Epiosde 158: Cold Brew Under The Canopy

Cold drinks dominate the world, but most people still treat tea like it only belongs in a mug. We go the other direction and get specific: how we make Chaga cold brew that actually tastes good, how long we steep it, and how you can do it at home without turning it into a science project. You’ll hear the two blends we’ve been sampling at events, including a green tea and matcha option, plus Ruby G, a deep ruby mix built around hibiscus, red beet, chicory, lemon extract and Chaga for a refreshing summer pour. 

Then we head north with Pierre for a real Northern Ontario check-in: wild blueberries going crazy, gardens pushing corn and tomatoes, and the kind of everyday surprises that come with rural living, like hornets dropping from a tree and dogs stepping on them. We also get into the food side of the outdoors, from cleaning pike properly to raising and processing meat chickens at home, including a drill-mounted feather plucker and the water temperature trick that makes it work. 

Finally, Pierre walks us through what mineral exploration looks like when you’re actually out there: building pads for diamond drills, how drill core is handled, why water and cuttings matter, and what “junior” mining companies do. We round out with winter preparedness, backup power, internet realities in remote towns, and a little bit of gold fever psychology when the gravel in your driveway starts looking suspiciously shiny. If you enjoy practical outdoors talk with humour and zero pretending, subscribe, share this with a friend who lives for the bush, and leave us a review with your favourite part of the conversation.

Transcript

Network Show Intros

SPEAKER_03 0:01

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, 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_01 0:22

I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

From athletes, all the other guys would go golfing, me and Garcie and Turk, and all the Russians would go fishing. And now that we're looking foresting away, things it's the perfect transmission environment for line with these.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

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.

Under The Canopy Opening

SPEAKER_07 1:15

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.

Listener Shoutouts And Cold Brew

SPEAKER_07 2:49

Okay, as always, we uh thank our listeners of Canada States, uh, Ghana, Caribbean. We've got some new listeners in the Bahamas, as well as uh actually, we had some people that I met from England that are listening now in England, so in Switzerland, and we thank all those listeners. We appreciate that. And congratulations to our number one listener in Halliburton. Uh grandma, the baby came, her grandchild was born, everything was born, everybody's healthy, and she's happy as a lark. That's good to hear. We always uh like that and make sure everything's everybody's healthy and wealthy, just like uh our grandson. And we get um, so that's good to hear and see things are going well. But we get some questions. So I got Pete who asked a question about cold brew. So, cold brew, and what happens is in the summertime we've developed, and I worked with John Snell on this, that's that international tea expert, and we've got two cold brews that we do at events. Now, one of the events uh just the week before this, I did a Caribbean event in Belleville to support our retailer there, Happy Buddha on Front Street, as well as the Sunflower House Shop in Brighton. And uh we go down and and we'll promote the product and people get to meet us and ask questions and things like that. So we'll have the cold brew there. Now we've got two new cold brews that uh we provide at events like this. One's a green tea one. So we have uh Mofeng green tea, which is a high-quality green tea, uh chaga, matcha, and lemon extract. And I know uh producer Dean just loves it hot, he drinks it hot all the time. And others were asking about well, how do you do this cold brew? Well, there's two ways to do the cold brew. One is to do what I do, and when I'm going to an event like the Caribbean event, I'll put in my dispenser, I'll put the tea bags in, put the water in, and then let it sit overnight. And before I go, I just add ice and serve it cold at the events as samplers so people can taste what they're getting. The other way to do it is to actually take now each of these teabags, uh, we we moved from a Chinese teabag because we're having problems, send the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong everything. And so I've got thousands of teabags sitting there that I can't use because they're all wrong, but I gotta pay for them anyways. Try and uh, but that's part of doing business. Anyways, so uh we've gone to a high-quality German teabag, and with the tea bags, these ones, you get about 750 milliliters of tea per teabag, about three cups. And so the one thing you can do is if you use hot water, you can put it in and that'll speed up the process. You let it cool and add ice, and then you can drink it that night, ice cold and really refreshing. Now, that's the green cold brew, but we also have another one which we call Ruby G. Ruby, because it's ruby in color, and G after my grandson Greton. So Ruby G is hibiscus, red beet, chaga, chicory, and lemon extract. And hibiscus is high in vitamin C plus anti-inflammatory. Red beet actually works as a liver detoxin, helping cleanse the liver. Chaga, of course, which is anti high antioxidants as well as anti-inflammatory as well. And chicory works with liver and kidney as well, and lemon for flavor. Now, that one the sales are just like people are loving that like crazy. I have people now coming to me and say, Look, I just have to do my calculations. Where are you going to be? Uh, what what Christmas market are you doing so I can be there to make sure I can stock up at Christmas time and how much I need to get through because they love it that much. And it's really going over. So I tell people, and particularly of kind of um, oh well, the uh baby boomer group, I said, Do you remember Kool-Aid as a kid? They and they said, Yeah, I remember Kool-Aid. I said, Yeah, yeah, Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid, tastes great. Wish I had some, can't wait. I said, Oh yeah, one cup of water and one cup of sugar with Kool-Aid. Well, it's the the the Ruby G is like a drinking a Kool-Aid, but no sugar, and good for you. So it's very, very popular and going over very well. And that's the other cold brew. But you can have both of those hot. Now, the producer has the cold brew green that we list as cold brew hot, but you can have a cold as well the way I like it. And really refreshing on a hot

