Commuting Continues.

Up and down I go. I was hoping to log 20,000 miles of commuting without a ticket but, bugger, last night at 19,303 I was radared. I wasn't going particularly quickly but had taken a risk on the short but highly policed route in order to get home in time to ride. That didn't work well either, we were standing with the horses tacked up and about to be bridled when the thunderstorm started.

I've taken to day dreaming about trucks and horse trailers and look closely at different ones as I pass them. This one was a bit of a shocker, nice trailer



I expected a similarly nice horse. Squinting through the slots I was startled to note that the horse had very poor conformation, far too much neck and simultaneously uphill and down. It took me a moment to register the creature as a Bacterian camel.

A Change in our Sub-Title

You may notice a subtle change in the Sub-title of our blog. It just didn't seem right to refer to ourselves as city-dwellers anymore. Well, I never really was a city-dweller. I was a captive of forces beyond my control!

Kittens now snack sized

and about able to climb out of their bed.

The last of Summer.

We think the barbecue went off rather well for one at which the guests were a mixture of farmers, foxhunters and Guardinistas; a potentially unstable mixture. People were very generous in bringing food and drink. No injuries were sustained. We had fun.

In the morning a couple of remaining guests had a go at riding despite lacking ideal footwear.



This is a bit of a nothing picture of riders on their way back to the barn but the one red tree stands out. It alarms me. Autumn in Ontario is frightening because it's over in a flash and then there's the snow.



A few trees along the commute have also turned, they're not red enough yet to warrant slowing down to take the pictures but they're getting there.







This one's looking a bit windswept.



Better get on with that staining, I don't want to be doing it in thermals.

You know you're in the country

when you have a party and a guest arrives driving a loader.

This is a scene I like very much indeed. Two smokers smoking. This promises to be a good afternoon!

14 out, 5 in.

We don't know the exact timing, perhaps for a moment we had 25 chickens, 7 cats, 2 horses and a dog. Now we have less chickens but we have the kittens.





They are, of course, absurdly small and in apparent danger of being squished by their mother.





We have one black, one grey, one white with some black patches and two that look a lot like the mother, one with the facial pattern reversed.





Since, regardless of gossip, we are not a pair of aging lesbians we plainly do not need 7 cats. If anyone is willing to adopt a kitten we'll throw in an oven ready chicken, light in weight, flavour unknown, but genuinely free range.

Chicken Reformating.

We had too many cocks so some of them had to go. They'd started trying to crow and I shall miss the sound of their strangled bleatings as I pick the paddock. That said, fourteen crowing cocks and a hangover is not a pleasant thought.




Poultry processing is, I suppose, a messy and smelly business. Appropriately the poultry processor was way out in the bush.

A digression. Toronto consists of a central city area which is pretty much typical of North American cities, postcards of Toronto are hard to distinguish from postcards of Pittsburgh, and then a band of older leafy suburbs much of which is being inbuilt with McMansions. Beyond that is awful sprawling exurbia, mile upon mile of housing estates consisting of identical houses with no pubs, churches or other landmarks. I used to hate taking the children to birthday parties north of the QEW in Mississauga as it always meant a frustrating half hour trying to find the way out of legoland and then another trying to rid myself of an earworm of the Talking Head's Big Country.

The exurbs extend along the major roads, between them are areas like Caledon where there are large houses and well tended horse farms. Some of this country is despoiled and polluted by golf courses but it mainly looks affluent, even groomed. Above highway 9 the horse farms continue but now they're either very big and very very well tended or a bit scruffy and may house horses of undistinguished breeding, donkeys or those freaky animals we know as ponies but which the owners are at pains to point out are miniature horses. There are now cows and crops in evidence. Above highway 89 the farms grow food; potatoes and other crops, cows, sheep. Recreational animals are in the minority and tend to be llamas or alpacas. The main businesses north of the 89 are gravel extraction and wind farming. The wind farms are controversial, some people think them ugly and untraditional but we don't mind them. Windmills don't add to the neighbour's property values though so when the poultry processing lady said to turn at the windmills I knew we were not going anywhere prestigious.

