Finally

I am finally going to do it. Something that has been scratching at the back of my mind for a couple of years now is finally going to become reality. The proverbial egg has hatched. . I am going to raise a couple of hens. Last summer I was very close to doing this but around the same period of time one of my neighbours had called the bylaw officer on me for an unkempt pile of lumber as well as someone called to have my car towed after it had been parked in the same space for more than a day(which is total horseshit, "oh I'm sorry if you had to walk an extra 10 feet to get to your house you lazy good for nothing ungulate"). So I felt that I was being watched a little to closely by one or more of my neighbours and decided at the time that it would be a bad idea to bring more rain upon my head.

Anyway enough ranting about the past, I am three quarter of the way done building a chicken coop for two Salmon Faverolle hens. The Faverolle is a quiet French multi purpose breed meaning they will supply me with eggs all summer long and in the fall I shall have a delicious feast. A harvest feast if you will. I am perfectly aware of the illegalities of what I am about to do but I feel that food is a human right and as long as my two girls are not affecting anyone negatively than i see no issue. If the bylaw officer comes by I have full plans to make this an issue with the city and media and will petition the bureaucrats to see things my way. There are many many cities throughout North America that allow backyard chickens, including some very big cities. Saskatoon is currently reviewing their bylaw against laying hens and hopefully the law there is upturned as this may set progressive decision making in motion for the rest of the province.

I will post more tomorrow when the coop is finished and my two girls are contempt in their new home.

For interested parties- I learned much about the subject of backyard chickens from this lovely site- www.backyardchickens.com as well this is where i found the idea for my coop tractor.

rusticundertakings is currently listening to Neil Young- Live and Unplugged.

Homemade medicine

Well I went and managed to get a bung leg the other day playing one of those European sports. I feel really fucking useless right now. I was hoping that Sunday I would be able to plant a few things in the garden, such as the almighty carrot and the humble beet, but no such luck. Instead I went out back to my stick pile, then over to the wood pile, back inside I picked up my buck knife and I started to give it hell.

So without further adieu I present to you the crutch I made. It certainly helped for the time being but now that my family has brought me over a pair of crutches I am going to have to retire the stick to some lonely corner of my house.

Bison

Ok so this is the bison horn i found burried in the side of the Wascana. The pen is there to give you an idea of how large this thing is. This has to easily be the coolest thing I have ever found. I would really like to figure out how old this thing actually is, but I don't know how that would happen.

Urban Survival

AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE RAIN. Right? That is how it goes right? Don't quiz me on scripture, I have been to church twice and am not exactly known as a man of the faith. However, if God so chooses he can rain down on me any day, as long as it is between the hours of 7 pm and 7 am so that I don't miss work. Any who, onto the picture, I scavenged this behemoth from the Lumsden dump, attached a nozzle and did some repair work with liquid fiberglass, which hopefully will stay repaired.... the last attempt, with caulking, failed miserably. I have diverted about a quarter of the watershed of my roof down into the cauldron and fitted the top with a screen to keep out the leaves and other junk. Being raised a couple feet off the ground allows for the water pressure to increase and hopefully with the odd rain this summer i will never have to use the actual tap to feed my thirsty plants. Move over appocolypse, make way for giant rain barrel.

Punk Rock

I got coaxed into putting on a punk rock show in July. Come check it out!
www.myspace.com/subsistance
www.myspace.com/failedstatessk
www.myspace.com/experimentsqc

Last Kick at the Can

So I had my last kick at the Wascana the previous Sunday, April the 18Th to be exact. That means I had a window of opportunity this year of 16 days, 4 of which I managed to get out for a paddle. I suppose the water was open a couple days before my first trip and would have been doable a couple days after my last but all in all the river is still only open for maybe three weeks. On Sunday you could tell that she was starting to dwindle. Paddles started to drag ground and rocks started jumping out at every corner, one of which I managed to not avoid and ended up rolling the canoe. To top it off it happened on the same corner I rolled it last time.... fuck. I'm not sure what it is about that bend but it really has it out for me, two totally different situations not ten feet apart put me in the drink this spring.

So while it is bye bye to the Wascana until next year, it is hello to the Qu'appelle for the rest of the summer thanks to directed runoff from the Lake Diefenbaker reservoir and hopefully it is howdy dowdy do to some Northern rivers this summer, but who knows what will end up happening.