Gunner The Lab And Life Updates

SPEAKER_07 7:08

summer. Now, we used to give updates on a couple of things, and Garrett's uh started a new job, but uh and it's a six-month process to get through the application for this job. But uh what I'll have to do is uh maybe I'll bring Garrett on. It's it's not uh I thought it was bad when he was building the gold mine up in Duberville, not allowed your cell phone and on and on, no communications, et cetera, et cetera, uh, because they they can't have anybody knowing what they're doing at the gold mine, I guess for security reasons, obviously. But this other one, i i it's worse than becoming a police officer. But I'll I'll get Garrett on and we'll talk about that. Now, I'll give a bit of an update on Gunner as well. Anson Gunner, my chocolate lab, as always, we do. You know, and when when we're heading out, when we're heading to the cottage, the camp, well, we where everybody's packing around, he's looking at us like, what's going on? So I just look at him and say, Are you packed? And then he knows what to do. He scrambles because he knows he's going somewhere, and he runs to get his harness. He grabs his harness and he'll bring it over to you. And so you're packed, okay, you're good to go. But the other thing with him is I I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but if you're around you're watching TV and you look at the TV and something's going on there, and look at that bad dog on that TV, and his ears go down, and we're just like, where did that come from? We never discipline him. Like, we didn't give him any any doggy whacks for doing bad stuff and stuff like that. But you just say bad dog, and boy, does he cower. Like, ears go down. What did I do wrong? Of course, if his harness is in a place that something might knock over or a fall or a sh it's a shoes on it, he'll come back and look at you and take you back there because he won't pick it up because he doesn't want to knock anything over. So he's very cautious that way, which is kind of interesting. But the one thing he doesn't like is if because he's had a couple of broken nails and a couple of um uh what did he have? Uh uh tick bite, I think, a couple of times a couple of years ago. Um, and and if you look at him and you say, Have you got a boo-boo? He starts the because he does not like having a boo-boo, what it means, I guess. So he just asks him, Diane kind of my wife Diane kind of teases him a bit about that sometimes. Have you got a boo-boo? And because we don't know what. But now the other thing is, like I said before, and and and Belle, the other dogs that's with us while Garrett stands with us when they relocated back from Calgary. The other dog, their dog Bell, Gunner likes his teeth brushed. Now she's starting to get into the rhythm of, oh, I like that. It's not that bad. So, you know, I'll ask him if he wants his teeth brush, he runs into the bathroom. Or if I ask him, I said, you know, if he wakes up and he's got like looks like some kind of a little bit of infection in his eye, do we need to put eye drops in? Well, the first thing he does is go grab his conch and then run to the to the uh to the to the the cupboard where the eye drops are, and I put in uh the polysporin eye drops and usually clears it up that day. And put the eye drops in and then because he knows he gets a treat after that. So he likes his eye drops. But the one thing he does not like, which is if we want to get his nails trimmed, his nails cut, we have to bring in a Navy SEAL team to cut those nails because he is just, I tell you, it takes like four of us to hold him down. And I I did try it once and it did work, but he was growling like crazy where I wrapped my head in cellophane wrapped and put peanut butter on my forehead and let him lick the peanut butter while I was cut cutting his nails. And the whole time he's licking, going he's licking and growling at me and looking, but I got it done, so it was interesting. I saw that one, I think it was on some of the social media feeds, and I tried it and it was work, but it it was still challenging. But now we've got a guest coming on that we bring on occasionally, and we need some updates to know what's going

Pierre On Berries Gardens And Dogs

SPEAKER_07 11:07

on. What's happening in North, Pierre?

SPEAKER_09 11:09

All good here, Jerry. It is, yeah, no fires in this immediate area anyway, and uh uh the blue the berries are crazy. So my brother Armin's the blue blueberries, uh Armin's been picking 15 to 20 liters a day.

SPEAKER_07 11:27

Really?

SPEAKER_09 11:28

Yeah, it's just by the handful.

SPEAKER_07 11:30

Really?

SPEAKER_09 11:31

Oh, it's it's I don't think I don't know. Well, I'm sure there's been berries like this in the past, but this is a very exceptional year.

SPEAKER_07 11:37

So Armin's your brother. Now, what's Armin doing with the blueberries?

SPEAKER_09 11:40

He's selling them.

SPEAKER_07 11:41

Where is he selling them?

SPEAKER_09 11:42

Uh people in town just ordered them. Oh, really? Yeah, like uh I think he's getting I forget what the price is, like 20 bucks a liter or some stupid thing, or 15.

SPEAKER_07 11:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 11:52

But uh he's been doing 25, 15 to 25 liters a day.

SPEAKER_07 11:57

Holy.

SPEAKER_09 11:58

Yeah, and it's just crazy. Raspberries, too, are nuts. Uh the garden's doing crazy.

SPEAKER_07 12:03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 12:04

Almost ready to eat corn.

SPEAKER_07 12:05

So you you what's in your garden, Pierre?

SPEAKER_09 12:08

Uh, right now, mostly just uh carrots and corn and potatoes and then some cucumbers, lots of tomatoes, all that kind of stuff. So any garlic? No, we didn't plant no garlic this year, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 12:22

I'm gonna get you some garlic seed from Master Gardener Bev Delonardo, because she has this garlic, like a bulb of garlic. There'd be like four cloves in it the size of your thumb or bigger.

unknown 12:33

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_09 12:34

Yeah, it's not those things are like that.

SPEAKER_07 12:36

Well, I hate those garlic you get where you you know it's the size of a pencil, and you gotta spend a forever to peel the dang thing and then cut it up and on uh but these big ones and tasty, good. Yeah, I have quite a bit of garlic, which dives Diane crazy. You know, I'll get up because I usually have like a clove or two before I go to bed. I don't know, it seems to help digest and then sleep. But anyways, uh you had garlic last night. I said, Yep.

SPEAKER_09 13:01

Hey, another thing too, we uh we're infested with bees, hornets. Hornets. Yeah, there's a tree outside here, like a maple tree. It's a it's not a regular maple tree, it's like a sawtooth or something. And the hornets are up in this tree. When you stand under the tree, you hear the buzzing.

SPEAKER_08 13:19

Right.

SPEAKER_09 13:20

And um, some of the hornets have been falling on the ground, and the dog steps on them.

SPEAKER_08 13:25

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 13:26

And the little puppy stepped on one the other day. We thought, uh, what's wrong with her? Like she's lifting her back leg, she couldn't walk real good. And then Schneider stepped on one on his front leg. We're like, what's going on with the dogs? And it's these hornets fall to the ground, and then the dog's been stepping on them.

SPEAKER_07 13:42

So there's the hornets are dying off like bees. So Schneider, which is what kind of dog is it? So our listeners know, okay. Just a dash hound. But it it's a uh what do they call that uh kind of miniature dash hound? Oh yeah, but it's a miniature, but but the color of it.

SPEAKER_09 13:57

Yeah, he's I forget what it's called. It's like it's apple. It's brindle, and he's got a brown eye and a blue eye.

SPEAKER_07 14:03

Yeah, it's like amazing to see, and as a little guy and aggressive, right?

SPEAKER_09 14:08

Yeah, he's pretty aggressive. The other day he had the groundhog. Oh, really? Yeah, you know, it was quite a oh, there he goes. He just saw something.

SPEAKER_07 14:19

Some doing his job protecting the place, eh? Yeah, so anyway, yeah. So what happened when you brought the new dog and what what kind is the new dog home, the puppy?

SPEAKER_09 14:28

It's a dash hound too, Jerry, but just a regular color, black and tan.

SPEAKER_08 14:32

Right?

SPEAKER_09 14:32

Uh Schneider tried to kill it. What? He jumped on that thing. If we hadn't been there, he would have definitely killed killed it. Maybe it was our fault, but Christine came home and didn't know I was at home, and Schneider jumped on that little thing. But now they're fine. Took about three days.

unknown 14:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 14:49

Calm him down. Yeah, we had to put him in a cage. And now they're uh now they're buddies. She's driving them nuts, of course.

SPEAKER_07 14:54

So what's the new one's name?

SPEAKER_09 14:56

Frida.

SPEAKER_07 14:57

Frida, okay.

SPEAKER_09 14:58

Yeah, yeah. She's lots of fun, but puppy mode.

SPEAKER_07 15:01

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Chewing everything soon or shortly.

SPEAKER_09 15:04

Yeah, and driving Schneider crazy.

SPEAKER_07 15:06

Yeah, the grandson must be teething because he's got his fingers in there. He's not on his fingers all the time. So with some uh I guess teeth must I don't know the cycles when teeth are supposed to start, but certainly looks like uh that way. And it's I guess the same with puppies, right?

SPEAKER_09 15:21

Yeah, give him the conch from the dog, Jerry. That'll calm the little baby down.

