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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 117: Camp Rain, Hot Sauna, Cold Coffee
The roof drums like a metronome while we sort the chaos of a wet northern camp into something that works. We’re counting paper plates, flipping pots to outsmart mice, and finding out the hundred-pound propane tank still has life—thanks to a quick hot-water trick on the steel. Five days of rain can’t stall a Chaga season, so we get practical: clean the carbon off a fouled plug, lean out a smoky two-stroke, and hunt down missing couplers for the old Gifford hand pump. When the seals slip, we switch tactics and haul lake water in pails, forty steps up and forty down.
The sauna becomes our reset button. We strip barcoded stickers from new pipe, seat a fresh damper, and build heat with cedar kindling, pine, then hardwood until the rocks sing. At 175 degrees we wash with a mug, breathe deep, and sleep like we earned it. Along the way we share the small bush hacks that keep a camp alive: a coffee-can bread toaster, a torch to convince a stubborn furnace valve, perked coffee with a hint of Kenyan instant and a scoop of Chaga, and breakfast leveled up by homemade pickled jalapeños. Even the boots get a second life—cut into dry camp slippers that laugh at soaked leaves.
Nature edits our plans with a wink. A perfect idea for wild hazelnut Chaga tea disappears when a black bear stands tall and cleans the bushes bare. We take the hint, shoulder gravel to mend the road, and lean on Starlink for a brief lifeline to forecasts and family. Between stories of decades on this land and fresh testimonials about Chaga’s impact on blood pressure, clarity, and resilience, a theme sticks: simple systems, steady hands, and respect for the bush go farther than fancy gear.
If you love practical outdoor knowledge, camp-tested fixes, and the calm that comes from real work under wet skies, press play and join us under the canopy. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a breath of pine and woodsmoke, and leave a quick review to help others find their way here.
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.
SPEAKER_06: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.
SPEAKER_08:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be for more efficient than it was punching.
SPEAKER_05:You so confidently you said, hey Pat, have you ever eaten a drunk? Find diaries of a lodge owner now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
SPEAKER_04: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 Olette, and I was honored 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 is a 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. All right, as always, we want to thank all our listeners all across Canada, states, all around the world. Great things are happening all around. Maybe we'll let you in on a few, but uh Josh and his girlfriend Casey down in Florida. And I'm stuck up here in Chaga Town. So no updates on uh Ensign Gunnar or Chocolate Lab and how he's getting along with Benny and and Jared's and Brittany's Doberman. But uh that sound in the background that you're hearing, that's let me see. Five days of rain. Pouring rain. Constant rain up here. But a lot of things that we get into uh into Chaga camp to make sure everything's all set up before we get up to the pick. But I gotta tell you, it's no fun picking Chag in the rain. So we wait. We wait. So we got up here, got up to the camp, and normally I get up a about a month early to check and see, you know, how much how many paper plates are there because it's a lot easier with the camp crew. Nobody wants to do dishes anymore, so we use paper plates and then put them in the sauna, burn them all out. Same with uh the wooden spoons and knives and forks and stuff like that. We got into camp and and um and I also normally, like I said, a month earlier, check and see how much how much toilet paper there, how many paper towels are there, how many garbage bags are there, how much propane is in the tank, how much gas, the generators running, the whole list of things that I usually get up for, but because the way I changed the uh the way I was operating through the summer, I didn't have the opportunity to take the uh extra time in September to get up and take a look, see what was in camp. But we get here. First thing we notice, all the pots are right side up. And everybody's wondering, what difference does it make if the pots are right side up or right s uh upside down? Well, the difference is is when you get mice in a camp, when the pots are right side up, you gotta wash them immensely because they leave these little messages in each of the pots. Oh, what's in this pot? And then hop to the next one, and then they go in there. So you gotta wash them all and scrub them all. But if they're upside down, the mice don't go in there, so it's a huge benefit