Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 67: Chaga Camp w/ Garrett Ouellette
Discover the secrets of the wilderness with us, as we bring you an exciting episode packed with stories and insights from the great outdoors. In this episode, Jerry Ouellette introduces us to the intriguing world of the chaga mushroom, sparking a deeper appreciation for natural living and the beauty of the wilderness. Together with our co-host Garrett, we outline essential preparedness tips that ensure every adventure, whether fishing or hiking, is both safe and enjoyable.
From navigating dense forest terrains with a GPS and compass to sharing a heartwarming 90th birthday celebration amid the autumn foliage of Sudbury, our tales capture the essence of outdoor life. We delve into the economic challenges faced by Northern Ontario communities heavily reliant on logging and mining. Through insightful discussions, we explore tourism's untapped potential as an economic saviour, possibly transforming fishing and camping into sustainable livelihoods for local residents.
Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, ang and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 2:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show.
Speaker 3:We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, From athletes All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing.
Speaker 1:To scientists.
Speaker 5:But now that we're reforesting and all that, it's the perfect transmission environment for life.
Speaker 2:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 1:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world world.
Speaker 6:On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy.
Speaker 6:So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy, we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy.
Speaker 6:As always, we want to thank all those around the world that listen to us here in Canada and Ontario and the States, as well as those in Trinidad and Tobago and, of course, ghana and Switzerland, where we're ranking as well. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our show and, as always, if you ever have a question or something you'd like to hear about, we'd be more than happy to hear from you in order to get that podcast on the show. However, sometimes it takes a bit of time to try and find the character and answer the questions, and we still work on that. Anyways, this podcast we've got Garrett back. Always a pleasure having Garrett back while he's in the province and we went up and we did a Chega pick and the camp work that took place up there as well, and it's great to have you back and it was a good ride up and back, wasn't it, garrett?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was great. We definitely were lucky there to have such wonderful weather like we did. It was very clear for the most part. Colours were amazing, which is always good, and, yeah, it was actually pretty warm for the time of year we went up there.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it was pretty good and some of it was. You know it's always you need to kind of look and prepare in advance. The trip is a lot better when you take the time to prepare in advance and what to take and, of course, normally when we have a full crew up there, which is probably let me see, we got two double bunks, a bed and another bed, five, six guys. We end up in most of the case, well in the case up there I end up doing all the meal plans and stuff like that for everybody and snacks and foods, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 6:By this time it was just Garrett and I on short notice because he had supposed to be flying back to Saskatchewan to work on the potash, mine or something else out there. Now I understand maybe Saskatchewan power, but he can tell us a bit about that but some of the things not only your food plan, your preparation, but you need to make sure you got the right material when you're heading up there and some of the things that we need to make sure we got some of the stuff that what's kind of stuff do you like to make sure you got, garrett?
Speaker 3:well, I always like to make sure I have um clothes for one thing and and boots for sure, because you never know how the weather's going to go or how much mud and swamps you're going to hike through, so it's always a little bit different there, but some of the things I always like to make sure I have is definitely boots being one of them, warm clothes and extra clothes just in case, because you never know and then definitely have lots of supplies, as in gas and food and stuff like that, to make sure that if you do get caught in a storm or a bad situation, that you have enough to make it through a little bit longer than expected well, some of that.
Speaker 6:It's when you're saying boots, it's, I like good hiking, solid hiking boots with good ankle support, because I gotta tell you we're, we're like this trip here is oh, you know, we're heading down logging roads and new roads that the logging companies have opened up, and Garrett's like there's one there, and so pull the vehicle over and Garrett and our chocolate lab gunner gets out and off. We go into the bush, but you walk in and this oh, look, there's one a little farther up, maybe we should check up here in. And this oh, look, there's one a little farther up, maybe we should check up here. End up walking in about a kilometer and then you do a loop to the south and then a loop to the north and a loop to the west on that loop and then come back out. I mean you want to make sure you got good solid boots and I got to tell you up there where we go, which is is, you know, chapleau Way. You know, look at 8-10 hours by the time you're in the camp.
Speaker 6:You, um, my uncle used to call them oh, it's just past that little knob over there. Well, in southern Ontario, those little knobs, we actually put tow ropes on them and call them ski hills. And here we are walking up the sides of these hills and you've got to make sure you got the support and everything else. You know, day one it was pretty good, but day two we got pretty soaked and you want to be able to dry all your clothes as well when you get to a camp, so you got to have a good locations for that. But so what are some of the other stuff that uh need to to look at then garrett as well yeah, it needs to be able to look for.
Speaker 3:Um, well, one things that we always forget is binoculars, for sure, because how many times it would save us probably walking the extra two or three kilometers to go. Well, that little black spot there on the tree kind of looks like I should go check it out. And next thing you know, it's two kilometers in and it's like, well, it was just a hoof conch or a burrow on the tree or a knot or a branch that's broken off and left a little piece on it, so it looks like a chagas sticking out, kind of thing. So binoculars definitely would be something that could have saved us a lot of hiking there. But that's okay, I don't mind the exercise.
Speaker 3:And then, like I said, a good pair of boots and then lots of dry socks as well, because when you're walking through there and you step and run wrong spot, the water's up to your ankles and your boots are saturated with water. But yeah, and then the other things for sure you need for what we're doing there is definitely have a lot of packing bags or bags you can canvas bags to pack out the chaga there, because I think we were in there for three hours and all of a sudden, you know the bag's full, and then it's oh, I got to go back to the truck, which is you know an hour out, come back an hour in again. And then you got two more bags full, because I always just seem to keep wandering around looking for chagas.
