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The
Squamidian Report – Oct. 5 / 24
Online
Versions
Of This And Past Issues Issue
#1167 The
Ontarion ****
The Ontarion
Hello everyone There’s always something to write about if one digs deep enough into their past! For instance, one’s high school days can produce some great stories from those memories! I can remember one particular day when I was called to the VPs office when he caught myself and another kid play fighting in a hallway! He thought we were hooligans and ordered us to his office. He was a rough VP AND all the kids feared him! During his screaming at us, HE was face to face with each of us, one at a time! His hygiene wasn’t the best and his teeth were dark yellow! When he was dressing my friend Ray down, Ray leaned away from THE BROW (his nick name) waved his hand by his nose and he said “for crying out lout, brush your teeth!” …… well, you would have thought an atomic BOMB went off! THE BROW (due to his heavy black eyebrows) blew his stack and suspended Ray for two weeks and me for two days! That was the first and last time I was called to the VPs office that year but there were other times in the following years! ( more stories later). I’m sure this story will stimulate your memories of your high school years! Don’t be afraid to put the in writing and share them with the squid readers! Thanks for tuning in…. Talk to you again next week! Bye for now and be safe!
GREG ****
From Karin
Hi , everyone ! Just wanted you to know I enjoyed and appreciated what you all wrote, so, thank you so much for sharing.🙂 I was kept busy with my 10 year old grandson, who has been on school holidays for two weeks. Once he goes back to school we don’t get to see him as much, so we make the most of having him here. It’s a bit of a shame we don’t have many kids his age in our neighbourhood any more. Maybe they are all at home, playing video games. Of course it depends on the weather. If both Parents have to work, kids Archer’s age can’t be left at home unsupervised, yet. I enjoy spending time with Archer. He is a very polite kid, and we always find some fun activities to do . It’s also good that he can spend time with Karl. Last week I was in the studio, and Archer came in from the house, and noticed some Posca pens nearby. They are acrylic paint markers, and he asked if he could use them. I have plenty of art supplies laying about, so he was soon drawing /painting with the posca pens. I gave him some small canvas boards to paint on, and soon he had made a special painting for his mom, dad and his nanna . I was working on a large painting on my easel, and we listened to some great music on Spotify . It was nice having company in the studio. Hope you all had a great week, too.
Karin
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From Nova Scotia Sus
After 7 days of cleaning up our fallen trees we decided to call it quits for awhile. The father and son team did tremendous work hauling, falling, clearing and chipping down trees on our land. They put all their efforts into making our land usable again. When they left it was hard to say goodbye that is how nice they were. Maybe in another year or two we will have them back as there is much more that can be done. Our road is also finished..only the center line needs to be drawn. It's so smooth and a pleasure to drive on new pavement. It's also nice and quiet again what with all the trucks and paving equipment gone. We are so use to quietness up here in these hills. Our fall weather has been great so far...just about right. We could use more rain though. We are at the stage of cleaning up the garden and freezing some vegetables. Our meat birds are at the end of their stay and were taken to the butcher. We have 16 birds in our freezer. We gave two chickens away to the foresters. I think we surprised them with that gift. They wanted to charge us less for their clean up work but we insisted. We are releived the big hurricane didn't make it our way. It was a disaster for those in it's path.
Sus ****
From Russ
Stir fry I do a mean chicken stir fry. Living alone, I cook for myself and one of my favourite dishes is chicken-pineapple stir fry; it's quick & easy and I do 3-4 meals at a time - eat one and freeze three. Saves clean-up and doing dishes, and besides it's healthy food for a diabetic. Today I'll be using chicken thighs instead of my usual boneless-skinless breasts - these have priced themselves off my table! I remove the skin and all fat from the thighs so they are not all that 'fatter' than boneless-skinless boobs, but they are tastier, and less expensive. As soon as I send this story to Doug, I'll start; first I'll gently fry the thighs in a wok using extra virgin olive-oil and a pat of margarine. When these are nearly 'fork-tender', I'll add the raw, fresh vegetables (in with the thighs) in the following order; mini carrots, red and green peppers, onion, mushrooms, sometimes celery and whatever needs cooking I find hiding in the dark corners of my fridge. By now, the wok is over-flowing, so I temporarily remove the thighs while stir-frying the veggies. I like to turn up the heat at this point, browning the veggies in the flavourful stuff stuck to the bottom of the wok by the chicken - giving the veggies a mean fried chicken flavour. Then, I pop the thighs back into the mess and stir vigorously. By now, the house smells like a Chinese restaurant and I'm so hungry I can't wait! But wait I must, because we now add chunks of pineapple giving the mess a colourful, mean-tasting, Oriental flavour! OK! Gotta go and do my 'magic' - eating is one of the few pleasures remaining - why not enjoy it?!