SPEAKER_07 15:25

The conch's probably the size. Well, the size of the well, no, it's funny because the what the dogs, you put stuff inside the conch, and now Bell's got a sensitive stomach, so we can't put peanut butter, we got to put butter on the inside of it. Oh, wow, and then a treat inside. Well, they they lick the the gunner gets peanut butter, they lick that out, and then Bell goes around and throws the conch in the air to get what's ever inside to fall out.

SPEAKER_09 15:56

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_07 15:56

Well, this morning missed the baby by about two inches.

SPEAKER_09 16:01

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_07 16:02

So and if the conch had been up, gone up three, four feet, and come down hit the baby, there would have been a wailing going on there.

SPEAKER_09 16:09

Or the maybe the baby would have got a treat.

SPEAKER_07 16:12

Yeah. Yeah, poor Gretin, he's doing well.

SPEAKER_09 16:16

That's good.

SPEAKER_07 16:17

So garden's good, so you got stuff now. You gotta feed a pike, I understand.

Pike Supper And Raising Chickens

SPEAKER_09 16:22

Yeah, the neighbor brought over a feed of pike there. So uh they were out fishing last night, I guess, him and the grandkids, and they caught a nice pike, so he cleaned it up for me. We haven't had really had much time to go, so right. That'll be nice.

SPEAKER_07 16:34

Yeah, and I like pike. Actually, when they're cleaned up, and you showed me how to clean them.

unknown 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 16:39

The Y bones out of there.

SPEAKER_09 16:41

Yeah, they're great, Jerry. Like uh, well, uh in our lake, that's all we have, so um you just learn to clean them. Once you're onto it, it's it's pretty, it's it's pretty quick. And it's and you and you don't get any bones, so it's great.

SPEAKER_08 16:54

Right.

SPEAKER_09 16:54

And you know, you keep the ones that are you know what whatever, like four or five pounds.

SPEAKER_08 16:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 17:00

Um I don't keep the big, big, big ones, but well, and then but Christine uh also wanted to uh last time we were up there and we took Diane out and she just went crazy catching pike like at uh the lake on your property there.

SPEAKER_10 17:13

Right.

SPEAKER_07 17:13

Um we brought them back. Christine wanted the heads to make uh uh fish stock, right?

SPEAKER_09 17:18

Yeah, that uh didn't turn out that great. No? No. Okay. I think we'll we'll cancel the fish head soup, I think. But we just did the chickens too. Oh, so we got lots of uh birds. We had 23 meat meat birds. Right. So we raised them to about six, seven pounds, and uh we had a uh a a chicken day the other day, so we cleaned them all up and uh we got a freezer full of birds.

SPEAKER_07 17:44

So yeah, but you're not sending them like uh the people I was with in um uh Thursday last, I was with some people in Lindsay that were taking their birds in to get them processed. You do it all yourself, right?

SPEAKER_09 17:58

Yeah, that you can bring them in. Uh my brother Armin there, he brought his in. And uh the problem with that is it's it's an hour and a half drive away, and then they usually don't release the birds on the same day because they got to cool them off. Okay. So then you gotta drive back the next day and pick them up. Armin brought a cooler full of ice and they let his birds go, but most times they won't let them go. So the Mennonites have the slaughterhouse. Okay, oh, I see, yeah. And they charge, I don't know, five, six bucks a bird. But then there's a government inspector there too. They, you know, certify the birds and yeah. I guess if you wanted to sell a few, you could. Right. You know, the government's got to know exactly how many birds died in Northern Ontario.

SPEAKER_07 18:39

Well, what you're allowed so many, and then once you go over that limit, like I don't know what it's 50 or whatever, then you have to get a quota from the Yeah, I think I think the limit's 200, but you can't put them in a store.

SPEAKER_09 18:52

They got people got to come to your farm to buy them. I'm not sure how it works, Jerry. Yeah, I don't know either. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So Tyson Foods. Tyson Food knows.

SPEAKER_07 19:00

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_09 19:01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 19:04

So so what uh what were you feeding your your chickens?

SPEAKER_09 19:09

We just gave regular grower and then table scraps.

SPEAKER_07 19:12

Right.

SPEAKER_09 19:13

And uh they were about seven, seven and a half, eight weeks old. They were seven, eight, seven, eight pounds. Huh. So they were it was nice, nice birds.

SPEAKER_07 19:21

And you got a big chicken coop outside where they're they're they're not confined, they're in running around fighting with each other.

SPEAKER_09 19:27

Yeah, they got a bit of room to run run around. But those those white rocks are usually, I think, when they're in like a production, they don't really keep them till they get real big because they start to get crippled up and stuff.

SPEAKER_07 19:38

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_09 19:39

Yeah, they get too heavy.

SPEAKER_07 19:41

Oh. Why is that? I wonder.

SPEAKER_09 19:43

They just eat and eat, right? Yeah. And then uh their legs start start to give out. So if you keep them like the nine, ten pounds, you're asking for trouble.

SPEAKER_07 19:52

Oh.

SPEAKER_09 19:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 19:54

So, but they I I gotta tell you, I was doing um events in Lakefield, and the guy beside me, Gary, he had free range chickens. And he was telling them, and they taste like night and day difference between the stuff you get in the store.

SPEAKER_09 20:09

Oh, yeah. Even our birds, like when we cooked one up, it's it's not the same taste at all.

SPEAKER_07 20:15

No, it's way better.

SPEAKER_09 20:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 20:17

It actually has flavor.

SPEAKER_09 20:19

Yeah, that actually like there's actually a taste.

SPEAKER_07 20:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 20:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 20:23

Those free range birds are way, way better, better for you. And plus, I now I remember our buddy John Bell. You know, John's uh he just had a major operation in Ottawa and back, and and they put rods in his back and all kind of stuff so he can be able to get mobile again. But John was telling me down, I think it's Kingston Way, that they actually allow people to have banting, um banting roosters, chickens, whatever, because apparently they eat ticks like crazy.

SPEAKER_09 20:54

Oh, cool. So the chickens, I mean, any bug that goes by a chicken's gonna eat it.

SPEAKER_07 20:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 20:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 21:00

So yeah, so it's one way. And and I I saw I was actually surprising. I was I was in a Mennonite place, and um they wanted some chaga, so I uh I got I was going by and I stopped by at the place and delivered a load of chaga to them. And they had one of those chicken coops on wheels. Have you seen those?

SPEAKER_09 21:21

Yeah, chicken tractor, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 21:22

Yeah, and it just kind of goes on the grass and it's a coop and then and it goes to new areas, so the chickens are fertilizing and cleaning all the bugs out of the lawns.

SPEAKER_09 21:32

Yeah, no, it works good. Yeah, it was where you've got eight or eight or ten laying hands, or it doesn't matter, just make the tractor bigger and then you just move move it every day up and down the yard, it works really good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 21:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 21:48

And uh they see that, they go nuts. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 21:51

Right. Yeah, so yeah, so yeah, it was kind of interesting. So and how long, uh how long will uh what'd you say, twenty six chickens?

