The New Meaning of "Rural Roots"

(First published in the December 7 issue of The Oxford Journal)

My hair stylist is an expert on all things country. She knows that free-range hens lay eggs with dark yellow yolks. She knows that ospreys only eat fish and fly south for the winter. She knows not to go hunting on Sunday.

She knows these things now. Six months ago, Jessica didn’t know nothin’ about living in the country. That’s because she lives in Halifax and works at a downtown salon. She looks and sounds and smells like a city girl (I should know; I once was one). I met her in July and bless her heart, she didn’t laugh at her new client who talked about chickens laying green-shelled eggs and needing to learn to shoot a gun, and working for a community newspaper that publishes weekly.

Although, now that I think about it, she might have checked me for ticks. 

Twenty years ago, I would have been self-conscious about being a hayseed in the city. Back then, I wanted to get out of my small town as quick as possible and make my mark on the world in a bigger place. By the time I ended up living in downtown Vancouver, however, I was starting to fantasize about a house on a country road instead of a fourth-floor condo, about fields and hills instead of mountains, about miles and miles of empty highway instead of rush hour traffic at three in the afternoon. All on the opposite coast. 

When you’re a hayseed at heart, it’s only a matter of time before you end up living  on a rural route  with a coop full of chickens and your very own .22 in the gun cabinet. 

“I didn’t know you couldn’t hunt on  Sundays,” Jessica said at our most recent appointment. 

I laughed. “Why would you know that?”

“That’s true.” 

She snipped for a bit then said, “I can’t wait to go out with my friends and tell them that!”

This is how Jessica earns her tip: she seems genuinely interested in hearing about the unique personalities of each of my chickens. She certainly expressed the proper sympathy when my story about Betty, our pet chicken, ended in tragedy. And when I brought her half a dozen eggs, not only did she not blink when I told her there were only six because half the flock is molting and not laying eggs, she was tickled by the two green-shelled eggs. 

“I can’t believe you don’t have to put these in the fridge,” she said after I’d explained why she didn’t have to worry about them being warm while she worked. 

It’s nice, you know, when you can educate those city people and help at least one get in touch with her inner hayseed. If only to impress her friends. 

by Sara Mattinson

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

Santa might be bringing me snow pants this Christmas (after four winters here, I'm finally wising up and dressing appropriately) but it doesn't sound like I'll be needing them any time soon.
Environment Canada is saying there is a less than 50% chance we'll have a white Christmas here in the Maritimes. We didn't have one last year either; I remember how mild it was because we were harbouring a stray cat under the sun porch (also known as the Stray Cat Hotel) and I didn't have to worry about food or water freezing (incidentally, just as the snow arrived in early January, she became our pet).
Anyway, according to the meteorologists at Environment Canada, there used to be a 63% chance of at least two centimeters of snow on December 25; now it's a mere 47%. Funny how we seem to think Christmas has to come with snow when most of the world that celebrates Christmas does it without snow; with blazing heat, in fact. Hello, palm trees and margaritas! Do you think anyone has ever suggested that Christmas be cancelled because there is no snow?! Christmas and snow do not go hand-in-hand; it just seems like it should here in Canada because, well, we're cold and northern and so gosh darn close to the North Pole where you-know-who lives. I mean, when Santa's in our backyard, it's like he's our neighbour. Wait - Canada has sovereign control over the Arctic, right? So that makes Santa and the elves Canadian citizens. Santa for Prime Minister!
But I digress.
The whole point of Christmas is the spirit, not the weather. It's "Ho Ho Ho and mistletoe and presents under the tree" as Lucy says in A Charlie Brown Christmas. And c'mon, you know how everyone would complain about the inconvenience for shopping if it snows any day between now and next Saturday night. Nothing sucks the life out of the holiday season like complaining. Christmas without snow is simply a lesson in humility: You can't have everything, and perfection is an illusion. Far better to believe in Santa Claus.

Only Two Saturdays Left For Shopping

That means you need to take this Saturday to visit the Pugwash Farmers' Market's annual Christmas market. It's being held indoors, where it's warm and dry and spacious, at the Pugwash high school. Is there a person on your list who is hard to buy for because he or she has "has everything"? Find something unique at the Pugwash Farmers' Market. There isn't a smart phone out there that can top the loveliness of homemade strawberry jam or a handmade mug.

Speaking of strawberry jam...my best friend lives in Ontario and every so often, I send her a small box that contains a jar of my mother's homemade jam. Sarah finds a reason to send that box back to me because it's the perfect size for sending jars of jam. It usually arrives just after she's finished the jar...

Why Old Dogs Rock

We're trying to house-train a nine-week-old puppy and "weather bombs" like the one we experienced this morning are not helpful. She seems to be reluctant to poop outside when it is dark and cold and/or wet.
That's northern Nova Scotia in December! And January, and February...sometimes even May.
It's just one of several adjustments being made to having a puppy in the house. We're so used the old dog, who is almost nine and is well-established in her routine and reliable for doing it sight unseen that the continuous excursions to the yard for piddles and poops are a shock to the system.
I'm not so keen on standing around outside in the dark and cold and wet either. Makes it a little harder to be enthusiastic when someone finally poops.

In Conversation With...Jerry Draheim

(First published in the November 23 issue of The Oxford Journal)

Jerry Draheim puts two glasses of homemade apple juice on the table. The juice tastes almost tart and naturally sweet; in the glass it looks a little murky but its taste is pure. The apples come from the orchard Jerry planted in the 1980’s but that’s getting ahead of the story. 