Speaker 6:Well, but some of the too, garrett is, you know when we're hauling in, so we carry a canvas pack and a canoe pack sort of thing with a you know a tump rope that goes along the front of your forehead just to help carry, and you carry a couple of those but you're clearing, climbing spurs, along with safety belts and all the rest, to get up some of these trees with hatchets, et cetera, et cetera, to do your pick. So you want to make sure you've got good bags, etc. Etc. To do your pick. So you want to make sure you've got good bags. And we take canvas bags when we go to make sure that it can breathe, because you want to a lot of people that I I talk to when they're picking their own chag and things like that, or even mushrooms uh, wild mushrooms for nose. You got to make sure that are picking wild mushrooms. You got to make sure you know what you're doing. In that particular case, um, they, they have, um, bags or baskets that allow it to breathe. Otherwise the moisture content in there will cause secondary mold and you don't want to have that.
Speaker 6:So not only that, but some of the things is a GPS and a compass, which is always great to have. I mean, you go in one way and you go in a kilometer this way and that looks the same. I know, garrett, we only took one small pack in and we filled that pack and I said, look, I got to go out and get the other pack. So headed back out and I found an old skidder trail that was probably 40 years old and I'm going along the skidder trail, and so I thought I'll take that skidder trail back in. So I head back in, go along the skidder trail and the skidder trail does unbeknown to me, the way it went, just kind of did a 90 degree turn, a very slow one, mind you. But I end up wait a sec, that's not where I'm supposed to be Head back through and up the hill so it's easy to get turned around.
Speaker 6:So compasses and GPS, and when I brought the extra packs back out, you know you want to make sure that you've got stuff that you can carry your material in and out with along with, you know, climbing spurs, et cetera, et cetera. Now, one of the things that was it was kind of interesting, garrett, what happened with one of the climbing spurs and what did it end up doing in the bush with all the leaves are off the trees up where we were and something fell off the spur yeah, um, one of the uh upper straps and the spurs fell off or got caught and fell off there.
Speaker 3:So it's definitely one of those things. It was a very frustrating moment to start. You know, get to the tree that you're going to climb and then you start putting your spurs on and you go grab the, your spur, start putting it on and you realize your strap's missing and you go, oh gosh, where the heck is this going to be now? So you know, luckily we got a little guidance there, a little help, and we were able to find the. I was able to find the strap relatively close to where we were climbing, so it wasn't like I had to go back probably two hours. I was hiking through the bush there.
Speaker 6:Yeah, when you're carrying the spurs and that in your straps, all of a sudden it falls off and the strap is a tan in color and it's only about probably I don't know maybe 12 inches long and it falls into these leaves that are basically a whole multitude of colors. But the one good thing about it is that was on day two of the pick and it rained the night before, so when you walk through the leaves you can kind of see where your trail went, and so it just followed the trail back and ended up finding that strap. But yeah, and the other thing about it is, too, we're using, or Garrett's using I don't put the spurs on anymore unless I really really need to. I mean once upon a time it don't put the spurs on anymore unless I really really need to. I mean once upon a time it was nothing putting the spurs on and heading up the tree. But now that later in life you got a lot more experience and you become the full figure male, it's a little bit more difficult. So we don't put the spurs on, but we use tree spurs, not pole spurs, and there's a big difference between the two, because when you your spur, depth is the main part. That's the difference. And a tree spur has a longer spur to allow you to get through the bark, where a pole spur doesn't have any bark, so it doesn't have to be as long a spur and it just makes for climbing and security reasons a lot more important.
Speaker 6:But some of the other stuff you know is this was we were up and it was a moose season where we were. So we met Dennis who was up there from Windsor Ontario and he had a crew that was doing a drive in one area and we said look, we don't want to, you know, disrupt your hunt if you guys are hunting. And he said no, no, it's okay, the guy should be coming out soon. And I said okay, you sure. He said yeah, and so we didn't even get near where their guys were, because we found some Chagas on the way in, but having colors, meaning your fluorescent orange, your orange hunter orange vests and things like that, and we actually had one on the dog as well. Gunner, our chocolate lab, had a orange harness on them so that uh could distinguish. I mean because you hear that rustling through the leaves coming through and you get excited, you want to make sure what it is, but anyway, so we have, uh, make sure we have colors on there so that we're in when it's hunting season, to make sure we can. We can make sure that we're visible and everywhere you go, and high visibility clothing is very important when you're up to trees as well.
Speaker 6:But on the way up it was very interesting to see the colors on the way up. You know we had it up on Monday, so this would be my mother's Garrett's Baba, our grandmother, and my mother's Garrett's baba, or grandmother. She held her 90th a week ago today, which would be October the 18th, and we held a big surprise party for her where we had people fly in from Alberta, saskatchewan, manitoba, come down from Northern Ontario, and we had a big party for her. It was a surprise, it was great. So we headed out. After that, which was Monday, after Garrett's girlfriend Brittany flew back to Calgary on Monday we headed up north and the colors on the way up were quite spectacular. The south of Sudbury. The colors were fantastic and you know, you see some things like some of the trees out there that have a kind of a yellowy kind of color, but it was an interesting kind of tree that you see. But once you got past Sudbury it was quite a bit different because a lot of the leaves have already fallen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Like the colors there are just definitely phenomenal. And then one of the things I noticed when you get past Sudbury kind of thing there the pine needles on the tamarack trees have actually changed color. And you know, I always say to myself, it's just, you would call it as a kid, oh, evergreens. And I'm like, well, that's an evergreen, how come it's turning? And you know, I don't really realize, but like you clue in on some things, the tamarack actually loses their needles and change color and it's a very interesting yellow because most of the maple trees and the birch and stuff like that, their leaves will change to all different kind of shades of orange, reds and yellows there. But the Tamarack is definitely one that's very distinct and it was different to see.
