Between walks, gardening, child care, and other activities I have hardly found the time to update this blog! I’ll do a short post this time and focus on photos. In the first week of April I had the opportunity to get outside a lot more. I planted some cold hardy vegetables outside like broccoli and finally had the opportunity to do some bird watching.
I was amazed to see that the American Goldfinch are starting to change from their muted browns in the winter to the brilliant yellow of the summer. I saw trumpeter swans in the village for the first time, as well as kill deer and osprey. I also was happy to see the return of the song sparrow and some grackles as well.
The crocuses in our garden began to bloom! Tulips, and daffodils began to make an appearance.
Cool rainy days provided an opportunity to transplant broccoli seedlings. I also planted arugula and spinach directly, however, I’m not sure how successful they will be!
Finally, I was incredibly happy to return to the forest. Being in the forest or by the ocean are the places I feel the most at peace. I missed being there. They created a new trail in the village near the wild bird sanctuary. By walking slowly I was able to notice the different species of moss and trees marked by the gnawing teeth of beavers.
Overall, it was a good week. This week I hope to get outside a bit more. I’m also going to be heading to Kingston over the weekend so I should be able to get some more interesting photos over there.
Lately the weather has been cold, grey, and wet. I suppose it’s like this every year around this time, but this year I’m finding it particularly cold and grey. This is the first year I’ve had not working or in school since I can remember, so I have a lot of time to observe changes in the weather day by day. While it’s true that the snow is melted, birds are singing, and flowers are starting to come up, there’s a chill to the wind. This damp coldness makes me want to sit inside with a cup of tea, a warm sweater, and do cozy activities like making bread. I find it hard to believe that in a month or so the world will explode with colour.
When my son was born in mid-December, my friend dropped off a lovely package of homemade bread, soup and hand-knit baby bath towels. I was completely in awe of the bread, it was so beautiful, with a perfectly crisp crust and a soft fluffy interior. Recently when I saw her and thanked her for the bread she told me “Oh you can do it! All you need is four ingredients (salt, yeast, water, and flour) and time!”. While my spare time is limited these days, I do have spare moments where I can put together some dough and plenty of time to wait for it to rise. So far I have experimented with making basic white bread, seed bread, and raisin bread using my dutch oven. All of the recipes require very limited kneading so are quite easy to make!
The gardening centres are starting to open and I’m itching to go. We ordered a number of fruiting shrubs and plants that will come in early May to continue to grow out our pollinator garden including grapes, raspberries, quince and blackberries. We’re also going to continue working on converting our lawn space into clover. I’m also planning on getting some more shelters for pollinators including a bat house and a solitary bee nest. I can’t wait to spend time outside and to introduce my son to the outside world.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying seeing the bulbs we planted in the autumn transforming into little flowers – our daffodils, tulips, and crocuses are beginning to emerge. I’m also working on growing some vegetables by seed, however, I’m uncertain on how successful I will be! So far I have sprouts for okra, broccoli, garlic chives and tomatoes.
In the next week, I plan on going to order our hanging baskets, and going on some short hikes with my son. In the garden I hope I have some time to cut back our shrubs and work on aerating the grass and clover.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since I last posted on this! I always have the ambition to start something like a blog, and then life gets in the way. In the case of this past year, I found out I was pregnant at the end of February. Now it’s been over a year since we moved to the country, and our family of three has expanded to a family of four.
My son has just turned three months, and I feel like I’m finally getting my footing again after a major life transformation. I find it oddly appropriate that I’m becoming comfortable with my new self just as spring has begun in the village. The winter this year felt particularly long, with weeks of minus 20 degrees and sleepless nights. In the past couple of weeks, just as my son has begun to smile, we have started to see glimpses of spring. This week I walked in my garden and peaked below the rotten leaves of the brown eyed susans and the mulch above our strawberries to discover the sprouting of new leaves. The goldfinch have returned and on my morning walks I see massive flocks of Canada geese honking above me. Spring is lovely, isn’t it?
The pandemic also seems to be subsiding a bit, and life in the village is coming back to how it used to be (or so I hear). We’re enjoying meeting more of the people who live here and going to the local fairs and pancake breakfasts. After the isolating months this winter, and really, throughout the pandemic more generally I had forgotten how nice it is to be around people, and have been incredibly touched by the kindness of others.
Last week we visited my friend’s farm when she invited us to come see how her family was producing maple syrup. We went from tree to tree and collected the sweet sap from buckets. Afterwards, she offered us some of the sap to drink from a mug, and offered us some maple pecan pie she made using her maple syrup. When we were collecting the sap she was telling us the importance of the freezing temperatures at night in producing the maple syrup. While I struggled with the cold this year, and having to stay inside, experiencing the marvel that is maple syrup made it feel a bit more worth it. The winters might be long and brutal where we live, but the springs are sweet.