SPEAKER_09 22:00

Yeah, twenty-three.

SPEAKER_07 22:01

It took us all day.

SPEAKER_09 22:02

But we're, you know, we're not in a panic when we do it.

SPEAKER_07 22:05

So and I heard you mention something to your sister Natalie about the feather plucker you have.

SPEAKER_09 22:11

Oh, a Ukrainian chicken plucker. So we were gonna buy an industrial chicken plucker, but they're like five, six hundred bucks. And then so I saw this Ukrainian chicken plucker, which fits on a drill.

SPEAKER_07 22:23

It fits on a drill. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 22:25

It's got like a bunch of suction cups on it. And uh actually it worked pretty good. They the the key thing is to get the water right. Like you gotta heat the water up. I I I found the best to be around 155, 160, and then keep the chickens in there for about 30 seconds. You don't want to water in in the water, and then the feathers come off like nothing.

SPEAKER_07 22:47

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_09 22:48

If you leave it, if you get it too hot, then it cooks the skin. Okay. And then when you use the plucker, or even if you pluck by hand, that you get the skin starts to come off. So I I found 155, 160. So how long? 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_07 23:04

30 seconds.

SPEAKER_09 23:05

Yeah. Dip them in for 30, and then when they come out, the feathers come off like nothing. Huh. Yeah, it works really good. And then I was doing the slaughter thing and the plucking, and Christine was doing the cleaning and all that kind of stuff. Then we put them in the fridge overnight.

SPEAKER_08 23:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 23:23

And then she took about seven of them apart, like separate the legs, the breasts, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_08 23:29

Right.

SPEAKER_09 23:29

But man, when you get an eight-pound bird and you like a breast is a whole meal. Right. Like it's it's a lot of meat. Yeah. Oh, it's cool. It worked out good. Good. So we were kind of mad at first that we bought them because we couldn't go anywhere because these they're high maintenance birds, you know, they can't run out of water or food or but anyway.

SPEAKER_07 23:51

Right. So and no animal problems like uh weasels, martens, whatever getting in at them. Uh no links.

SPEAKER_09 24:00

We got lucky this year. So um, like I said, the only animals we had was the groundhog, and Schneider took care of that.

SPEAKER_07 24:07

So Snyder's he's pretty small.

SPEAKER_09 24:11

He's about 12 pounds.

SPEAKER_07 24:13

Oh, miniature ducks and okay.

SPEAKER_09 24:15

Did he go down the hole and drag it out? Or well, the the groundhog ended up under a pile of slabs. Okay. I was running the mill and I could hear the screaming and the dog barking and the whistling from the groundhog and the teeth, and and I couldn't get Snyder out from under there. And uh I told I told Christine, I said, You better get the sewing kit out. This is not gonna be good. But uh he had that groundhog by the arse and he pulled it out. Oh yeah. And uh it ran the bush and he chased it and caught it, and the battle was on, and anyway.

SPEAKER_07 24:46

Well, well, you know, John Bell, he's he's I think he's uh with his health, he he's cut back. He's been like 28 dogs or something like that.

SPEAKER_05 24:55

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_07 24:56

And I I talked to him about sewing, uh, but I think they have one of those staplers that you know they use in the hospitals for people now. Right. It's to staple and he cuts because the dog goes through Bob Wire, rips it open, or uh gets because he has problems with bears, he gets chewed up by a bear. They use a like a a medical stapler to staple all the the wounds together.

SPEAKER_09 25:17

Wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Snyder never got bit. I was I was kind of shocked. Yeah, so pretty quick though. But anyway.

SPEAKER_07 25:25

So what's happening

Sawmill Work And Mining Exploration

SPEAKER_07 25:26

at the mill? You've got this uh sawmill there that you run pretty regular.

SPEAKER_09 25:30

Yeah, it's been it was busy early, and I just delivered a a small building the other day, a dovetail, uh, to a guy at Horwood Lake, and they had to put it on a barge and get it across the lake.

SPEAKER_08 25:41

Right.

SPEAKER_09 25:42

And then uh how big is the small building? Uh sixteen by sixteen.

SPEAKER_08 25:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 25:47

Yeah, yeah. About two hundred and twenty-five square feet, I guess. Right. But um but yeah, it slowed down a little bit now. Um I just finished an order there this morning, so I'm kind of glad because we took a mining job. Uh diamond drill job. Uh making pads for them.

SPEAKER_07 26:03

So, what does that mean? A diamond drill making pads?

SPEAKER_09 26:06

Well, they're they're drilling down about 250 meet meters into the bedrock to see what kind of sediment is there, like if there's any gold or any, you know, minerals. And uh, but these drills have to be moved, they're not on wheels, they're on big skids. So I've got an excavator out there and I have to make them a pad wherever they're going. And then so when you make a pad, is that like you're pouring a concrete pad? No, no, just dirt. Okay. Dirt, and then usually the the drill sits on a couple logs or some blocking, and then they have uh what's called a sloop which hauls all the drill rods, so you gotta move that as well. Okay, and then uh they'll drill for maybe three days, two or three days, and you gotta move them again. So we're on the seventh move there tomorrow.

SPEAKER_08 26:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 26:53

So um, and then I'm done, which I'll be glad because I don't it's I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 26:57

How far away is it from you? How long does it take you to get there?

SPEAKER_09 27:01

An hour and ten minutes, so which is kind of nice.

SPEAKER_07 27:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 27:04

Yeah, down um down the Foliet Timber Road. Right. So there's lots of exploration going on down there right now.

SPEAKER_08 27:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 27:11

There's that drills going. There's another company about 20 miles further down the road, they're looking at they're into an old mine site or something. Um looking at um ore piles. I guess when ore, like when gold was really not that expensive, the if it was low grade, they wouldn't process it.

SPEAKER_08 27:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 27:31

But now all of a sudden, with the price, they're back into these old piles. But now the roads have all grown in and everything. So we're going to look at that next week to see if we can uh update the old roads and get some of that ore hauled.

SPEAKER_07 27:43

Well, I I recall one thing when I was uh with Northern Development in Mines that was a junior minister. Um, what happens in some of these is if the gold is hooked up to iron pyrites, like gold metals, what they do is they take it out and they leave it in a pile and let the other stuff rust away.

SPEAKER_09 28:02

Oh, that could be, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 28:03

And when it once it's rusted away, then it's a lot easier and more cost-effective to separate it.

SPEAKER_09 28:09

Right, right.

SPEAKER_07 28:10

So it could be, and because uh I but it each situation is different.

SPEAKER_09 28:15

Yeah, I don't think that's the story here, but like there's so many mines here, there's well, I can think of three mines where they they actually mined like a portal the whole thing and uh never hauled any ore.

SPEAKER_07 28:26

Oh really?

SPEAKER_09 28:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 28:27

So So what kind of mines were these were in open pit mines or what?

SPEAKER_09 28:31

No, they were on on underground, like a regular mine. Yeah. So but I they didn't run for very long. Like it's not like they ran for three years or anything. Like a lot of them were just like a junior mine back in the day, you know.