Speaker 6:Yeah, the Tamarack is the only coniferous tree that actually loses its needle every year. And so when I remember in school that coniferous tree that actually loses its needle every year, and so when I remember in school that coniferous trees now don't lose their needles, and that was the thing, but Tamarack or it's in the larch family they retain their needles but they turn this kind of yellowy kind of color which add color in the fall as well. And you know, when you see the various colors kind of an orangey yellow for your birch, your poplars are kind of a yellow tree, a yellow leaf, and the maples and the oaks are kind of a red, and it was kind of spectacular. But even when you got up there and and at night it was clear nights, on monday night and tuesday night, the stars are crystal clear and and I use this, uh, this app to identify a lot of the various planets and things like that, and it's called Skyview, skyview Lite. It's a free app that goes in your phone and works anywhere. You don't need cell service to have it work.
Speaker 6:Don't ask me why, because there's no cell service where we go, unless Garrett's brother and my other son, josh, brings up. What does he bring up. What's that? Son Josh brings up Starlink. He brings up Starlink and configures it, so we run the Starlink off the generator and that's mostly when Josh is there. We get to watch the football games in camp because we like watching all of the teams play and it's great to have those when we're in camp just to give us a bit of break, but crystal clear nights. And you know, garrett, one of the things that we talked about was the employment in Northern Ontario. I mean, what do these communities do with various types? And, quite frankly, the lifeblood in Northern Ontario is the logging or the lumber industry and the mining industry, and that was something that we saw quite a bit about. Ontario is the logging or the lumber industry and the mining industry, and that was something that we saw quite a bit about was some of those places and some of the things that we saw with them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. You know some of the questions I always have driving up because you pass through these communities and small towns you go how do they survive up here? Because, like, how do they get the base level income for the economy there, for people to, you know, make a living? It's worthwhile to stay in those places. And it's one of the questions I've always kind of hummed and hawed over because you think of, well, if they had this and they had that and they brought in some outdoor stuff or some kind of entertainment source to bring out people who have a desire to go up there. It's one of those questions that you know how do you keep a base level supply for, uh, people in north there? And definitely with the logging, for sure, and the mines. But you know, some of the questions I always have is what happens when the mines dry up?
Speaker 6:well and that was one of the things I know. When I was junior minister for northern development and mines, when I had the privilege to serve the province it, I was in sudbury at a mining uh convention basically in Sudbury, and Sudbury is kind of the mining center. It's got a lot of resources built on mining and of course the nickel that's produced there in Sudbury is very key. And that was the question that came up from the media what are you going to do about all these communities? And I said, well, that's part of it. I mean, when a mine opens they build an entire community around the mine and they have all that support structure, whether it's materials from the mine, workers and housing where they live, and then they end up getting elected officials and they become a whole town and it runs for 60, 80, 90 years while the minerals are there. But what happens when it's gone? And I said to the media, I said, look, part of it is if you look at the number of people working in the sector, there's probably the same number of very consistent in northern Ontario. So when this town and this mine shut down, those workers relocate and if the town hasn't started to diversify from the minute it's established, then it's in trouble and they end up closing it. And it's the same thing we talked to when Rolly and I were up last month doing some assessment on stuff in up north. We were talking to some of the logging trucks there that were hauling logs out and they said the logging industry is just completely destroyed. And I said, well, what about this one? Nope, that mill's closed. What about that mill? That's closed. All the mills were closed, but it's the logging trucks.
Speaker 6:And I recall when I was minister, one of the bureaucracy actually allowed a transfer of fiber from one forest to another mill and that essentially gave that corporation the ability to close the one mill because it couldn't run two effectively unbeknown to me. Everybody assumes that you know everything that's happening within the ministry and some things take place. Well, it was Gilbisson, who was the member from the Timmins area at that time, who brought it to my attention. So we looked into it and, sure enough, yeah, that's what happened. Anyways, I went to the deputy minister at that time and we talked to him and said look, did you know about this? No, and I said well, it's having a significant impact and the mayor from that community has now approached us and so the mayor said look, I want that, I want that shut down. I don't want that our lumber leaving this area. I said I can do that if you'd like, but just remember this your worship.
Speaker 6:I said now the mill workers have lost their jobs, but what you're asking me to do is all the people who are working in the forest now that are from your community to take those jobs away from them, and all the truckers who are hauling it all, and all the repair shops and everything else that take that, that repair all those trucks and all the equipment that's used to harvest all this material. I said you're asking me to close that down in your community. And is that what you want me to do? He says, oh, I never thought about that. No, no, no, no, don't do that, don't do that.