Rural Ontario isn't conspicuously poor like rural Texas or an Indian reserve but still the theme from Deliverance sprang into my head as we drove into the mist, the windmill blades coming and going as they passed through the clouds. We drove for several miles on roads like this



the houses we passed each had a field of ruined agricultural equipment and an unchained dog that may have been part mastiff. The road naming convention is very confusing, the same few names repeat with a compass point appended, 2nd line NE, 2nd line SW, some direction in which the road does not point. I'm often lost but even if I was less constrained by machismo I wouldn't be stopping at any of those places and asking for directions. Just before the point of domestic tension we found the poultry plant and, as directed, pulled behind to get some crates. At this point a man who couldn't have been a hillbilly because it's flat around there drove up and said Diane had seen us coming and we weren't to take the yellow crates. I wondered if "Diane" lived close by, perhaps in a tree or a culvert, or if there was a webcam somewhere. Either way, watching the yard seemed a curious and slightly creepy way to spend the evenings.

We took multi-coloured crates and headed home. Then all that needed doing was to grab the chickens with manly bits



and place them in the crates



the first one went well. As suggested by Beebop, I crept up and grabbed the legs. Easy. The second one looked at bit nervous but came quietly. Of course, with each one they got more noisy and flappy and harder to catch and there was more space for them to run into. Soon all sense of style and panache was lost.



Still, we got the chickens in the crates and the crates in the Element



we left them there overnight. I suppose the car has now absorbed the smell of chickens diluting the previous odour and making a lie of the bumper sticker "That horse smell is my aromatherapy".

So there we have it, from this



to this




all that remains is to taste one.

The perfect shred.

Summer's ending and we've hardly had anyone to the house. Time then for a barbecue. On the day the smokers will be filled with ribs so we made the pulled pork early. This is what a pulled pork shred should look like:



The end is bark, then there's three-eigths of an inch of smoke ring and then the barely smoked meat. At this moment the pork is absorbing the vineger based dressing. I love pulled pork, I almost hope no one comes and we have it to eat all winter. We have enough to keep two and a quarter people going for quite some time:



it took a couple of hours to break it all down



All the time watched by a still pregnant halfway feral cat.



Barbecue offers something for everyone, butt skin being a great delicacy for dogs

Like a goldarned hippy honky tonk.

Some evil thing on the porch.

Sid came out to find a new and threatening object crouched by the door.




It took a lot of sniffing and pawing before he determined it to be safe.



Charlie was not overly bothered.

The Country

It really is different, and it has amazed me how quickly I have become used to it. Our mayor is also our mailman. Sometimes the mail comes, and sometimes it doesn't. That's okay--it will come tomorrow. Our neighbour, from whom our horses have stolen a roundbale, still hasn't billed us for it, though we have asked him to. I think we'll just write him a check for the average price of a round bale in this area--he probably never will tell us what it cost. We hear the coyotes yipping at night, and the cows mooing in the morning. Red tail hawks (we think that's what they are, anyway) swoop over the fields. I hope they're eating the horse-killing groundhogs. A barbecue held to benefit a local recreation center featured cow-patty bingo. Participants purchased tickets identifying a plot in the cow's pen. If the cow pooped on your plot, you won the money.

Yesterday I had to go to Brampton to get a customs form for so that we can legally bring the Element into Canada (yes, it has been in Canada for three years without actually being in Canada). So, I set off on my way, bracing myself for the hell that is Brampton. On the way I stopped to get gas at our local store. The woman charged me for the gas but didn't see the bottle of water that I had picked up to buy (one has to fortify oneself for trips into the city). By the time she noticed the water, the credit card slip was already printing, so she shrugged and said "come in some other time and pay for it." Brampton was, well, Brampton-like. I wandered around a grocery store for a while to waste some time while waiting for Jim to arrive for our dinner date. I dodged men with their hands a little (okay, a lot) too far in their pants, and noticed myself taking on that bitch-persona that women have to adopt to get by in the city. It saddened me to think that there are some women who never know anything different, and for whom that persona is just second nature. This grocery store wasn't working. I found another one, a halal one, that I hoped would be a more comfortable place to while away an hour, and would hopefully have some ingredients that aren't readily available in Shelburne. It did indeed. While I was at the checkout, a man came in who could only speak Arabic and French. Neither of the checkout ladies could speak either. Eventually the man made it clear that he was looking for a mosque. Both women, both in hijab, just shrugged and said "I don't know, I never go."