SPEAKER_07 28:44

Well, yeah, there's there's no so maybe we should explain what a a junior a junior is in the in the mining sector.

SPEAKER_09 28:51

A junior, like that, that's who we're working for right now. Like that's a geologist, and some people will raise some funding to do exploration because even the big mines have to put money into exploration. So they'll raise four or five million bucks, or who knows how much, and then they'll go in and and diamond drill in a uh a spot and see if they can hit any, you know, any good um showings. Right. And then they'll send all the data away and then they'll come back and say, no, there's nothing there, so write that spot off. Or yeah, holy man, we hit really good, you know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_08 29:27

Right.

SPEAKER_09 29:28

But these juniors are, I mean, we worked for one all last winter. Now I've been with this one for almost a month.

SPEAKER_07 29:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_09 29:35

And then uh they'll pull out and go somewhere else and do the same thing over again.

SPEAKER_07 29:40

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_09 29:41

Okay, it's almost really good before you get there. Oh, yeah. It's like Christine, Jerry.

SPEAKER_06 29:54

Back in 2016, Frank and I had a vision to amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.

SPEAKER_05 30:02

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SPEAKER_06 30:09

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SPEAKER_05 30:16

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SPEAKER_06 30:30

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SPEAKER_05 30:47

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SPEAKER_06 30:49

Find Ugly Pike now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Listener Win With Chaga Cream

SPEAKER_07 31:09

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_00 31:15

Yeah, I've uh used it on blemishes, cuts, uh just basically all around healing. Uh anything, anything kind of blemished, it speeds it up really quick. It speeds the healing box up, uh, the healing process really well. It leaves no marks and doesn't stain or smells okay.

SPEAKER_07 31:35

Okay, thanks Rob. Appreciate that. You're welcome.

Sponsor Offer Code CANAPY

SPEAKER_07 31:46

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How Drilling Works In The Bush

SPEAKER_07 32:42

so the juniors, now I think there's what, 13 majors in the province of Ontario, is there, is there not?

SPEAKER_09 32:47

I don't know, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 32:49

Yeah, something like that. And and I remember your father telling me something because we were down at your trap camp once, and helicopters were landing people in there, and they were line markers at the time.

SPEAKER_09 33:02

Yeah, it's either staking claims or doing or cutting lines for exploration.

SPEAKER_07 33:07

Yeah, and so and your dad was telling me that the majors, what they would do would be they would get these line guys to come in to do all this work in order to tie up an area so other companies couldn't develop them.

SPEAKER_09 33:19

That that happens a lot. It does. But now they're taking claims online so they can tie up huge blocks of ground. Yes. On online, right?

SPEAKER_08 33:27

Yep.

SPEAKER_09 33:28

Oh, I got a good story. They were so where we're working right now, they're they were flying a magnometer, like a thing that hangs down. Usually they used to use a helicopter, but now they use drones.

SPEAKER_07 33:37

Right. Oh, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 33:38

So they got a um, you know, there's old roads around, so they get a man lift because they they can't lose sight of the drone. For some reason, that's part of the regs. And uh there was one big tall tree left in the middle of this clear cut, and of course the drone got tangled up in that tree. Right. And it was an $80,000 drone that they brought to the scrapyard after.

SPEAKER_07 34:01

Really? They brought it to the scrapyard?

SPEAKER_09 34:04

Oh, yeah, the the the thing that hangs down from the drone, the instrument, it was fine. But I guess the cable got stuck into this tree. And uh the drone was going around and round until it hit the ground. Anyway, it wasn't good.

SPEAKER_07 34:17

Wow. So okay, so what do these these uh drilling machines look like and how do they get through all this all this bedrock?

SPEAKER_09 34:27

It's it's kind of complicated. They they're basically a drill, it's like it's seven feet, eight feet wide, maybe twenty-five feet long, and it's like a closed-in, half-closed-in shack.

SPEAKER_07 34:39

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_09 34:40

With about 140 horsepower motor, from 170 to 120 horsepower engine, some are bigger.

SPEAKER_08 34:46

Right.

SPEAKER_09 34:46

And uh they just keep they just put a tube down and it's got a cutting bit on it.

SPEAKER_08 34:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 34:53

And uh every six meter, every uh six or every nine feet they pull the core out. Okay. And then uh they just keep on going. It takes them about forty minutes, half an hour to do a run, like about a six meter uh eight, nine foot run, like drilling. Right.

SPEAKER_07 35:14

Eight, nine foot.

SPEAKER_09 35:15

And and there's always something going wrong.

SPEAKER_07 35:16

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_09 35:17

Yeah, it's either and then they gotta get water.

SPEAKER_07 35:20

Oh, I was just gonna say, do they lubricate it?

SPEAKER_09 35:22

Yeah, the water lubes it. So they they have to find a lake or a stream, and they'll pump water like up to two clicks away.

SPEAKER_07 35:29

Two kilometers.

SPEAKER_09 35:30

Yeah. To run the drill. To run the and then that that that drill has a big, like a big bathtub in it, like a tank, and then they draw out of that tank, and then it goes into the cuttings, is what the drill um when it cuts the rock, it has to go into another tank to settle.

unknown 35:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 35:48

They don't make cuttings if it's too close to a stream, they'll make them pick up the cuttings.

SPEAKER_07 35:52

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_09 35:53

And then they'll have a pump that repumps that water anyway. It's it's a whole rig emerald, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 35:58

Huh.

SPEAKER_09 35:59

Yeah, yeah. And a lot of them guys are bangers, man.

SPEAKER_07 36:02

Like what does that mean? They're bangers. So our listeners know.

SPEAKER_09 36:08

They just, you know, it's just drill holes at all costs.

SPEAKER_07 36:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 36:12

Doesn't matter if, you know.

SPEAKER_07 36:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 36:14

If your hand falls off, you're still good to go.

SPEAKER_07 36:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 36:17

You know. So and you should see them drive their trucks, man. Like they they rent these brand new trucks, and the guys are are so because they get a bonus, right? Okay. Like they get paid so much an hour, and then every meter, the the driller, I think, I don't know, they get six, seven dollars per meter bonus. So it's all about getting the bonus.

SPEAKER_07 36:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 36:37

And um everything flies by the wayside, you know. Right. But uh, they they rented these brand new trucks. I I I don't know, just cleaning them after they're done, you know. Yeah. And uh they they're driving up and down these gravel roads, 80, 90 kilometers an hour. Just brutal. Brutal, brutal.

SPEAKER_07 36:57

Beating the heck out of them.

SPEAKER_09 36:58

Oh, they beat the heck out of them.

SPEAKER_07 37:00

Okay, so they so you get all this drill core. What do you do with the drill core? And how do you assess it?

SPEAKER_09 37:04

Well, they have a team out there. So they the this company set up two drill shacks right in the bush. Right. And they've got about four people cutting the core, analyzing the core, logging the core. Um, and then they've got people picking up soil samples. So there's about 10, 12 people out in the bush there.

SPEAKER_07 37:22

Right. And just for our international listeners, like where would you be from the the the biggest city in in northern Ontario?