Speaker 6:We got to keep all those loggers and all that component of the business going. So when a community loses it, the base of its employment base I mean I'm from Oshawa and Oshawa had General Motors and at one point it was over 25,000, I think, working at the plant and all the feeder plants. I mean Peterborough was not far away and General Motors in Oshawa was the number one employer in Peterborough. It's the same thing in Northern Ontario, whether it's the mining industry or the forest industry, and they need to look outside those kind of aspects that companies or communities, I should say, should be looking at in other areas. And those were some of the things that we discussed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And another thing there that I always talked up as well is that because I am always on the looking out and scouting out for new fishing spots and opportunities and one thing I set out for things like there is the tourist industry with fishing and the outdoors there, creating opportunities for even camping as well was one of the things to keep people employed.
Speaker 3:Because I know up in on the way up to Sudbury, kill Bear is actually a very popular park, provincial park, that a lot of people go camping into and they say the fishing up in that area is just something that's very peaceful and quiet because it's a lot of smaller lakes spread out and everything else. So it's quite nice and having a tourist there is also a huge draw for those northern communities because when you get past more so of northern Ontario, past the Muskokas outside of that Toronto area or the GTA area of their target fishing areas, the fishing up in northern Ontario is just completely different and it's an opportunity to allow a lot of those people to go camping and fishing and get their peace and quiet. That's why I like my fishing for for the peace and quiet there. But you know it's a lot of draws and attention up there for the outdoors industry.
Speaker 6:Well, that was one of the things. And, garrett, on the way up where did you want to stop on the way up and for what reason did you want to stop?
Speaker 3:Well, I wanted to stop at a store in Sudbury.
Speaker 3:It's called Ramacos and it's an outdoor store there. It's been there for as long as I can remember and it's one of those stores that I've always gone, because they have a lot of unique items there, a lot of usually put new product there every year, so it's something that you go up there in the area and it's you know way. What are the fish biting this time? Is it? Is it white? Is it a shad color? Is it like? Are we going for more of a pumpkin seed kind of thing, green pumpkin? You know what's the, what's the color of the area? Cause it all depends on the hatch and the grubs, things like that, that are growing at the time. So I always like to go into the stores in the area, especially Ramacos, because they do a good job of providing information and details there, as well as boots, for sure, because I ended up wrecking my pair of boots when I was up there picking chaga. I completely ripped off a sole there going over the logging trails and getting stuck between all the down brush and stuff like that.
Speaker 6:So, yeah, so Brian Romacko owns Romacko's in Sudbury, Great spot, and if you haven't been in there and you're going through, and especially if you're an angler, all right, those stuff, not just an angler, he's got hiking boots, he's got clothing, he's got great stuff. It's a bit of a plug, but even though I give you a plug, brian, at Romaco's, I got to give you a shot Because on the way through on Monday, when we got through into town at 6 o'clock, it was closed so we couldn't stop, which made it a little tough. But you know, I have to tell you the thinking of individuals like Brian Romaco at Romacco's and he's got a great operation. I stopped in before he moved to his current location and I said all right. So I wasn't minister at the time and so I was Northern Development of Mines and I said all right, I'll give this guy a chance to vent. I said all right, brian.
Speaker 6:What do you think, brian, about the reduced limit in slot sizes? Because here's a guy whose life, livelihood is basically dependent on the outdoor and the industry and one of the biggest components of it is the fishing part, and what the ministry was doing was it was reducing the amount of harvest you're allowed to take on a lake and then bringing in slot sizes. Now, if you don't know what slot sizes are, it means that a fish between certain number of inches cannot be kept, and so you have to measure your fish and find out if it falls in the slot, and then, if it's brought in the slot, then they release it back in. You're not allowed to keep it. So if you reduce the limit, and I said to Brian, I said what do you think about these reduced limit and slot sizes? And he said to Brian I said what do you think about these reduced limit and slot sizes? And he said well, I want to tell you, as far as I'm concerned, everything north of the French River should be reduced limits and slot sizes. And I was like what are you talking about? This is going to have a huge impact in your industry. And he said yeah, probably in the short term. He said but it's best for northern Ontario and that's what we need to look for.
Speaker 6:And I said than Ontario, and that's what we need to look for. And I said explain, tell me what you're thinking in this process. He said well, part of it would be that within, for the first five, seven, maybe even 10 years you're going to get. And he said the same thing that happened with these individuals where they did the test sites, where they brought in reduced limits and slot sizes and all the anglers came in and whined and bitched and complained about the reduced limits and slot sizes.
Speaker 6:But it's now five years later and those same guys that came in whined and bitched. They'd never go back and curse the ministry and on and on and on. We're doing this Now. It's the only place they go and they catch lots of fish and big fish. And Brian said if they did that in Northern Ontario, northern Ontario within 5 to 10 years would be the fishing place that everybody in the entire world would want to go, because you catch lots of fish and big fish and that's what people want. And I was quite surprised. But I was forward thinking. Like guys like Brian at Ramacos would think like that and I was sure that it would be something that he would be upset with. That would potentially cause a lot of negative opportunity for him, but he knew it was going to hurt his business but it was going to be the best thing in the long run and that's great to see.
Speaker 5:Back in 2016,. Frank and I had a vision to amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.
Speaker 4:Our dream was to harness the knowledge of this amazing community and share it with passionate anglers just like you.
Speaker 5:Thus the Ugly Pike podcast was born and quickly grew to become one of the top fishing podcasts in North America.
Speaker 4:Step into the world of angling adventures and embrace the thrill of the catch with the Ugly Pike podcast. Join us on our quest to understand what makes us different as anglers and to uncover what it takes to go after the infamous fish of 10 000 casts the ugly pike podcast isn't just about fishing.
