Canola, Part 2

On July 18 I did a post about canola blooming, showing my friend M. up to her chin in blooming canola.  Within a week or two of that post, the yellow blossoms were gone and the canola fields turned green.  Sometime last week the outer edge of this canola field just across the road from our place was swathed.  It's usual to swath the edge of a field sometime ahead of processing the whole field.  When the farmer thinks the field is about ripe, he will swath the outer edge.  That gives the equipment room to move around the field, and also tells him if, indeed, the crop is ready.

Canola is one crop that is usually swathed completely some time ahead of combining. It remains on the field in swathed rows and finishes the ripening process.

Here is a close up of the canola in the swath.  Those long skinny pods contain the canola seeds.

Two fellows started swathing this field sometime shortly after noon today.  I grabbed my camera and ran out to get a video of the swather in motion to give you a notion of how this works.  Unfortunately the swather was heading away from me, and the far edge of this field is a half mile away, so I gave up for the time being.

Just a half hour ago I heard the swathers approaching this end of the field, so again I grabbed my camera and ran out to video a swather in motion.  I was able to get a great video of the two swathers meeting and shutting down for the supper hour.  Unfortunately, the video won't upload to the blog.  I get a window saying, sorry, there was an error in uploading your video.  No dice!

So instead you get a still of one swather approaching.  This front end is called a "reel."  It has fingers that pull the stalks of grain toward the knives.  It cuts the canola off the stem about a foot or so off the ground, and lays it down in the neat swath in the first picture.  In this photo you can see the canola stalks sticking up in the foreground.  These are very stiff and if you walk through them, they will give you many, painful scratches.

This canola was seeded at 5 pounds to the acre and is coming in at an estimated 2500 pounds to the acre.  Isn't that amazing!  This particular field is about 100 acres.

Sometime later the combine will go through the field and separate the canola  grains from the pods and stalks.  Here's a picture of the grains, with a few bits of pods left in.  They are tiny black grains.

You'd never guess when you buy a bottle of yellow canola oil that it came from this, would you?

We're hoping this hot, sunny weather holds for the harvest time.  It's perfect for getting the crops ripened and off the fields.

Apple Du

When our dear grandson #1 was a little child he LOVED apple juice and drank gallons of it.  He would stand up in his crib in the middle of the night and call out, "Apple du! Apple du!" and dear daughter would get up out of bed and refresh him with apple juice.  She bought it by the case!--literally.

Well this past week Jim and I have been making apple du.  One of our apple trees split and the half that was overloaded with apples fell to the ground.  I picked one of the apples from the fallen limb and found it was very tasty. A few days later I went out a picked a bucket of apples from that limb.

Here's my set up: I wash the apples and slice out the stem and blossom ends and any bad spots.  The sliced apples go into the tube at the top of the Omega Juicer, the apple juice comes out the spout and the peel and pits get spit out of the back side of the machine into a container, ready to go onto the compost pile.




At first the apple du looks pretty gross.  That's a thick foam on top that's almost like apple sauce.  I get rid of the foam and pour the juice into a pitcher, straining it through some layers of sheer curtain material.  That gets rid of a lot of the particles in the juice.  Then it goes into the fridge overnight, and the next morning most of the particles have separated from the juice.

Here are the three batches we've made
so far. The one on the left has been
strained a few times. The middle pitcher
needs to be siphoned off, leaving the
solid matter at the bottom to be rinsed
away.  The right hand pitcher is the
newest batch, just through the juicer.  In
two days it will be as clear as the first
batch.


This is wonderful juice, as tasty as can be, without any sugar added.

Yesterday morning we woke to see our first frost of the season.  It was exactly 0º on the thermometer and the roof of the sales building was white.  As soon as the sun hit it the frost melted.  It's unusual to get all the way to September before an overnight frost.  And, as so often happens after a frost, the day warmed up beautifully, and we've had just wonderful summery weather yesterday and today.  The forecast for this week is great: all highs of 25º and 26º and no lows below 5º.

Farmers have started swathing canola, and some barley has been harvested.  Now we hold our breath and hope for good sunny weather without frost as frost can damage the quality of the crops.

Coincidences

High time I got back to blogging!  There's always a lot to catch up on when you've been a while, and this was no exception.  Most of the catching up had to do with the garden, although I've been so blessed this year that S. took care of everything while we were gone, even picking, blanching and freezing whatever came ripe.

