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 80: Exploring the Untamed Beauty of Central Ontario
Joined by our esteemed guest Pierre, we navigate the rugged beauty of his homeland, sharing tales of wood stoves, encounters with wildlife, and the indomitable spirit that northern living requires.
Amidst the challenges of frigid temperatures, our conversation shifts to innovative solutions that keep families warm and secure. We delve into the intricacies of wood-burning stoves and share an inspiring story of perseverance, featuring a recovery journey from a CN truck accident to his academic pursuits in Sudbury. The episode paints a vivid picture of life in the cold, highlighting the creativity and resolve of communities adapting to the harsh winter conditions. Through personal anecdotes and expert insights, we celebrate the enduring connections forged by shared adversities and triumphs.
Back in 2016,. Frank and I had a vision to amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.
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Speaker 3: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. 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. So join me today for another great episode, and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. Under the Canopy, all right.
Speaker 3:Well, good day y'all. And it's cold out there, a little bit cold where we are. We're out running our chocolate lab this morning, which wasn't too bad, normally when it gets this cold I think it was minus 16, that it starts to lift the paw and stuff like that. But he had the nose to the ground and was looking, and I sent him in the bush a couple of times to see if we can chase out those local coyotes that are starting to occupy the area. We have some problem with them coyotes, in that they seem to like local dogs and not to play with either, but for lunch or brunch or some of the smaller ones and some of the stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Anyways, we were out with Ensign Gunner and, yeah, it was kind of cool. So we grabbed our usual pile of sticks and twigs for kindling for the fire later today and we'll put that on and to all our listeners across Canada and the States and Switzerland and Ghana and Trinidad and Tobago. We really appreciate you listening to our show and, as always, if you've got any questions or any suggestions for the show, we'd be more than happy to see what we can do to put it all together. Anyways, we've got a repeat guest on the show, my buddy from the far north of Ontario, pierre. How's it going up there, pierre?
Speaker 4:Very cold. Jerry. I'm in the house feeding the wood stoves.
Speaker 3:Feeding the wood stoves. You're in the cold, okay, so very cold. What's very cold, pierre?
Speaker 4:I don't know. My thermostats seem to be arguing with each other, but one's at 38, 39, and one's at 40, 41. So around there let's just say minus 40. Last couple days Minus 40. Yeah, it's just a white fog, you're not going outside, are you? No, we're running equipment and stuff, jerry, and after minus 30, it's kind of a waste of time. You know, you heat everything up unless you let everything run all night, and it's only a couple of days. It's going to warm back up again a bit.
Speaker 3:So choose your battles, and it's only a couple of days it's going to warm back up again a bit, so choose your battles. Well, I know I sent you a picture of my son Garrett, who's a regular on the podcast and he's out Saskatchewan working a minus 44. And you can sure see it in his face. But an exposed face like that, you know, get concerned At least fathers do, or parents do about frostbite and stuff like that. So you're inside and got the stoves going. What do you, Pierre? What are you using for heat to heat up where you're at?
Speaker 4:Well, we just put a new boiler in Jerry, so we're heating two homes, two fairly large homes. As you know. We put Portage and main boiler, which has a fan like a blower, on it Right and it keeps the water between. We have it set so it keeps the water flowing through the house between 170 and 180. I wasn't a big fan of these stoves at one time but I'm really liking this one. Very, very efficient. It'll definitely do 12 hours on a stocking of wood.
Speaker 3:On one stocking of wood. It'll run 12 hours.
Speaker 4:And keep that water between 170 and 180. Right now it's maybe burning a little more wood because we're capturing more heat out of the water. Right, if the houses are cold, like we have in-floor heat rads, all kinds of stuff, so maybe only doing 10 hours on a stocking, but uh, but the house is pretty, it's pretty warm, so so okay, so explain.
Speaker 3:A lot of people may not understand how this boiler works and and it kind of fill us in. So it's not in the house, right, the boiler's outside.
Speaker 4:Uh, it's about 80 feet from our house and it's 225 feet from Philip's house and everything runs underground. And then once you get the water in the house and it's your choice how you exchange the heat. So we put in a makeshift system in floor heat. I have also a plenum with some blow heat and I have some old-time rads, so it gives me the choice if it's hot out, we unplug the blow heat, like the plenum heat, because it just gets too hot in the house, like if it's minus five or seven, we unplug that and just run the other heat. But no, it's doing really, really well.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, hey, wait a sec. What's that other dog I see in the picture there? That's not LD.
Speaker 4:Little dog. No, he doesn't go too far. In the morning he's down to about 13 steps out the door and then he does his business. He's a little PO that the cat can poo in a box and he can't.
Speaker 3:What's the other dog I see going by? Because I got you on video there.
Speaker 4:That's Phillip's dog Maisie, so we have her over here for a couple of days. Phillip's gone to Sudbury with Mayan, his son, oh what's going on in Sudbury? Well, mayan's in school there, but you remember the accident he had a few years ago with running into the CN truck. So he's going to get his teeth fixed, implants and stuff. Oh, so it's pretty intense.
Speaker 3:So Mayan goes to school in Sudbury, not Timmins.
