Final project

I am starting to get my final project underway here. I will have some pictures up in the future, but for now I will explain what will be going on.

My classmate and I are going to do a predator population survey index. With this index we will be able to compare population compositions of two distinct habitats. We will be looking at the difference between a predominately jack pine forest and habitat in the aspen parkland.

How it works...

We set up a 1'X2' piece of OSB against the base of a tree. The wood is covered with spruce bows to provide a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel will be bait to entice visits by different predator species. To keep tabs on who has been visiting our sites we will be applying carpenters chalk to the first half of the OSB sheet and on the other half we will be stapling one sided sticky paper. When the individual visits the site they will step onto the carpenters chalk and transfer their footprint to the sticky paper. From here we will be able to identify the type of species that visited.



Pictures of cool ass animal footprints to follow....

Tasty.

For your sake I hope you have not cut ties with my friendship.

Here are some pictures of the sausage extravaganza. The picture of the freezer is one individuals share. After all was said and done we churned out 320 total pounds of the tasties. Beer was obviously involved. As was moonshine.

I can now add "sausage stuffer" to my resume.

Better have a sharp knife for sausage making.

Yes I still live here

Thankfully it snowed though. I was beginning to worry about how much of that white insulation I would have for the rest of the cold months. Looks like I will be okay, and if it is a three dog night I can just invite Le Petit up for a cuddle.

That's just the pork!

We made three hundred and sixty pounds of sausage yesterday. It ended up being a 14 hour day but oh so worth it. We figure what we produced ended up with a cost of a buck fifty a pound. Pretty good for sausage of such quality that I would push my own mother down in the grocery store to reach it first (just kidding mom). You can see Tyler using the grinder I rigged up (hundred bucks for the grinder, 7 for the belt, 2 bucks for a new male plug, motor was free (left at my house....if you need it back Jason it is yours..or I could trade some sausage!). I will post some more pictures here soon. I purchased an antique cast iron sausage press for the occasion which was about 240 bucks. I figure one more batch and that pays for itself. We ended up making a jalapeno cheddar, a bratwurst, smoked farmers, regular farmers and a spicy Italian. All tasted phenomenal during the inaugural tasting sessions. Le Petit provided the mop, or rather he was the mop. There is no need to clean floors after a sausage party when you have a hungry dog.

More pictures to follow.

Contraband

No that is not cocaine. But it is as highly sought after. It is the secret base mix for ******* meat's pork sausage. The recipe was not divulged but certain hands were shook and low and behold three bags of contraband were shipped courier express to Prince Albert. Looks like it is time to get making sausage.

Farmer vision and the junk box

One day I would like to acquire farmer vision. Sometimes I exhibit small hints of the phenomenon(see opening a bottle of wine without a corkscew) but the true farmer vision still eludes me.

What is farmer vision you ask?It is the ability to look at any mechanical problem and come up with a solution without having to use the Internet or run to the store for some material or a new tool. It is the ability to make anything work without an engineer cooking up an equation for you. The ability to make do with what you have and nothing more. I know two people who have reached farmer vision (the rural dwelling folk's equivalent of Buddhist enlightenment). My friend Joe has it and my neighbour Dave has it. I would like it.

How do you reach enlightenment?I believe it can only be aquired from living out of town and avoiding long trips into the city for simple solutions. The only other real prerequisite for farmer vision is to have a large garage and an assortment of tools... sometimes home brew is also required. I can however think of one object that can speed up the path to the promise land. The box of junk.

The roll of the junk box.Ahh the box of junk.
"do I hear 10? 10? 5? come on 5.. look at that box..shes awful perty.. I think I see an old washing machine motor in there, some screw drivers, a tin of quarter inch bolts. That must be worth 2 bits. Do I have a taker for a quarter? SOLD!"

Sometimes the junk box is sold alone. But more often at the auction, you will spot a tool that you wish to purchase. The usual downside of this purchase is that it often comes with a box of junk that the auctioneer realizes will only vanish if sold along with a useful tool that provides instant gratification. .. BUT... The box of junk is often not the downside. Who knows what you may find in the junk box..... The mysterious workings of the junk box will undoubtedly manipulate themselves into the eye of the farmer vision.

