bigugli

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

Ya got that right..We grow just about everything on your list excet the peppers all from heritage seed banks. Also we grow a tomato called Sicilian saucer it is red and as old as the hills..Tomato seeds are one of the easiest to harvest..

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

When I see veggies that look like they should be in a floral arangment and chicken and turkey that look like they are jacked up on steriods,Im thinking what the hell happen to the orange carrots and red tomatoes we once knew to be true.

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.

Would you pay $2.00 lb more for chicken if it was free range ? Would you own a company that raised free range chickens that lost money? So now we have you buying a better product that is costing you more you now need to make more money so you ask for a raise. There is a ladder that we all climb that as we ask for more labor intense products the price goes up to cover the expense.

 

Art

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

I'm glad you make that point Bruce. As a History graduate one thing I remember was a lecture about reactionary historians and the tendency to romanticize the past.

 

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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.

i'm going to take a wild stab in the dark but I bet cancer rates were a helluva lot lower with that lifestyle than they are now.

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.

very cool Lew.

 

My Dad has been writting a novel based deeply on our family's history, including farming and our native bloodlines. He isn't sharing any of it just yet, can't wait to see how we used to live.

 

Reading the stories above, I really find it interesting how dependent people were on fish for food and how no one concerned too much about the species, only the amount of protein.

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.

Another thing that often gets overlooked. K, my better half pickles and cans. But now that i think about it, i better learn too. Life outside the grid could be terribly rough if something happened (sickness or injury). Same goes for her, i better get her on the guns and hunting. Tough to do though since her grandma was accidentally shot by a family member

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

Thanks for that Bruce.

 

I find it funny how back then you needed to do those things to sustain and not die, and yet nowdays you'd lose money doing it. I mean,... if I ever quit my job to self sustain, well I couldn't afford my property and my children (6 months away) couldn't keep up with the modern world. Sure makes it hard to even consider reverting to the old ways. It's our own fault/choice but wow we are enslaved to corporations and governments.

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.

Refrigeration and freezers have certainly made things easier. But we did have similar options even 200 years back. They just required more work and planning.

Your yard was for growing garden veggies. No cabanas, ornamental plantings or swimming pools. If you owned a house, you had a cold cellar. No problem keeping root crops and apples til April in there. Your wife also dried foods, or canned intensely. I still put away 100+ jars of pickles, preserves and fruit for winter every year. Sugaring off in early spring was a necessary ritual. it was your source for sugar during the year, and any surplus was bartered at the general mercantile for those things you could not produce yourself.

Meat was dealt with in three ways. Smoke and cure, or salt and dry, was by far the easiest, but still a 1-2 day process. Pickling, but the Mrs had to really know what she was doing. Folks I knew, growing up, were still pickling herring and smelt from Simcoe in the early 70's . man were they good.

There was a refrigeration, of sorts. There was the ice house. A cabin, 1/2 buried in the ground built of thick timber. Seams grouted with thick wads of moss or peat. In winter, the men went out with ice saws and cut huge slabs of ice that were placed in the huts to the ceiling. A space tween the wood and ice was packed with sawdust. The rafters were also packed with insulating of a fashion. You could then keep meat hung in there for months without spoiling. In cities, companies sold blocks of ice to be placed in an ice box to keep food from spoiling.

In cities many went to the baker for bread. The norm was to bake fresh bread once or twice a week. Every culture has it's own version of hard tack or biscuit for when grain for fresh bread was in short supply. For Finn's it was rye ring or Reikäleipä. Others have rusks, hard tack, etc... I still practice some of the old world recipes

it was all much more labour intensive, yes. The focus on living was to survive. Fishing was not a hobby, it was a chore. Fish were food, not playthings. People certainly did not have the leisure time they enjoy currently in Western society.

A) Your maul is too light. I had 12 and 14lb mauls.

If you can wait til the sap freezes, better.

C) Large logs you work from the outside in, else you will bury the maul in the center. You can also work a split line by making hits in line from one side to the other across a large log.

D) Twisted grains, like on Boxelder, Elms, etc.., are just a pain.

I'm glad for the good news, as is Judy. It's just hard watching all the complications, endless clinic visits, extra tests, wear Judy down. Its also hard to look after things when you keep having to go back again the next day, and the next, and the next...

 

But with any luck, we'll be done with most of it before Christmas.

Usually, when govt caves to the demands/threats of big business, there is a larger price tag/consequences down the road.

What kind of GreyCup forecast is that?! THe best Cups were always played in mud bowls or raging blizzards.

 

I do like all the "subtle" fan hints.

Well, another rocky week while we continue the cancer dance with 5 days of clinics. Judy still runs into difficulties with her IV's. Nothing goes easily. Usually an hour or more to start an IV. She had a picc line, but that occluded and plugged after one treatment. It also caused a few DVT's in the arm. After 2 days of attemting to do a CT, they have found a couple more small DVT's in the lungs. All of that is treatable with a daily diet of Heparin for a few months.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. One more chemo treatment for Judy to undergo. The better news is that radiation treatments will not be necessary

Glad to hear Jen is getting some positive news and results.

I'm all for gmo foods if it all checks out health wise for humans. Higher yield, and favourable charteristics .... I mean we could end world hunger...

I'm afraid it does not quite work out that way. Usually, for every synthetic industrial product we produce, there are two or more byproducts, and it is the byproduct that is usually the most dangerous.

However, with GMO in particular, streamlining the gene pool may just be far more harmful in the long term if the diversity of the gene pool is diminished.

Genetically modified crops have been around for some time now. Most mainstream supplies of grains are GMO. Look to traditional and organic farmers for sources outside growing your own. You would be looking for "heritage" and "heirloom" strains like Stowells, Truckers Favorite White, White Silver King, Whipples White.

GMO livestock has been around for over 20 years. They are big in the dairy industry. One Corp headquartered outside of Guelph specializes in dairy herds, and has since expanded into the cheese industry.

Went through the same thing with Rob some 20 years back. I'd watch his line while he wandered, explored, played around. But he was quick to get back if there was a fish on "his" line

We were supposed to do the Hamilton perch derby. Get up at 6am, check computer, see the cancellation. What to do with the salties and live minners?. Hmmmm....

Hunt down some perch elseways. Stayed out til the bands of squalls moved in with some quality results.