SPEAKER_09 37:31

Biggest city from here would probably be well, Sudbury. So we're about four hours, um, I'll say northwest of there. Right. And then after that, it's four hours to Toronto. Okay. There's a town a hundred kilometers one side of us, and and Timmins is a hundred kilometers on the other side.

SPEAKER_08 37:54

Right.

SPEAKER_09 37:55

But you know you're in northern Ontario when the towns are a hundred kilometers apart.

SPEAKER_07 37:59

Well, I always tell everybody, you know, you're in northern Ontario when the garage is bigger than the house.

SPEAKER_09 38:05

Yeah, that's that's that's another thing.

SPEAKER_07 38:07

That and and you look at all the houses, and and I so I tell people, I say, look at all the houses here. They all got steps going up, up to the front door. You know why? And and they're all like, What do you mean? Yeah, I never noticed that before. How come? I said, that's because when it snows, it can snow a lot. And you gotta have enough space to get up to be able to get out in the wintertime.

Winter Preparedness Power And Internet

SPEAKER_09 38:30

Yeah, this last wit winter around here was brutal for snow. Yeah. Yeah, we we weren't getting four or five inch storms. We were getting like a meter.

SPEAKER_07 38:39

Three feet of snow at a time.

SPEAKER_09 38:41

At at Christmas time, the everything was shut down for like four days.

SPEAKER_07 38:45

Really?

SPEAKER_09 38:45

Like the highways, you couldn't move around town. Um, it was just like probably got about 18 inches of snow that time in one, like in one dump, like in a 24-hour 18 inches in 24 hours. Yeah, so nothing's going nowhere.

SPEAKER_07 39:01

So how do you prepare for that? Like, what do you got in the house on a regular basis to make sure that you can get through there? Like, what happens if the hydro goes out? Oh, etc., etc.

SPEAKER_09 39:10

Yeah, well, you got a little power plant and you have a wood stove, and you know. Yeah. And then uh they were running around actually at that time because a lot of people had a furnace and they needed power. Right. And they didn't have a delco like some of the older folks in town.

unknown 39:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 39:26

So a a group of people got together here and ran around with all the generators they could find to power up these houses. Yeah. Because a lot of the like gas furnaces won't work without power.

SPEAKER_07 39:36

Right. So, yeah. So it's just so people know a delco is like a generator, right? Right, right.

SPEAKER_09 39:42

So you know, they were running around town for because it was uh it was like I don't know how many hours without power, but it was a lot.

SPEAKER_07 39:48

Really?

SPEAKER_09 39:48

Like a day and a half at least.

SPEAKER_07 39:51

So when you when you say they got gas furnaces, it's mostly propane, right?

SPEAKER_09 39:54

Right.

SPEAKER_07 39:55

Yeah, it's not it's not natural gas because they don't have lines there yet.

SPEAKER_09 39:58

No infrastructure. No, they'll never put a line in here. It's way too far, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 40:01

Well, that's what you said. Uh, I remember when they put cable TV in up there.

SPEAKER_09 40:05

That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_07 40:06

No, uh, cable TV will never show up here. And the next thing you know, surprise, surprise.

SPEAKER_09 40:11

Cable TV's gone. Now we got the internet.

SPEAKER_07 40:13

Yeah. So yeah, so now you you're using something, so so the winter was pretty bad. So you you make sure you got enough food supplies, but how long would you plan for?

SPEAKER_09 40:24

Oh, you should plan for four or five days.

SPEAKER_07 40:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 40:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but you never know. And then this winter, I don't know if it's gonna be warm or cold. They got that super Eldino they're all talking about. So I'm excited to see what's gonna happen with that.

SPEAKER_07 40:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 40:40

Yeah, yeah. Oh we'll have to check the spring, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 40:43

Yeah, so you you mentioned about uh um the internet and stuff like that. Now you're using Starlink, I believe, are you not? Or you have Starlink?

SPEAKER_09 40:51

Uh no, that's the Elon Musk thing, eh? Yes. No, Bell came in with a system, like a wired system, which is cheaper and about the same quality, I think.

SPEAKER_08 41:01

Right?

SPEAKER_09 41:02

But we use the Starlink like on our on our jobs out of town.

SPEAKER_08 41:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 41:07

But we there's a new smaller one now that fits on your truck that plugs into your lighter.

SPEAKER_07 41:12

I I've not seen that one yet. I know that uh uh at our camp or cottage uh or when we go to Chagapickin camp, the boys bring the Starlink with them. And it's uh, you know, like a some kind of a uh like it's I guess you'd still call it a dish, but it's about the size of uh oh, I don't know, two, three dinner plates.

SPEAKER_09 41:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 41:32

And rectangular in shape, and and uh you just have to put the location in it, it'll hook to the satellites locally. But this one hooks to your your truck, you said, and it's got a how big is the the dish or the pan, which the dish is about I don't know, if it's like sixteen inches by sixteen at the most.

SPEAKER_09 41:47

Yeah. Four suck suction cups on it, so it just sticks to the top of your truck and then you plug it into your lighter. Right. But the new trucks don't come with a cigarette lighter anymore, but a lot of them have a like a like a 120 volt outlet. So you just plug it in there and then you got internet. Really? And and you link that to your phone and you can make calls and it it just works.

SPEAKER_07 42:09

Right. Fairly expensive though?

SPEAKER_09 42:11

I don't know. Okay, I don't think it's crazy.

unknown 42:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 42:14

Like 120 bucks a month or something.

SPEAKER_07 42:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 42:16

Yeah, I know. Isolated, I mean you can, you know, you can do internet work, you can do all kinds of stuff, right?

SPEAKER_07 42:23

Right. Right. So, oh very good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 42:26

Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_07 42:28

So now how when you so I was visualizing something like a four by four pad for these uh these diamond drill things, but it's quite a bit larger than that, isn't it?

SPEAKER_09 42:38

Oh, it'll be uh 30 at least 30, 40 feet by 30, 40 feet. Because they've got a drill shack in there, they got water stuff. So it's it's a fairly big, it's it's a it's a big enough pad, and a lot of times in some areas I'll go back and rehab the air area, like bring all the trees that I've sometimes I'll push over trees and stuff, so yeah. I'll go and just make it look like no one was there, kind of thing. Right. Which is a little hard in some areas, but we're not in real natural bush right now. We're kind of in cutovers.

SPEAKER_07 43:10

Okay. So wait, well, for our listeners to know, what does that mean? A cutover?

SPEAKER_09 43:15

An area where the trees have been taken out by the logging companies. Yeah. So it's a little easier to work.

SPEAKER_07 43:23

Right. Well, with the price of gold, there's gold exploration going on everywhere.

SPEAKER_09 43:28

Oh, it's crazy up here, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 43:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 43:30

Yeah, yeah. Well, they they just announced our government just announced they're gonna expedite the paperwork on that um nickel mine, which is just a little bit north of Timmins.

SPEAKER_08 43:41

Oh, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 43:43

And uh they're they're looking at like a thousand men.

SPEAKER_08 43:45

Right.

