bigugli

Nothing beats Christmas Eve like a Scandinavian open house. Hanging around the kitchen for 2 weeks as Gram created all the special cakes, cookies, breads, and sampling them all. Then shopping at the specialty delis and butchers for the great treats. More sampling. It took all day of the 24th to get everything ready. 2 full tables of food and goodies and copious stockpiles of beverages. By 6 o'clock, folks would start knocking at the door. Family, good friends, neighbours, would wander through our home until 3 in the morning. 50-60 people in the one night. all so happy to see one another. Those Christmases held a magic all their own. It's been 20+ years since the last open house. The elders are all gone. Gram died a month after Robert was born. All the families scattered to the winds and seemed to lose touch and connexion with each other. The in-laws don't have those kinds of ties. Nobody seems to care for that kind of gathering any more?

These blankets are absolutely beautiful pieces.

For young fellows like that you need to go a little shorter. A 5' rod would do fine. If you are looking for near indestructible and taking a lot of abuse, (they are young lads after all) you want an ugli stik. Stick to a simpler reel. I actually have a 5' ugli stik lite action that I use for drifting harnesses, and for bush fishing. Still more than capable of handling 30-36" pike without trouble some 10 years after.

I usually cook up a batch of elderberry brandy. Been too busy of late, so there will be no new batch for Christmas. Maybe in the New Year

I don't have any little ones to buy for at the moment . At least not for another 2 years

As far as current rules go, you need to go direct to farm. Any product for retail, past the gatepost, requires inspection, certification, and specific inoculants.. I know of one poultry farmer Elmira way, by word of mouth, but his flock had already been sold and culled by our Thanksgiving. Usually you need to order well in advance. Most of the independent breeders I knew in Niagara are now retired or dead., and the local club folded. I used to run the poultry and rabbit show at our fair. Best suggestion is to get a hold of your local breeders or feather fanciers club, or local fair board. They would be able to put you in touch with the right people

Enjoy it while it lasts. Under the new Fisheries Act, it is quite possible and lawful for vast tracts of the great white north to be turned into hazardous waste zones. Waters not habited or used by humans won't require environmental protection.

Does not have to be extreme, Dan. You're right about eating out though. Until 1970, we never went out or ordered take out, unless we were travelling .Even then, Gram used to pack a mean picnic basket. There was always all the fixings for sandwiches, slaw and tater salad, hard boiled eggs, etc... We were never hungry. However, in 1970 we had moved down to Toronto suburbia, just 5 minutes away from Canada's first McDonald's restaurant on Keele St. Stepfather thought it was the greatest place on earth. Keele st., from Finch down to Shepherd, was "restaurant road" just outside the airbase. And Gord insisted we try them all. McD's, A&W, RedBarn, DQ, Ponderosa, Harveys, BurgerKing, etc... My Gram would just shake her head. Mind you Gram did have a weakness for fish and chips from Chico's, kitty corner across from Honest Ed's, and she always took me to the Woolworth's lunch counter when we went to downtown Toronto, but those were full days away from home. Going to Downtown Toronto was an adventure back then.

And that there is a key downside to industrial society. The byproducts and wastes of a modern industrial society. Poison and pollution.

Quite correct. Cross pollination and selective breeding. Processes that occur in nature over thousands of years, but which man has accelerated. We breed together the biggest hogs and sows, bulls and cows, to sire stronger, heavier, more profitable herds. However, the only difference from nature is that instead of the biggest male in the local herd getting first dibs, we bring in males from other herds in other locales to blend with the females in another herd. Then you have the accidents of nature, that prove viable and successful. I've had some wonderful crosspollinations in my pepper patch done by the bees. Mutant sized jalapenos, 3x normal size due to crossing with sweet bells, but after 3-4 seasons they revert back to original properties. In horticulture, there is lot of tissue splicing of plants and trees, but the seed is either sterile or it reverts back to it's parent species for the most part. Hence most propagation is through taking rooted cuttings. Gene splicing and tampering with DNA sequencing may prove one day to have benefit. However in the drive to push profit, industry, and government,always looks for the short gain while ignoring the possible long term consequence. No one wants to wait while long term effects and potentials are studied. Imagine what harm could have been avoided if they had performed long term usage studies on such wonderful inventions as DDT or Thalidomide. What really happens is that a new product gets fast tracked for public consumption, after 5 years of testing, and gets pulled after the long term consequences have already reared their ugly heads.

Wish I had time to post into this earlier, but here are a couple of things the son and I put together to feed our addiction. Micro bucktails for crappie 1/32 and 1/16 size heads. Too many colour patterns to list or display. 9 head colours: Blue, pearl, orange, green, purple, black, brown, white, chartreuse The hair is left a little longer intentionally. Some like varying hair lengths on the jig. Some also use them trouting. 3 for $5 Bucktail worm harnesses Just a sampling of the patterns available. Really effective on a slow troll or drift. 3 for $10 Just pm me and we can work outing getting them to you

Despite certain physical limitations, I still farm part time, as much as my body will allow. ( I wish I had gone back to it full time 20 years back when I still had better control over my legs) I also share my knowledge of crop management with friends who farm. I used to assess crops and inspect for pest and disease management and quality control. My family farmed and fished and timbered, so I'm used to having dirt under my fingernails. I find it both satisfying and fulfilling. As for eating well... You could say it is one reason I look like Santa

Sicilian saucer is one of the ugliest, yet tastiest tomatoes around. For a totally different flavour try some of the old Siberian variants. Black Krim for slicing or black plum as a salad or sauce tomato. On the peppers, try a company known as West Coast Seed. Pretty reliable firm specializing in organic and heirloom seed strains

Believe it or not, the odd coloured veggies are often some of the oldest true seed varieties around. Purple and yellow carrots, "black" tomatoes, orange, green, white plum tomatoes, white and purple peppers, black radish, blue potatoes, are all heirloom strain as old as dirt itself. That perfect red tomato is the hybrid.

