Rêves Canadiens

The Past

I bought my place in 1974 after travelling for six months in the States and Mexico. I initially wanted to buy in New Mexico or Tenessee, but found the government too different. I opted to buy in Ontario where I was born. I travelled from Sault Ste. Marie to Cornwall looking for a stream that I could damn to swim. I bought a place near Tweed and found after doing my own aerial survey and waking up with a shotgun aimed at me, that the stream was not on my place. I managed to get my money back and bought a place near Bannockburn at twice the price. This piece of property had a river, but needed a bridge, although there was a place that I could drive across the river during dry spells. This meant planning the year ahead as far as materials were concerned.

This is the field that I am now gardening. In the twenties this had been a corn field. I found it over grown with tag alders and with sandy spots where only the desperate plants grew. I planted a test garden and then travelled to South Dakota to visit friends. When I returned all that I had planted was dead or very stunted

This is my Dad being pulled across the river. We managed to bring an 8hp roto-tiller across this way. That winter was very different. I was use to camping in the cold, but not building for the cold. I did not think I needed insulation in such a small building and so had to staple the paper backed insulation to the walls.

This is Dad at the house site. It was a clearing in the dense forest when I arrived. The tractor was purchased in South Dakota and hauled to Ontario on a stripped house trailer. Rated for 800 lbs per each tire, I made it almost to Toronto before the frame cracked. A little welding and I was able to make it the rest of the way. The tractor is a 1952 Minneapolis Moline. It managed to haul all the logs to cut for lumber. The actual logs for the house walls were skidded with a horse. All the windows in the house came from the garbage in Toronto. The wood was cut in a saw mill made from car and truck parts. I bought two tractors for $80.00 and scavenged the one for parts and brought the good one home. I left South Dakota doing 15 miles and hour and was doing 60 by the time I hit Ontario. I occassionally fish-tailed when my dog moved from one backwindow to the other.

That winter was very cold. I tried covering the outside with plastic that I scavenged from the saurkraut factory. I wound up living upstairs with a barrel stove. I would go to sleep with a couple of cast-iron frying-pans.

Poverty can be depressing, but when it hits the fringes it can get pretty ridiculous. This is my bridge across the Moira River during flood season. I had to pole vault to the bridge for a few days. Even my dog had enough and refused to even try. People would come by to offer up advice for me to impliment. One of their pet peeves was the large spaces between the logs. I knew I could fill them with something, and had faith an idea would come to me. I hated the sound of the chainsaw and found the adze to slow. While telling one of these people I was going to install little windows for the animals to peek in and out of, the idea of bottles between the logs came to me. The spaces were filled with metal lathe covering fiberglass insulation and then chinked with mortar. Twenty five years later it is still holding. There are small leaks, but the bio mass of the logs helps to keep it comfortable through -50 F.

I also planted and acre garden that first year. As you can see even with a pump for water I was barely able to grow corn. My tomatoes never ripened and my corn was very short. It discouraged me from planting for twenty-five years.