SPEAKER_09 43:46

I'm like, where are they gonna find a thousand guys?

SPEAKER_07 43:48

Well, I remember I was doing the uh what uh is it uh what's the the Mac building just outside of uh Timmins?

SPEAKER_09 43:57

Oh the McIntyre, the old McIntyre head.

SPEAKER_07 44:00

Right. McIntyre arena there.

SPEAKER_09 44:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 44:04

And there was a a counselor that I now he would be in his eighties and he was telling me, he says, you know, he is come on, I want to show you this arena. And it was this is the exact same as Maple Leaf Gardens, where the Toronto Maple Leafs used to play. And he said, Yeah, it's just downsized. But what happened was, after World War II, they couldn't get people to come up and work in Northern Ontario. So he said what they did was the towns and the mining companies and the lumber companies got together, and this is what they did. They created this semi-professional hockey league, because for those that know hockey, their kids still gonna make it or they still think they're gonna make it. So they were playing semi-professional hockey, so they were getting paid to play in Northern Ontario, but you paid you played for the McIntyre mine.

SPEAKER_09 44:53

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_07 44:54

And so during the the the hockey season, you were playing hockey and the cost of the ticket sales uh covered the cost for paying these guys. But when the hockey season wasn't on, they got to work in the mine.

SPEAKER_09 45:07

Oh yeah. So it's great.

SPEAKER_07 45:08

Yeah. So after they were done with their hockey career and they they they knew they weren't gonna make the big show anymore. Guess what? They stayed up there.

SPEAKER_10 45:16

Right.

SPEAKER_07 45:16

Now what they did the and I didn't know this, and they did the same thing at that time with baseball. So in the summertime, they had baseball up in northern Ontario, where the lumber companies and all the mines would have teams. And guess what? When baseball season was over, they were working in the lumber mills or they were working in the mines.

SPEAKER_10 45:38

Right.

SPEAKER_07 45:38

And eventually they stayed up there, so they had a lot of families come up there that had hockey experience, and that's why you get some hockey players out of northern Ontario.

SPEAKER_09 45:46

Right. Well, they were having trouble finding guys last wit winter, the diamond drill I was helping with, they they were having a hell of a time getting help helpers, you know, the guys that move the rods around and stuff. Yep. So they hired a guy, uh not native to Canada, maybe. And uh so on night shift, he was his job was to go out and bury the water line so they don't freeze. Okay, yeah. They were water about a kilometer away or a kilometer and a quarter. Right. And uh so this guy doesn't come back, and uh, you know, he's all decked out in new clothes and everything, and they they gave him a shovel to go bury the line.

SPEAKER_08 46:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 46:24

And uh he doesn't come back. The guy goes to look for him, he's sleeping. He dug himself a hole, he's sleeping in this hole. They're like, buddy, that's not the way it works, man. Like, you got a job to do. Oh, way too hard, he said, way too hard. He quit. So they're having a hard time finding guys, you know. Yeah. But uh, yeah, it was funny. So yeah. He had a good laugh. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 46:49

So where are you gonna get a thousand workers?

SPEAKER_09 46:51

Well Yeah, well, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 46:53

And that's just it. I mean, workers, you guys are gonna continue, they're aren't gonna dig holes and jump in the hole.

SPEAKER_09 47:00

Well, yeah, and you know, then this like if they set this mine up, there's gonna be probably a couple thousand people for a few years, right? Like in the construction trade. Yeah. You know, and um, yeah, it's it's they're having trouble finding guys now, so I don't know. It's gonna be special.

SPEAKER_07 47:17

Well, listen, uh I I I I think I got this this uh I gotta go see a doctor because I got a problem with my head.

Gold Fever Work Shortages And Wildfires

SPEAKER_09 47:25

Oh, is that the not a psychiatrist, Jerry?

SPEAKER_07 47:29

Yeah. Uh because it still thinks I'm in my 20s. So I had uh a week ago I had 22.48 tons of gravel, and I thought, oh, I'll just move it with a shovel and a rake and a wheelbarrow. Well, 25 years ago I moved 13 trucks like that. Now, uh no. No, I don't think I'm doing that anymore. But and the reason I bring it up is I'm finding all this stuff in the gravel that they got, and I'm looking at it going, that looks like gold. And it's in quartz. So it's right, quartz is one of the indicators, or seems to be, so I've been informed, but I'm not uh knowledgeable enough to verify stuff like that. But yeah, I'm finding all these pieces of of looks like gold flakes. It's probably iron pyrites, but still, like you said, iron pyrites is an indicator too, isn't it?

SPEAKER_09 48:16

It is, it is, Jerry. I mean, you could have zero gold, but you you you could also have a pretty good showing there.

SPEAKER_07 48:22

So yeah, yeah, you never know.

SPEAKER_09 48:25

Yeah, yeah. The best time to think you're rich is now, Jerry, before you get an acid.

SPEAKER_07 48:30

Well, that's just it. It's like buying a lottery ticket. So I get oh yeah. I I get lottery, uh, I don't know, these scratch tickets, and why didn't you do it? And I said, Well, because once I scratch and I know I didn't win, but I still have that delusion of grandeur if I don't scratch it.

SPEAKER_09 48:44

Well, a guy in town here won a hundred thousand dollars about six months ago. Really?

SPEAKER_07 48:50

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_09 48:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 48:52

Jeez.

SPEAKER_09 48:53

You never know. If you don't buy a ticket, you're guaranteed not to win.

SPEAKER_07 48:56

Exactly. I I remember one guy when I was selling back in the early 80s when the stuff first came out and everybody was buying tickets. Um, Renee, I can't remember uh Renee, it was the garage. I was selling automotive all the garages. Well, he had scratch tickets in there, and they knew that there was a winning ticket there in the gr in the place that he never sold. So he got it, plus he got a fee for selling it to himself. Which is surprising.

SPEAKER_09 49:24

That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't buy tickets in town here because of course Philip, my brother, owns a store, and he says if you win, um, get ready, because it's there's like you know, if you win a big amount, there's gonna be an investigation that you you know your family bought the ticket and yada yada.

SPEAKER_07 49:43

So Oh, I see, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_09 49:45

Yeah, so he doesn't like it when I buy a ticket.

SPEAKER_07 49:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 49:48

Yeah, yeah. But uh he doesn't have much to worry about because I never win.

SPEAKER_07 49:51

So Well, I still got a bunch of scratch tickets at home, and I know uh my daughter-in-law, Brittany, she likes to do that stuff, so she I get those things occasionally and I'll give them to them. And so, but the deal is if you win, we get 50-50. I buy them and she can do them, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 50:08

She kind of zooms out. That that's kind of my my thing. You you only win if you make a stupid deal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 50:15

Well, I I remember I was playing, I did you know I used to play darts?

