Signs Say the Silliest Things

Many years ago, we were on a road trip around Cape Breton – I just remembered the lobster rolls and clam chowder, it must be lunch time.  Anyway, I saw a sign in the window of a jewellery store in North Sydney.  It was professionally produced, printed with bright colours.  It read “Ears Pierced While You Wait”.  The first thing I thought was “No thanks, I’ll pick them up on my way home”.

Last summer, we were wandering around the area – in the Hills of Headwaters, not Cape Breton.  We turned right at the south end of Erin’s downtown, parked, and took a little walk.  Crossing the bridge over the river that runs south from town, this sign was set on a concrete block set right into the water, facing the bridge:

 

and all I could think of was, “______?”

What’s it trying to say?

On the same subject (ice cream, not signs), if you’re in Toronto and want to enjoy the city’s best ice cream, go to Ed’s Real Scoop – on Queen East at Logan, Queen East at Beech, and now open on Roncesvalles.

Farmers’ Markets Starting Again – YAY!

The Orangeville Farmers’ Market starts up on Saturday May 10.  Although there have been monthly markets indoors in the atrium of Orangeville’s Town Hall, through the winter, they’re not the same.  The last one indoors is April 12.  Saucy Girl Foods will bring – and sample – their soups and other goodies… Wayne Speers will bring his “Smokin'” beef, Bert & Janet Niewenhuis will have lamb, Randy Leitch will have the output from his bees… lots to fill your kitchen with some treats for yourself or gifts… and best of all it’s local.

BUT… when they’re outdoors again, there’ll be fresh bread from Amanda and 100 Acre Bakery, fruit from Beamsville, fresh greens from Am Braigh and Fiddle Foot, Arthur Greenhouses will have annuals and perennials to kick start the garden.  Anthony and Cheryl from Black Willow Farms will bring maple syrup and preserves… I hope, anyway.  As the season goes on Evan Besley will bring his beautiful greenhouse tomatoes, the Best Baa Dairy will have sheep’s milk cheese – delicious… here’s the Website for more details.  No doubt there will be new people, maybe the guy with the fresh and smoked rainbow trout from Georgian Bay… mmmm.

I hope the weather is better than the day of the last outdoor market in October.

A Heavy Wet Snow and Cold Kept People Away at First

A scarecrow competition was part of the plan but I think this was the only entry.  It would probably have won anyway.

Hay Bale Scare Crow

Despite the weather, there was fresh produce to take home… and when the snow stopped, the crowds fattened up.

 

A Stunning Choice of Heritage Tomato Varieties

I’ll let you know when the other markets are starting up.

Tardy Spring 2014

Driving along the number 5 side road, just up the hill from Hockley Valley Resort, I saw a pair of geese on a frozen pond.  It’s on the north side, just east of the Third Line E.H.S. (East of Hurontario Street) and is one of myriad examples of water just appearing here in the Hills of Headwaters (Please read “Why ‘Hills of Headwaters‘”.  This flows down to join the Nottawasaga River in the valley.

One of the geese was standing on the ice on one foot and the first thing I thought was:

Sh*t that’s cold.

Woody Was Here

Sugar maple on Church at Margaret Street

On the north side of Church Street, just west of John, there’s a big old sugar maple tree.  Perhaps it was one of the trees planted in 1878.  The then mayor of Orangeville, Joseph Patullo, decided the town needed more shade, so he and the Council offered 20 cents for each tree planted.  I don’t think it’s as old as that but at some time in its history, the tree’s main trunk broke off, in an ice storm, perhaps.

Today the lower branches are thicker and sturdier than usual, having taken over the energy that would have otherwise gone into pushing the main trunk

Pileated woodpecker on a softwood tree.

higher.  Near the top of the foreshortened trunk, there is one sturdy branch, still green and thriving and on the opposite side there is a hole, a deep rectangular cavern, the mark of a pileated woodpecker.

The pileated woodpecker has been busy. Looks like he carved a face.

