Uncle Berwyn’s Yukon Birch Syrup

Birch Boy Alaska Birch Syrup

Writing at Not Dabbling in Normal

I have been reading the Not Dabbling in Normal blog for several months and am continually impressed by the depth of knowledge revealed, and inspired by the community of like-minded people that this blog provides us with access to–via the ether! So, I am both excited and flattered by the invitation to participate as a regular contributor.

One of the best things about that blog is that it is run by like-minded folks who have tonnes of information for the struggling upstarts like myself. I have found them to be more than happy to answer questions when I have needed answers. I have felt both humbled by the depth of experience these folks have and inspired by the supportive encouragement they have afforded me. When you live as remotely as I do, this kind of ether-community is like a warm safe place to land and draw sustenance from.

Note, you can visit them via the above link on their name or I have also put them in my blog roll.

Rod and Gun Club dinner and dance

David Hall's cougar watches over the Rod and Gun Club annual dinner and dance.

Last weekend we held the annual Rod and Gun Club fundraiser dinner and dance. In preparation for the dinner, the members of the Rod and Gun Club prepared the meat they hunted this fall, butchered farm raised food animals, and taxidermied animals for the display. Earlier in the year, I helped Clarence butcher the turkey he planned to donate and also helped his son, David, skin and butcher out the cougar which he recently prepared for the display. The dinner provided me the opportunity to bring my duck breeding venture to a close. I butchered the last of the Muscovy ducks and took them to the dinner.

Gary carving the elk, moose and grizzly bear roasts.

The vast array of different foods there was surprising given the small community and was a testament to the amount of ‘industry’ the people in this valley are involved in. I could have tried every kind of meat on offer but managed to limit myself to what I could fit on the plate and still be able to remember which meat was which by the time I got from the smorgasbord back to the dinner table. On offer was nearly everything one could imagine and then some: deer, moose, caribou, elk, wild boar, duck, turkey, beaver, llama, black bear, grizzly bear, and of course, David’s cougar. He presented it freshly roasted as well as smoked sausage and hams.

Animals of hunting trips past on display at the game dinner and dance.

I tried everything except the caribou and beaver. I had tried caribou before and the beaver just wouldn’t fit anywhere on the plate by the time I got to it, though it did look delectable having been made up into a beautifully presented stir-fry. I was surprised to see that the dinner even catered to vegetarians, with salads of various kinds and several versions of tofu, vegetable stir-fries and bean dishes. I also took a home made loaf of bread and others had made rolls and biscuits. The meal was scrumptious and most of us ate far too much, but I did manage to save room for dessert!

What struck me most about the dinner, besides the fact that it was such a  unique example of local culture and something particular to this valley, was the fact that the vast array of meats differed little from each other. I was expecting to notice a greater difference in texture and taste between the carnivorous animals and the ruminants. My favourite meat was the elk, with the cougar and the grizzly bear roasts tied for second place. So similar in taste and texture were most meats that I’m certain I could feed my mother a grizzly bear roast and tell her it was beef! Of the options I sampled, the animal that had the most distinctive taste was the llama.

The Rod and Gun Club puts on this dinner and dance every year to raise money for the club and to raise awareness of hunting and animal conservation. Many would find it curious, if not ironic, that the hunters in this valley are some of the most aware of conservation and environmental issues and the most active people in terms of environmental conservation and preservation of animals. They are by far the most knowledgeable bunch of folks I have ever had the pleasure of learning from about the complexities of the natural world around us and the balance of nature.