Country Chores.

In a climate like this one must always be thinking of Winter. Even today, June 1st, we had a small fire and on May 19th it snowed a little. That stack is two cords, most of it was dumped in the driveway and hauled in this weekend. We burned five cords over the past year so there are three more coming for the pile. We also burn deadfall, I found this branch leaning on a fence last weekend. The chainsaw dates from another era, an era when I thought light trimming was all I would ever do with trees. An electric chainsaw is next to useless so when it burst into flames yesterday I had mixed feelings; I'm glad to be rid of it but I'm not sure that no chainsaw is better than an electric chainsaw.

Meanwhile Anna's been making dandelion wine.

I suppose this is a traditional starving-peasant-in-need-of-alcohol type thing so I'm a bit surprised the recipe calls for oranges, one might think they'd be in short supply in barely settled
Ontario.


It looks, er, interesting but then I suppose even the best Bordeaux don't look their best at the feet-on-grapes stage. Time will tell.

Something else Anna's been doing is salting the eggs from the bantams.

They've been laying well but that may be about to come to a halt. One has disappeared. We twice returned Hunter to the neighbour's place this weekend, once after he was chasing the chickens. He has to be the prime suspect and that presents a problem, it'd be nice to find a better solution than the traditional "shoot, shovel, shut up".