SPEAKER_09 50:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 50:20

Yeah, so I was playing in the North American Open in Vegas, and one of the Canadians that was there was very lucky at the slot machines, and and I I don't like to gamble. I don't like going to the casinos. I just it it doesn't appeal to me. I just hate my money going hard-earned money going to waste anyway. So she was very lucky, and I said to her, I said, Look, I'll tell you what, I'll give you $100, you gamble all that in the slot machines, and whatever you win, we split with whatever you win with that hundred dollars. She says, What? What do you mean? I said, No, no, I'll give you the money, you gamble it, because I don't like playing these machines. Anyways, so she just said, I I I don't understand, I've never done this before. I said, Don't worry about it. So, anyway, so she goes over, puts uh uh two dollars in and wins three thousand dollars right away. I just look at her, yeah, just can't win for losing, right? Never got half, but anyway, she did well.

SPEAKER_09 51:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 51:16

Yeah. So no fires up your way, eh?

SPEAKER_09 51:20

No, it's been pretty good. Like we get the odd rain, a lot lot uh raining at night. So it's kind of good. It's really dry right now, right? And uh, I was in the bush yesterday with the geologist. We were went for about a four-hour walk, and a lot of the balsam trees are are dead because of that spruce budworm. Oh, really? It it's a tinder box. Yeah, like we're lucky we just didn't get the right, you know, thunderstorms or whatever. Um I'm like, holy man, this was not good.

SPEAKER_07 51:50

But I thought you were getting quite a bit of rain and you had quite a bit of snow.

SPEAKER_09 51:54

Yeah, but the rain, like right now, it's pretty dry.

unknown 51:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 51:57

We're probably just on the edge of of you know danger. Right. They're calling for rain in a couple days, so you know it'll moderate itself.

SPEAKER_08 52:04

Right.

SPEAKER_09 52:05

Yeah. And and the nights are nice and cool, like 8 10 at night.

SPEAKER_07 52:08

So okay.

SPEAKER_09 52:10

Yeah, yeah. Perfect.

SPEAKER_07 52:11

8 10, so that's well, that's kind of cool, isn't it? It's nice. Yeah. It's nice. Yeah, yeah. And and and you were saying uh that Phillips doing no, uh Armin, your brother's selling blueberries like crazy.

SPEAKER_09 52:23

Yeah, he just he just dropped in and he's gone picking right right now. So a couple orders.

SPEAKER_07 52:29

So does he use one of those picking squeak things?

SPEAKER_09 52:33

No, because uh it it you end up with the berries are dirty, like you get lots of leaves. Yeah. Um he just likes to pick by hand.

SPEAKER_07 52:41

Well, how many would he pick? How many, how much, how many blueberries would he pick in a day?

SPEAKER_09 52:47

He's averaging about 15 lit liters per day.

SPEAKER_07 52:50

Right.

SPEAKER_09 52:51

So sometimes 20 if he hits a good patch.

SPEAKER_07 52:54

And and he's selling it in town mostly?

SPEAKER_09 52:56

Yeah, people order. Right. Like he'll go around and people call him and say, I'll take, you know, this much or that much.

SPEAKER_07 53:03

Really?

SPEAKER_09 53:04

Yeah, so he's been busy with that for like almost three three weeks now.

SPEAKER_07 53:08

Well, I tried, I tried, I went up there the one time to try and pick blueberries to see about having a wild blueberry chagga tea.

SPEAKER_10 53:15

Right.

SPEAKER_07 53:16

But it was a lot of work to try and figure out each one of these teas is a lot of work to try and figure out. So how do you dry them enough to be able to load them in tea?

SPEAKER_09 53:26

Well, uh, that's not the problem you had, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 53:28

Oh, the problem was You ate all the berries. Oh, I didn't eat them, no. No, I tried everything. And so so I I got a dehydrator, so I try to put them in. You got to get these special fruit-drying maps, mats that go inside the and you cut them to size.

SPEAKER_04 53:46

Right.

SPEAKER_07 53:46

And then you put the blueberries in, but then when you took the blueberries and put the load them in once they were dried, you take them down to a low moisture content. I think it's below eight um percent. Anyways, and then try to load them.

SPEAKER_10 54:00

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_07 54:01

And it was a major problem um in that uh the um there was no flavor. Oh so I had all these blueberries and tried you load them in wachaga and the tea bags, and they had no flavor to them at all. But then I figured it out. So it took me like a year and a half, two years. What I had to do was put them in a grinder to break the husks on them, and then everything turned blue and they had a blueberry flavor to them, but way too labor intense, and I couldn't find anybody to pick blueberries for me.

SPEAKER_10 54:33

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_07 54:34

Once you start something, you want to keep it going, and so it's hard to do.

SPEAKER_09 54:37

Hey Jerry, when you bottle your new Chega stuff, uh is it plastic? You can't you can't afford to put that in glass bottles, right?

SPEAKER_07 54:45

Well, oh, it's not bottled. I don't have it. We don't have anything bottled. You mean the cold brew stuff? Yeah, no, no, that's just people doing it on their own.

SPEAKER_09 54:54

Okay, you're not bottling it and selling it.

SPEAKER_07 54:56

No, no, no. I that's a whole nother probably series of yeah, bottling companies and all the rest of it. But so the John Snell, he's the international tea expert that I work with. He figures that 80% of all drinks in the world are cold, and the tea industry is not tapped into it. So we developed a couple of cold brews that people can do at home.

unknown 55:15

Cool.

SPEAKER_07 55:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 55:17

Well, that's good.

SPEAKER_07 55:18

They'll have to get you some of the hibiscus one. It's it's quite it's actually great, really good. Right, it goes over very well.

SPEAKER_09 55:25

Casino liked that.

SPEAKER_07 55:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 55:28

Cool.

SPEAKER_07 55:29

Good. All right, Pierre. Well,

Blueberry Experiments And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_07 55:31

I think that gives us an update. We don't have to worry about fires and smoke's not, wasn't a problem up there. Did you have smoke issues?

SPEAKER_09 55:37

Yeah, for about three days. Yeah. It was really bad, yeah, in the spring, like uh early June, mid-June, I think. Right. Maybe the end of June. But it for just a short period of time, you could like it was it was pretty bad. Right. But then it cleared up, so we're lucky there.

SPEAKER_07 55:56

Very good. Well, thanks very much, Prabier, for the update from up uh northern Ontario, kind of halfway between I don't know, I always tell people halfway between Sault Ste. Marie and Timmins, so probably more towards Timmins, but no. Right between the Sioux and International Timmins, Ontario. And it's always good to hear what's going on and all the diamond drilling. But hey, if you find if one of those diamond drills hits it big, let us know the company so we can invest.

SPEAKER_09 56:25

Yeah, I'll let you know, Jerry.

SPEAKER_07 56:26

Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_09 56:27

Uh like your lock ticket. It'll be exactly like buying a ticket.

SPEAKER_07 56:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 56:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 56:33

All right. Thanks very much, Pierre. Appreciate that. Just some updates of what's happening up under the northern canopy in Ontario. Doctor. Thanks, Jerry. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_12 57:18

But

More Podcasts To Check Out

SPEAKER_12 57:19

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_02 57:35

Meanwhile, we're sitting there popping along trying to figure out how to catch a mask. And we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing efficient showing.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in on those bass in the summertime, but that's mighty feel more efficient than it was punchy.

SPEAKER_12 57:57

Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.