Turkey day

I'm not sure why i have still failed on blogging about the most ridiculous adventure of 2010 for me. I think it was just to real for words to explain. But whatever the matter was, I am now going to try to do it justice here.

If there is a god worth worshipping, it is the Sun. The Sun is tangible, it is real, it gives us life, without it we die. Sounds pretty well like a god to me. Sounds worth worshipping to me. So why celebrate Christmas when we can sacrifice a live animal three days before and then proceed to get belligerently drunk on red wine.

I have long wanted to celebrate the solstice, so decidedly this was the year where I would force my annual Christmas party to fall on the day after the solstice, the first day of the year when the sun is beginning to awaken from its lengthening slumber. Also i decided that if I would be celebrating the existence of the sun, I better do it in style. So I placed an add on used Regina, looking for a live turkey. I had only one reply. It was for a fifty pound turkey. Yes I spelt that word correctly.... a FIFTY pound turkey. Not one to be daunted by the task, I graciously accepted the offer and plans were made to pick up the bird on December 22.

Currency in hand I travelled the forty kilometers to Indian Head at eight pm on the twenty second in my economy sized 1986 Honda Civic. The bird stood waist high. It was a sheer marvel of genetic strength. Beautiful, yet powerful, the bird was wrestled to the trunk of my car in exchange for two twenty dollar bills. Yes, for forty dollars all of my friends would eat a fantastic meal and I would be eating poultry for the next two months.

I then assembled a group of the finest individuals to make the sacrifice. Justin Ludwig, Cam Wenslow and Andrew Love arrived at my door step, red wine in hand, already well on their way to somewhere. The trunk was popped, turkey was bear hugged and walked to my largest wood block in the back yard. Justin played the role of documenter, Cam, the role of supervisor, and Andrew held down the most Heinous role of all, that of the executioner. While hesitant at first, Andrew played out his role fantastically. With one clean swipe of the machete, the wrist sized neck came detached from the body. If you have ever seen what a chicken does when its head is chopped off, simply imagine what a fifty pound turkey does and you will realize the horror that ensued.

The bird was then cleaned up and the four of us got mightily rip roaring drunk to celebrate. Hungover, i awoke to a turkey that overflowed the pan and barely fit into my oven. Eight hours the beast would pass in the oven, and still it would not be fully cooked deep inside. Regardless, the bird was taken out and a feast for the ages was served somewhere on 1400 block Mctavish while half way around the world the sun was smiling down at the earth.

Don't throw them back!

It's well known to the fishermen and women of Southern Saskatchewan that the Tullibee is the unwelcome fish of the sea. For every ten men I talk to, nine feed the fish to the dogs and one unlikely person is brave enough to have eaten this bottom feeding white fish. So after throwing them back for years at the thought of skinning a fish full of worms, I decided to experiment, and find out for myself what sort of table fare these fish made. Rather than just regurgitating the age old hate for the poor boy, I would now have an informed opinion. Now white fish are infamous for being delicious when smoked, the tullibee is a cousin of the white fish. I have a smoker. The answer was clear. So i cut off the head, scooped out the guts, chopped off the fins and plunked er into a brine. I used about a cup of sea salt and a cup of brown sugar and filled the bowl with water until it covered the fish. I subsequently left to go clear my mind at the local Sunday evening karaoke bar and 2 and a half hours later i arrived back home to take the fish out of the brine and let it dry off a touch before taking it out to the smoke house. i believ i kept a small fire of hardwoods going in the old washing machine basin for roughly 4 hours. It was not just finished yet before it was time to get some shut eye so i left it smoke a tad til morning. As night grew into dawn i brought the fish inside and the skin pulled off like a glove, lunch time came and I could not wait. Fucking candy in my mouth. really really really tasty. Just like smoked salmon, only the texture of the meat was a tad different. I will no longer throw away another one of these delectable treats. If there is one thing I can take away from this aside from a non empty stomach, its that it sometimes pays not to go with the flow. EAT A TULIBE!