This profusion of roses is what we see out our back door, just the other side of the driveway.  There's lots blooming all over the landscape, but there's also a definite feeling of "end of season."  Things are starting to look a little droopy, so S. and Jim are starting the fall cleanup of the landscape.  Our tractor is being repaired just now, so that will make carting away all the cuttings quite a job for them.  The vegetable garden is also coming to an end, although we are still picking buckets full of wonderful, big strawberries.

Now, back to a week ago Saturday when we had checked into the Clarenville Inn, had a nice meal of tortellini in the restaurant late in the afternoon, and settled in for a restful evening.  Jim usually channel surfs pretty regularly, but came upon a really interesting program on CBC entitled, "Regarding our Father," an hour long film about a certain Gerald S. Doyle, born in King's Cove, Newfoundland early in the 1900's.  When he graduated from high school he moved to St. John's a worked in a pharmacy.  A company which manufactured a "patent medicine" asked him to be their representative, and he found he had a real flare for selling.  Soon he was representing several companies, selling such things as Dr. Doan's Little Liver Pills, Cod Liver Oil, etc.  He had a yacht built which he named Miss Newfoundland and began to make the rounds of all the little "outports" every summer.  People waited for his visit, and came thronging down to the dock where he would pass out samples to one and all.  The patent medicines were important to them, because they didn't have access to doctors or pharmacies.

As he made his rounds, and became friends with so many of these isolated families, he became interested in the profusion of folk songs by which they entertained themselves.  He began collecting the words to the songs and published them in a book which he distributed free of charge.  Along with the songs, the books contained advertisements for the products he sold.

He married, built a large house in Saint John's and had seven sons and finally one daughter.

When radio came along in the 1930's he had a program called The Doyle Bulletin on which families could pass along messages, a unique service for the isolated outports.  For thirty-three years this program, which was a free service, was a community lifeline for the families who lived in the little fishing ports along the coastline.  He also published "Family Friends," a free newspaper.  He was always interested in what kept these communities going.

In 1940 he published a new edition of his songbook, this time with the music in addition to the words.  Newfoundlanders began to realize the treasure they had in this body of folk music.  A third edition came out on 1954.

It was a very interesting program, especially since it incorporated a lot of film that he had shot over the years with a movie camera he bought in the 1930's.  I always enjoy watching film like that: it's as close as we can come to time travel.

The next morning, Sunday, we set out on the way to Bonavista.  One of the tiny towns we drove through was King's Cove.  In fact, that was the spot of the missed photo op--an attractive view of a typical fishing village, but I was unable to snap the picture because there was no place to stop the car--narrow road, no shoulders, and another vehicle behind us.  But kind of neat to learn all that about Gerald Doyle, and then the next morning to see the small village he came from.

As we visited the Ryan Premises in Bonavista we came into the "Fish Store" where there is a display about the history of the cod fishery.  One of the first scenes featured a model of John Cabot, who landed there sometime in the 1490's.  The mannikin representing John Cabot was dressed in a dark cloak with a snug black cap on his head.  He was the spitting image of M.G., the Arab leader who is currently the object of a search.  (I don't want to mention his name and risk being noticed by a Google search!)  Jim and I both had a laugh over this, but had a bigger laugh when we returned to our hotel that evening, and the situation in Libya was all over the news.  We thought we could let them know where he's hiding out: in the fish store in Bonavista.  After the fact, I wished I had snapped a picture of that particular display!

So that was the second coincidence of that day.

A third amusing thing: I had put the remains of a litre of milk into my insulated travel mug, as I hadn't found the refrigerator in the hotel room (because it was hiding behind a door disguised as a set of drawers.)  I figured the milk would keep cool in the mug.  But it did get pretty hot in the parked car that afternoon.  The next morning when I went to pour out the milk, I found it had clabbered clear down to the bottom!  It was only later when we were packing up that I found the hidden fridge which would have kept the milk good.  I've made yogurt in the past that didn't clabber as well as that mug of milk!

All the Way Home

Yesterday we lounged around our hotel room at Clarenville Inn until noon, and then drove in to St. John's where we had a room reserved at Comfort Inn, just 1/2 km. from the airport.  We unloaded the car, making sure to remove all of our belongings.  Then we gassed up at a nearby station, and drove the car back to the airport to return it to Budget Rentals.  All went well.  We were happy with the vehicle we've been using for the last two weeks, and the rental agency was fine.  The vehicle was ready, gassed up and clean when we picked it up, and we had no hassles returning it.  One small note: the young woman who checked it over was the first Newfoundlander we encountered in a commercial context who did not smile, act friendly, and say thank you.  In fact, I don't think she said anything.  She checked the car for damage, made sure that the tank was full, checked the odometer and printed out a charge slip.  All done without a smile or a thank you.  Oh well, everyone else was great!

