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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 120: Practical Lessons For Outdoor Living
The woods don’t shout their lessons; they whisper them through blisters, bandages, and the warm glow of a stove that finally wins against the cold. We open with Gunnar, our chocolate lab, whose paw surgery turns into a candid look at corporate vet practices, realistic costs, and the small rituals that keep him healthy—yes, right down to the toothbrush. From there, we step into the birch stands and unpack what years of ethical chaga harvesting have taught us: how to use the right tools, why leaving a live margin matters, and what the mycelium hidden in a birch’s heartwood reveals about this storied fungus.
Gear and grit take center stage as we trade too-hot rubber boots for supportive soles that tame plantar fasciitis across long, leaf-slick miles. We get practical about layers, coveralls over shorts, and the packout details that make a ten-kilometre day feel doable. Back at camp, small comforts roll in hot from the pan: carrots parboiled, then sautéed in butter and garlic; pickled wild leeks with perfect crunch; and hot peppers that find their way onto nearly everything. There’s mischief, too—like swapping mayo in a Hellman’s jar—and a listener testimonial praising chaga cream for fast healing.
The bush has a way of writing plot twists. A nagging arm injury becomes a hospital odyssey and ends with a two-inch sliver finally sliding free—equal parts relief and “you won’t believe this.” We round things out with heat: a log cabin that needs a full day to warm, backup propane to jumpstart the process, and a fireplace insert at home that sips wood while heating the house with help from the furnace fan. We even tease a new chaga mint line and share where to find us at holiday markets.
If you love smart outdoor talk that blends fieldcraft with camp kitchen joy, sustainable foraging, and the real-world fixes that keep a trip on track, you’ll feel at home here. Subscribe, share the show with a friend who lives for the bush, and leave a review with your best camp hack—we might try it on our next run under the canopy.
Hi everybody, I'm Angelo Vallada. And I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the host of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, Angela 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_03:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
SPEAKER_08: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.
SPEAKER_04:All the other guys would go gun. Me and guys can turkey, and all the Russians would go fishing.
SPEAKER_03:It's the perfect transmission environment for my fish.
SPEAKER_05:Chefs, if any game isn't cooked properly, marinated for me. You will taste it.
SPEAKER_08:And whoever else would 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.
SPEAKER_04:Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_00: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 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. Okay. As always, we want to thank the listeners, thereabouts, and here and there and everywhere. Got any questions? You know what to do. Any suggestions for show? Make it happen. Let us know. We'll do what we can. Anyways, we're giving some updates on a bunch of different stuff that we haven't had in a while. Now, first we'll talk about uh Gunner, the char chocolate lab. Now, Gunnar's had this problem with his foot. It almost looks like an extra toe. And it's so I took him into the vets, and I briefly talked about uh how I dislike the corporate buy-up of all the vets in the province of Ontario, where actually one of the um uh I think it was CBC did a special on how they're taking it over. It might have been Marketplace or something like that. And they kind of drive me crazy because some of the stuff they're coming up with is it's all about the dollars and cents and not really about pet care at all, and just how do we make money? That's some of the first questions I asked you in these corporate places is uh well what dog food do you use? And you know, you oh, we can't see your dog uh uh because we haven't seen it in a year. So wait a sec. What where's this coming from? I mean, the dog used to get sick going to see the vet. Now it's kind of like, oh, you have to have an annual checkup now, and it's all about dollars and cents, anyways. So I got a good vet, Dr. Matt, and um took it in, and apparently he gets the some dogs get a a growth out of a scent gland in their foot. And this thing's been growing a bit, and so we took um Gunner in to uh get it looked at, and it uh was same as always. So remember I mentioned just that about I got the price uh first before I confirmed, and then when I went in to get it done, it was virtually twice as much as they said. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Uh that's not what I was told, so we got the original price that I agreed to. Anyways, so this uh growth had it removed and did the usual stuff. So while he was under, got his nails clipped, and one of the things that was kind of neat was he didn't have to have his teeth cleaned because guess what? We always talk about how I'm in the washroom. Now, if I don't close the door, he comes and stands between me and the sink and looks at me and gives me that chocolate lab look like what? I want my teeth brushed. So I brush his teeth, and then he's happy. But anyway, so right now uh he's all bandaged up, his foot's all bandaged up, and I got my mother Baba just being with him because when we're not there, we gotta put the cone of silence on him to make sure that uh that uh he doesn't lick it or chew it or bite at it and things like that, which is very important. You know, I gotta tell you, when I walked into the to the vets, you drop him off at eight o'clock in the morning, and then I picked him up at 3 30. And when I walked in at 3 30, all you could hear was a guess who? It was Gunner howling like crazy, looking for you know who. And anyway, so we got him back and all good, and he's on an antibiotic now. But I also got him on um Chaga as well as an anti-inflammatory. And uh Chag has been recognized by Health Canada for dogs, cats, and horses as well. And so long as they don't have over 3.6 grams per day, it's not a bad thing. But you should always check with your uh professional on usage for for things like Chaga and how it interacts or potentially. Because uh there's not a lot of research on it, but as an anti-inflammatory, and last night when I got Gunnar home from the vets, he was sitting uh there, and all of a sudden he just kind of you knew he was hurting a bit. So we take care of him. But I wanted to talk about some of the stuff. Now, we did a Chaga pick. Garrett did a great job, the team did good. We've got uh we've got enough Chaga picked for this year and uh maybe potentially do a little expansion to uh our bakery friends out in uh Edmonton, Alberta, who asked if they could carry the Chaga, so that's good. And not only that, but once we get enough, we stop. But while we're still there, we started looking and we got it all marked out for next year where we can start and have a a good uh section that we'll be able to pick Chaga from and be able to fill up again for next year's uh demands, which is good. But some of the things I gotta tell you, so boots. And I had a pair of these bogs. Bogs, my first pair of bogs were absolutely spectacular. Um I actually wore them out. So what we did was it were Rolly and Ron cut the bogs down and so that they're camp kind of camp shoes now. So when you have to head out of the camp and go to the outhouse, you put these bogs on, and they're kind of like a low-cut running shoe now, and your feet don't get soaking wet from walking in the wet grass or the snow or the rain, because we had a lot of rain up there. But the new bogs, they were so hot that I couldn't wear them. I could not wear them all day long. They were a bit sloppy too, so uh when you're walking, you you your boots kind of slip, and I got I got a good blister on my l left ankle from uh walking. And you gotta remember, I'm not just talking about uh hikes uh from the camp to the outhouse. I'm talking on average, I'm doing 10 to 15 kilometers, bush kilometers a day doing the Chagga stuff and being out in the bush. So they were a bit uh bit too hot, though, was the key, was the worst part about it. They were so hot that I couldn't wear them, I had to get back and put on my different uh pair of uh uh boots. They were kind of a low-cut, uh well, not a low low-cut boot, but a high-cut running shoe kind of size with a great support in the sole. It's almost as if there was a metal sole in there that uh was being used as as a support. So, and I have planner's fasciitis in my one foot. Tried like crazy, just about everything, but I gotta tell you, when I'm walking in these things, don't notice it, don't have it, don't see it at all, and it works spectacular. They're waterproof. Uh, we got them from Marx, and I have to tell you, these things were fic fantastic. Great support. And when you're walking through the bush and all of a sudden you're you're walking through leaves that have fallen all over you, you don't know there's a hole there, down you go, right up to your knee. That happened a few times as usual. Or you step on something like a rock or a um a slippery branch underneath the leaves and you slip. Well, these boots work spectacular. So that was one of the things. And some of the other stuff is as the guys think I'm a little bit crazy like my wife and everybody else does, but that's just a norm. The um the thing I do is I wear shorts, and I mean like regular shorts. I'm not talking uh I'm talking like uh just a pair of shorts that you'd wear on a summer day. And when I and through the camp and all around the place, but when I go out into the bush, I put a pair of coveralls on. And the coveralls work spectacular. And I find uh that I don't get too hot and it works fantastic. And so I can walk great distances and don't work up too much of a sweat. And now, mind you, I layer up, so I've got a usually a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, and a light jacket, and probably a vest on as well to carry a lot of gear with as well. Not only that, but you've got a pack to pack to chaga out with when you're picking chaga, and plus the gear, we have a I've got a harvest tool. It's kind of like a hatchet on the front. It's about the size of a regular hatchet. It's got a hatchet face in the front with a flat back and then a pinch bar on the top. So what I do is I take that, I'll go around the chaga, and then with the the hatchet part, and if need be, I'll take uh one of the long knives that I have on my belt and use the back part to tap it into the chaga, and then put the pinch bar in part of it, and then just kind of pops it off. Still leave enough chaga on the on the tree to make sure that it's still going to continue to grow, and we monitor quite a bit of that. So I've got a lot of images from chagas that we picked