Currently listening to blue rodeo. The concert this past weekend was amazing.

the end of funemployment.

I have done it! I am one of them. One of the nine to five thirty crowd. having avoided steady day time employment for my entire existence, I have finally broke down and found a way to kill the three most dangerous winter months. From now until mid April I will be sending away parts to the farmers of the world so they can feed the mouths of the hungry. Yup, I will be spending my days driving around a warehouse, the most exciting of professions. While I will enjoy the money, I will miss the freedom of getting up everyday to carry out ridiculous feats, that later could be blogged about. I'm praying to the dark lord that my life does not become as boring as most people I know owing to their whole nine to five unexistence. I will still be able to get out for winter fun i think. There is plenty of snowshoeing, ice fishing and ice skating to be done.

Cook stove

I stumbled into Western Fireplace this weekend looking for a piece of trim for my chimney, instead I saw my future, a future somehow involving a Heartland Sweetheart. If you did not catch on, the Sweetheart is the name of the cook stove in the picture. This bundle of joy can heat your entire house, cook and warm your food, AND can even be fitted to warm a hot water tank. Now this is one piece of technology I give two feets up to. I thought cook stoves were a thing of the past and had no idea that they are still being manufactured. Needless to say I was stoked. For now I can dream, but one day I will have my Sweetheart and put her to work in my kitchen where she belongs. Just kidding girls, if this was in the house I would not let anyone near my kitchen.

Finished product.

TADA! Here is the finished product. The first night of fishing consisted of me and Miranda drilling a hole in only six feet of water. We would have moved the shack but the hole in the ice was overly hard to drill because of unsharpened tools. Unsharpened tools are sort of like all my vehicles when winter comes, they just don't want to work.

Abraham Lincoln once said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

This is advice I will take to my grave.

Regardless, that first evening I was able to catch a very nice sized dog fish that Miranda wanted to keep as a pet.

The next day would prove far more successful. After spending some time that evening sharpening up the auger i was ready to move out the shack on Tanner's arrival the next morning. That day we caught a good number of dirty old tullibee, I brought up a nice little eating walleye and Tanner lashed onto a nice four and a half pound pickerel that fed four of us for lunch.

Hopefully the rest of the season is this promising.

Ice Fishing Part One

Me and my new found friend Tanner Morrison decided to build a hard water fishing enclosure. This is not the first ice shack I have owned. My virgin attempt at construction way back in the years of high school consisted of me thinking that I would be able to use my mighty brawn and brain power to fashion a suitable ice hut. However, like most virgin attempts, the outcome left me very unsatisfied. In recent years I have retired the old shack to the back wall of my gazebo that I built this summer. Here it sits, patiently housing my bicycles in the summer time. The old boy was simply not practical for the hard water sport. It was so heavy that six men with large chests were needed every time it was to be loaded or unloaded onto a vehicle. With this in mind Tanner and I headed strictly toward building a light and simple shack that could be easily set up every year when the geese fly South. The materials cost roughly 180 dollars in total and in the end that shack was so light that I could tie a rope to it and actually run it along the ice while my girlfriend sat inside wishing I was a reindeer.... and the shack was St. Nicks sleigh.

The shack is built into parts and then assembled. The building of the shack took about an hour from start to finish with two people and then I was able, with some difficulty, to assemble it by myself in about an hour once I got it out to the lake.

Here is what the disassembled parts look like. In the background on the right you can seen the cabin my parents purchased on echo earlier this summer.
If you want to know more about the plans of the shack, send me a line.

My dream home

This picture was taken in some National Forest land on the Eastern part of Wyoming. The scene you see is captured from one side of the canyon and down below where you see the house is where the main highway is located alongside the river. There is an excellent walking path that slowly makes its way up the canyon and up onto the plateau. unfortunately i did not have the ambition to make it all the way to the plateau but we came pretty close.