The pileated is a large woodpecker – about the size of a crow.  If you’ve never seen one, the bird looks a lot like the creation of Walter Lantz – Woody Woodpecker.

Regardless of its size, the bird’s ability to dig such a deep hole in a maple is amazing.  I’ve often seen the same sized holes in pines and other softwood trees, but this is hard maple.  If you’ve ever set a screw or hammer a nail into maple wood, you know how hard it is.  I’ll grant you, the top part of the trunk has likely deteriorated, may even be a bit rotten, and it was (I hope) full of larvae of some sort, gnawing away, but it still seems quite a feat.  Just think about bashing your head against a maple tree how many hundreds of times to dig a hole that deep and wide.  Would he get a headache?

I just hope he had a good feed to make the effort worthwhile.

Still Standing

The remnants of Thomas Jull’s Mill, built 1857, at Little York and Mill Street in Orangeville

Looking at the old mill wall – or what’s left of it – I can picture farmers bringing burlap sacks of grain to the mill to Little York and Mill Street, a block south of Broadway.  They’d arrive by horse and wagon.  If the wagon was full and heavy maybe the horses would be a little winded, huffing and rattling their traces as the farmer unloaded the grain.  Perhaps there’d be a trough with water, like the one in front of Town Hall… and maybe the farmer would remember to stop at the grocery store to pick up a bag of flour to take home.

According to the historical plaque on the grounds, the mill in fact operated from the time of horse drawn carts to pick-up trucks – 1857 to the late 70s – producing flour, then livestock feed.   There was another mill on the same site before this.  Orange Lawrence built the first.  He was a major landholder in the area and gave the town its name.  His mill was wood frame and burned down.

Thomas Jull and John Walker Reid built the stone mill.  They were sons-in-law of Orange Lawrence.  At first, the mill was powered by an overshot wheel, which means a flume or mill race must have started upstream to bring the water to the top of the wheel (Also there must have been a lot more water).  At some time a turbine replaced the wheel, and it, in turn gave way to electricity in 1913, when the mill produced 75 barrels a day of Pride of Dufferin and Gold Anchor flour.  The building operated until 1977, stood vacant for eight years, while various ideas were put forth for its use, but in 1985, it came down… and this little bit of wall is all that’s left still standing.

Running In the Mud

Some things are irresistible.  Wet concrete, for instance.  Not many can resist setting a penny or writing initials in a wet sidewalk once the workers pack up their shovels and drive off.  Forty years ago or so, someone gave into this urge (According to the Orangeville Works Department, this sidewalk was poured in the late 70’s or early 80’s).  I was out for a walk late last summer (2013) and found where someone had left his mark in the sidewalk on the south side of Church Street in Orangeville, just east of the train tracks.

Footprints in the sidewalk… way more fun than initials.

Footprints have got to be free… in spite of attempted repairs it still shows through.

I have a picture of a summer’s evening, warm and bright.  The Works Department crew has left and the concrete in the new sidewalk is curing.  A young man sees the caution barrier and the wet concrete and gets an idea. He takes off his shoes and socks and runs down the sidewalk, his arms waving wildly and his feet barely staying under him.  The wet concrete squishes a bit underfoot and leaves a white rime on his soles.  As he runs, he shouts at the top of his voice, nothing intelligible, just exuberance.  Someone reading the paper on this front porch looks up, shakes his head and mutters, “Kids”.  Maybe there were other boys there – buddies who dared him to do it – but I think he’d have done it anyway. It looks like they have tried a couple of times over the years to repair the footprints, but they’re still there and will be at least until the time comes to replace the concrete.  Sidewalks have a life of 50 or 60 years, so they’ll be there for a few more years at least.

The Coming of Spring 2014

Winter came early, like a guest too eager, and has stayed without respite… more snow, lower sustained temperatures, and no two- or three-day thaw since late November.  In fact the total span of above-freezing temperatures can be more easily measured in hours than days.  It’s not all bad.  The Great Lakes anticipate a really big gulp from the Spring freshet.  Already their levels have risen to near normal and above in many cases… and because their ice cover is larger than it has been for many years, they haven’t lost as much to the lake effect snow machine as in past years.