Speaker 5:It's about creating a tight-knit community of passionate anglers who share the same love for the sport. Through laughter, through camaraderie and an unwavering spirit of adventure, this podcast will bring people together subscribe now and never miss a moment of our angling adventures. Tight lines everyone find ugly pike now on spotify, apple podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts and now it's time for another testimonial for chaga health and wellness.
Speaker 6:Hi, it's jerry from chaga health and wellness. We're here in lindsey with tula, who's actually from finland and uses chaga. Tula, you've had some good experiences with chaga. Can you just tell us what that experience is?
Speaker 7:Yes, I got sick with fibro and one weekend my husband came here alone. I was home and he brought your leaflet and I read it and I said next weekend when we go to a market we're going to buy some. And so we started putting it in our morning smoothie.
Speaker 6:Right.
Speaker 7:And among a few other things that I was doing because of that, the chaga has been the steady one Right. I would not want to live without it. Oh good, yeah, so it's been working for me Very good Lots of ways.
Speaker 6:And you had some good luck with blood pressure as well.
Speaker 7:Oh right, yeah, Thanks for remembering that. Yeah, I had a little bit of high elevated blood pressure and within the two weeks of starting that every day, every morning, it went to normal.
Speaker 6:And you think the chaga was the reason why. Well, I didn't do anything else in that time frame Very good, and so how much chaga did you have and how did you have it?
Speaker 7:Well, we just put that powder in the smoothie, right? Yeah, and it's about tablespoon. Yeah, no, it's less than tablespoon for two of us. Yeah, so you don't need that much.
Speaker 6:Right, but a teaspoon, yeah, yeah, very good. Well, thanks very much for sharing that. We really appreciate that and wish you all the best with the Chaga. Oh, you're from Finland as well, and Chaga is pretty popular in Finland, is it not?
Speaker 7:I think it probably is, because there's some professors in a university that start teaching it and talking about it. And of course it's big in Russia, right, because that's where you know the northern woods that comes from. Yeah, and of course Finland has lots of birch trees.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and it's the only mushroom that you can't forage in Finland.
Speaker 6:You have to forage everything, but not Chaga.
Speaker 6:Oh, very good. Well, thanks very much for sharing that. Okay, have a great day you too. We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you.
Speaker 6:To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY, c-a-n-o-p-y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening back to the episode. But, garrett, now you picked up a special um lures that you couldn't find anywhere else. That, uh, were pretty good right yeah.
Speaker 3:So I always am on the lookout for pacific type of lures different color patterns as well, but mainly the size, and the only place I've ever been able to get it regularly is at ramacos and it was a size 15 panther martins with a black body and yellow dot, and that one particular uh lure there is the only one I find that dominantly works most of the time throughout the year when I'm up there, like spring, summer, fall fishing, depending on what you're going for, it's the number one lure that I find works the best and it's the Panther Martin.
Speaker 3:It's size 15, and the only place I've ever been able to get it steady was where Mack was.
Speaker 3:So they have the black body with yellow dots and they have the yellow body with red dots and a silver blade, and those ones they absolutely are deadly lures for sure and I'd recommend those all the time. I don't think I'd go anywhere without the Panther Martin there lure because I've had huge success with them and actually this year I was using the black one with a gold spinner or gold blade and I switched to the yellow body there with the red dot and silver blade and the very first cast I caught a nice 22-inch rainbow, probably about three, three and a half pounds. It's a very good size, very healthy one as well, and it's just one of those things where it's right place, right time, right color and those lures, just they work and they, they snag them every time well, and and we had to talk a little bit about fishing because I have to comply with the outdoor uh, journal radio networks, uh, uh compliance, where everybody talks about fishing, except from our podcast.
Speaker 6:So we brought a little bit of fishing in just to make sure we're in compliance. So Ange, basically the boss, the head of the network, can give us heck for talking about fishing and not the outdoors. But that's a good thing and it was good because actually, where we go, garrett, if you know, it's a remote lake, we won't say where, and Rainbow is still open, along with Splake, and there's some interesting things about Splake that we could talk about. And when we go there, all we do is we take a motor. We have a little two-horse Honda four-stroke motor that we carry into the bush and there's some boats cached in at this particular lake where we go and it's fairly long. It's, I don't know, maybe over a kilometer long maybe, but not very wide. It's only probably about half three-quarters of a kilometer wide Long stretch, but there's a lot of natural occurring rainbows in there. So we haul that in and we take our paddles and our life jackets and all the gear that we need to make sure we have and we head in and use one of these cash boats and Garrett ended up catching a very nice rainbow which, once we cleaned it out and everything else, the meat was beautiful red pinky flesh on it which his mother, my wife Diane, will very much enjoy because she loves eating that kind of fish. But you know, when we're heading up there it's surprising to head up.
Speaker 6:A few years ago Rolly and I were heading up and we were taking Mackenzie up with us at that time and we get to one section just south of well, between oh where the heck it was past Sudbury, oh where the heck it was past Sudbury where we were down to Tulane Highway and we were south of what the heck was that south of Espanola, and we we was a huge backup and they said the highway was going to be closed for eight hours and what happened was there was a, an accident that had a fatality, and so we were there and we were probably in the lineup for 10-15 kilometers and we're looking like, what do we do? And so to turn around and go up 144 and do loop around would probably take longer than eight hours to do that loop, to get through that section, because there wasn't a way to do it and you're looking at your maps and your gps. But we happened to find an old logging trail that ran along the rail line and, sure enough, roly and his 2010 sierra four-wheel drive truck the three of us followed a group of other cars and headed down this logging trail and, sure enough, we skirted right around through where the accident was and came out farther up the road past the accident. But we had a bunch of cars following us. We had to clear a trail and actually one truck there a guy just started a new job and it was a flatbed tow truck and he went through one dip in the trail and the back of the truck caught the one end and the front caught the other and the back wheels were now sitting spinning and there was nothing they could do.
Speaker 6:We tried to haul that poor guy out. We had a couple of trucks. Fortunately we had tow chains, because that's the sum of the stuff you take when you're in the bush in the north. We had tow chains, because that's some of the stuff you take when you're in the bush in the north. We had tow chains to haul that guy up. But sorry, we'll let your people know, but that's about the best we can do now. We worked on him for, oh, probably close to 40, 45 minutes to see if we could help that poor guy. But we were able to get around him, as did a lot of other people, and it was certainly interesting that when a shutdown takes place like that, that the highway would be closed for eight hours. You know, and some of the other stuff that we needed to do as well. Garrett was when we get to the camp. We had kind of work to do that, roley and I, when we were up in September, we looked and assessed and some of the things that we like to make sure we have operational yeah.
Speaker 3:So one of the things, um, that's definitely always appreciated when going up there is the nice sauna. Uh, nothing it's hard to beat a nice dry sauna, or even a wet sauna, if you like, a little bit more moisture in there when you're in the bush all day and hauling, uh, hauling gear or carrying wood or cutting wood or anything like that. But you know, definitely a sauna is one of the things there that you people take for granted. It and it's definitely a very enjoyable thing and helps the experience a lot.
Speaker 3:And one of the things also great about sauna is that you know our boots there on the second day my boots were completely soaked and saturated and just completely shot kind of thing, because I have a hole in the front toe. But you know I the boot was still fine, so I was using it, and then of course, it was uh just teeming raining in the morning and then it was kind of a misty wave of rain throughout the rest of the morning there and my boots were soaked, so put them in the sauna and then next thing, you know, it's probably a couple hours later and they're almost completely dried out and it's definitely nice for, uh, having nice dry clothes makes a difference there for sure well, asana, yeah, we use asana in camp for a number of reasons.
Speaker 6:It's, uh, where we get cleaned up, where we basically have a asana bath or a cat lick where you wet down, you soap down, then you wet down again then, um, the one thing was that when roly and I were up there, we we noticed that, uh, we need a new pipe son of a stovepipe and roly actually is a actually is a millwright by trade, and what he did was he took a wood stove with a glass door and he welded sides around the top of it where you put your rocks in and then you have your pipe go through and that's your sauna. It's basically an old wood stove that he's welded side plates around the top and you put all your rocks in there and you heat it up. And we have a glass door on it to give us light in the sauna, because once you close all the doors or it's night, when most of the time we're back in the bush, when it's dark Although we have a generator that we use there up there as well that gives us a bit of light, but it's good to have the glass door to give extra light inside there. But, yeah, this sauna that Roley made was spectacular, but the pipe was all rusted out now. So you need to make sure that those maintenance and that's part of maintenance and taking care of these sort of things, to make sure everything goes smoothly is to have it. So we picked up the new stove pipe and damper and it's all up there and ready to go.
Speaker 6:But some of the other stuff as well. Is, when you're dealing with this up in the location there's no electricity, there's no hydro lines. We're in remote areas, so we take or have a generator up there. We had a Honda 2000 that. Actually it was kind of interesting.
Speaker 6:I haven't tried it yet, but I got to pick up from my camp, my cottage down here, a drill because the generator runs but it's not producing electricity. So I met a guy who's had some expertise and he said now, what's wrong with your Honda? Because I asked him. I said I need a motherboard If you know anybody that's got a motherboard for a Honda 2000. And he said no. He said what's it doing? I said well, it starts, but there's no electricity. He said, well, it starts, but there's no electricity. He said try this. He said we have this happen quite a bit, so take an electric drill that plugs into your generator, start the generator, put the electric drill in reverse and start spinning it by hand. I said what he said, yeah, what's happened is on a lot of these it's reversed the polarity and when you spin it in reverse it neutralizes that and starts to produce electricity again.
Speaker 6:He said I've done loads of them, so as soon as I bring my electric drill back I'm going to try and get that other generator going so it's back up in use in the camp. But instead we've got a little two-stroke 950 watt that runs all the lights that we run up there and if we shut all the lights off we can get a small microwave going plus a Starlink when Josh brings it up. So we shut a lot of the lights down but it gives us all we need and we just make sure that we run high-test gas, and so it's high-test with a good quality oil, because when you end up leaving it. So when we started we got up there there was enough gas that Rolly and I left from September to make sure it can handle Garrett and I. But when we left we drained the generator. So we run it dry and then we leave the gas there.
Speaker 6:But with the high test I find that if you get because it'll be the springtime by the time we're back I expect although that's not for sure, like April, may sort of thing that that gas will still be good and it doesn't seem to go bad. But you can put gas stabilizer in it as well, and so we drain it and make sure that everything works out great. But some of the other stuff is you know, you try to have a way to get cleaned up and we've tried different things at the camp to try and see what will work to get cleaned up. And we've tried different things at the camp to try and see what will work to get cleaned up. Because at camp it's good food, a good place to sleep and so long as you can dry your clothes makes it an enjoyable camp. But some of the other things that we've tried is some things Garrett.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So the other thing that we've tried is a water tower there or just more or less a water tank put up in the air so you get a gravity feed there like a like water towers concept kind of thing, and that definitely helps for running like a shower and stuff like that If you have a little area to do that as well, because you can get inline heaters that run off propane that you can run your water, have a nice hot shower as well.
Speaker 3:So definitely, if I bring up your significant other, your partner there, I know my girlfriend would appreciate a hot shower at the end of the day, because I know sometimes it's not best going to bed being all grubby, covered in wood chips and dust and dirt. So it's definitely nice to eh a lot of sweat, but it's definitely nice to have a have a clean sensations. That way you're going to bed clean. So definitely. Uh, one of the things that I've always thought about as a great idea is having a water tower there or some kind of bin to give it gravity fees. That way you can have some water pressure, have a nice shower at the end of the day too.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and some of it is, as I mentioned. Uh, you know, good sleeping, good food and that, uh, and what we have is I actually have a good sleeping bag that I purchased 43 years ago. It was a wood five-star and the thing with the five-star and the three-star are the same, but three-star is sealed, five-star you can take apart. So I take apart mine and I'll sleep on the bed with the five-star and it's great.
Speaker 6:And the other thing is that we kind of mice-proof the pillows. I mean, you get there, you got to clean off the mice debris from the beds to make sure they're clean to that extent, and we clean it up and sweep it up and do the best we can. But we put all the pillows inside bags or inside drawers that are not accessible by mice to make sure that they're proof, because it makes for a much nicer sleeping. But we do a bunch of other stuff to at the camp to to make things easier rather than just a standard way that you a lot of people think. There are some things that we do that make it a lot easier yeah.
Speaker 3:So one of the things there that we do is definitely a great opportunity that serves multiple purposes is using paper plates and wooden forks and knives and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Because one it saves you having to wash dishes and bring up all the other stuff to wash your dishes with.
Speaker 3:Two, all the paper plates and forks and stuff like that make great kindling or fire starter stuff like that, so you don't have to worry about you know finding out dry kindling things like that. So you have already serving a dual purpose there and also you're reducing your footprint there. You're not bringing home any plastic stuff like that as well. So having those paper plates and stuff saves everyone arguing over all right whose turns to do the dishes or who's getting the hot water or who's going to fetch the pails of water to heat up in the first place, to get hot water, to wash dishes. So it saves a lot of time and energy there and definitely makes it a lot easier for people that are getting up there in the experience so that they don't have to go down and up again to get all the pails of water when the young guys in camp aren't there to do that work anymore well, yeah, the the water wasn't hooked up this time, but a lot of times we use the gifford pump, but in our camp we have four bins.
Speaker 6:Basically, one bin is for burnables, which is your paper plates, your wooden knife spoons and forks and all your papers and your paper towels and stuff like that, and then we have a plastic recycle bin, as well as a garbage and a compostable bin as well. So we try to make things as environmentally friendly in our camp as well, and, plus, it's great to have all the as garrick mentioned, the paper plates and the and the, the wooden forks and spoons and knives, to be able to use that as kindling and some of the other stuff. Though is is when we're there, we have um, a uh. We call it the gifford pump because, uh, ray gifford, bless his soul, got this pump some way and brought it up there, and it's a hand pump that probably raises I think it's about 22 steps I'd have to check with my cousins up there at this camp how many steps it is and so it pumps quite a bit from the lake all the water up there, and we run with a foot valve to make sure that we've got running water, but it takes a little bit to to prime and to to to get the water from the lake up, but it was just easier because garrett and I were only there for a few days. So we were up on monday and headed back yesterday, on thursday, so we or I should say he hauled up water from the lake so we had, uh, fresh water to wash with for the sauna and to do whatever dishes needed, because you're still doing pots and pans.
Speaker 6:But some of the stuff, though, in camp is when we leave.
Speaker 6:We always try and we can tell when somebody else has been in camp because we turn the pots and the pans and everything upside down, because it's real tough for mice to jump in into a pot when it's upside down and make a mess inside that pot or any of the other stuff the frying pans, everything If you turn them upside down. And that's one thing, nick, when you're in camp, turn the pots upside down when you're leaving to make sure the mice can't go inside there and do their business, and that way it just makes it a little bit cleaner. Now the other thing is, when we shut down the camp, we take out the water, so we pull the foot bulb, we drain and blow out the lines and plus we drain the line from the camp inside the camp to where the outside line goes down to the lake to make sure there's no water so it doesn't freeze. And some of the stuff is old pumps like this, old hand pumps and it's probably, uh, I don't know, uh, garrett is probably how tall would that pump be?
Speaker 3:um, if I was to guess, I'd say probably at least from when standing height when you're pumping. It's gotta be about just the pump itself alone. It's got to be about three feet.
Speaker 6:I'd say well, it might be, it might be anyway. So it's a big pump, long pump, um, and it's really hard to get the gaskets to make sure they seal and work. But, uh, our, my cousin's husband chet, what he does is he makes leather gaskets to reseal it all and make sure that everything's working, and so we've had this pump there for well, let me see, I think it's got to be over 40 years, 45, 50 years that that pump has been there and been rebuilt a number of times and still going. But those are just some of the things that you try to do and some of the other stuff that we need to do when we're closing down camp.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there's always the last things that we do. There's always shutting off the propane and the valves and everything else. So what we'll do is we'll have our propane lights, which I always find amazing how they function, because that little piece of cloth that the propane lights up doesn't burn, but just glows bright enough to create a bit of light off of it. But yeah, so what we'll do is we'll have that light going, we'll close the tank on the propane so the lines are all getting drained out for that light. When the light finally goes out, turn off the light and then seal the line as well, keeping it all shut, so that way it seals it for the wintertime as well.