Uncle Russ
PS I also do beef stir-fry(when I can afford it!); Pork (not often); turkey (about once a year); and fresh salmon (not a favourite) In winter I make several different kinds of stew (but let's not get carried away - it's not yet winter!) ****
From Doug
How’s it going…..eh? I had intended to do this little ‘chat’ about a month ago but didn’t get around to it so I’ll do it now. It’s another stroll through memory lane from WAY back. Here’s the setting, it’s the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. I was a kid (obviously) up on the farm. It was harvest time. Harvest time for the farm meant bringing in the grain crop. The haying was done in early / mid summer. Farming for my grandparents up there in ‘muddy Proton’ township was pretty primitive. While they did have an old Ferguson TE-20 tractor, most of their field equipment was still of the type designed to be horse-drawn. The only grain crop they grew was oats. Not much else would grow in that muddy, rocky, poor soil. Half the time the summer thunderstorms would knock down the spindly crop of oats making it very difficult to salvage enough to cover seed costs. They were truly subsistence farmers. The oats, once ripe, were cut by a binder that was being pulled by the Ferguson, or at times, by the neighbor's team of Clydesdale horses, but, usually the Ferguson tractor. Binders go way back, they had been around in various forms for years and years. They consisted of a cutting bar, perhaps about 6 ft long, and a canvas conveyor belt that carried the cut grain into a bunch of metal fingers that tied the grain into bunches, it ‘bound’ the grain, the bunches being called shieves. A person rode on the back of the binder to lift and lower the cutting bar and to trip the cradle that collected the shieves, usually loading up to about 8 shieves at a time. Tripping the contraption left the shieves in a loose pile on the ground. Then, we as kids followed along and stooked the shieves. In other words, we stood them up into a pile where they leaned on each other in such a way as to keep the ‘heads’ up and the butts down. They would then dry like that for a few days or so. Stooking meant long backbreaking days that ended in very sore raw hands. Once all the fields were cut and stooked, it was time to thrash. My favorite job during thrashing was pitching the shieves onto the wagon. Again, the wagon was pulled by either the tractor or those horses. Loading the wagon meant picking up the shieves one at a time with a pitch fork and tossing tossing them onto the wagon where someone was stacking the shieves in order to get a good full and stable load. Each load was then taken back to the barn where it was thrashed. This was long before combines were even invented so the grain was thrashed vie a thrashing machine. In the case of thrashing on our farm, the thrashing machine was powered by a very old Case tractor’s side pulley. That in itself would be unheard of now. That old Case was a relic even back then, had to be hand cranked and was barely steerable. It belonged to my grandfather’s brother, Earl. Farmers would work together, going back and forth between each other’s farm. There would be ‘our’ farm, Earl’s farm situated a concession to the south, and the Gardner farm on the other side of the old corduroy road. My favorite thing when moving from one farm to the next was driving the tractors down the road, pulling the wagons and machinery. The Case ran a very big belt that transferred power to the old thrashing machine that looked like some great metal beast with belts and chains turning all sorts of wheels and pulleys. It blew the straw up into the straw mow, and the grain via a pipe, into the grainery. The straw mow was not a nice place to work. It was so dusty that you could not see or breath but someone had to place and tramp the straw into place where it was stored until needed as bedding for the live stock. The grainery was just a bad, perhaps worse, as the grain dust was itchy. In either case, you coughed up black guck for days. Some years the weather was so bad that very little of the crop was salvageable. Some years were so wet (muddy Proton) that it was almost impossible to get onto the fields. But, each year they had to try. And, once in a while, they had a good crop. Most of the crop would be sold for the needed cash so they could pay bills. Some had to be kept for feeding to the cows, horses and pigs. That meant filling burlap sacs and hauling them to the little mill in Cedarville where, in trade for some of that grain, the miller would run the oats through the mill’s grinder and turn it into chop (basically a course oat flour). As kids we loved it and I would give anything to be able to relive those days and memories. It is sad that modern kids have no idea or concept of a harder but better way of life. Electronic screens can not substitute for life on a farm.
Doug ****
Have
a
Good One ****
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