We chose Comfort Inn near the Airport because they have a 24 hour shuttle service. So after we turned in the car, we left the terminal, hailed the shuttle and were soon back at our hotel.

That evening, sans vehicle, we dined at Clancy's in the Comfort Inn, Airport.  I can recommend it without reserveration.  The service was fast and friendly and the food was great!  I had a pizza--kind of.  It was pan seared chicken, mushrooms, onions, and peppers with cheese on a flat bread.  That covered half of a very large dinner plate.  The other half was a wonderful salad: lettuce; red, yellow and green peppers, onions, mushrooms and mandarin sections with your choice of dressing.  It was a terrific meal, totally tasty.

Of course, when you have to catch a plane in the morning you never sleep too soundly, but it wasn't bad.  We had a wake-up call at 6 a.m.  A continental breakfast is available from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., and the shuttle was at the door when we wanted to leave to 7 a.m.

All went smoothly, and WestJet delivered us safely back to Calgary before 11:30 Mountain Time.  S. was there to meet us with our car, and we were home by 1 p.m.

I dug some potatoes and carrots and cooked up our first homemade meal in two weeks.  Although I must say that all our meals out were great with the exception of my scallop dinner in Bonavista at R and J's.  The breading and deepfrying ruined the scallops in my opinion, but other than that one meal, our meals in Newfoundland were uniformly excellent.

It seems strange to be sitting in our own living room in Alberta after waking up this morning in St. John's.  But it is also great not to have to drive all that distance.

This was a lovely holiday.  We think Newfoundland is very beautiful, and its people are admirable.  Thanks to all for a wonderful time!  Newfoundland hospitality hits the spot!

Last Day of Sightseeing

Today we drove north through the Bonavista peninsula all the way to Bonavista itself. Along the way we saw some very typical sights:  such as this house.  To me, this is a very typical Newfoundland house: square, front door in the middle downstairs with a window on either side, and three widows evenly spaced on the second floor.  The only atypical thing here is the replacement window on the left, obviously a newer window.  This house seems to be abandoned.

Then there are the typical towns, houses scattered along the hillside, facing the water.  We drove by a really good photo op, but with a vehicle behind us and a narrow road, we said, "We'll just remember how nice that was."  Here there were driveways we could pull into.






Around noon we came to Bonavista and stopped to visit the Ryan Premises, a National Historic Site.  We found this very worthwhile and spent about two and a half hours here.  These buildings are the Retail Shop on the right,which is a souvenir shop, and that building also includes the old office of James Ryan, the proprietor.

The second building behind that is the Retail Store--which contains the orientation centre with an excellent introduction to the east coast fishery story.  This was a comprehensive display that also taught much about the cod themselves.  There was a history of the whole fishery, and of the Ryan Premises themselves.  James Ryan was the merchant who supplied the needs of the fishermen and took payment in dried cod.  He had a large house across the road from these buildings.

On the second floor is the Bonavista museum, a large room with lots of old objects donated by townspeople and organized into area by topics.

There was an excellent display case with drawings and text that explained how the fishermen knew where they were on the water.  They memorized the landmarks all around and lined themselves up front and back by these landmarks.  That could tell them just where they were on the water, and over what area of sea bottom they were placed.  Certain areas were excellent for fishing at certain times.  It was possible to catch a ton of cod overnight, just using a "handline."


We had learned much about the plight of these desperately poor, incredibly hard-working fishermen and their families in other displays, and it was a bit unsettling to read about it from the merchant's side of things.

There were two other buildings on the site, a Fish store with more displays and a Salt Store, used to store the huge amounts of salt needed for the cod fishery until modern times when the catch was quickly frozen.  Now it contains a display of "Outport furniture," furniture made by the residents of the isolated fishing villages, known as "outports."  They made use of whatever they could find, mainly shipping crates, as can be determined by looking at the back of the furniture, or the undersides of drawers, where the original printing is still found.

We were so fortunate to catch a demonstration by this guide, Rick, of how fish "were made."  He's carrying a cod for the demonstration--but this cod is made of cloth and has detachable parts.  Rick was terrific: dressed as a typical fisherman, he talked and demonstrated just how the fish were handled once they were caught.

The season began sometime in May when the cod came in close to the shore following the run of cappelin.  The main catch followed until sometime in July/August.  The work was intense because the cod would spoil if left in the heat of summer.  As soon as the boats came in the fish were flung onto the "stage" with pitchforks.  Men, women and children worked together to quickly move the cod to tables where they were beheaded, slit open, the livers saved to make cod liver oil, the rest of the offal thrown back into the water under the stage.