last year, the year before, and so on, that show that they grow, continue to grow so long as we leave some chagga on the tree, which we do. But the more research we do in this, the more we find out that the actual chaga is the mycelium of it. Now, remember we talked, uh you may not remember, but uh if you take the components of a fungus, if you compare it to an apple tree, the roots of an apple tree would compare to the mycelium of a fungus, and the roots absorb most of the nutrients, as does the mycelium. And then the fruiting body of an apple tree is the apple, which is actually an extension of the bark. Didn't know that until we had the apple expert on the uh on the program. And the fruiting body of a of a mushroom would be like the white button mushroom you see in the grocery store. And then the seeds of an apple is how it continues to grow and and and expand into other areas. And it's the same with uh the fungus, which is uh spores. Well, we're finding that the mycelium of a chaga is actually going through the entire tree. So, and I know Pierre, who I've had on the show a couple of times, he's the guy that introduced me into the chaga business. He uh does a lot of logging and things like that. And he tells me that every single one of the chagas, that uh tree that had a chaga that they cut down, the center of it is all rotten, which would be the mycelium going through the center of the tree. So that's more research that we're doing and finding out more details about it. But we leave some on and we continue to go. So we've got a good harvest for this year enough to do some a little bit of expansion. We don't try to over harvest, and we know where we're gonna start next year. Some of the other stuff, though, is the hand pump. Now, the hand pump in the camp, we call it the Gifford pump, because Ray Gifford found this pump, don't know where he got it from. And it's got a long arm, it's about, oh, I don't know, about twenty-four, thirty inches tall, with a standard three-foot pump arm on it, and we draw from the lake, but wasn't drawing. And so, which usually means that the seals are worn out on it. And my cousin's husband, Chet, who used to build the blast doors for Algoma Steel and Sault Ste. Marie for the furnaces up there, he's rebuilt it a couple times. And Chet is going to see if he can make a couple more seals and try to rebuild it again so that we've got a pump up there. But there was a lot of different stuff up there at the camp that uh happened that we rather enjoy. And one of them was uh normally we Rolly, Roley does the cooking, he does a great job at it. And he did something very special this time. We had a this would be a good one if you haven't tried it. So you you peel your carrots, you cut the ends off, and then you slice them as you would normally, just like little slivers of about, oh, I don't know, what is it, about a quarter inch thick. Cut the carrot up, and then put it in a frying pan. Now, and then what you do is you put water in the frying pan with the carrots, so that the water goes about halfway up the uh carrot, and then you put a lot of butter in. And then what we do is usually about uh three, four big buds of c of garlic, cut that up into little wee chunks, and put it in there with it as well. And then you boil the water, which takes the raw carrot and just has it el dante. And once it's the water's boiled off, you have the butter that's left, and then you saute the carrots and the butter and the garlic. And they are spectacular. For those that haven't had tried it, this is a great recipe to try, and it's something that you'd really enjoy. I I just actually uh when my mother was uh watching uh gunner to make sure that he doesn't chew or rip the band-aid off his foot so I could come and do a recording, I made her up a batch just to try, and she was like, Wow, is that ever good? And it's the same thing. I've made it several times since I've been back from the camp now, and every time, Diane, my wife, she says, Are you gonna have any more carrots? I said, No, help yourself. And guess what? They're all gone. They never survive because it's really, really good. So that's uh one of the good things that uh camped that we had that was very enjoyable, and a new recipe that I shared with you all. But some of the other stuff was that we had um a lot of different everybody brings up a little special thing. So this year, this the leeks that I pickled in the springtime, I brought a large jar, and quite frankly, all I did was I took I had a jar of pickled eggs that I got from the store, took the eggs out, left the pickle juice there, and then filled it up with wild leeks and just the bulbs. Uh so they're just a little bit past the bulb so you get the white of the bulb and then left it in until the fall. And I just brought them into the recording studio here, and everybody tried them, and they just love them. Pickled leeks, did it in the spring, probably pickled them for the fall. They were rock hard, fresh, very good tasting, and very enjoyable and good for you as well. But Rowley brought up a bunch of stuff as well. So what he brought up was some pickled hot peppers that he grew. And he does his for uh, well, he did brought eggs as well, and he he'll put these hot peppers in with his eggs, and they'll have hot eggs, and believe me, has to be Hellman's. If you bring Hellman's mayonnaise to the camp, and then he takes the pickled eggs, puts the Hellman's on top, and then usually a a slice of uh a hot pepper in with the egg, and it's