Until next time, stay rustic, start planting your onions, peas and spinach and go listen to the Highwaymen.

ice jams on the wascana

fun fun fun. all gone now though. a few days after this picture was taken i was in the area again. The jam was gone but the force behind the jam was so strong that there was giant chunks of ice pushed 15 feet up the river banks that would have easily weighed 3000 pounds

dipping the paddle

The trip down the creek can be divided into two parts. From Regina to Wascana trails and from Wascana trails to the valley at Lumsden where the creek meets the river that calls. Or if you are more ambitious you could just do an over nighter and consume the whole trip at once. This was the original plan but what with the constraints of our everyday lives we were forced to call it in at a day trip and decided to do the second leg of the tour instead of doing it all(maybe we lucked out and avoided some Deliverance type shit by doing so). This is for certain the faster leg of the tour, outside Regina the country is still very flat and the creek does not flow very hard at points. The second leg has a larger grade and is also joined by another creek of sizable girth at which point the river really starts to move. Once this creek, whose name escapes me, is passed, no more ice jams occurred on the river due to the extra flow as they had all been swept down towards the climax. This might seem like a blessing but the ice jams are actually a very fun element of danger. Dodging floating ice bergs that easily outweigh a large car entertains an element of danger that gets your heart pumping and the adrenalin rushing ever so slightly. If you are looking for adventure within the confines of your own homegrown roots this is the trip you need to take.

We tend to take the Wascana for granted living in Regina and see the lake often as a feeble attempt to pretend the location of Regina actually made sense, and that our forefathers did not simply get lazy and set up camp when their feet got tired. The Wascana however becomes very beautiful the further out of the city you get. Large thirty feet banks sometimes loom above the canoe as beavers slap their tails in fear of my giant blue craft. Situated in a typical valley formed by the receding glaciers of long ago, it is, like all other valleys of this sort, immensely gorgeous. Trees constantly flank the river and waterfowl are always being scared up as often as the deer are numerous. The Wascana really is a special place and the best way to explore it is by boat. Come to think of it there really is not a lot of things that I would rather be doing in the first week of April(last year there was still a substantial amount of snow on the ground).

The mighty Wascana

Monday March 29th i went for a walk down Elphinstone to where the creek crosses the road. There was still thick ice across the whole surface. Tuesday the 30th I went for a walk to the river. No more ice. This was my Friday April the 2.

Getting Ambitious

So I was working away at John Deere today when I had an excellent idea. I have been craving the BBQ season ever more as the snow has been dissipating. But what to Que? I'm not a big beef guy, but I do have a freezer full of other various ungulates. A few months ago I purchased a meat grinder at Value Village for a couple bucks. Just a small little guy, it is the kind that clamps on to a counter top. So I popped some deer into the microwave and even some bacon to boot. After it was defrosted I ground it into a small bowl and came up with these ingredients to add to the recipe recipe-

Some grated cheese
One beaten egg to keep it all together
A hand full of oats to for the same purpose
A little pepper
A touch of ground mustard
A dash of oregano
A splash of garlic
Seasoning salt to taste
and last of all I put half a white onion in there.

After all was said and done I ended up with 12 burgers. I shall be eating excellent lunches for the rest of the week.
Fuck you McDonalds.

currently listening to Steve Earle and the Del McCoy(spl?) Band

Canoe season

It is here, well, almost. I can not be more excited and filled with anticipation. Last fall I purchased a brand new canoe after my old one was replaced on warranty. What I did was simply upgrade instead of taking my replacement canoe. My 16 foot blue beauty has been waiting 6 long months to feel the coolness of fresh water lapping at its sides and i have been waiting even longer. This reminds me also that i have to crisen my new craft. I read somewhere that it is tradition to break a bottle of wine open on the side of your vessel as you name your fair lady on her maiden voyage. I have yet to come up with a good name though. Perhaps those of you out there in Internet land can come up with something clever for me to use.

In recognition of the upcoming season I have decided to post my favorite canoe stories from days gone by. Hopefully I can keep up with the blogging and get a few stories on here this week.

#1

On the maiden voyage with my last canoe, I decided I would complete a two week somewhat round trip on the Churchill river and some of its surrounding lakes. The most important aspect to tell about this trip is that aside from maybe two afternoons in my entire life I had never been canoeing before. That and I would be by myself. If any of you have been up North at all, you know that there really is no one around and lakes really are not the easiest thing to navigate in a canoe, let alone in a canoe by yourself. I had a few topographical maps with me to find the way but these soon become almost useless. When you are floating on the water, islands in the horizon which might normally give you some semblence of direction, simply blend in to the mainland and you really start to feel like you can no longer trust your compass. To give you an idea of how useless I really was at reading maps, before the trip as I scoured the lakes and rivers on the piece of paper I noticed a particular spot that I would have to canoe through to get to the mighty Churchill. "Of course! I can just paddle right on through that" I said to myself as I neglected to take into account the elevation change between the two bodies of water. When I eventually paddled up to that spot in the map in real life, I was greeted by a roaring mamoth of white water and the pleasant surprise of an uphill, downhill, two km portage. Basicly it fucking sucked. But back to my story.

My plan was to canoe the churchill for about a week and then head up through a series of small lakes until I reached Clam Lake where I would meet my family. The whole time I just assumed there would be well marked trails and that between every lake I would be able to portage a short distance. After about a week on the Churchill I dragged my canoe to the bottom of the powerfull Birch rapids where I believed I would find the portage into the string of lakes I was hoping to follow. Slipping the canoe back into the water I searched the shoreline which really was more of a giant marsh than a defined feature. This was another case of me mistakingly thinking I could either canoe up the river that entered this marsh on on side or portage right beside it, but the river resembled the stream of piss that I subjected my maps to rather than a navigatable system of water, and the bush was so thick it was all I could do to simply walk thought it. So with dismay looking over my shoulder I paddled back out to the bottom of the rapids, not really sure what I was going to do about my current situation. I had no other maps so I could not keep going down the Churchill without getting lost, and I really did not want to turn around. So there I was fishing at the bottom of the mighty flow when this 20 foot aluminum gas powered boat comes bounding over the rocks on top of the rapids, I could not believe my eyes, ovbiously these people had done this before. They slowly approached me and when they were within shouting distance the driver yelled, "Wheres your queen?" I told him I had to leave her behind and we struck up a conversation. I explained my situation to the two men and they then invited me to camp with them at their cabin where we could talk further. These two Cree men then hauled up my craft onto their boat so it stradled it at a right angle and became some sort of giant red boat wing and we preceeded to bound through the next series of rapids going from side to side avoiding the rocks and having a gay old time. Once we were at camp I was treated me with the purest and most genuine hospitality that is oh so common in the North. I was given a spread of fresh moose meat, carrots, potatoes, and even a soda pop, which for some reason I had been craving since the fateful day I entered the water. Conversation turned to my predicament and I pulled out my maps. My new friends looked at the paper and gave a loud chuckle. They knew the trail I could take. It was the start of their trap line, and it was located ten feet behind the cabin. Never in a million years would I have figured this out on my own but somehow I was struck with ten thousand volts of dumb fucking luck. For the rest of the evening I was treated to adventure stories of the north and awoke the next morning to bacon and eggs and more soda pop. As I left the cabin door to carry on my way I vowed that I really would not forget these two men as long as the rivers flow and my paddle dips beneath thier surface.

canning in the dead of winter.

It is not exactly economical. But it certainly is tasty. Sometimes you just run out of pickled beans in the cold storage and sometimes you just might have a friend that has been scratching up your tree asking you to teach him how to make delicious treats.

I think I purchased roughly enough beans for five jars at superstore and it came out to a measly 4 bucks. Not exactly free and not exactly fresh but when push comes to shove and you live above the forty ninth parallel and its midway through the month without form, you don't really have a good darn to say about the matter.

Jason brought over some more beans, more carrots, hot peppers, banana peppers and even twelve hard boiled eggs. I had spent the day fishing and he the day coyote hunting so it was 9 bells on a sunday before the water started rolling in the big pot. But we eventually got at it, not sparing on the cayenne pepper, certainly not sparing on the garlic and liberally splashing vinegar in every which direction. Ever since i accidental forgot to bring the garlic along on a fortnight canoe adventure I have never let it from my side. I have been lonely before, but those 14 days without my vampire repellent were some of the loneliest days i have ever withered.

After some trial and error(always be sure to keep your jars hot before putting them in the water bath as they will crack furiously) we lay the bounty out on the table. If only we could pry those lids off with that satisfying pop right now, life would be no better, but alas the spices need time to ferment with the veggies and it will be at least two weeks before i celebrate the glory that is pickled beans.

happy canning everyone.

currently listening to billy bragg

cultural differences.

The other weekend me and a couple good chums of mine decided we would drive down to America to catch a Steve Earle show. The plan for the adventure was to wake up early and cross the border before noon in time to get some greasy American small town breakfast. So we did just that. We found the local diner, sat down with eyes glaring upon us and picked up the finest menu Montana had to offer. From the pages of the breakfast menu popped up the local special. Eggs, your choice of dead animal, hash browns, and biscuits and sausage gravy? Biscuits and sausage gravy? What the fuck is that. Biscuits? ya i know what they are. Gravy? ya its pretty good on fries, especially Canada's own invention, the great poutine(by the way, Yankee spell check did not like this word). But sausage gravy? Never one to back down from a good breakfast challenge, the three of us decided to partake in this sausage gravy biscuit business. We were not disappointed. it wasn't the tastiest thing ever, and it certainly was not the healthiest, but hey! it was OK.

So off we went to visit the gun shops and glory holes of American and we hit the road for another four hours while constantly revisiting the idea of biscuits and sausage gravy in our conversations. We arrived at our hotel, did the American thing, went to Hooters and went to Famous Dave's where they serve you the entire barn yard on a garbage can lid. Somehow we once again ended up at a rodeo dance in America and then we hit the sack. The next morning we decided to give the smorg at the hotel restaurant a looksee. Down the aisles of buffet trays we travelled until our eyes feasted on the prize. Once again. Biscuits and sausage gravy. We were sold. All the biscuits our colons could handle. We found out from our helpful waitress that the biscuits are a staple in the northern mid west and that somehow the phenomenon had failed to make a showing in Canada. Perhaps one day I will feast upon this goodness from the confines of my beautiful country, but until then i will keep visiting that country that lies to the south of us.


currently listening to Billy Bragg

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.