This year we look forward to expanding on our garden. The space we have is limited compared to many in this rural area, but it’s a lot more than we’ve ever had before. Last year we were amazed by the amount of time it took to take care of the land we have. We worked on planting a lot of perennials, built some new beds, and planted some trees. This year we’ll continue to plant more perennials and trees. We’re also hoping to make some new raised garden beds.
I also have recently taken up bread making, I’ll make another post about that when I have the chance.
This weekend we were blessed with beautiful weather and we enjoyed taking long walks throughout the village. On Saturday we celebrated the opening of the seed library, an initiative started by Sustainable Merrickville-Wolford and sponsored by the local Lions Club. The goal of the seed library, is to provide locals with free seeds that they can use to grow their garden. Locals donated seeds they collected before the winter to the library over the past few months, then on Saturday the library opened. I picked up some brown-eyed susans and echinacea that I’m looking forward to planting. The library in the village is very beautiful, it originally was owned by the Recreational Canadian Canoe Association, and became the library in 2008. We were also happy to see some Canadian goose on the Rideau River floating on the melting ice.
We’re looking forward to getting started on our garden, and building one of our raised beds (and maybe a greenhouse!) this weekend.
Lately we see many animals. We saw both deer and foxes in our backyard, a coyote by the river, and countless birds. I was surprised this morning to see a massive flock of Canada geese flying overhead. To me, Canada Geese are a sign of changes in the seasons, and I found it odd to not hear them when I lived in Japan. It’s quite amazing that they learned how to fly in v-formation, a pattern that allows them to save energy and travel longer distances.
Lately our garden is starting to reveal itself and since this is our first spring in this house, we’re not sure what to expect. The gardens around here are quite different from those in our previous neighbourhood in Ottawa. They seem more wild with lots of moss, rocks, and spreading coniferous trees. I plan to use as many native plants as I can in developing our garden, and it seems like the previous owner of our house was of a similar mindset. So far I’ve found a native elderberry tree and milkweed amongst countless (as of now) unidentified plants. We’ll have to see what pops up out of the ground over the next couple of months.
We also have been getting different visitors at our bird feeders. We put up some of our bird feeders near a line of trees by the side of our house. Birds, especially smaller birds, require shelter in order to protect them from predators and weather. While it took a few weeks, we now have many visitors including downy woodpeckers, red-breasted nuthatch, dark-eyed juncos, chickadees and lately a pair of cardinals. We also put up an owl nest – although I’m not sure if an owl will take residence there.
This weekend we plan to start looking into how to convert some of our grass lawn into a clover lawn. I will post about that soon.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been almost two months since we moved from central Ottawa to a little village. We didn’t anticipate moving during a pandemic, or moving at all really, but we always dreamed of living in the country. One of the silver linings of 2020, is that it gave both my husband and I the opportunity to work from home. Working from home has it’s own challenges, particularly during pandemic lockdowns, but it also gave us the flexibility to choose where we wanted to live. Merrickville is one of the villages that we often visited after moving back to Canada. It’s a remarkably unique place abundant with artisans, beautiful scenery, and incredibly kind people.
While we considered moving to a more rural area, where we would be able to start our own hobby farm, we decided to live near the heart of the village. It allows us to be able to walk to pretty much everything we need, and become less reliant on using a car. One of the highlights of our days is walking to the local shops, restaurants, and scenic areas. I’m excited for the weather to become warmer, so that we will be able to bicycle to nearby farms and canoe in the river.
I’m going to try to make an effort to update this blog at least once a week to showcase changes in the season as well as highlights in our new life. One of the things I loved about my first year of living in Tokyo, was having completely new experiences throughout the seasons. I’m excited to see the ebb and flow of the seasons here, and what they bring. Hopefully learning about what it’s like to live in a small village will be interested for you, too.
In the past week, we started to see temperatures rising to above double-digits and subsequently falling again to below zero. I’ve heard that the rising and falling of the temperatures is what leads to the flow of maple syrup in March in Ontario. Farmers and those with larger plots of land around the village are beginning to tap sugar maples, and in some places you can see steady steam rising from small huts where sap is being boiled.
The rising and falling of temperatures has also lead to melting snow and the return of birds. We encountered a flock of evening grosbeak while on a morning walk to the library the other day, and often see the returning v-shapes of Canada goose up above. On our walks we can see little streams beginning to flow below cracking ice. I’m also enjoying seeing gardens reveal themselves as the snow melts. We even discovered the local community garden, where in the summer, people will grow vegetables to donate to the local food cupboard.