to cleaning, you know, just to make sure that they're uh you don't have as many problems and as much cleanup time as normal. But I can't understand why people don't get it. Whenever we leave the camp, it's pots upside down and everything else, but it's not just me using this camp. So and we appreciate the ability to use the camp. And the propane. So we got the um propane and we have a hundred-pound tank and then a backup 30-pounder and a 20-pounder as well. No, no, 20-pounder we use for a turkey fryer to do chicken wings and potato wedges usually, and the um barbecue we put on the the 20-pounder on the barbecue to to do um, oh, let me see. Well, we had we had steaks and we'll have ribs and stuff like that. So and things like that. So we have the backup. But the hundred-pounder, we the temperature was a little bit warm, so it was hard to tell. We were gonna unhitch the 100-pound tank, take it into town, get it filled, but so what what we did was we poured warm water on the side of the tank. Rolly's the kind of back guy behind that, to check and see the level of propane in there. And it seemed like there was about two-fifths of a tank left. So we didn't change it, and here we are, got there uh five days later, and we're still got propane in the tank to run the propane lights as well as the the uh the propane furnace and the propane stove, so we're still doing good there. But I think today we're gonna unhook and head to town and fill the propane tank because as I keep saying, that sounds that's rain on the tin roof. Now, the other thing, some of the other things that we have is uh in camp that's a bit unusual, is uh we have a bread toaster, a homemade bread toaster. And it's kind of a little ingenious, it goes great on top of the propane and propane stove. It's an old coffee can cut in half, and the bottom half of it has holes punched in it, and then they take a coat hanger and kind of punch a couple of holes in the top of the half of the can, put them through the coat hanger, and put a like a doweling on the end for a handle, and you put that on the stove, and all these little holes on the bottom of the the coffee can will actually let heat through, and we toast our bread with it on the on the propane stove, and it works spectacular. It's it's kind of a little ingenious. It's my uncle Ernie's, I think it was his brother who was who made that, and he we've got a couple of them here, but the uh two sizes, uh one was uh probably a tomato juice can and the other one a coffee can, and they're cut in half, so there's about four to five inches from the bottom of it where you you punch a whole series of holes, like a oh, probably a I don't know what a uh oh let me see, a uh quarter inch hole, maybe a little bit smaller than that. And just take a uh put it on a board, tap it through with a that and a whole series of them, so it looks almost like a a huge strainer, and that lets the heat through, and then we put the toast on that 15 seconds on each side, and we got toast in the morning, and it works great. Now, some of the other stuff as well. We have uh generators that we had to get going. So one generator is working great, it's spectacular. Uh, and I'll tell you it's a Honda. We don't have any problem. And I got champions and I got Hondas and I got uh a couple of other ones here, and we got uh the Honda's, of course, a four-stroke one. So it runs lights and it runs the radio. So we listen to the to the Jays making it to the World Series Go Jays Go. Glad to hear that. And then another generator, because one of the guys in camp here he stays in a trailer and it's a two-stroke engine. Smokes a bit because the the gas mixture was a little bit high, but uh runs all his lights and his electric furnace in that big trailer. It's like a I don't know, a 30-footer, and a big bed, table, stove, heater, lights, all the accompaniment, so he can sit and read and get his space and works out just great. So we got a couple of generators, but the uh two-stroke generator wasn't going when we got here. Because so we had to take it inside because guess what? Listen to that. It's still raining. Five days, and oh boy. We had well, actually, I shouldn't say it. We had one good day, and we got out and uh we we got a huge uh deposit of jag in the one day, which is good, but all the other days, and it's just teeming out there right now, makes it miserable in the bush, and you get drenched in soak. Anyway, so the two-stroke generator, which is a 950-watt one, just enough to run lights and charge a car battery to run the trailer and all the rest of the stuff, and it works perfect. Um we couldn't get it going. So we had uh we had spark, but we pulled the plug, and you could see that it had been carbon fouled pretty bad, which made it tough to do anything. So I had to take that, clean the carbon out, clean the whole thing out, and then put her back in, give her a little