As we were driving back, I felt a little surge of happiness upon crossing the county line into Dufferin county. Working at the museum has allowed me to learn about the community, and there is no better way to get to know a place than to get to know its history. It is a community that is more connected to its past than any place I've ever lived, with the possible exception of Northfield, Minnesota. The past matters here in a way that it didn't in, say, Toronto, because so little has changed. Individuals are referred to as being seventh, six, or fifth generation Dufferin county. That may not seem like many generations to a European, but it is a large number for a North American, most of whom can only claim to be third or fourth generation. The same names that were on the land deeds in the early 19th C are still there. Until very recently, most business, political, and social activity was conducted through the Loyal Orange Lodge. I'm envious of the sense of place that people around here have. I've moved so often that even places that I love have never really felt like mine. The people who live here have a sense of belonging, of a history with the place that goes back much further than their own lives. The archivist at the museum has an encyclopedic knowledge of the area's history and families. He can tell you, off the top of his head, the names, dates, and specific plot locations (both while living and dead) of everyone who ever lived in Dufferin county. He is related to most of the county. Everyone here is.

Mind you, there are some drawbacks. There is a casual acceptance of drunk driving and a stubborn resistance to gun registration. The old farmers don't talk much. Or, they do, but only to each other. The Scotch/Northern Irish/English composition lends the area a very different feel to other rural areas that I've known, which were populated primarily by Swedes, Nords, and Germans. It is a colder, more Calvinistic feeling. Or perhaps that is just the weather. Cooking anything more exotic than steak and potatoes requires several days notice, as we gather such exotic ingredients as fresh basil. Outsiders are easily recognized by their accents and speech patterns. I never before knew that "you's" was an acceptable alternative to "y'all." All in all, though, I can't imagine going back to a city, especially one like Toronto. I could hardly believe that I was there while I was there. And while a ranch in Wyoming is still where my heart lies, I'm really getting to like this place, with its chilly Calvinists and even chillier winds.

Just like the advert.

The original advert for the property had some gushing copy along the lines of "down below you'll be able to see your horses grazing". That's turned out to be true, though it requires squinting and ultra-zoom. This is the view down the hill from the balcony. Through the trees one can see the manure pile with a chicken on top and, beyond that, a horse.



Meanwhile, the outside of the house looks increasingly as if the people living there do hippyish things like keeping chickens and home knitting their yoghurt.



Within, the inevitable moment draws near



the question now is whether or not the kittens will arrive before the chickens get the chop. If the timing is right we could briefly be custodians of some three dozen animals, rather more I ever imagined.

Summer

It's the height of summer now. Night and day the crickets are chirping, the chickens chase them and, if one is caught the chicken holding it is beset by an army of competitors wanting to shake it loose. There are many frogs despite our not having any water on the property. I think this guy was chasing one but the prey gained a new lease of life and sprang off past a bewildered flailing Charlie




High summer in rural Canada is bittersweet, it's warm but it gets dark earlier and that hints at the horrors to come.

High summer in Toronto is just unpleasant, the crust of smog over the city traps the heat and humidity and occludes the sun. One benefit is that the smog filter allows one to drive directly into the sun without wearing sunglasses or using the visor.



The lake and the Humber river take on a smell I used to be unable to describe but now know to be similar to that of an unpumped septic tank. It's no wonder that those who can afford to spend their weekends at "the cottage".

Spikes.

Charlie bounced on to the bed, he was prickly to the touch and he had porcupine quills in his back. We'd seen a dog with quills at the vet, they were in that dog's nose, his tongue, all the places you'd expect a dog to get quills when sniffing a live porcupine. Charlie must have got his quills from rolling on a dead porcupine. We know where there's a dead porcupine but I, at least, don't care to think that the dog that has just climbed in the bed had previously been rolling in the manure pile.

Anyway, the day started with pulling them out:




The next job was to give the horses their West Nile booster shots. Just take these



and stick them in those



In the event it went surprisingly easily




and walking up to the horses gave us a chance to see what over the fence so fascinates them. It's the buffet.

Painting Advances.

Finally the front of the house was all sanded and we could crack on with painting it.

The shutters got a couple of coats of gloss white to match the window frames



and the wall got stained a very dark brown, almost black.



The painting, like the staining before it, was a slow process due to a dog constantly needing a ball throwing, a cat constantly needing reassuring affection and an autistic person constantly needing to tug at the painter for no obvious reason. Sid, by the way, has reason to fear being supplanted. As if it wasn't enough that there should be one additional cat that cat has developed a suspicious bulge amidships:



After one coat the wall looks like this:



it looks much smarter than the untouched wall to the left but, perhaps, a little austere. Reinstalling the repainted shutters will make it less formal: