Moving House

Time for a change. I've decided to move my blog to Wordpress, so if you'd like to continue following my life, please go here. See you on the other side!

The Omnivore's Dilemma

I've been wanting to read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma for months, but just finally picked it up yesterday. I'm only on chapter two, but I already I know that this is a very well written, thought provoking book. In the following excerpt, he writes about a corn and soybean farm in Iowa owned by George Naylor (note that I have edited this for length).

The story of the Naylor farm since 1919, when George's grandfather bought it, closely tracks the twentieth-century story of American agriculture. It begins with a farmer supporting a family on a dozen different species of plants and animals. There would have been a fair amount of corn then too, but also pigs, cattle, chickens, and horses. One of every four Americans lived on a farm when Naylor's grandfather arriver here; his land and labor supplied enough food to feed his family and twelve other Americans besides. Less than a century after, fewer than 2 million Americans still farm - and they grow enough to feed the rest of us. What that means is that Naylor's grandson, raising nothing but corn and soybeans on a fairly typical Iowa farm, is in effect feeding some 129 Americans.

Yet George Naylor is all but going broke - and he's doing better than many of his neighbors. For though this farm might feed 129, it can no longer support the four who live in it, nor can it literally feed the Naylor family, as it did in grandfather Naylor's day. George's crops are basically inedible - they're commodities that must be processed or fed to livestock before they can feed people. Water, water everwhere and not a drop to drink: like most of Iowa, which now imports 80 percent of its food, George's farm (apart from his garden, his laying hens and his fruit trees) is basically a food desert.

Reading this book, I had a bit of an aha moment. All my life I have been one of the fortunate few who has never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. Food was something I took for granted; I didn't really give it too much thought. Of course I tried to cook and eat healthy meals (although that certainly didn't always happen - I've eaten my fair share of junk food and fast food) but food wasn't a great deal more than a way to fuel my body and satisfy my hunger.

At some point recently (I don't even know when this happened - I think it was a gradual shift) I came to see just how precious our food is and how important it is that I put some thought into what I put into my mouth. I think growing a vegetable garden had something to do with it (although maybe it was because of my shift in thinking that I decided to grow my own food, and not the other way around).

Whatever has happened, I have become quite militant about the issue to the point where I must be insufferable to live with at times. The latest example of this is when I pronounced to Joe (after the Maple Leaf meat recall) that I would not be buying any more sliced meats: that we had plenty of caribou sausages in the freezer and that would serve us quite well thank you very much. When he ventured to suggest that perhaps having sliced meat once in a while wouldn't hurt, I quite adamently disagreed and declared that it was my job to keep my family healthy and therefore I would certainly not be buying these chemically-laden, processed, disease ridden meats. Insufferable, right?

But my point is this: food is a big deal. Our choices do make a difference.

Of course I'm not totally naive: I realize it's a heck of a lot easier for me to eat thoughtfully than it is for a single mom who's struggling to make ends meet or a kid living on the streets or the family in India that barely has enough food to keep themselves alive. It's because I am so priviledged that I have an even greater responsibility to try to do the right thing when it comes to food. The selections we 'haves' make will ultimately affect the 'have-nots'. It will also affect most other living things on this planet, not to mention the earth itself.

OK - I'll get off my soap box now. I told you...insufferable!

The Girl Who Silenced the U.N. for Five Minutes

Take a look at this. She is David Suzuki's daughter, speaking at the U.N. back in 1992, before a lot of this was even on people's radar screens. And there are more than 1,000 responses to this on YouTube!

And while on the environmental theme, here is another website you might find interesting.

Lady MacBeth

The dirty deed is done.

After reading an article in What's Up Yukon, I learned that in order to speed up the ripening of tomatoes, it's good to prune back the plants. That way, the plant will devote its energy to developing and ripening the fruit it already has instead of working on producing more. Like the woman who wrote the article, I was full of trepidation about the whole thing. But I have tonnes of tomato flowers, not that much fruit, and not one as yet ripened tomato, so I decided that drastic action was called for.

So this morning, scissors in hand, I cut back my plants. They were so overgrown I could hardly get in the greenhouse. Now there will be much more air circulation and hopefully some tomatoes. But I still can't help but feel a bit like Lady MacBeth, hands stained with tomato juice.

Takhini Salt Flats

About a half hour's drive from Whitehorse, there is one of the most unusual natural features in the Yukon. Although I've lived here for almost 25 years, last night was the first time I've visited the Takhini Salt Flats, although now that I know how to find the area, it certainly won't be the last.

The mountains around this location are very alkalin (salty). Over the years, these mountains have eroded and silt has washed down into the flats. As well, artisian wells bubble underneath the flats and infuse the area with minerals such as sodium sulfates. Normally these minerals would be washed into the ground, but the permafrost keeps the water near the surface. There is no river or other body of water it can drain in to, so it sits there until the summer sun evaporates it, leaving salt crystals.

What's interesting too is that there are salt-loving plants here that aren't seen anywhere else in the Yukon. One of the most distinctive plants is a bright-red sea asparagus, which you will see in the photos below. Apparently this plant is so unusual that its species name is still in doubt.

Photos, from top to bottom: 1) long shot of the flats; 2) salt flats detail; 3) chunk of salt; 4) another detail of the flats; 5) salt covered log; 6) bear track; 7) another bear track we saw on the way in to the flats; 8) salt pool; 9) salty ant hill; and 10) section of the inside of a salty ant hill.

What an amazing world we live in!

A Happening Place

There is a wonderful trail in Whitehorse that runs either side of the Yukon River, with bridges linking each end. It is used by hundreds of runners, walkers, bikers, strollers and the like. There's always something to see on the trail, whether it be wildflowers, water fowl or even spawning salmon.

Last night though it was particularly interesting. Just down from the Whitehorse dam, the Yukon Canoe and Kayak Club was holding their annual white water rodeo. I've never been in a kayak in fast water, but this certainly made me want to experience it. Everyone seemed to be having so much fun.

A few minutes further along the trail, near the fishladder, someone from Icy Waters was giving a demonstration about how to fillet and cook arctic char. Yup, the Millennium Trail certainly was a happening place last night!

Where Have all the Salmon Gone?

Last night was Appreciation Night at the Whitehorse Rapids Fishway. There were kids' games, door prizes and refreshments, but sadly, few chinook salmon. One female arrived in the morning and two males showed up in the evening...a far cry from the dozens that typically navigate their way through the ladder in the run of a day. In all, only 70 salmon have reached the fishladder this summer.

A rare sight

With the real thing in short supply, visitors had to look elsewhere to get their salmon fix:

A silk painting commissioned by a local artist.

Cake anyone?

A tank of salmon fry. They'll be released in a few weeks and will find their way to the Bering Sea next year. Hopefully we'll see some of them return to the ladder in five or six years. Photo credit for this shot: Yukon News.

Salmon scales: did you know that you can tell the age of a fish by counting the rings on its scales, much like you count tree rings? There's lots to be learned by visiting the fishladder.

Out of Touch

I have been 'off-line' for the past three days. A problem with the phone line leading into our house meant we were without telephone or Internet service the whole long week-end (it was a holiday yesterday in the Yukon - Discovery Day).

The lack of phone service didn't bother me a bit. In fact, I enjoyed not hearing the telephone ring. I liked it so much that I'm thinking we should get rid of our land line and just rely on our cell phones.

Another benefit is that that the time I normally would have spent on the Internet was freed up to paint Jamie's room. Funny, two years ago he wanted his room painted black. This time, he asked that it be painted white! After his first night sleeping in his 'new' room, he told me how much he liked all the light. He said he felt like he was in heaven!

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear

You might be interested in reading this article. I knew the broad strokes about Monsanto of course but there is a lot in here I didn't know. While the writers do not provide the sources for their article, I don't doubt the accuracy of most of what they report. I felt sick to my stomach after reading this piece.

Co-incidentally, I was recently looking over my RRSPs and saw that Monsanto has a 1 percent share in one of my interests. I have since asked my financial planner to sell that and find me something that doesn't have anything to do with Monsanto.

In the Studio

Alan's band Sanktuary has spent the last two week-ends in the recording studio putting together their first CD. It's all very exciting for the boys: Alan dropped by the house at one point last week-end and had a huge grin on his face. The producer told him the band was very well rehearsed, so that made him feel good.

They'll have a CD release party at Christmas time when Alan comes home from school. Meanwhile, I think they're going to load a few cuts onto the web so we'll be able to get a sneak preview. Be forewarned though...heavy metal music, as you know, is definitely not for the tender of ear!

My Perfect Lunch

It all started with two large bags of chicken feet. You see, I happen to think that the feet make the best chicken stock. The flavour is much more intense than from using any other part of the bird. My grammie took things even further and served up soup with the feet still in, but I won't go down that path on this blog. I suspect you're feeling squeamish enough as it is.

Anyway, when my farmer friend called to say she had bags of chicken feet left over from the week-end's butchering and did I want any, I quickly said yes and arranged to pick them up from her today at the Farmer's Market Kitchen. She runs the kitchen there every Monday, making delicious lunches using mostly local meats and produce.

When I arrived it wasn't much after 11, but my stomach started growling as soon as I walked in the door. On today's menu was a chili made with bison, cheese questadillas with fresh salsa, and a fruit salad.

I opted for both the chili and the questadillas. Yes I know, I am a piggie. But it just looked too good to pass up. And in my defence I asked for small portions of each.

I took my lunch outside to sit at one of the picnic tables in the park. The sun was warm and full, the sky bright blue, there was the rhythmic distant pounding of hammer on nails as workers repaired one of the old homes on the edge of the park, birds were carrying on friendly conversations with one another: it was truely a zen-like moment.

In the dead of winter when it doesn't seem possible that summer will ever come again, I will pull out some chicken feet from the freezer, cook up a mean stock and remember with great fondness today's perfect lunch.

What Month is This?

Surely this can't be August. I must be confused. This morning when I got up there was frost in one of my lettuce patches. And investigating something stuffed in my mailbox, I see that we have received the Sear's Christmas Wish Book. What month is this???

Fish and Fowl

Former neighbours of ours own an organic farm out of town and today was chicken butchering day. I volunteered to help. As a farm girl growing up, I certainly did my fair share of this sort of work and in a strange way, I miss it. I find that the more I know about where my food comes from, how it lived, and how it died, the greater reverence I have for it.

The Rudges had quite an assembly line going, with areas for butchering, plucking, removing head and feet, gutting, final cleaning, weighing and bagging. I was on gutting duty. We took care of more than 200 chickens and then it was time for a late lunch: soups, fresh bread, salad (using greens from their garden of course) and various fruits and desserts. At the end of the day I left with a dozen chickens for my freezer.

While I was looking after our winter fowl supply, Joe was heading for Alaska to fish for salmon and halibut. Valdez, Alaska is one of the few places that has healthy salmon runs, thanks to a very successful hatchery program.

My we are going to eat well this year!

Eat the View

There's a move afoot in the United States to get the next president to grow vegetables on the lawn of the White House. You can learn more about it here, but the idea is to have the First Family grow enough food not only for themselves but for local food banks in Washington, D.C.

That got me thinking about our own situation here in the Yukon. There is quite a large patch of lawn at the back of the Yukon legislature...enough for an ample garden to feed quite a few people. Since a Yukon food bank is supposed to open its doors by the end of this year and work is underway to find a permanent youth shelter, there would certainly be a 'market' for the produce. I suspect there would be a number of Yukon government workers who would be willing to give up a portion of their lunch hours to plant, weed or water (it is after all theraputic work that could lead to more relaxed, satisfied employees) and the politicians could take turns tending the garden too. It could also be opened up to the general public to help out, including those who would benefit from receiving the food. It could help those most in need to learn a new skill and take some ownership for producing their own food. I think it would be a good thing on so many levels.

We happen to have a friend who is an MLA, so I put the bug in his ear last night when he came for dinner (a meal that was largely made up of food we had grown or gathered ourselves). If you're reading this and are interested in working with me to make this happen, please drop me a note.

Garden Supper

The garden is slowly and somewhat reluctantly starting to give up its bounty to us. Today we had our first potatoes and our first broccoli. Delicious!

That, My Dear, Was an Adventure!

Just got back from the Dempster Highway, and I must say I think I've had my share of excitement for a while. It was quite the trip, with ample bouts of joy and tragedy. Where to start? Chronologically I guess.

We had been on the road for about four hours when we came upon a Yukon government highway truck, lights flashing and door open. As we got closer we saw a man lying in the middle of the road. We stopped, as did a couple visiting from Germany. We did all the usual things, including CPR, but it was pretty obvious this man was gone. We called for help but of course cell phones are pretty touch and go in rural Yukon. After several attempts we did manage to get through to the closest nursing station. A tourist bus stopped with a doctor on board so he came to try to help. He surmised the man had had a massive heart attack.

So while we waited for the ambulance and RCMP, I directed traffic from one end and Joe and the German fellow from the other. In the midst of all this, a bit of absurdity: the German man mentioned he and his wife had seen the Frantic Follies the night before. Joe told him our daughter dances in the show, so the man's wife excitedly ran to get the program so Joe could point out which dancer was our daughter. Turns out they had taken pictures of her and promised to email them to us once they got back home. All this happy chat was going on while this poor man lay in the road. Anyway, I digress...

After an hour, the police and ambulance finally arrived, took statements, and we went on our way. It certainly put a damper on things though.

Several hours later, we arrived at our camp site on the Dempster and collapsed into our tent. It had been a long day. But the next day was going to prove to be even longer!

Up early on Sunday to battle the rain and the Dempster once again. It's had lots of rain this year as has the rest of the Yukon and the road was a total mess: thick soupy mud and pot hole after pot hole. I've never seen it so bad in all the years we've been making this trek. We came around a bend and there was our friend Darius, soaked and covered in mud, lying on his back under his vehicle. One of his tires had expoded and he couldn't get the spare out from under his vehicle, so we loaded him into our truck and headed on up to Eagle Plains to get a new tire. Joe then drove him back while I stayed at the hotel to get cleaned up. All of us were a soggy muddy mess by this point.

It was then that we came across this vehicle:

This fellow from Toronto was driving all over the place with his solar car, including the Dempster. I have no idea how he has been manoeuvering the road in the condition it's in (he apparently has about 70 spare tires but has only needed four of them so far). We spent some time chatting with him before continuing our treck north, in search of cloudberries.

We did find cloudberries - more than I've ever seen in my life in fact. But we also found caribou...a few hundred of them. I have never had the opportunity to see a large group like that and I was so excited. They are incredibly beautiful animals. But of course they are also our winter meat, so we were up before 5 the next morning hunting. Joe got two caribou (one for us and one for the elder he hunts for) so we spent four hours skinning, cutting up and packing the meat.

Just as Joe was starting to skin the animals, an old fellow from the Northwest Territories came tearing up the tundra. I have no idea what possessed him to drive on that kind of terrain - I guess he was excited at seeing all those caribou. But of course he got stuck BIGTIME! Joe and I pushed for a while, but he wasn't going anywhere without some major mechanical help. So we flagged down someone on the highway to go for help and we went back to dealing with the meat. It has to be taken care of quickly or the belly swells (heat from the intestines). As well, being in bear country means you don't want to hang around with fresh meat any longer than necessary. We did see a black bear and two cubs, and another single black bear, but not in that area. We also saw a moose, but I'm getting off topic.

The caribou was packed and covered with tarp but we still wanted berries so we spent the next couple of hours picking. We left relectantly after that point, again because we needed to get the meat home. We could have picked for days and not made a dent in the patch! As it was we picked about 12 litres, then back into the truck we went for the long 12 hour drive home. We arrived in Whitehorse last night just around 11. I'm exhausted today, but a good exhausted. The Dempster Highway takes good care of us, that's for sure! And every time I go there I am reminded that it has some of the most beautiful scenery I've seen in my life.

Dam Good Idea

This year is the 50th anniversary of the building of the Whitehorse dam, and it was my job to put on an all day 'event' to mark the occasion. That event took place yesterday. First there was a fun run across the dam and around the Millennium Trail. Back in the 70s when the Riverdale bridge was being repaired people drove across the dam to get to work and school. But it's been off limits ever since then because of safety and security reasons, so I think it was a treat for people to have a chance to go across it. We had about 150 show up for that and we had them all decked out in orange or blue t-shirts that read 'Dam Good Idea'.

Next we offered tours of one of the hydro plants. People had to pre-book and my phone didn't stop ringing for two days beforehand. I was amazed at just how many people were interested in seeing the facilities. What was really great was the number of old timers who came. Many of them had worked on the dam when it was built and so this visit really brought back memories for them. They told some amazing stories - far too many to recount here. I will mention that I looked over at one point to see one of these old fellows (I think he said he was 85) down on the ground doing push-ups for a reporter so he could show that he was still in great shape! And boy could he do push-ups: far more than I could do!

The day ended with a gathering by the dam, where there was lots of food, live music, old photo displays and stories told by some of the old timers and by elders who spoke of what it was like before the dam was built.

I heard many good comments so I think the event was a success. Several people said we should do this every year. Hmmm, I'm not sure I have the energy to do that (pardon the pun) but we'll have to see.

Now to switch gears:
Joe and I are off to the Dempster this week-end for our annual cloudberry search. As I write this, I have caribou ribs roasting in the oven, potatoes and eggs cooking for potato salad, several packages of various veggies in foil all ready to be thrown on the coals, a huge amount of fruit and cheese, and Joe has gone downtown to get the 'fill in the blanks' stuff. So even if we don't find any berries we'll certainly dine well.

Field trip to Carmacks

It's been a blur of a week, with many things demanding my time at work. I only have energy to write about one of those things now, with more to follow later.

This week I took a group of reporters to a fly-in site near Carmacks where an all-woman crew is hand digging holes for transmission poles. The area is a no-machine zone, meaning that all the work has to be done by hand or from the air. These women are digging holes that will end up being eight or nine feet deep and four to six feet across, using only shovels and other hand tools. The women do the first three or four feet and then a crew of men comes along and finishes digging to the required depth, again using only jackhammers and shovels. The poles themselves will be dropped into the holes by helicopters. I love the fact that women are doing what is some of the most physically demanding work on the line.

Here are a few pictures. The culverts you see in photo #1 weigh 300 pounds each and are set upright into the ground to hold the poles in place. The hole you see in photo #2 is deeper than I am tall. Notice the layer of white ash close to the surface...it's from an Alaskan volcano that erupted a few hundred years ago. Photos #3 and #4 are shots of some of the reporters at work.