shot of just one shot of a quick start, methanol. Ether, sorry, ether. Put the plug back in, give her a crank, a couple of cranks, and away it went, and it's running good now, but it's starting to foul a bit. But so we changed the uh gas after we burned through all the two stroke gas, because to be honest, it's like it was at 108 kilometers to get to uh the gas station here. So we still use the gas up, but we lighten the mix up a bit because we bring in enough of the gas to mix up with it. Then we had to get to the next stage, which is guess what? Hooking up the water because I wasn't here a month ago to do that. Normally I get here a couple times a year, once uh around the springtime, hook up the water, check the base camp, and then come back in September, make a list of everything we need to for all the guys and everything. I didn't get here either in the spring or in September, but we had to hook up the water. And we use something called the Gifford pump. The reason it's called the Gifford Pump is because it's an old farm pump that that Ray Gifford found and brought into the camp, and it draws up from the lake. So and it was all taken apart, the couplers were missing, so couldn't find them, checked everywhere. We don't know why. Somebody probably borrowed them and didn't replace them or put them back after they borrowed them. So we were short two couplings to run the line to the lake. One goes outside the from the Gifford pump outside through the the camp, down underground to the hill, and then there's another connection there that takes a long pipe down to the lake so that we can with a foot valve on it. Foot valve was there, but no couplers to join the two sections of pipe together. So guess what? Back to town we go to get a one-inch coupler to put a knot, bring it all, put it all back together. Then we started pumping like crazy, but the uh seals on this pump seem to be have worn out. And that's some of the stuff, but it's uh it's now, as I said, raining. Hear that? And five days later, and uh the the because it's leather seals inside this old hand pump. And it's starting to wear, but there must have been some rust inside uh inside it because you can see the rust coming out. We're not getting any rust anymore, but uh they're getting some slippage through the seals, so we need to take that apart and rebuild that unit as well. And so we got uh pump working to some extent, but to be perfectly honest, it's still easier to take the 40 steps down the hill to get pails of water and bring it up for the sauna as well as for cleaning uh because we boil water and we wash everything with that. I gotta tell you, that's something else. And with some of the other stuff that I check, you know, is there dish soap there? Is there towels to dry stuff? Is there the racks? Of course, there's always the racks here, towel racks to use, but that's not a problem. Anyways, we um get all the water and uh we don't have any problem with that, but it's still lugging those fills up, up those soaking wet stairs in the rain. A little slippy, but I got my uh my big rubber boots on, and it's fine to make it to the outhouse and everything else without any problems, but it's all part of the joy of being in camp, and right now we're in just enjoying a morning coffee recording, and we'll continue to record and send them through. And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we're with Bev here in Lindsay, and Bev, you've got some experience with Chaga that you'd like to share with some people. Tell us uh two stories. Start with your father's story.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, Jerry. Um well, um, my dad had mentioned to me that he was struggling with his blood pressure and he'd gone on meds and it wasn't bringing it down. He was running around 180, 185, and wasn't enjoying that at all. And um and so I suggested that he try the chaga tea because I knew some other people that had had good experience with it, and I knew my own experience with it. He started doing the chaga tea every day. Um, he stuck it in with his coffee, so he only had to drink one thing a day, and within three weeks he had dropped from 180 to 140, which he was really excited about. But what he was even more excited about was that about three to four weeks after that, he had gone down to 125. So we're really grateful for the difference the chaka has made with his blood pressure.
SPEAKER_04:And he wasn't doing there wasn't any other medications or changes just to do the change?
SPEAKER_00:No, this was the actually the only shift. He didn't shift anything diet-wise, physical exercise-wise at all. The only thing he added in that he hadn't been doing before was chaga.
SPEAKER_04:And put it in his coffee, I believe.
SPEAKER_00:And he put it in his coffee. Very good.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, and you have your own story now. I have my own story.
SPEAKER_00:So I I started on chaga when I um I met Jerry just as I realized that I was going into a relapse of multiple cirrhosis, that I I had not relapsed for approximately 25 years, so I was a little startled about it and wanted to get on it. And um, so I was in the process of changing a lot of things so that I could um go back into relapse rather than dealing with the MS symptoms. And so I did change diet and I stopped physical exercise so that my body would have more rest and I added the chaka in. And within within I mean within five days, I noticed that the nerve sensory issues I was having in my legs was already settling down, and within about three weeks I had the strength to walk unassisted again. And I am about three months in now, and um I have um taken a 10-day break from it a couple of times just to, you know, you know, just so that my body, you know, can stay balanced, you know, without it. But every time I go back on it, I um I can feel the difference in mental clarity and in the way my nerves are communicating, and I'm I'm walking very, very well now.
SPEAKER_04:Very good. Well, thank you very much for sharing your story with.
SPEAKER_00:No, thanks for thanks for hollering me and asking me to try a free cup that one farmer's market morning.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I'm glad it's working out for you. Thanks, Jerry. Okay. 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. 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, Chaga Health and Wellness.com, place a few items in the cart, and check out with the code CANAPY, 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. Well, had to make a little bit of a break because nature was calling. And the outhouse here is very comfortable. We use these um uh a bread basket, an old bread basket to uh put uh the rolls of toilet paper in, and then the sweetie wipes, which we have for a cleanup afterwards, and it's just a pretty basic one holer and good deep pit. And all occasionally throws some sauna ash into the outhouse to keep it uh to keep it going, and plus all the um the other active uh stuff that goes in outhouses or septic tanks to break down the material in there. Most people don't know this. One of the key parts of um outhouses is the fact that there's so much toilet paper down there. And if you can break that down, it just keeps the um keeps the hole that much uh um lasting that much longer. But now one of the other things that we had at the camp that that we had to work on, which was inspiration, and as I mentioned earlier, when I uh got the property in '99 in central Ontario, the only thing that I wanted was a sauna. And I got the logs and I got the rebar and I got the stuff, got the stove and everything else, just ain't got no sauna. But it's probably because of the sauna here in the northern camp that inspired me to do that. And we keep that going pretty much 24-7, but we had to replace all the piping. So all the stovepipe, the black stove pipe, and we use a single wall here. It's kind of hard to find in the stores a double wall black pipe, which would be a lot better because it lasts a lot longer. And then it goes up through, and we've got the insulated pipe to go through the roof of it. And it's pretty basic. It's just basically a, uh, it's probably a what a 16 by 12 um place that has a change room, an old shower in it that doesn't work, where we store wood and a bunch of stuff. Just a very, very small basic one, almost the size of one you find in a trailer. And then a sauna in it with a stove and a bench probably holds two if you want, maybe three, possibly, but we use it one at a time. And we use pails of water to wash and clean up and do any of the cleanup to make sure we're clean, and especially when we have to put on our go-to-town clothes. Anyway, so Rolly and Us, we uh replaced the damper, put the damper in, replaced all the pipe, and it's all good to go. We first started though, and one of the problems was that they put these these darn uh barcoding stickers on the sauna pipe, and you kind of get have to get that off. And the stick is the stick is so much to it, you can't get it all off, and it burns just like just like the the um you burn off all the paint in the new one and it smells for a bit. But we got the the all the sauna stove and burned off just great. And you know, and and there's not nothing quite like the smell of old dry newspapers when they first go in. It's got this kind of weird smell to it. But then after everything, we um get the temperature about to 175 degrees Fahrenheit, and we pour water on the rocks to bring up the temperature in the room. And and I I don't know what kind of rocks are in there. I don't think there's anything special. And I often wonder if there was special rocks you could put in a sauna that would make a big difference and much more enjoyable, but it is what it is. And and then the one thing is is that I couldn't figure out why the glasses I have my my eyeglasses, because I wear glasses, they get these spots on it, and I could never figure out why. We thought it was just a defective material that was put on the uh spots or that they were cheap or whatever, but