spectacular. But here's a little secret every year I go out and buy a small jar of a different brand of uh mayonnaise. And then what I do is I take that Hellman's jar, I empty that out, and I fill it with the regular mayonnaise from a different company, and he never knows, and he thinks it's Hellman's every single year. Surprise, Rolly, it's not. And just guess what? Just something you can enjoy. So we have these um hot peppers and hot pickled eggs, but they only take about two weeks for uh the way Roly does it. And he just takes uh pickling vinegar, some spices, throws some garlic in as well with the eggs, and then he'll throw the hot peppers in, like jalapenos, and depends on how hot you want them. But he has a he grows a wide selection of hot peppers. And one of the other favorites that we ran out of this year, and my son Josh says, Hey, we ran out of the hot banana peppers. Because we put those things on everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Peanut butter and jam in the morning, peanut butter, hot banana peppers, and jam. No hotness to it all, it's just a great flavor and something that we enjoy. And we have it in the morning. Same thing in the camp, just about every morning. We have usually uh beans, uh, we have sliced potatoes, eggs, toast, and bacon. And what I do is I get the precooked bacon to make it a lot easier in camp. So I mentioned about the uh paper plates and the wooden spoons and forks and knives and that just to make it easier so there's less work to do because it's always a hassle to get people to try and clean up afterwards, take their turn. So we don't have the paper plates, and you get the good ones, as well as the uh the cutlery. It all goes into the burn pile and we just burn it later on. But yeah, so the the the banana peppers with everything are just spectacular and very, very enjoyable.
SPEAKER_02:Back in 2016, Frank and I had a vision to amass the single largest database of musky angling education material anywhere in the world.
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SPEAKER_02:Thus, the Ugly Pike Podcast was born and quickly grew to become one of the top fishing podcasts in North America.
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SPEAKER_00: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_06:Yeah, I've uh used it on blemishes, cuts, uh just basically all around healing. Uh anything, anything kind of blemish, it speeds it up really quick. Speeds the healing box up. Uh the healing boxes really well. It leaves no marks and it doesn't stain or pit. Thanks, Rob. Appreciate that. You're welcome.
SPEAKER_00: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 CANIPY, 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. Now, some of the uh the other things was was while we were at camp, I had uh an issue that I mentioned, and I'm gonna go over it back again. So what happened was on October the third, I picked up a a uh a maple skid. The skid shifted in my arm. My arm stayed the same, but the the meat on my arm kind of pulled away. Anyway, so it was uh about two weeks, three weeks later when I'm getting ready to go to camp. And the darn thing's not healing. So I go to the clinic, they do an x-ray and an ultrasound, and they say, I think there's something in there. I said, I can't tell. I said, Okay, well, whatever. And so then they uh call me later that afternoon and said, Look, you gotta go up to the hospital and get it looked at up there. So I go up to the hospital. I sit there for several hours now, and they're looking, and they do an ultrasound there, and they say, I think there's something in there. Well, okay, what are we gonna do about it? Well, I don't know. I think we'll just treat it as uh an infection. So they gave me a bunch of antibiotics. So I head up to the the camp up north, the Jagopican camp and thereabouts. And about a week into it, all of a sudden my arm, it looks like there's a huge goose egg about a size of a marble sticking up on my arm. And everybody's oh, you gotta go get that looked at. That could be bad. You could you could all kind of problems like you know, i i it it it it's it's so anyways, all right, all right. So we go in and it's about you know a couple hours there and back to go into the hospital. So I go to the hospital and they look at it and they go, Yeah, we gotta deal with that. So they take an ultrasound. He says, There's something in there. Anyways, okay. I'm waiting for find out, so what do we do? So he says, Well, they send in a surgeon and he's cutting in there, he says, I'm gonna cut into your arm, see if I can get that out of there. Anyway, so at least to get rid of the inflammation and that. So he's cutting away on my arm. And I don't know, somebody looked at it and said, Oh, that's like 10, 12 stitches at least, the cut that's there. Um, afterwards, and I I he's cutting away and he's cutting in, and he's fairly deep now, like the the depth of the head of the scalpel. And I look at him and I say, You realize I can feel all that cutting through my skin. Oh, geez, you know, it's freezing. We gotta get that freezing taken care of. All right, so hang on. So then we uh do the freezing and wait until it takes effect, and then afterwards he says, Well, I can't find anything, so I'm gonna uh cut a little deeper. So he's cutting away. Don't feel a darn thing now. But it was kind of like a test of of male maleness to see, all right, go ahead, keep cutting. Am I supposed to feel this? Am I not supposed to feel this? And I'm feeling this, and my arm is just like anyways. So he's cutting deeper. He says, I can't find anything in there. No, I said, okay. He says, Well, tell you what, um I'm gonna leave it open. I'm not gonna stitch it closed. I'm gonna let it heal from the inside out this time. All right, well, you're the expert. So let's go ahead. So he sends in the nurse to tape me up. She puts on this this bandage that that won't stick because I got fluids all over me. You know, the uh the the the stuff they put on to kill all the bacteria, whether it's alcohol or what and everything else. It's not sticking to my arm. So then she tapes a gauze to my arm, and she's got a tape so tight every time I move my arm, I'm ripping hairs out of my arm, and it's not a pleasant feeling. So she says, Look, you've got to change that gauze. And I said, Well, is there you know a band-aid that you're able to supply him? She says, I can give you one. So she gives me this band-aid plus more antibiotics. So I head up to the local drugstore in the up north, and I'm waiting there, and I says, Uh, do you have any of these specific bandages? Because these bandages don't rip the hair off your arm, but they they hold very well and keep things in place. Anyway, so uh no, I don't think so. Uh talk to the pharmacist. So I talked to the pharmacist and I said, Well, well, let's look. And I said, Well, I can read it just the same as you are. Uh, do you know of anything? No, no, all these ones, they are not very good. But try this place down the road at a medical supply store. So I head down. I says, All right, sure. So I'll go down to the medical uh store. And I said, Do you have this this bandage that they gave me at the hospital because it was great? And uh they said, uh nope, nope. Uh we have ones like that. And I said, Oh, okay, well, whereabouts are they? Can I see them? No, no, we keep those in the back. I said, Oh, well, how much are they? Ten bandages was over$80. I said, What? They said, uh can I see them at least? She's and the person there is uh he says, I think maybe I can I can uh take a deal with the bandage ripping hair off rather than deal with that. And they said, look, try this place up the road, another medical place that carries stuff. So I tried there. Ten bandages, the exact same one the hospital supplies, six dollars and forty-nine cents for ten. So guess what I picked up. Anyway, so use the bandages, and I started to run out and figured, well, we have stores like that back in Oshawa where I'm front, so I'll just pick up some more there. So I go into the two down here and they don't carry them. I said, Oh, I guess this store doesn't all the stores don't carry the same line. Nope. And I said, Oh. So I left the bandage on instead of changing it every day, it was every two, three days, because I only had a couple left. And the very last bandage I had, I take the bandage off, and there is this thing sticking out of my arm about a quarter of an inch. I know, what the heck is that? I'm looking at it and I'm pushing on it. It's not like you know how you get uh a um a heeled section that looks like a you know blood that's uh a scab that's kind of peeled away. That's not that, and I can feel it and I'm moving the darn thing. Anyway, so I grab a pair of tweezers and I said, Diane, can you pull this out for me? Because I think that's that's the thing coming out. Well, she pulled it out and it was over two inches long, and it was about the thickness, it was a sliver, and about the thickness of a wooden match, a heavy wooden match. So I'm there trying to to deal with this, and and and it's just like, holy mackerel, that thing's keep coming and keep coming and keep coming. Well, we pulled it out and left a little hole in there, but uh it's healed up well now and it's all better. But it was better to be safe than sorry, so headed into into town, the hospital, but it wasn't until I pulled the last bandage off that it it somehow forced its way out of my arm. So that was pretty good. Uh and it was a good camp. We got lots of stuff. And some of the other stuff now is um the other things that camp was because uh I'm gluten free, and I talked to a lot of people, and and I've had other individuals that uh, such as uh the master gardener on who is uh whose belief is that a glyphosphate that they they spray on wheat is the actual cause for peat until they have a gluten intolerance, and that's why in E. Europe they don't have those issues because they don't spray that on their weed out there. Whether it's true or not, I don't know. Not a doctor can't give medical advice, but it was certainly an interesting concept to think about. But we have a lot of gluten-free stuff. So we have gluten-free peanut butter, I have gluten-free bread. And there, if you you gotta shop around for bread for gluten-free stuff, because I gotta tell you, some of the stuff is like eating sawdust. And it's just disgusting. But there are a couple of really good ones out there, and it takes a little while to get into the routine of going gluten-free to what to look forward to and what's half decent. But we had gluten-free pasta a couple of nights, and it was it was very good. And same with the bread, and then all of a sudden everybody's eating my gluten-free bread, even though I bought them specialty bread. And uh with, of course, peanut butter and hot banana pepper rings. And not only that, but uh there was a lot of other stuff that we just try and focus on keeping gluten-free, and all you do is check the cans. So it was kind of interesting to to have the gluten-free