Speaker 4:No, there's a university in Sudbury that he liked. He knew some people that went there. He's doing business and sports administration Okay, and they have a really good program there and it's close to home, like he can drive home in four hours.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:All that kind of stuff, you know. So he's going to school there. He's in his first year doing quite well, so he's got Okay.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so Philip's taken down the. To be honest, I don't remember the accident with the. You're talking that he was involved with what happened there.
Speaker 4:He was coming home for lunch and you know how our road is there's a bad curve at before the tracks. Yeah well, there was a cn truck park there and it's a little bit of a hill, so he put his head down to to give the pedals a little more of a workout and there was a piece of rail sticking out of the back of the truck and it hit him in the mouth. Oh really, yeah, it was like 70 stitches. They had to reattach his top lip, knocked most of his top teeth out. It was a real mess, jerry.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I didn't. This is the first I'm hearing about it. I did not know that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so now he's getting like bone grafts done and they wanted to wait till he was old enough so that he stopped growing or most of his growing was done before they did the implants and all that stuff.
Speaker 3:Right. So how old is he now? First year of university? He's 18.
Speaker 4:Hmm, Wow, yeah, he wasn't looking forward to it. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 3:And there was no red flag on the rail sticking out. Probably right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was just one of them fluke things and the guy that he hit is a friend, like a personal friend, you know, of Phillips and stuff, so I felt so frigging bad, I mean.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, how can you not? Yeah, okay, so back to your heat. So you got this boiler outside that runs lines and it's obviously got an electric pump that circulates the water through the house.
Speaker 4:Yes, Through the houses. Yeah, there are two small Danfoss pumps on the stove and that circulates the water not extremely fast. The water goes through the house, like not at a slower pace so that you have time to capture the heat. So the water comes in at 180, 170, goes back out at 160. Right, and then the stove gets it back up to temperature you know.
Speaker 3:Okay, and so these lines are just so and just kind of give people an understanding. So you're in an unorganized township, right, and so the lines are buried in the water or in the ground in the water.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, we can do whatever we want here, jerry. It's called freedom. And then you want to dig a hole. You dig a hole. Yeah, we bury the lines.
Speaker 3:You mean you don't have to get a permit to dig a hole there? No, jerry, you can build a house right next door to mine tomorrow without a permit or nothing, and this is the stuff that people want to hear about. So these are unorganized townships, but we'll get into that in a little bit. Um, so I'm back to the heat stuff. So you got this. This like it looks like what? Like an outhouse out in the back yeah, like a like.
Speaker 4:it's, uh, maybe about four or five feet wide and about eight, seven feet long and about eight feet high, and then it's got a firebox. It holds about 300 gallons of water, right, and then of course you heat the water and then the pump, it circulates, you know.
Speaker 3:Do they use water all the time, or sometimes do they use antifreeze of some type, some guys?
Speaker 4:use glycol, jerry, but this is our only source of heat, more or less, so I can't really let the stove go out, so I didn't feel like going to buy 300 gallons of glycol. Now you can run your water a little hotter with the glycol, because I think it doesn't boil the same, but we're running 170, 180, which is fine, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, glycol, you know, can be expensive, but I happen to recall that once upon a time don't know if it's still true or not that a lot of the wrecking yards that have cars Right. They give, they virtually give that stuff away.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you can get used glycol, yeah, but there's just no point. And then every year I kind of flush the system. So if I had glycol I wouldn't be able to do that, I'd have to recapture it. Right, you know, this is just water. It goes a little brown. We empty the system, fill it back up, you know kind of thing.
Speaker 3:How much wood are you putting in to get a 10, 12-hour burn out of it?
Speaker 4:Round logs 10-inch round logs about 24 inches long.
Speaker 3:I'll put about 8 or 10 of them in there, really yeah 8 or 10 12-inch logs 24 inches long Right and you put 8 or 10 12-inch logs 24 inches long Right and you put eight or 10 of them in there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and you don't have to split it. That's the beauty of it. I mean, if the fire is low in the morning, like if I haven't been there for 12 hours, and it's just a bed of coals, right, I'll split the first piece and just lay it flat on the coals and then I just load round wood in there.
Speaker 3:And what kind of wood are you burning in there? I mean, you're not getting the oaks and the maples that that we have down here um. We're burning jack, pine and birch jack, pine and birch and you're getting eight to twelve, ten, twelve hour burns out of a load with jack, with pine and white birch, white or yellow birch.
Speaker 4:It's white birch area and I I kind of put the birch on top, like I'll load it full of pine at night and then I'll put three, four pieces of birch. It's white birch, jerry, and I kind of put the birch on top, like I'll load it full of pine at night and then I'll put three, four pieces of birch on top, which gives you nice coals in the morning, you know. Yep, and we didn't have time to do wood ahead this year, so Phillip bought a truckload of wood, really, yeah. Well, I was down for a while there, just as we were supposed to go get wood, and yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So how dry is the wood that you're burning?
Speaker 4:The jack pine is dry, the birch is not.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 4:So and it's not a problem? No, it's not been a problem.
Speaker 3:No, you said you got a bit of hesitation there.
Speaker 4:So yeah, I mean it would be better if the birch was split and dried, right, but the way it's just how you load it Like now. I got to be more careful how I load the stove. I can't just put birch in there, I got to, you know.
Speaker 3:That's why you put the jack pine on the bottom. Yeah, and then a couple of pieces of birch just to extend your burn time, kind of thing. Right, and you haven't got slab woods from the mill, because you run a mill there and you supply a lot of wood for quite a few people from you know what. An hour, an hour and a half away, they'll drive to your mill to pick up wood.
Speaker 4:Right, I did burn a lot of slab in the fall, right, but it's hard to keep like, it's hard to get 12 hours burn time with slab Right, because it's just. I mean I did burn a lot, I mix it in, you know Mm-hmm but, and I still have a couple loads in the back, but anyway, oh, when you come down I'll have to see.
Speaker 3:next time you're down I'll have to see if I can grab you some ironwood. Oh yeah, have you ever burned ironwood?
Speaker 4:No.
Speaker 3:Okay. So if you're getting 10, 12 out of jack pine and probably pretty green birch, you're going to get probably 16, 18 out of ironwood, right, if you?
Speaker 4:filled it right up with ironwood. Yeah, because actually the stove does the thinking right Once the water's hot. That fan just shuts down. Oh, I see. It just seals off the stove so you're not burning any wood. It that fan just shuts down. Oh, I see. It just seals off the stove so you're not burning any wood when that fan is not on oh, okay, now I understand.
Speaker 4:So there's a kind of a regulator to regulate the, the, the temperature of the of the water, by controlling the temperature, the amount of fire that's in the box right, like if it's if, like if it takes a half hour for the water to go from 180 to 170, well, the blower on the stove is not on Right. It sits there and smolders Right and then, when you need the heat, the fan comes back on, supercharges the wood and then gets the water back up to temperature.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:Yeah Cool.
Speaker 3:So you know, for those that don't know, pierre and I Pierre worked with me when I was minister. We brought him in because he runs a forest harvesting company and we did a bit of a. So he was a policy advisor for the forest industry province-wide in Ontario when we had that privilege and honor and do you remember that run that we did out towards Thunder Bay? Yeah, barely, jerry, not that long ago, peter, you got to remember that. Yeah, yeah, you and I drove from basically Timmins over.
Speaker 4:I remember. Now, jerry, I'm getting a flashback.
Speaker 3:So just remember that Kruger Mill that we were in. And the yard manager comes to me and well, maybe I wasn't supposed to say that, but he says I don't know what you did, minister, but we got too much wood. Please don't send me any more wood.
Speaker 4:Right right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4:That plywood mill is still going.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And like I told him there, I said, look, that's what we want to hear. We can you know we keep you going. Okay, so you got lots of wood. Now we got to make sure the other mills are going Right, right. But just north of there Greenstone Right, they renamed the community up there they had a house where three sides of the house was covered in dirt Right, okay, so they banked up all the dirt around the house, so it was almost three sides were completely covered right up to the roof with dirt, and just the front door was how you got in and out and everything else from that house.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:And that was because the winter conditions, like you're talking, minus 40. And I found it very interesting, but it's interesting to hear these kind of things. So tell us then, Pierre, so you're getting a 10 and 12 hour burn who's doing the night run to fill the burner? Is it you or is it Phil?
Speaker 4:Well, let's just say I did the math on the old stove, jerry. We had the old boiler lasted 23 years and if I fill it, I was filling that three times a day for, let's say, eight months a year. I figured out I fed the stove over 19 000 times. How many? 19 000 times 19 000? But I do the most of the stove. Okay, yeah, you know, it's just what I do. So if I, if I need to to, philip will do it. Right, you know. So it's not a big thing. Or Christine, she'll do it too, like if she's home, she'll go at noon and put a couple pieces in. Yeah, you know that kind of thing, oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Christine's great like that. Like you were saying, the Mennonites were shocked and she was out in the bush and Christine starts up the chainsaw and starts running the chainsaw to cut the cedar for the Mennonites that you were supplying up that way as well.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, she's on the ice right now, jerry, she's taking charge of the crossing we're doing on a river, so we got the ice hut out there with her, mr Buddy, and she's got the pump going Right. She's pumping water. We're up to about 22 inches ice, I think, so we need about 20 a minimum of 26 for me to cross with the shovel so when you say the shovel, an excavator the excavator.
Speaker 3:Okay, so all right. So let well, just before we get into that, I remember, um, when we were, when I was living in just Crooked Creek, if you know where Crooked Creek is. No, you don't know where Crooked Creek is, I don't know that. No, well, it's straight south of Starkville, you know? East of Brownsville. Okay, northern Newtonville.
Speaker 4:Oh, Newtonville, yeah, now I got you Jerry.
Speaker 3:Okay, we had a wood-oil combination furnace, so we had two burners in the furnace and we burned wood in the one, just a small, you know 12-inch stuff. But you got enough of a fire pot in there that you'd burn a heck of a lot of wood, and then, when the wood burned down, the oil would kick in automatically, which was pretty good, right, right. So there's different ways of heating these sorts of things, and the other thing then, pierre, is not only that, but what are you doing for cooking? Aren't you supplementing heat with some of the cooking stove that you brought in there?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, you helped me bring in that big cook stove, so the last couple of days we've had that going just for a little bit of extra heat, you know Right. So not great guns though, but it's on, so you know. But we haven't had it going for almost a month. It hasn't been that cold. We had a hell of a time freezing muskeg, yeah yeah, even last week before this cold spell. So I'm anxious to see how things are going to look after this cold spell in the muskeg.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, yeah. Well, we had the tractor helping us bring in that wood stove.
Speaker 4:I recall Right, the tractor's handy yeah.
Speaker 3:The tractor's Garrett. For those that don't know that, simply because he works like a tractor picking up the stove and the other stuff. But yeah, it's a, so explain that cook stove that you have there a little bit.
Speaker 4:It's a Robey cook stove, so it's got a nice huge firebox on it, it's got an oven and it'll hold fire overnight as well. Oh really, and it's a great stove, jerry. They've gone up in price a bit, though. I think we paid like $3,500 for that one. Now they're up almost $5,000. Oh really, yeah, price a bit, though. I think we paid like 3 500 bucks for that one. Now they're up almost five grand. Oh really, yeah, but I mean, you get what you pay for. It's a lifetime stove, you know, and if you were heating like a thousand square foot house or 1200 square foot house, I think you could definitely do it with that stove. Well, how big is your place then, pierre? I don't know, jerry, it must be five, six, seven thousand feet that's a big difference between five, six, seven thousand.
Speaker 3:How many bedrooms? You got Seven, seven bedrooms, okay, and there's only two of us here and only two of you. No, you got LD and you got Phillip's dog, and the cat.
Speaker 4:Oh, the cat takes up her whole room.
Speaker 3:Now, have you ever taught or tried to burn any coal?
Speaker 4:No, you know what? There was a coal furnace in the old house when Christine first moved in here, yeah, and there was actually coal in the basement, so I think they used to burn coal. Now, why they would do that in Northern Ontario I don't know, but maybe it came in on the train Like I mean, it was steam at one time, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So the old water tower is still here for the trains to load up with water. They haven't torn that down yet. Oh, so I guess it was coal around. I don't know if the guys stole it or they bought it. I have no idea, but anyway.
Speaker 3:Well, sometimes, depending on when I talk to people, there was kind of a soft coal and a hard coal. The hard coal burned for hours and hours and hours and a load of that would last you a whole night and you'd get more than your 10 or 12 hours. You'd load that up and it would last. And, of course, the temperature. It burns a lot hotter than wood. So maybe that's why I don't know. But I just wondered. Yeah, because I've got an old cook stove from my first house, which was my grandparents' on my mother's side's house had a cook stove in there that had an oven and we kept it. When we sold the place we bought the family house and we were the one two third generation in that one that my grandfather built Wow, but it had a firebox in it as well, but it had coal grates in it.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:So I'm sure that it was burning coal in that at some point, but we only burned wood in it. But now I save it for a small camp like yours. And what's happening with your camp now?
Speaker 4:You got it all shut down Well actually somebody went and stayed there about a week and a half, two weeks ago, oh really, and the road's open. I've got the guy that owns Horwood Lake Lodge, he's got a grader, so he's opening the road for me, because I'll probably head up there in February to cut my wood for the mill, since we're done this stupid mining job.
Speaker 3:So you don't have to worry about snow load. And what are they using for heat in that camp? And how big's that camp?
Speaker 4:When we say camp.
Speaker 3:It's like a cottage sort of thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's. What is it? 16 by 32 and two stories.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so you can do the math on that. We didn't want it too big because we've got to heat it. So what are you using for a heater? Just a regular wood cook stove, yeah, yeah, which has been working really well.
Speaker 3:Right right. We'll probably spend the end of february and march here yeah, getting our, oh really yeah, yeah okay, so what does ld and and maybe people you can tell who ld is and he's our little 12 he's our little dash hound uh, miniature dash hound.
Speaker 4:So we bring him to work because we can't leave him at home. Right, got his little coat on, but he spends time in the ice hut. It's funny because that ice hut has little windows in it. So if christine's on the ice flooding the ice, he jumps on the table in the ice hut, looks out the window and watches her because it's heated, right. So he figured that out yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, how deep is the snow load up there now?
Speaker 4:Not a crazy amount of snow, jerry, maybe a couple feet of snow. The snowmobile trail to Timmins is in. Okay, they just got it in about a week or two ago. Right, they got stuck, of course, with the groomer, so same old thing, you know. But uh, yeah, it's looking good now. But now that the the foliate to shapplo end, they're having trouble with that because some of the landowners that the snowmobile trail crosses don't want the snowmobile trail on their land anymore. So now they got to redo the trail to go those lots and it's, it's, it's Anyway.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, because that association usually has that all shored up before the winter comes in when they start to do the work.
Speaker 4:Well, people love to do loops right, like they love to. You know, if you can leave from Timmins and go to the Sioux, then it's great, you know. But anyway, we'll see what goes on there. Hey we just had a lady move to town, her husband, she has two kids, she worked, she got the permanent posting at the ambulance station here. Okay, she bought one of the nicest houses in town, right For I think, $150,000 or $160,000. Okay, she's like I would never be able to live in a house like this anywhere else, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah and so yeah, but then you got all the taxes that you guys pay for everything up there, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, oh yeah, Over $1,000 a year, Jerry.
Speaker 3:And what do you get for $1,000 a year?
Speaker 4:Well, you get fire protection sewer water.
Speaker 3:That includes sewer and water.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay, and lights and stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a little like that's all bundled in there, jerry. I forget how, maybe it's $1,200 a year, Like it's just a bundle right.
Speaker 3:Right, but you get sewer and water with that too.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we're on. We got public like a water plant, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we're spending more than that on water alone down here, right right, which is ridiculous in my opinion. But, like you said, yeah, you're unorganized and you've got this freedom stuff that everybody talks about and wants. Certainly you have what a lot of people would love.
Speaker 6: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. Hmm, 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, I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 6:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes All the other guys would go golfing.
Speaker 1:Me and G To scientists. To chefs.
Speaker 6: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 3:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we've got Rob from Hamilton here, who's had some success with the Chaga cream. Rob, can you tell us about it?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I've used it on blemishes, cuts, just basically all around healing Anything kind of blemish. It speeds it up really quick. Great, it speeds the healing process up really well. It leaves no marks and doesn't stain. It smells okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, thanks, rob, appreciate that. You're welcome. We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health 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. 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.
Speaker 3:Okay, so the impact on the snow you think it's going to have, it's going to be negative impact because you've got all those fires right now in California. Right, because everything's so dry, and I know when we worked in the ministry that was a big thing is how deep was, how was the snow load? Because it impacted how much moisture was in the soil to determine how, what the fire forest fires would be potentially like.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was weird. Like last year, jerry, we opened up our road to the property twice Like there was no snow. There was no snowmobile trail, the coldest day was minus 29 for one day, and it just was one of those weird years, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But there was no snow, no snow, snow load, but it just happened to rain every four or five days in may. Okay, so everything like we didn't have much of a fire season here last year, right, and I don't it's hard to predict whether we'll have one this year or not, you know, right. So, but the the snow load is definitely down right, and the weather is definitely warmer than it used to be, it seems, anyway. So, like the old days, my dad used to say if you didn't have your roads froze by Christmas, you were kind of in a pickle, you know. Well, there's no way you're going to freeze a road before Christmas now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that was some of the big stuff, because a lot of the forest industry used to get what they called winter wood right, yeah, they do all their swamps and everything in the winter. Yeah, because they get through all the swamps and everything else on the frozen ground and be able to haul the logs out. But they can't do that, I guess, now quite as much as they used to be. So their winter wood would have to be a major concentration once it's frozen enough to be able to get winter wood out.
Speaker 4:Well, I'm anxious to see what our swamp's going to look like after this two, two and a half days of cold, Because when I left there we had a baruca on it like a track piece of equipment that looks like a little dump truck. It weighs about eight tons, so I had no trouble getting that on the swamp, but we've been at it for a month like packing everything down.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:But I tried to go with the 22-ton shovel and there was cracks in the snow like I was sinking a bit, you know.
Speaker 3:Uh-oh.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I'm working on pads right now, like there's, I have to sit on pads in the swamp because there's no frost at all in the swamp. So I got 8 by 14 feet wide mats, like swamp mats.
Speaker 4:Okay, well, I don't know what a swamp mat is. Is it rubber or what? No, it's just wood. Jerry, three layers of two by eights, bolted, okay, and so I sit on two of those. Then I leapfrog the third one forward, move up 10 feet, do my work, put all the wood I can find under the swamp pad and then move up and move up and do that all day Right. Find under the swamp pad and then move up and move up and do that all day right. But usually you can just go without those things. But now, that's that's. There's no way you're doing, um, that kind of work without those swamp pads. You know.
Speaker 3:Okay, let's, let's explain to listeners what's going on here, what are you working at, or what's happening here, what, what are you doing?
Speaker 4:we're doing, um, a diamond drill, like they're going to go in there with diamond drills which they'll sink, uh, maybe I think about 250 meter holes, and, uh, they're looking for gold, of course. So, uh, the drill is probably going to come in, let's say, another week, week and a half, two weeks from now.
Speaker 3:So how big is the drill and how much weight does it weigh?
Speaker 4:well, they have to move the drill. The drill is not that heavy, maybe 15 tons, but they need a D6 to move it which weighs about 25, 26 tons. So you've got to prep everything. And then they've got to pump water. So right now they're going to be about almost a kilometer from their water source, so they've got to move another pump shack to the water source, pump the water in hoses back to the drill, heat the water.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:And it's quite a show. So they never shut down, they just go 24 hours a day, because if you shut down, everything will freeze and you got to start all over again. You know.
Speaker 3:So you're making ice over these areas. So what kind of area terrain are you going over with these big machines to get to where you're drilling?
Speaker 4:Well right, now they're drilling in what I would call typical swamp. So some areas have some pretty nice trees, like black spruce trees four, five, six-inch trees, but then as soon as you get into that real muskeg you've got like one or two-inch trees. So you can't really ride on that mat because the 20-ton shovel just crushes all the wood so you don't get much float Like it doesn't float much, so that's why we've got to freeze that. So what I do is I go with the swamp pads and I pack all the snow down, get whatever wood I can, put it under the pads and prep all the sites so that when the drill gets there they can actually get there. And prep all the sites so that when the drill gets there.
Speaker 3:They can actually get there, Right. So, but you're making ice, you're pumping, drilling holes in the ice and then bringing water up.
Speaker 4:No, I'm not using water on those sites, but they want to cross that river and then do what's called sonic drilling on the other side, which is a different type of drill that just goes to the bedrock.
Speaker 4:It doesn't really go into the bedrock that much, okay, so it weighs about um 15 tons. So I got to make sure I got enough ice to cross the river. So I'm hoping to get at least 30 inches ice, because it might melt too, like if they come in late and we get a heat, uh like a bit of a hot spell, yeah, I might lose ice, so I want a little bit of extra ice. I could I could cross on 26 ice, but I'd rather have 30, you know.
Speaker 3:And what do you do to get this ice? How does that work we?
Speaker 4:pump water every day, Jerry. Every day we build an inch, an inch or two ice.
Speaker 3:And how many times a day?
Speaker 4:do you pump? Well, with the weather, the way it's been, we've been pumping once per day. So we go there, we pump in the morning, let it freeze, go back the next day, pump in the morning Like we're not in a big panic because I've still got work on this side of the ice Right, I'm not going to be crossing that for another couple of weeks, so we're not really in a panic mode to get the ice built up Like we didn't even go the last couple of days. You know, yeah.
Speaker 3:So when it's this cold out, is it hard on the equipment? Do you know what you're using to pump it and stuff like that?
Speaker 4:yeah, you got to be on the ball. We didn't get what's called a typhoon pump, because they're fairly expensive. We only had one crossing to do so we're kind of using a trash pump, oh, yeah, yeah, um, which we bring in the ice hut, you know okay, and we make sure we drain it and then, uh, in the morning we put the heat back on, give it an hour, but at minus 30 um, the water doesn't make it through the hose, it freezes like. We got about 50 feet of hose, yeah, the water will go about 15 feet and freeze.
Speaker 3:Oh really, yeah, and so you can't even pump the water so when you put the heat on, what kind of in the uh the, what kind of heat are you putting on in there?
Speaker 4:Just a Mr Buddy Jerry.
Speaker 3:A propane heater yeah yeah, a gas heater. And so what are you using? A 20-pound tank or a 30-pound tank?
Speaker 4:Yeah, 30-pounders, 20-pounders, it don't matter. We do, probably a week on a 20. Like we don't run it all the time, Right? So the key is to drain the pump, make sure all the water is out of it and then heat it back up again so it don't break.
Speaker 3:Right, so what's the price of propane up there? Yeah, I don't know, jerry, you don't know, I don't know. This is very cost important for you, shouldn't you know?
Speaker 4:I should know, but Philip knows, I know.
Speaker 3:It's 86 cents. What is that? A liter or a pound here?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, probably about the same.
Speaker 3:You think so that?
Speaker 4:would have been more. What's the price of?
Speaker 3:gas.
Speaker 4:Gas is about $1.70.
Speaker 3:$1.70 for regular.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think I haven't checked in a while it's around $1.50 here.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much. Goodbye current federal legislators that brought in these extra charges. Yeah, those are handy. Oh yeah, you look at the price down here $150 something and you get up there as $170 something Very costly. How long does it take to make 30 inches of ice on a river? How big is the river?
Speaker 4:and how fast is it flowing? It's only about maybe 80 feet wide only about 80 feet wide.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's not flowing real quick. Okay.
Speaker 4:So it's pretty easy crossing to do. Have you done this one before, not this one. No, we were in that area when we were on the lakes. So on the lakes we were doing a kilometer and a half on the lake and then some big pads off of that, like 100 by 100 pads. Okay, so we had the better pumps then, but it took us about over three weeks to get there. We had 36 inches of solid ice.
Speaker 3:Really.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they wanted a tractor on the ice and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:So 36 inches of solid ice on the lakes? How big is the lake we're talking?
Speaker 4:It was a pretty big lake, jerry, maybe a couple hundred acres, four or five hundred acre lake. Okay, yeah, yeah. So we went all the way around an island and the pads like your road. The rules are that your ice road kind of thing has to be 75 feet wide as well, so you need 36 inches of ice 75 feet wide as well. So you need 36 inches ice 75 feet wide why is that uh?
Speaker 4:you said the rules. Well, there's like standards, right, like before these guys go on the ice, they everything has to be to to code, kind of thing right okay, yeah so we had to go check all the ice they you know, because you don't want to get out there. And you go oh geez, we only had 20 in this spot. No, no, no yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, how deep are these swamps and these lakes in the river that you're talking about crossing?
Speaker 4:The river's not deep, jerry, it's maybe eight feet.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and the swamps. Well, it's just pure mud, like pure topsoil, and then clay Topsoil, maybe eight, 10 feet, and then you hit clay 8, 10 feet of mud.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that'd be tough to get out of, and if you were going down in there you wouldn't want to be there.
Speaker 4:It's 50 grand if you get stuck. Yeah, well, you got to go get another shovel, yeah. And then you got the floating. You got to roll in there. We, we're almost seven, uh, we're about, uh, five kilometers from the main road.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:So it's, it's quite a job just to get in there, you know.
Speaker 3:So there's quite a bit of gold.
Speaker 4:Exploration in the area is there Quite a bit right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this company has been at it for a while. I'm not going to mention their name, but Okay, yeah, anything else. So what other kinds of mines are in the area?
Speaker 4:There's another mine in development not too far from town. Now I forget. It's not gold, it's an ostracite, some kind of weird rock. It's a very purple rock and I don't know what they're using it for it's batteries, maybe some kind of thing. So they did quite a bit of work out there last year and stuff's being tested Right and they might use it to make cement. It's I'm not sure.
Speaker 3:But we'll see if it flies or not. It's, oh, what is that? Purple rocks. It's not amethyst, though, right?
Speaker 4:No, no, no no Anorthosite or something like that. I forget the name, but they did a 50-ton sample, I think last August or September. Yeah, yeah, so they sent all that away and they're waiting, you know, to hear back.
Speaker 3:And isn't there a telc, mine or something?
Speaker 4:as well. Yeah, I just worked there for about 28 days. I was back in the swamp over there too, on swamp mats, right, because they're expanding their ponds like their settling ponds. Yeah, so they had to do drilling there as well to see how much overburden they had. You know, okay, but it was a bad swamp there too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what is the purple fluorite that you were taking out?
Speaker 4:I don't know.
Speaker 3:Jerry, okay, and so these settling ponds. So just so people understand, so maybe you can kind of. I mean they are because we worked with them in the ministry, but what I mean, the settling pond, when they this talk.
Speaker 4:Mine uses a lot of water so in order to be able to dump the water back into the river, they have to they. It goes into the I think there's two settling ponds, I'm not 100 sure, but it goes into a pond, they. They let it settle so that all the contaminants settle to the bottom, and then it goes into a pond. They let it settle so that all the contaminants settle to the bottom and then it goes into another pond, settles again, and then they can pump it. Once it passes the environmental rules, then they're allowed to pump it back into the river.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, to make sure that it's well. Yeah, a lot of them say a lot of the water. You know he talks to the mining industry that does that, and what they pump back in is cleaner than the water in the river, according to them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you don't want fish with three eyes. No Well, there's lots of natural mercury in the water. Like you know that, jerry, like the groundhog is. They say not to eat pickerel when they're over four or five pounds because they're full of mercury.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's one of the residuals that come out of a lot of the timber and they used to. When the timber starts to break down, the mercury content and that has a tendency to get into the water courses.
Speaker 4:Right, but like we always said, jerry, couldn't you just put the fish upside down in the freezer? Then the mercury would go down and then just cut the head off. Okay, maybe that doesn't work, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3:How long do you figure you're working with this mining stuff? How long is that going to take to do the job?
Speaker 4:I think another month, Jerry, maybe five weeks.
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah we'll see how it goes. And then so all this equipment, equipment, you've got all this equipment. Are you renting it or what we're renting?
Speaker 4:uh, I think philip bought the argo and we're renting the maruka and the shovel the maruka is that tracked uh kind of a dump truck sort of thing yeah, little box on the back right and the shovel is is just a.
Speaker 3:How big a shovel is it?
Speaker 4:it's a 22 ton jcb with a bucket and a sum. It's got a sum on it so you can handle the wood yep yeah cool, very interesting yeah yeah, so what other?
Speaker 3:so you said, probably in february you're going to your camp and then start cutting the logs for your mill, right?
Speaker 4:yeah, I found a nice big patch of oversized spruce and a lot of them are dying Right Near one of the lakes, near Far Lake, and I'm trying to get in there. So I did a lot of cruising last fall and I linked up some old diamond drill trails and I'm just going to see if I can get in there. I don't know if I'll be able to freeze my way in or not, Right, but I've got a backup plan.
Speaker 3:So are you using the drone much to seek out your wood supplies around?
Speaker 4:I'm going to be flying the drone. I'm always scared to fly because I think I'm going to crash it all the time.
Speaker 3:Well, what good is it if you bought it and you can't use?
Speaker 4:it, christine flies it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I just yell at her to take a picture. Take a picture, Okay. But yeah, I'm definitely going to learn to fly it because I got too much to do like exploring, right, and it just saves so much time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this picks up a lot of time. Do you think I could use a drone to look for Chaga?
Speaker 4:Geez, I don't know, jerry, I think it'd be too hard with the canopy, yeah, but you could definitely identify the wood type, like you know. If you, if you know you're into a bunch of yellow and white birch, then you know, okay, that's, that's good, that's a good spot you know right.
Speaker 3:But uh, once the leaves are off the trees and well still the canopy, it might be difficult. But how good are those cameras on those drones to be able to get down and look close?
Speaker 4:it's pretty good, jerry yeah, it's pretty good, jerry. Yeah, it's pretty good. They're about $1,500 for like the one that we bought, you know Right, but a guy in town's got the one and he's got the goggles. Oh yeah, yeah, but it makes you sick, man, does it?
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 4:You tried, it did you I didn't try it, but a buddy of mine tried it. He said, holy God, I'm going to get sick. So, explain how the goggle one works. Well, it's just like you wear these. It's like a, I don't know, like a mask, I guess and you see everything like real time right in front of your face. So it makes it easier to fly the drone, I think.
Speaker 3:Oh, really.
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, then you don't have light. Like you know, when you're trying to look at the little pad, you got to make sure that it's. You know that the light's not hitting the pad. But as soon as you let go of the joysticks, I mean you can just let go of the joysticks and hit home and the drone flies home Right, like it's not that complicated.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so if you shop around, there's some different prices. I know I've seen a couple of them that I always thought would be great to use for seeking out patches of jag, and once you find, you know the way it works. Yeah, yeah, when you find a patch, you usually find a bunch of them in that area and then nothing anywhere else. Right, you know, you get five or six trees or a small plot of it growing in the same area.
Speaker 4:Well, you have enough experience now, Jerry. You should be able to sort that out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I tell people, you know, if the leeward side of the hill for some reason seems to be better than the windward side.
Speaker 4:Elevation too, I found it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you mentioned that before and I haven't found anything with elevation to be consistent for chaga growth. But mind you, when we're picking we're hauling in packs and stuff like that. I'm not checking elevation levels or grids on my maps or running grids. Okay, so with the temperature out like minus 40 out there, have you tried throwing the boiling water in the air and it freezing all completely? No, I haven't tried that, Jerry, I just wondered. I mean, you got to have something to do up there in the minus 40 with two and a couple of dogs and a cat and seven bedrooms. You got to entertain yourself somehow.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we seem to find some entertainment every once in a while.
Speaker 3:Jerry, it's only minus 31, so oh so, but you've got all the, the bells and whistles and the toys or the uh, the, the tvs and the. You're using starlink still no bell came in.
Speaker 4:Now they uh. So there's a wire that comes right in and it's cheaper, less expensive and it's really high speed. So it's, it's really great. So we got good. Yeah, we, we got rid of the uh elon's system there yeah, well, josh, uh, my oldest son.
Speaker 3:He picked up starlink and we use it at the camp, where there isn't any service there, as well as um, when we're in uh um, the up at uh pocket there, we take it up there with us as well. Right it? It's handy for that. Yeah, it's kind of tough, especially these guys being football nuts watching football out in the fall season. So they want to keep that and it was quite surprising how good it was. But that's okay, that's cool, all right. Well, thanks very much, pierre. Anything else you want to enlighten us on that's going up there that we don't need to know about.
Speaker 4:Not much, Jerry. I think we covered most of it.
Speaker 3:When are you going to be down?
Speaker 4:Good question. Usually I try to do a run in the spring, but I'll see how my logging goes.
Speaker 3:Okay, if you're not going to be down before then I'm not cutting you any ironwood, then I'll burn myself.
Speaker 4:Well, nicky wants me to go out west and help build. So what's he building out there? Well, he's got a piece of land there on cortez island and he wants to start to put up a little little house and stuff.
Speaker 3:So is it organized or unorganized there? Unorganized very right, and so what's nicky doing?
Speaker 4:maybe you can kind of enlighten people there what he's doing he's still climbing trees um, logging a bit, and he's setting up like over there they'll climb a tree and set up like a dish on top of a tree for people to get reception Right. So he does a lot of climbing limbs. The tree climbs to the top, puts a tower there. Then he's got to spend a couple hours up there aiming the tower Right and he's been doing a lot of that work in a couple hours up there aiming the tower Right.
Speaker 3:And he's been doing a lot of that work. Well, he was cutting some of the big woods out.
Speaker 4:There was he not, he was cutting. Yeah, he was on chopper jobs. What does that mean? Well, they used choppers to get the wood out. Helicopters, yeah, they would go and cut the trees and then slash them into weight like measure the trees see how much it weighs, so the chopper could haul the load.
Speaker 3:How big are these trees? So people understand.
Speaker 4:Five, six feet on the butt.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:Like five, six feet across. So some of them they have to split. Like they'll take a 40-foot log and they'll pay him to take his power saw and split the tree in half. Oh, really yeah. And then they make a wedge and they split the tree because it's too heavy for the chopper right and he was on a barge job there last time, so they stay on a barge and work a couple weeks and go back home. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, different lifestyle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, different for everyone. I don't know how you're going to get the time to be able to go out and help out, but I'm sure if you get a chance you'll do that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we might drive out. I don't know. It takes a couple of days, though. Yeah, it's far, jerry.
Speaker 3:But how long does it take? Two days to drive, you said.
Speaker 4:Well, the last time we went, we were three drivers and we didn't stop, so we made it in like 30 hours, 35 hours.
Speaker 3:Oh really? I think no it's got to be longer than that.
Speaker 4:We left Monday morning at 6 and we were there Thursday. So yeah, it was like 44 hours, 45 hours, right, and we just missed the ferry, right. So then we didn't get there until late Thursday afternoon, kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a bit of a job.
Speaker 3:All right, well, that sounds good. It's always great to get an update, pierre All right, jerry, I know you've got to go out and pump some water and make some ice or something, or fill the stove with another 10, 12 hours worth of Jack Pine and birch 10-4, Jerry.
Speaker 3:Okay, pierre, all right, jerry, All right, great talking. Talk to you later Over and out. Hey, just something a little bit different People learning about what happens in well, some would call it the far north, from people in southern Ontario, but it's kind of central Ontario when you talk about up Hudson's Bayway, right?
Speaker 4:That's right, Jerry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just some stuff that's happening out there under the canopy. Thanks, pierre, over and out Jerry, bye Bye.
Speaker 6:How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way. Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass, and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show. My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that might be for more fishing than it was. Punching you so confidently, you said hey, pat, have you ever eaten a drum? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.