no, actually, it was the excess heat when I wear my glasses in the sauna that causes these problems in my eyeglasses. So I have to take my eyeglasses off to uh to go into the sauna to be able to stop them from from um going spotty on me. Now, some of the other stuff is is uh the uh the wood that we burn, we start off with local papers, and that's one thing. The last one of the last things I buy is stop in at a variety store. I was quite surprised some of the gas stations don't sell newspapers anymore. But I stock up on a newspaper of each just to make sure we got paper to light the sauna, and then I use cedar kindling and then a little bit of pine and then uh small slivers of hardwood using maple or yellow birch to get it going. Once it's gone, we keep her going and put pails on. Uh we've got a number of different pails. You've got to watch some of the pails because they're some of the older pails are soldered together. But Dan, when he was around, bless his soul, Dan donated a couple of stainless steel, one-piece stainless steel pails that we use in the sauna, and they work spectacular. I'll be honest. Everybody says don't put the pails on the rocks, but if you haven't got a heck of a lot of time to get some water heated up, we put the pails on the rocks, so on top of the stove. So you got to make sure it's all level and it works very well. And then we'll uh kind of go in and use a, we used to use a dipper in it to pour the water on, but the dipper disappeared. So now I got a large coffee mug that we use. And then not only do we put it on the stoves, but we'll wet down with the water from the pails, and then soap down, and then wet down, uh wash it off with uh the the uh the coffee cup with warm water. And it works great, keeps you nice and clean, refreshed, sure makes you sleep at night. I gotta tell you, we uh last night we got another load of um now. Rowley's got a dump box on his truck and a heavy-duty spring. So we've now done two loads of gravel and fixed the road on the way in because there were some big potholes, and guess what they are filled with? Water and all this rain, as you can hear it probably in the background, still on the uh tapping on the roof. And after you work up a good sweat doing that, it's nice to wash off in the sauna and give you a nice sound sleep. And plus, I also find that the sauna, when I breathe in the deep water, it kind of clears my lungs and makes me uh feel better when I'm doing that. So good, good workout loading up the uh the dump box on that. There's lots of gravel up here where we are, just about everywhere you go. You clear the one inch of of half inch of topsoil that's there of that, or leaves, and you're right down to gravel here. So lots of gravel around and clean cleared that up pretty good. Now, some of the other stuff is uh in camp as well. We had um we always have difficulty starting the propane stove, not the cook stove, but the furnace. And it just drives me crazy. So what I did was I got a couple of things. I got one of those little handheld butane torches, and I think it just takes like a uh little lighter in there and it kicks out the heat pretty good, but also those refillable barbecue lighters that have kind of a torch on the end, not just a lighter, but a torch. And there's a little heat valve inside the propane furnace. As a matter of fact, uh for the uh fireplaces, not the fireplace, but the oven on the on the cook stove, you need to heat that heat valve up and then press the pilot light and before it kicks in. And it takes a bit of time, and it's always the same. Of course, the the colder it is or the damper it is, the longer it takes to heat that little valve that bends in inside uh where the pilot light is. And but we got that going pretty good. And once it gets going, the uh the propane uh lights that we have here. We got a couple of propane lights, a propane furnace, and the propane stove works just great. So they're all running. Takes a little bit of time, but it it it certainly worked out great. And I think that uh now uh that's all done, and we are good to go with a lot of stuff. So and up here at camp, one of the other things is the uh coffee. We perk coffee up here, and of course, guess what's in the coffee? I put cheg in the coffee, and I mix up a blend of decaf, and then I got some. I happen to have Father McCarius give me a can of instant coffee from Kenya, Dorman's. And I mix a spoon of the instant coffee with the perk stuff, and everybody thinks it's just spectacular, and we really enjoy that. So coffee is good to go. We got the sauna going, we got the the uh propane going, the the sauna pipe replaced, the the road fixed uh when it was a little bit. But there's always something going on in camp that makes it uh interesting. And of course, in camp now we've got Rolly and I showed up first, and then Garrett showed up the next day, and then the day after that, Ron showed up, and then my other son, uh Josh, he'll be showing up. I'm not sure if it's tonight or tomorrow, but uh, and that should be it about this time. Pierre was supposed to come, but that didn't pan out for you, Pierre. But we've got a few in camp and we'll keep going and work on it.