They were then salted and left for some time, after which they were rinsed and laid out on "flakes" which were platforms held several feet off the ground.  There they were dried by the sun and the weather, turned several times.  When they were dried they were stored and in the fall taken to the store to be applied against the debt incurred when the necessary supplies had been bought "on credit" in the spring.

All that work had to be done very quickly, to preserve the quality of the cod, and because in a few hours there would be another couple tons to process.  Men, women and even children worked incredibly hard, just to maintain a miserable level of subsistence.


Here's a view of the Bonavista harbour today, a lovely, colourful place.  You can see that the weather has improved over the course of the day.

Twillingate and back

This morning we drove to the end of the
road past Twillingate where the Long Point Lighthouse is located.  There are some frightful cliffs here, but some secure viewing areas.  I thought the water dashing on the rocks was beautiful.

What you can't see in this picture, but what I was able to get with my good telephoto capability in my Canon G10 was this fishing boat, working out near this point, pursued by a large flock of gulls.

One of the signs at the viewpoint was quite informative on icebergs.  And my made-up word "berglet" doesn't make the list.

We left the point and drove back through Twillingate and as far as Boyd's Cove where we took the road to Gander.  The other choice was a long, winding road along the coast, and we've seen lots of coastline.

Along the way I snapped a photo of an iconic roadside sight:

These trash containers are everywhere.  They look like two lobster traps, the lower one bottom up and the top one bottom down.  I don't know if that's intentional, but wherever we've gone this is the style of trash container out by the road.  Your garbage cans fit into here and are neatly out of sight while waiting for pickup.

That is one thing we have noticed here--there is very little littering along the roads.  People take pride in keeping the province clean and "presentable."  The other thing we notice is that very few properties are landscaped.  Of course, there are some places with lovely gardens, but I would guess that a good majority, like this nice new home, have no formal landscaping.  Now that's something that we tend to notice, since we run a garden centre!

We drove along Hwy 1 as far east as Clarenville where we looked for a B and B but ended up in Clarenville Inn, a large hotel on the highway.  No complaints, though, we have a groundfloor room facing away from the highway, and we're sure it will be quiet here tonight.

  

The Beothuks

Today we visited the Beothuk Interpretation Centre at Boyd's Cove on the way to Twillingate, a fine centre, worth going out of your way for.  The Beothuks were likely the descendants of the people known as Recent Indians.

They had a wonderful site for their village here on the Notre Dame Bay.  This is a gravel esker, which provided drainage for rainy weather, with a fresh water stream running  beside it (now called Indian Brook) which has, and had, a heavy smelt run in the spring, a wonderful food resource for them.

At this grassy site there are eleven shallow depressions here showing that there were elven dwellings.  Starting in 1981, when the site was discovered by archaeologist Ralph Pastore, four of these dwelling sites were excavated.  A huge amount of artifacts were recovered.







Another advantage of this site was the protected beach where they draw up their canoes.

There were many animal resources nearby also: caribou, black bears, polar bears, plus lots of berries and a variety of trees that provided wood for their needs. There were many kinds of birds: duck, geese, seabirds, used as meat and eggs.

The Beothuks were here when the Europeans arrive to fish these waters, but rather than initiate trade with them, the Beothuks withdrew, avoiding contact.  When the Europeans would leave at the end of the season, the Beothuks would return and scavenge the gear and old boats left behind.  They burned the boats in order to "free" the iron nails which they then fashioned into useful tools for themselves.  So this contact opened the way for a new technology to be developed.  Of course, when the Europeans returned and found their gear and boats missing or destroyed, then viewed the Beothuks as enemies.

This contact had two main harmful effects (other than the enmity), one of which was the introduction of European diseases against which the natives had no immunity.  The other was starvation as they were driven away from their traditional sources of food.

Later the Europeans tried to make matters better by capturing a few Beothuks with the idea of teaching them English and using them as interpreters.  However, both women captured, Mary March and Shawnadithit, died within a year of being captured.  Before her death Shawnadithit provided many clues to the Beothuk culture with her drawings and words, but as she was the last surviving Beothuk, when she died these people were gone forever.

The Visitor Centre has excellent displays, though not extensive, and a good 20 minute film showing the discovery, excavation and interpretation of the site.

We then drove north on 340 to Twillingate and got the last room at Kelsie's Inn, a lovely, spacious room in a quite new facility.  Had supper at R and J's restaurant, including a soft serve cone to eat on the way "home."