“My wife and I were working in the States in the late sixties and wanted to find a place in the country,” he says. “We looked around where we lived, in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but didn’t see anything we really liked or could afford. We came to Nova Scotia in 1971 on vacation in August when there are no black flies, no mosquitoes and fruit hanging everywhere. We fell in love with the place.”

With the tourist brochures came a list of farms for sale and Jerry couldn’t believe how cheap land was up here so he and his wife decided to move to Canada.  They arrived as landed immigrants in February 1972, started working in Dartmouth, and looking for land.

“We found a farm for sale around Oxford so we drove up and I guess the old lady liked my wife and me, and it was a winter when it was really open and we could walk around. We decided to buy the farm right then.”

And that is how a city planner from Minneapolis ended up on 70 acres in Roslin with half a mile of frontage on River Philip.

Three weeks later, Jerry was laid off so he traded his car and bought an old pickup and at the beginning of April, moved to the farm in Roslin. There was a foot of snow on the ground.

“It snowed every other day and we got a normal amount of snowfall that year,” Jerry remembers. “It certainly was an adventure.”

Having grown up on a farm, Jerry wanted to return to what he loved. He had plans for ducks and goats and some bees, for gardens but the first thing he did was start bee keeping, even though he’d never had bees before. 

“The bees came in little packages in the mail,” Jerry says. “I remember sitting at the end of my lane waiting for the mail in the pickup truck because there was a huge snowstorm and I remember thinking, Here it is the middle of May and it’s snowing out. Maybe I made a mistake.”

The bees arrived and so did the goats and the gardens. 

“I didn’t like the goats at all but we milked them,” says Jerry. “We got some geese. These things came and went.” 

So, too, did Jerry’s wife; unable to handle the isolation, she returned to the States after a couple of years. For five winters, Jerry supported himself through a federal program that hired people to work on public projects, providing him with enough income to get started with the farm.

“I also had enough bees that I was making money from the honey, and from selling eggs.”

More heartache. Jerry didn’t realize that the equipment he’d bought from a neighbour was infected with a disease until the provincial apiarist explained why the bees weren’t doing well.

“I had to exterminate the bees,” Jerry says. “It was really hard. Seeing them die, I said I’m never doing this again. I’m going to learn to keep bees so they are healthy. I started over right with new equipment.”

A series of fortuitous events allowed Jerry to eventually declare “bee keeper” his formal occupation. In 1976, the price of honey doubled from 25 cents to 50 cents per pound, which Jerry says was significant. He also benefited from government subsidies encouraging expansion of farm operations and by the 1980’s, Jerry had 250 hives. He began renting bees for blueberry pollination then in the 1980’s, our border was closed to bees from the States due to a nasty infection. 

All was not golden, however. Jerry’s second wife died of cancer. They were together for five years. Unlucky in love, Jerry discovered he had a knack with a different kind of female. 

“I had a hive of bees that produced a lot more honey than the others and I found out that it was genetics. The queen was not aggressive and I wanted to know how to get all my queens to be like that one.”

All Jerry had to do was learn how to breed queens from that particular queen so Jerry went to  California to learn from a bee breeding expert.   

“I got all the hands-on training I needed to start my own breeding program. I did artificial insemination and really refined my breeding program which I’ve carried on ever since. Selling bees to other beekeepers became very lucrative for me.”

Love came around again. Jerry first met Carol at a party in 1974 but they were both married to other people; then Carol saw him at a sugar bush party in New Brunswick in 1998. 

“I love it here,” Carol says from the kitchen where she’s cutting onions for pickled beets. Despite his truck breaking down on their first date, they’ve been together for 12 years. 

In 2005, after three decades in the old yellow farmhouse, Jerry built a new lovely, light-filled home that he designed himself. He’s also done all the landscaping around the property, including the planting of 10,000 daffodils and narcissus that come up in the spring.

 An astrologer once told Jerry that he should live on a hill near water, and he does.  After 41 years, four wives, thousands of bees, and one recent battle with cancer, what does he love best about his life on Honey Wind Farm? 

“My freedom,” Jerry says. “Being able to do what I want to do whenever I want to do it. I would hate to work for someone else.”

by Sara Mattinson

More Shopping Local Ideas

In this week's Journal, a full page celebrating "A Country Christmas" in the lovely seaside village of Wallace.

Morning Meditation

Just returned from a long walk with my older dog, an hour up to Carrington Road and back. It's raw out, the sky steel grey, the air damp. Definitely a day to keep the throat wrapped warmly but I can't tell if it feels like December yet; last weekend, as the snow melted away and the sun came out, the day felt like March. I get so few chances to go for a good, long walk with the dog now that I'm grateful for this mild start to winter. 
My colleague, Jane, has a puppy who is five months old and recently, Jane discovered the joys of the morning walk. She's enjoying the quiet time not only on the streets but also with herself. IWhile I'm happy that she has found something that brings her happiness, it pains my heart to hear her talk. For the first time in 15 years, I'm not starting out my days with a morning walk with the dog. It's partly circumstances - a regular job schedule now - but also the downside to living rurally: no street lights or sidewalks, and coyotes in the woods.
There is something very special about that time alone, with only a dog for companionship, early in the morning when traffic is scarce, the air is fresh, and the light is spreading slowly across the sky, low and burnished, gentle on the eyes. It's a lovely way to wake up and I believe by breathing in that atmosphere, we carry it inside ourselves all day.
For now, I must be satisfied with breathing in Jane's words.