Speaker 6:And some of the things as well. I mean, we use a 100-pound propane tank that lasts us about a week and a half, depending right from full, two weeks from the time it's full. But we're using, we have a propane light, we have a propane heater as well, furnace, and when it gets cool it comes in handy. Not only that, but we place a bucket of water on top. Bucket of water on top, a pot of water filled with water, so that it heats the water and puts a little moisture in the air when you're sleeping as well, because it can get pretty dry when you're running the propane heat. And so we've got a. It's a phenomenal furnace. I don't know where they got this, but up in the north they have some things that we don't find here in Southern Ontario and plus we have a propane stove. So with that 100-pound tank it lasts us a couple of weeks and we'll head back in and fill it up and make sure.
Speaker 6:And one of the ways is when it gets cold outside you can kind of see a frost line, and we had Hugh Sutherland on from the propane company and you can kind of see that frost line. How much propane is left in in the mornings when you go out and take a look. So there was about a third of a tank left. But I leave a 30 pound tank up there as a backup, because the one thing you don't want which has happened in the past is it got so cold, we ran out of propane and we had no propane to heat in the place. So I keep a 30 pounder as a backup just to give us enough propane to last us a couple of days to be able to get into town to refill that. So the hundred pound tank works great and you can pick those up in most shops.
Speaker 6:But it was good to see that some of the things up there were uh, were some of the logging roads and you met some of the guys up there. That one guy who was, uh, you can tell us what he was doing where they're cutting lines to a 10,000 hectare cut that they're looking at, but they're cutting now. And they were doing certain things to the road, but they're building roads now to be able to get in there. And when we talked to the loggers when roly and I were there, there wasn't a lot of demand for it, but they need to prepare and this is some of the things that they prepare yeah.
Speaker 3:So when I was making my way out there uh, the bush, they're coming out there from a pick I came across the lineman from the logging company. So he marks the road and he marks the lines. He's kind of like the general foreman in the area as well for them. And what he was telling me about the roads there is that they block it off with these massive boulders that you know I think I could move, but then you sit there and go. Well, that's probably still 10,000 pound rocks, so probably can't move that one by hand.
Speaker 3:But they block the roads off there so they don't want people going down the roads, because when they make these roads it exposes a lot of fresh soil, fresh dirt, so they want the roads to harden and dry. So that way, these logging roads, when they go back there in the spring and summer the roads are not going to be all wet and mucky, they're going to be firmed up and hard. So that's why they block the roads off there, so people aren't driving down in their pickup trucks. He said ATVs are a little bit fine because they stick to the sides anyways most of the time, but he doesn't want the pickup trucks because they put too much pressure on the road. They're the ones trying to firm up and dry there.
Speaker 6:So we kind of closed the camp for this year, although we may head back. You never know well, time will tell. It's always nice, depending on the weather, but we'll be back in the spring, we expect, and it's just another way that we spend time and love it out in the bush. We saw different kind of mushrooms that I got images of that I hadn't seen on a gray birch. If you've ever seen a gray birch, it was a weird mushroom growing in a gray birch, but if you've ever seen a gray birch, it was a weird mushroom growing on a gray birch. But a lot of oyster mushrooms we saw, plus a lot of the chaga of course, and you had a lot of hoof conch, a lot of turkey tail and the other usual mushrooms that we find when we're spending time out in the bush under the canopy. And we're closing that camp up for now for this year. But it was great, as always, to have you out there, garrett, and it was good that we got a little bit of fishing in and then you landed that nice rainbow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was always my favorite times being up there, for sure. Just the peace and quiet and the fishing, even just hiking through the bush looking for chaga. It's almost like a little bit of a treasure hunt there every time. But yeah, it's always a great time. I definitely enjoy it and it was nice that I was able to catch a fish because I didn't get to go fishing at all all summer because I've been out in Saskatchewan the potash mine there so I've been very busy with work so it was nice to get a little time off.
Speaker 6:Well, thanks, garrett, and it's always a pleasure to spend some time in the, in the forest. And you know, once in a while it just reaches the point where I say, you know, I got to get out in the bush, I got to get out, I got to get away, I got to wind down, just like you said, and spend a little bit of time in some of the old forests and enjoy things out there under the canopy.
Speaker 2:What brings people together more than fishing and hunting? How about food? I'm Chef Antonio Muleka, and I have spent years catering to the stars. Now, on Outdoor Journal Radio's Eat Wild podcast, luis Hookset and I are bringing our expertise and Rolodex to our real passion the outdoors.
Speaker 4:Each week we're bringing you inside the boat tree stand or duck blind and giving you real advice that you can use to make the most out of your fish and game.
Speaker 2:You're going to flip that duck breast over. Once you get a nice hard sear on that breast, you don't want to sear the actual meat. And it's not just us chatting here. If you can name a celebrity, we've probably worked with them and I think you might be surprised who likes to hunt and fish. When Kit Harington asks me to prepare him sashimi with his bass, I couldn't say no. Whatever Taylor shared and wanted, I made sure I had it. Burgers, steak, anything off the barbecue. That's a true cowboy. All Jeremy Renner wanted to have was lemon ginger shots all day. No-transcript.