Weird tree

The top half of this tree must have broken off and it decided it did not want to die. Perhaps it is a magical tree and decided it could create more witchery with two terminal branches.

Stop stealing my grouse!

I suppose coyotes have to eat to. I just wish they would eat the less tasty animals. I found this along my usualy walking path. The victim was the ever so clumsy ruffed grouse.

Weekend fun.

Saturday
Ice fishing on the weekend greatly outweighs nursing hangovers in the fun department. I should probably learn something from this but it is likely that I will forget all common sense the next time someone issues the warning of a party. Sans hangover we managed to limit out on walleye in 45 minutes. I could tell you where we went fishing but you would have to supply me with the body bag. The fishing was so hot everytime someone would pull up a fish, their hole was stolen faster than a fifteen year old's virginity during frosh week. It made for a great morning of musical chairs and jousting comments about the lack of fish certain people had caught.

Sunday
Super dog managed to cut all that lumber himself! What a fantastic pooch. If I did not know any better I would say he is the bastard offspring of Lassie herself.

In actuality the dog just ran around licking his balls while I hauled some lumber(I think when I leave this plain in a whirlwind of fire I want to return as a dog).

No school friday afternoons. Must occupy fun.

Canoe trip? You mean how was my fucking sailing trip!

It is the July long weekend, the Canada day long weekend. I can distinctly remember spending this weekend trolling Regina Beach for fist fights and fun loving females in years gone past. I hope that I have slightly grown up from this, but as I think about it, I may not have digressed that far.

This weekend would however be different. It has now become the annual adventure weekend for me and my hillbilly friends. A weekend where cell phones are left in secret hiding places, fireworks are bought by the crate, paddles are broken and whiskey is drunk like water. If there is one weekend I look forward to all year long, this is it.

Last year we paddled a stretch of the South Saskatchewan. This year we would travel through the provincial forest down the North Saskatchewan from the Cecil Ferry crossing to Nipawin. Six men and three canoes would accept the challenge. Dogs were left behind as this summer would be particularly dangerous. With the flooding this year the river peaked roughly a week before we were to set our vessels in the current, and peak it did with a flow of over 2000 cubic meters per second. For comparison sake, Wascana Creek has an average peak flow of 16 cubic meters in the spring.

Aside from Joe becoming slightly upset when I threw a cup of pee at his truck, the trip up was relatively tame. We arrived late in the evening at what was supposed to be the ferry crossing. The high water had closed the road leading down to the crossing and as we walked up to the bank we could why. The torrent of water had turned the river a dark brown as whole uprooted trees floated past us like giant foreboding gestures.

Three of us would be in charge of driving to the Nipawin area to drop off a vehicle while the other three would be in charge of drinking and setting up camp for the night... but mostly drinking. I elected to stay behind and sent the others off with a somewhat non detailed map and a list of hazy instructions to find the shoreline in the middle of the night. As it would stand though, instructions were not followed and the vehicle was left somewhere down a road as far as the muddy surface of the bush trail would allow.

Eventually the weary travelers made it back to camp just in time to shoot fireworks in the direction of a group of high school kids frolicking on the opposite bank. Beds were then made as mosquitoes were avoided while visions of sugar plums and whitewater began to dance in my head.

We awoke to a dreary overcast day and set ship. As we floated from our camp we could hear someone screaming at us from the opposite bank in a panicked voice. Was he warning us of something? Was Wīhtikōw himself, eater of flesh, waiting for us in the shadows of the next bend. Hopefully not, maybe the old man was just making sure we were aware of the large tree headed in our direction. Regardless of what the warning was for, it was an unnerving start for the trip.

Now I had travelled the first section of the river before so I became the unofficial guide of the trip. I had been through the stretch known as LaColle falls before at much tamer water levels. I knew the boys were coming up on a challenge. True to form the falls produced swells twice the size of a canoe and one boat just about took on enough water to swamp it. When your canoe has six inches of water in it you lose all control and losing all control while you are hitting 20 km an hour down a 300 meter stretch of rapids does not exactly compare to opiate induced relaxation. Luckily they managed to float to shore and bail out the canoe while we travelled onto the abandoned Prince Albert Dam . When I had been at the dam previous it was possible to climb inside it and walk around. Now the water was so high that the entrance way was completely submerged. While waiting for the others we stumbled around, happened upon a geocache and ran into a couple of teenagers out for a stroll. The teenagers decided they were not interested in sticking around after one member of our party proceeded to get rip roaring afternoon drunk and shoot his WWI era rifle at the concrete dam. Not really sure what their problem was….