Art makes a good point. We produce pesticide free, non- modified produce. We are pretty good at it too. A lot of folks want it, but will not pay the premium that some organic growers wish to charge. It requires a lot of specialization, and a lot more expense to go that route. Did you know that the wholesale price for tomatoes is the same as it was 20 years back? Fuel prices alone are 200% higher since then. You can't blame producers for trying to grab any slight advantage to increase their margins.

Snow used to mean 6-8 hours of heavy exercise. No snow chores for me any more. It's one small blessing of apartment life. S

' You as well? Whod'ave thunk it? Mind, I feel more like an anachronism these days, than a student. I got a similar lecture from a Cambridge man teaching here in Canada.

It would be difficult to jump to that conclusion. Many forms of cancer were unrecognized/ undiagnosed/undetectable some 50 years back, let alone 100 years ago. I do agree that there is a correlation between the increased incidence of cancer and increasing industrialization. How dramatic, I'm not sure. I do know that our avg. life expectancy far exceeds that of our counterparts in Canada 100 years ago. Due very much to advances in science and technology. Taking maternal death rates, as an example, the rate in the 1920's was 1 in 2000. By 2005 that rate had diminished to 1 in 11,000. Infant rates in 1920 were 1 in 10 as compared to 1 in 120 by 1990, and even that number is exaggerated as it includes neonatal deaths due to abortions and medical termination. In short, the good old days were not always good.

Standard winter projects of casting lead and tying harnesses and bucktails. Am hoping to construct a cold frame to get my hot pepper crop started earlier.

Fish was readily available, and could be had fresh most days. Secondly, there was no expenditure of resources, effort, or crops. Livestock requires care, handling and feed. Your summer diet would also be heavy on fish and chicken because there was little or no waste from spoilage.

We ate what we caught, growing up. Pike and sheephead were great for moujakka (chowder). Nothing lit up my Gram's and my great Aunt's eyes more than when I would walk in the door with a fresh pike. I would kill for a bowl of Gram's fish head soup. It was only much later that I learned to filet them. Bass, walleye and perch were staples. Then there were lakers , whitefish, pannies, smelt. My one uncle, and some of his pals, would go out and catch loads of coarse fish like cats, gar, bowfin, herring, just for the smokehouse. You also have to realize that limits were much more liberal then. The limit on whitefish was 25. Living in the bush, or farming are lifestyle choices, not simply career paths. You have to plan out your days and weeks carefully with lots of cushion for the unexpected and nature's surprises. I just got my weed cloths up off the ground Friday morning, despite being saturated or under water. If I had waited til this morning, they'd be frozen in until spring. Really screws up the schedule. I try to turn soil in the fall, it may have to wait until spring. Wood gathering has to happen every week. You need wood for cooking, for heat, for chores. Look at 10 bush cords per year as a starting base.

My mother can outfish most fellas on any given day. My Gram could hold her own as well. If there was one thing I learnt from youth, there are no fixed roles by gender. You do what you need to, in order to sustain yourself. The things you are good at, get really good at. In rural life it takes a family to survive and thrive.

Back into the conversation, was just tying some more worm harnesses. I'm not saying all modernization is bad. Truck and tractor are just an improvement over horse and wagon. Both have costs to use them. Modernization does make things easier and allows us to be more productive. It takes a day to buck up a face of firewood with the old cross cut or swede saw. I've done it. Only takes 1 hour with a decent chainsaw. I used to be able to split wood as fast as a mechanical splitter, but only for the first hour. A computer, if seen and used as a tool/resource for communication or information, is a library at your fingertips. You don't need the gamer equipment and programs. Sinker's upbringing is no different from thousands who grew up outside the city right into the 70's. Drawing water from the well. Running out to the "Honey House" on a cold winter's night to answer nature's call. Uncle Johnny didn't install running water until 1972. We didn't have great means growing up. By the age of 8 Gram had taught me to sew enough to mend a hole in my trousers or darn my socks. I could also knit my own mitts and scarf. Fish 'was' food, and we caught and ate a lot of it. As a family we entertained ourselves playing cards and board games together. We watched television together as a family Sunday evenings. Today, My wife watches TV constantly, whereas I can't stand most of the drivel that is allegedly "quality programming. There was no such thing as bored with nothing to do. There was always something to apply your energies to, if you couldn't make up your mind, Mom would find something, whether you liked it or not

Actually, you could still self sustain. It's your lifestyle and priorities that change. It's amazing how much clutter and stuff we insist on accumulating. You would be amazed at the number of families north of Waterloo who still live without the hydro grid. Not all are members of the "black hat" society either. I admit that I have had the good fortune to have actually experienced, hands on, much of what I wrote. I am also experiencing some of it again in my later years . I also admit, sadly, that I have not passed on half as much to my children.