Now it’s Spring, and Winter Still Won’t Leave.

We keep looking at the calendar and standing up, in anticipation of showing the cold the door but it’s not paying attention, blathering on with cold winds and snow drifts, polar vortexes and closed highways.  Snow drifts by the side of the road are still three and four meters high.  Rivers are still solid ice.  But the sun is doing its best.  Now there’s more light than dark in a day.  Beside the roads, below the drifts, there are puddles and occasional wisps of steam where the sun has warmed the asphalt and melted the snow.

Also the robins are back.  At least one is.  I know that people have been reporting robin sightings for weeks now, but I saw my first for 2014 yesterday… along Station Street in Waldemar (just east of Grand Valley).  It was on the shoulder of the road, and must have been trying to remember the last line of that old saw about the early bird… no worm this year, just a frozen tail.

This one had its back to me and dashed off without turning around but it is definitely a robin.

Maple trees are also showing signs of life.  The ice storm just before Christmas wreaked havoc (Incidentally, I typed “wrought” before “wreaked” but looked it up.  Wrought is the archaic past tense of “work” – as in “wrought – or worked – iron”.  So while it’s not incorrect to say “wrought” havoc, “wreaked” is what i meant).

Back to the maples.  The weight of the ice brought down thousands of trees and broke many more branches, large and small.  The broken branches on the maple trees, are showing that the sun’s warmth is penetrating the ice and snow and digging deep into the earth, stirring the roots.

Well, OK, maybe it’s not.  That sounds nice but it’s the daytime/nighttime alternating expansion and contraction of the trees above ground that draws the sap.  When it gets to the broken ends of the branches, it forms icicles – sapsicles – and I can’t help but think that it was one of these that inspired whoever it was to make maple syrup.

 This tree is just north of 5 and 5 – on the 5th line north of number 5 side road north and east of Orangeville.  You can see a bunch of sapsicles on the small branches to the left, and one very large one in front of one of the main branches to the right.  Here’s another tree on the same line:

The sapsicle is very large but unfortunately out of reach.  But next time you see one that you can reach, break it off and taste.  There’s an interesting atmospheric dustiness at first but then a unmistakeable sweetness.  A few years ago, the father of a friend of ours had the fire blazing in the sugar shack and the evaporator full of sap.  We had tea made with the hot sap.  That’s a treat the rivals the maple toffee made by pouring hot syrup onto the snow, where it turns to sticky toffee.

Maple syrup producers in the Hills of Headwaters have been hard at work for a while now… drilling holes and setting spiles running the lines between the bush and the sugar shack.  After the winter we’ve endured sugaring off is as welcome as the smell of lilacs that’ll come later.  We sure make the most of it.

The Maple Syrup Festival at Island Lake Conservation area is going on this weekend.

The Headwaters Taste of Maple starts March 28 and runs through April 13 at various locations throughout the Headwaters Region.  There are breakfasts, cooking classes, maple themed art, and many other offerings.  You can even share your favourite maple recipe here.

Obviously there are also many producers throughout the hills who offer farm gate sales, and stock the shelves in local stores.

Look at the names on the maple syrup bottles to make sure you’re buying from someone down the road.  Or call the producers directly to see what’s available. Some producers allow a guests to check out the process. Just be sure you’re welcome and that the sap is running. And next time you see an icicle on the end of a broken maple twig, have a taste and you’ll know how this process started so many years ago.

Some Local Producers

John & Nancy Kidd, Kidd Farms, 438162 4th Line, Melancthon, 519 925-6453

Bill & Wendy Masters, Knollbrook Farms, 142239 Dufferin County Road 5, Grand Valley, 519 928-3354

Clare Booker & Jay Mowat, Willow Creek Farm, Erin, 519 362-3383

Putney Heath, Caledon East, 519 584-9328