We proceeded to eat some canned ham tomato wraps while JJ bravely lit a live hornets’ nest on fire to entertain us. I don’t have balls that big. I was impressed. The would be members of Davey Jones' locker eventually caught up and after having our fill we shipped off once again into the wild blue yonder. The rest of the day was spent with a myriad of animal sightings. The first was a cow and calf moose that joined us, floating down the river just in front of us, racing towards the promise land for what must have been a solid 2 km. Following that we came up on a cow elk floating in the distance and later on even a bull moose showed up for a bath in the river. I’m really unsure why there were so many animals in the water that day. Perhaps they were due for their weekly cleaning or were simply escaping the wrath of the Saskatchewan mosquito. The rest of the day went on uneventful aside from some naked swimming at a sandbar just north of the forks of the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers and a ruckus camping adventure where we spent the evening being assholes to Jason who made the mistake of telling us about his dream of becoming a police officer.

Enter Awesome Day

This is the day that will forever be known as Awesome Day. This day, July 1, 2011 is now capitalized and forever will be. The government told us they would have issued another calendar holiday, except that it already is one. On Awesome Day, everything is wonderful. The sun decided to pay us a visit this groggy hangover morning. A beautiful day, we set forth for the horizon. The waters from this point on started to calm as the river began to widen in advance of the dam miles ahead. This afternoon four members of the party indulged while the other two were designated as baby sitters for the man children. The world was beautiful. We tied all three canoes together and simply floated our craft ever so slowly towards paradise.

Perfect, complacent, magical, the 7 wonders of the world have nothing on us....Suddenly though… Our world was shaken. Brett had an idea! “An idea” I ask? “Pick up your fucking paddle, were going to shore you useless tits.” Okay,” I thought to myself, “I can do this.” We all joined in and paddled our not so maneuverable raft towards a clump of aspen on the river bank. “Give me ten minutes,” demanded Brett. “Hey, you do what you gotta do man,” was the only reply we could muster. Brett left with a saw and an axe and true to form came back with 5 polls. Two were lashed across the thwarts and the other three were crafted with duct tape and rope into a mast. JJ offered up his tent (a small black tarp). Well in hindsight he did not really offer it up, it was more so just taken, however it was a very small price to pay for what would come next. With Brett’s ingenuity and my artistic ability, we soon had a Jolly Roger sail for our pirate ship. We called it the Docket Rocket.

“How was your canoe trip?”
-“You mean how was my fucking sailing trip!”

And yes… It worked. We were cruising down the river at 14 knots without even dipping the paddle. The only paddle in the water was used as a rudder by our esteemed captain, Brett “mother hen” King. For the rest of the afternoon we sailed on through the provincial forest riding our happiness vessel like a pinto pony sent from fields of Elysium. Eventually in the distance we spotted a large bridge. We had made it to the crossing at Wapiti ski valley. Cruising under the bridge we startled a few fishermen who were enjoying a leisurely afternoon of sturgeon fishing. After what we had been through thus far, I am not sure if we were more startled to see them or if they were more startled to see us. As we drifted past the valley we had a brainwave that we may be able to find women at the local campground.

With our brave captain in command we steered towards shore. Once we docked we realized that upstream paddling would be impossible. But not impossible would be a night spent at the campground! Once again with our brave captain “mother hen” at the helm (a large rope attached to the vessel, the other end to himself) we would make it back to the recreation site. Chest deep in the water, Brett trudged on with our shouts of encouragement from the comfortable seats of the best pirate ship Satan ever concocted. We would arrive just before Brett’s legs would give out in exhaustion.

ENTER THE HUMANS

We had only been bush for two days but it was enough that I really did not want to have anything to do with the normals. A few of the more gung ho sexually deprived individuals ventured up to discover a campground full of nice family types. We did not fit in, so we marooned our ship in a cove and set up our own little private campground. Of course in the haze of Awesome Day we managed to forget that it was also Canada day. And in the true spirit of continually making everything better on Awesome Day, we discovered that a firework shot under the water went in magical directions and could make a really neat noise. Also we learned that impromptu floating firework barges create a fire hazard. We would eventually flame out just as fast as the perceived fire hazard in anticipation for our final day on the river.