Shops within the village are also beginning to wake up since the lockdown was lifted and spring has begun. We pre-ordered homemade belgian chocolate bunnies and cream eggs from the local sweet shop for easter, and were excited to participate in the pi day auction (in honour of the mathematical symbol) for the first time today. The pi day auction, as many things, is virtual this year, and the proceeds will go towards supporting the local fair. We bought a bumbleberry (mixed-berry) pie from the local bakery. Did you know bumbleberry pie was a Canadian thing?
Earlier this year, during the summer, my husband and I went to a farmer’s market outside of Ottawa. Come to think of it, it’s the only time we’ve been to a farmer’s market since the pandemic started. It was surreal lining up outside of the market wearing masks and waiting for hand sanitizer. At that time, wearing masks was still becoming a social norm and I felt a bit self-conscious. We did a loop around the market, picked up a braid of summer garlic, and some ears of peaches & cream corn.
While we were getting ready to leave, a farmer selling mushrooms caught my eye. We stopped to talk to him, he told us about the different mushroom varieties he grew and how he had taken a course on how to forage and grow mushrooms in the Kingston area. I was enamoured. I’ve always loved mushrooms. As a teenager I often went to the forest, camera in hand, taking macro shots of fungi. I’ve never been brave enough to forage mushrooms myself, however, someday I would love to take a course to better understand which are edible and which are not.
Photographing wild mushrooms in Canada
My fascination with mushrooms increased when I lived in Japan. In Japan, fruits and berries are often more expensive than they are in Canada. When I lived in Tokyo, I had a limited budget as a graduate student, which continued later as I became a teacher and freelance researcher. I couldn’t afford to buy fruits that I would typically buy in Canada, but I still wanted to eat healthily. I noticed that there was an abundance of mushrooms that I was unfamiliar with, at a very reasonable price, when grocery shopping. In Japan, at a typical supermarket you can find enoki, shimeji, shiitake, eryngii, and nameko, amongst other varieties of mushrooms. You also often encounter mushrooms when you go out to eat; they’re incorporated into stews, soups, rice dishes and omelettes. I personally often bought shimeji (one of the cheaper varieties) for dinner.
Boiled vegetables in Japan.
Coming back to Canada I missed the variety of Japanese mushrooms that were available to me before. I was still able to find enoki, eryngii, and even shiitake, but it was a little more challenging to find shimeji. On the other hand, I discovered that many mushroom varieties that I was unable to obtain in Japan were available here. When I met the mushroom vendor at the farmer’s market, I was excited about the possibilities of learning about different types of mushrooms (and maybe trying my hand at growing some of my own).
A few months later, I was reading a recent edition of the Edible Ottawa magazine, when I came across the Fungi Connection. They’re a mushroom farm in the Kingston area that develop a wide variety of mushrooms for local restaurants including lion’s mane, pink oyster, and blue oyster. Luckily for me, they also sell mushroom kits. I ordered my blue oyster mushroom kit a few weeks ago and picked it up at the farm. It was a strange looking white block that came sealed in a plastic bag. The farmer gave me some paper instructions and told me that I could contact her if I had any problems.
I later learned that the strange white block was actually a mix of mushroom mycelium and sawdust. Mycelium can be described as “the vegetative body for fungi that produces mushrooms“. According to Fungially mycelium can be thought of as a root system whereas mushrooms themselves can be thought of as fruit or flowers. You can learn more about mycelium here. In order to activate the mycelium and begin the ‘fruiting’ process, I had to cut three inch “X”s into the mycelium, mist the block, cover it with a humidity tent (clear plastic bag) and put it in a cool place with in-direct sunlight.
Over the past week or so, I have been dedicated to misting my mycelium block three times a day. For the first few days I was a bit skeptical, as it appeared that nothing was actually happening. However, one day seemingly dozens of tiny black heads began to sprout from the mycelium’s white surface. Hour after hour those heads grew in size, doubling day after day until the point that they began to flatten out.
The growth of my blue oyster mushrooms.
Once the mushrooms were large enough, I completed my first round of harvesting and made some spaghetti, which you can see below. I’m excited to try the mushrooms out with other recipes, there’s still quite a lot left, and even after we harvest all of this batch there should be two or more rounds. Once the mycelium block stops producing mushrooms we can compost the block in our composter.
While I’m still just beginning my journey of understanding mushrooms, in learning more about oyster mushrooms and mycelium I discovered Paul Stamets, a mycologist, and medical researcher intent on spreading knowledge about mushrooms. His YouTube channel is quite interesting, he also has done some Ted Talks that I recommend.
Cosmos and Chickadees 