SPEAKER_07: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 gonna talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's gonna be a lot of fishing.
SPEAKER_08:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors.
SPEAKER_08:From athletes, all the other guys would go golfing, me and Garchomp turkey, and all the Russians would go fishing. And now that we're reforesting and light things, it's the perfect transmission environment to find a chap if any game isn't cooked properly. You will taste it.
SPEAKER_07: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 podcast.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, well, back now, and and I have to tell you, I've been coming to this camp for Since it was a little knee high to a grasshopper, as they say. So it's been over 60 years. And it used to be a road that was monitored or run, owned by logging companies, and you had to pay a fee to go on the road, unless you own property down here. And the result was my my uncle's father bought uh the property, and uh my uncle ended up with it, and lo and behold, I've been coming here for over 60 years. Now, I gotta tell this story again. It's the wild hazelnuts. I thought I'd come up with this spectacular new Chaga tea. It was Chaga wild hazelnut tea. But uh, I'll let you know that uh for those that haven't tried wild hazelnuts, if you roast them, and it was Pierre, uh Pierre's been on a couple of podcasts with us, he's out foliette. The last one was an update on the on what was happening with the river, flooding them out there, but uh they make it all through and it's unorganized, as is where we are now. And Pierre had these wild hazelnuts that were spectacular. I had to tell him, take those away from me, otherwise I'll eat the whole thing. And for anybody that's had what's it called, Nutella, they just taste like Nutella. And I thought they would make a spectacular Chaga wild hazelnut tea. But so Diane and I, my wife Diane and I came up to camp and we went around to uh get a bunch of areas up here and looked, and we found all kinds of wild hazelnut bushes everywhere because I knew they were here. So, and then the end of August, September is when they kind of ripen. So we came up to harvest them, and we pull into the camp and everybody's there, and and great, and no hazelnuts. Like, what's going on? Like, where are the hazelnuts? So I asked my cousin uh who were up uh using the camp. I said, uh are you picking all the wild hazelnuts? They said, Wild hazelnuts? Where are they? What are you talking about? I said, Well, see that bush right there, and that bush over there, and that bush there, those are all wild hazelnut wild hazelnuts. Really? I said, Yeah, come here. So I found some on there. I showed them to them. I have no idea. Now, um, extremely smaller than the normal size. So the tip of your pinky finger, well, that would be an extremely large one. Like a large pea size is uh the wild hazelnuts. But anyways, and lo and behold, no hazelnuts anywhere. Couldn't find anything. So I'm checking all the spots that I'd uh picked out, and for a wild hazelnut harvest to do the the uh the experimental chega wild hazelnut tea. Nothing anywhere. I can't find any anywhere. I was like, what is going on here? I can't figure this out. Then all of a sudden, uh Diane and I are out, we come around the corner, and there's a large black bear standing on his hindquarters, grabbing a hazelnut bush, eating all the wild hazelnuts. Surprise, surprise, all gone. So that ended the wild hazelnut uh jaggate potential opportunity. But uh, you know, you got to look at different things to figure out what works and what doesn't, if it was pretty good. And some of the other stuff, you know, in camp and you're getting ready, and like I said, you know, rain, rain, rain, and now the forecast looks like it's pretty good. And I'll mention this again. We're using uh Josh picked up uh my son Josh picked up a Starlink, and we use that in camp and it works great. We run it off the generator and it gives us internet service. But some of the other stuff is, you know, um one of the last things I do before I go to bed, I get the morning coffee ready and we perk it here. So I fill the percolator, put the coffee in, and I just have to turn it on in the morning. Also, some of the other stuff is that, you know, Rolly, and Roly's a buddy of mine, uh, he pickled jalapeno peppers, and they are spectacular. And