bread, the gluten-free peanut butter. There's actually one brand out there that has gluten-free peanut butter. And when you read the uh ingredients in the other peanut butter, it doesn't appear to be any any wheat in there at all. But uh this one says gluten-free on it, whether it's just a marketing tool or not, don't know, but it's certainly something that uh I pick up when I can. And we had that, and we go through quite a bit of peanut butter in camp. But I'm gonna say that uh some of the stuff now now at my place down in southern Ontario, kind of between Bancroft and Halliburton, we put in a wood stove there and they did a great job. And we were back up on the weekend uh with a crew, Roley and my son Josh. And Roley showed up early to get the wood stove going because it was minus 10 that night. And I built a log cabin for those that don't know. It's all heavy logs, cut the logs by hand, hauled them out with uh ATV as a skitter, peeled them all with drawing knives, got it all together, and it's it's it's a log cabin. I don't know if I'd recommend a log cabin because it's a heck of a lot of maintenance. And unless you're wanting to do the maintenance on an annual basis as a labor of love, uh well, there's other things as well with it, but that's another story. So Rowley went up, he got the wood stove going, which we just got installed in uh September. September or the first week of October. I think it was the first week of October, and two hours later, he still can see his breath when he's breathing. Well the log cabin, and it's big, it was fine upstairs because there's a loft up there where there's a couple of bedrooms up there. Upstairs was fine, but I don't have fans yet uh on the ceiling fans to circulate the air around. But it took about 24 hours to heat all those logs up in the camp so that it was half decent. So with that, uh I think in the future, if we're going up there during cold periods of time, we gotta get up there first thing in the morning, get that stove going. And we have support heat as well. I have a small salamander Mr. Heater that I can't remember how many BTUs is like 20,000 BTUs that hooks to a 30-pound propane tank. We have that as a backup. And then another one as well that uh we use to kind of get things going. And once it heated up though, it wasn't too bad once the logs were warm because you've got to get that coldness out of there. But after 24 hours, it was fine. Now, one of the other things that I had talked about before was I got a I had a fireplace insert installed in my house as opposed to the fireplace. And what happened was the fire bricks were starting to crack and wear, because I had a fire just about every night. I love having that crackling fire and just the the warmth from it and everything that goes with it. Well it was either rebuild the fireplace again or put an insert in. So I thought and the guy I get to come down and do the uh clean the fireplace, you know, he said, you know, take a look at an insert. So we've talked about it and put an insert in and it works spectacular. I hardly use any wood at all. But the heat that it gives off, I every day that I've been there, I don't have the heat going, uh like the the the furnace going, because there's enough heat coming off that insert to heat basically the whole house, and all I do is turn the circulating fan on the furnace and it circulates the uh the air through the house and it works spectacular. Hardly burns any wood at all, I can tell you. I'll put uh three logs, you know, that you could kind of basically, if you touched your fingertips to your fingertips about that size, in, and that'll last six, eight hours. And when you get up in the morning, it's still hot, and there's hot cools in there, and I just throw a couple of pieces of kindling on or small wood, and they catch pretty quick and keeps the whole place extremely warm. It works fantastic. Yeah, so it worked pretty good, and that one I would highly recommend that if you take a look, take a look at an in's fireplace inserter because they work spectacular. Now, one other thing is that with the Chaga, we've got a new line just starting up, and if you're interested, it's it's going to be a Chaga mint flavor. And we're coming into the season now, or if you check, I'll have to start posting, but I'll be doing a bunch of Christmas shows and talks and things like that. And if people are interested, they can reach out to us or get in touch with us, and we can provide them with some information. But it was just a bit of an update on some of the stuff that that happened with uh the camp, the fireplaces, the wood stoves, and everything that's happening with uh my best friend Gunner, because he's uh my ensign, my chocolate lab Ensign Gunner. He's my buddy, and it was concerning, I tell you, I didn't sleep the night that I had to take him in the next day. But he is my my bestest of friends, and it was good to see he's on the men, and everything's good there. But just to something a little bit different to talk about on this week's podcast out there under the canopy.
SPEAKER_07:I'm your host, Steve Nidswiki, 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_09:Meanwhile, we're sitting there popping 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_04:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in on those bass in the summertime, but that's might be more fishing than it was punchy.
SPEAKER_07:You so confidently said, Hey Pat, have you ever eaten a drink? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.