Words of wisdom from Awesome Day:
“Make it better, Make it work”
“Were losing time, but gaining fun”
“It’s getting better!”
Maybe you had to be there…….



Third and final day

Obviously this day was spent sailing. Why fuck with a good thing. We did add a windsock though so we could steer properly into the wind. The river now was really starting to widen and slow down so the sail definitely helped. The only downside of a slow wide river is the influx of normal humans. But hundred thousand dollar wake board boats proved no match for the Docket Rocket. Every time a boat would get to close, Joe would wave his “stick” at them. The stick was actually a loaded bolt action rifle, but who is counting. Anyway this day proved relatively tame until we happened upon Pabst Blue Ribbon camp.

You know those commercials where they rant and rave at you, tricking you into drinking really piss poor Budlight Lime just so you can have a chance to party at Bud Camp. Are people really stupid enough to forget that the bud girls are just sad renderings of the sluts from your high school that were not intelligent enough to pursue even a bullshit fine arts degree? Ignorant… Drink real beer. But enough ranting…. Anyway, while we were canoeing we kept talking about how we wanted to discover a mythical Pabst Blue Ribbon camp where silicone is restricted to a caulking gun and expectations just simply do not exist. (not that Pabst is a particularly good beer, but at least it is marketed to hillbillies instead of flatbrim nothings).

The verdict? Sadly I think we found it. We could see tents in the distance so we once again marooned our ship in the presence of the normals. A few members of the party walked off in search of Pabst Blue Ribbon headquarters while the rest of us lay on the beach for a well deserved nap. We did after all spend an entire day doing nothing while the wind did all the work. I was exhausted. Amongst the drift wood that had piled up on the beach the previous week I found what appeared to be.... a coconut? That really must have been some high water. What was a coconut doing here? Well me not knowing much about coconuts, or anything tropical for that matter, I decided to crack it open. It of course was rotten inside. ROTTEN. I have not smelt anything like that before. And If I can die without ever smelling it again I will have achieved my life’s ultimate goal.

While I was enjoying my nap someone had found the Pabst girls. True to form, JJ took off his shirt and began doing pushups to impress the girls. When JJ does this, I always think that he is more interested with impressing us by showing us how hilarious of a situation he can muster, but regardless the girls were also impressed. Groggily I surveyed the situation. We could sit here all evening, PAY for a camp site (an outrageous idea) and watch JJ perform the “mean lean” (this is where he puts one hand on his hip while the other is lifting himself off the ground in a display of panther like sexuality), or we could paddle the short distance to our end point, hope we can find the car and enjoy one more evening avoiding the normals.

It would take some convincing but we eventually shipped off and sure enough when we were 30 meters on our way down the crick, certain crew members of the Docket Rocket attempted to convince the Pabst girls to flash us. Being Pabst girls, they gladly took their shirts off. No thanks, my spectacles remained in my waterproof tickle trunk. In our final hour of paddling we managed to get into our first fight. Without wind we were hopeless. No one wanted to paddle. All I wanted to do was dive naked off our ship and swim around it annoying everyone. The front simply wanted to drink. The back wanted the front to paddle. It was a vicious cycle, a standstill would best describe the final hours of the journey.

We would though eventually make it to where we hoped the vehicle would be. After half an hour of outrunning the mosquitos we found it and retrieved it down the road we were supposed to have dropped it off on which would take us directly to the camp site. We set up camp and scrounged around for the last morsels of food we had packed. The presence of bear tracks near camp was slightly unnerving but I am not sure if I have ever slept so soundly in my entire life. Sailing is exhausting.

In the mean time.

Here are a few songs we recorded this past fall.

http://thewildmen.bandcamp.com/

Up and at dem.

Alright, so it has been a while since I have made any updates to this self absorbed blogger thing. This can be attributed to 30% laziness, 15% apathy, 50% of it goes to losing my camera twice this summer during adventures and not wanting to replace it, and the final 5% can be attributed to spending all my free time pretending to be Woody Guthrie these days. The plan is to buy a camera this afternoon and to post about the adventures I have been on during my downtime from the internet.