we put them on eggs and we put them on in the morning uh for breakfast. I usually don't eat breakfast, but up here I do because I skip lunch when I get out. Uh I'll take an apple and maybe um a can of uh sardines and a bottle of water with us out into the bush when we're when we're doing our pick. But we put so in the morning uh normally there's uh toast, eggs, as well as uh uh pan-fried potatoes and beans or chili. Well, he puts these pickled jalapeno peppers in there, and they are spectacular. Not too hot, just add a nice, nice uh bit of uh enjoyment to the morning. Some of the other things we have in the camp that uh we look at, we have a what's a burn box. So we have uh normally we have a recycle, a garbage, and a burn box. So the recycle is all the plastic bottles, et cetera, et cetera. The garbage is usual stuff that goes to waste, and then we have a burn box that we guess what? We burn it in the sauna. Also, uh we have a seasoned uh fry pan. So normally uh we use uh we'll have a night where we do chicken wings on a turkey fryer. So we have a big pot, and we will heat the pot, and and normally we have uh chicken wings as well as potato wedges. And uh we just use the grease from that as the cooking grease. And you know, we uh Garrett showed up, uh finally showed up in camp. So now we've got uh Garrett and Rowley and Ron. And tomorrow Josh is supposed to be showing up, uh, so long as everything goes okay, so he's coming up, so we'll have a that'll be it for this year's crew, as far as I know. Um now 44 years ago was the first time I was in this camp in a harvest, and it was the first week of November, and there were 12 guys in it. There's a bunk room with two uh four double beds. There was two guys in every bed, two guys in the main one, and two guys on the pull-out couch. And mostly um they were all pretty much active police officers, such as uh my dad and and Doug, who was the deputy chief, and Bill Mills, and oh, the whole gang of them were all there. And the one of the first things that happened on the first day here in the first week of November. Remember, I'm uh quite a few uh hours north of Toronto, like eight, ten hours north of Toronto, in November. Um, I look out and they're all swimming in the lake in the first week of November. And it was just uh some of the crazy stuff that happens in camp, you know? So the um I mentioned I probably mentioned about the eyeglasses in the sun, and you want to make sure that you you don't take your eyeglasses in because it uh it takes away the um coating on there and puts spots on your eyeglasses. And one of the other things that happened was uh by the uh the stove we have uh old coat hangers hanging from the ceiling where everybody dries their boots and puts their boats around boots around the around the uh propane stove. And I had an old pair of boots that were worn where they where they were brought together. So Rolly and Ron cut the boots out, and now I use them as slippers. And I gotta tell you, when it's raining like that, when you're walking in the wet grass, it's not really a grass, it's kind of like uh, you know, in the yard, you're walking in the wet leaves and all that, your shoes come in absolutely soaked, but with these old rubber boots that are cut down like a uh a camp slipper now, they work spectacular, and thank you, Rolly, for doing that. Um, one of the other things is that uh in when we're out in the uh bush, we all use uh radios in order to be in touch with everybody. And that way we're in constant communication and we know exactly what's happening. And next time I record, next week, we will do a show of harvesting chaga. All right. Now, just before we end today's podcast, I want to do a big shout out to listeners of the podcast and the consumers of the Chaga product, uh, Bonjour Bakery in Edmonton. The crew there, we thank you and appreciate you listening to us and enjoying our product. And if anybody has any questions or comments or needs some information, as always, don't be afraid to reach out to us. And this is just another segment of how we do things out there under the canopy, getting ready for the Chaga harvest and be able to pick. Now we've spotted some and we're gonna start harvesting. We got a little bit, but now that the rain looks like it's cleared up, we're good to go and be enjoying a lot more fun and times out there under the canopy.
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