The Canada I miss

The Land of Real Snow

 

The east coast has just been through one of its periodic winter storms.  If you live along North Carolina's coast, you eventually learn that many of these storms get re-energized in our waters before they make their trek up the coast.

I often wonder how we survived all the years we lived on the farm without the Weather Channel.  We obviously had some weather forecasts, but I think they were pretty basic.  Mostly we waited to see what the weather would deliver and sometimes it brought a really severe storm.  When you live on a farm, you take what the weather brings and do your best to get what needs to be done finished in a timely fashion.

Many people are surprised to learn that Canada actually has snow belts.  Those places where the snow seems to be present for an inordinately large part of the year a rare in North Carolina, but not in New Brunswick.   After three years in Nova Scotia which tends more to rain, snow, rain and back to snow, we moved to Tay Creek, New Brunswick about twenty miles north of Fredericton.  Tay Creek was just far enough north and higher in altitude than Fredericton to be one of those snow belts.  The picture in the post shows one of the barns that I built in what could be considered an average winter snow in Tay Creek.

Our first year there I kept track of the snow.  We got around twenty-three feet of snow that year.  It was not the snowiest year that we saw but it was in the top few.  There were no closing schools for snow but they did close a couple of times when the temperatures got down to minus 40.

The March 6, 2013 storm that brushed Washington, DC, brought mostly what the Weather Channel folks are fond of calling "heart attack" snow which is heavy and wet. The picture that I got of the Northern Virginia storm was impressive but it just did not look like Canadian snow which rarely melts when it first hits the roads unless it falls in late April or early May.  In Canada, we worried most about heavy and wet snows collapsing roofs on homes and buildings.

I will admit to enjoying snowstorms from the comfort of our coastal home.  I have been a weather junkie for a long time but I have also shoveled more than my fair share of snow over the years.  One of the toughest storms that I remember was actually one that caught us at our home in the Virginia mountains on December 19, 2009.  The snow was deep and mixed with some sleet.  These pictures will give you an idea of how difficult it was to clear.  It would have been good snow for making igloos.

When I first moved to Canada after graduating from college, snow was an exciting challenge.  I was born in North Carolina and a good blizzard was something of a thrill.  We had the equipment to handle it on the farm so while it was a challenge, it was one we knew how to handle.

There is something cozy about being snowed in if you have heat, water, and don't have to carve a mile-long road out to your cattle so they can be fed.

My wife keeps trying to reconcile the beach and water-loving version of me with that 1974 version which loved the challenge of snow.  Some things just will never be adequately explained.

Still I have made an effort at explaining how someone who graduated from Harvard after studying history ended up building a big cattle operation in New Brunswick far from the warm salt water of North Carolina.

Our new book, "A Taste for the Wild, Canada's Maritimes," has just been published on Amazon's Kindle store.  It is good study in how snow and more likely farming can build character in someone whose family never strayed very far from the soil.  It is also a deal at only $2.99.  If you have never tried an e-book, this is a good one to try.  It is not tremendously long and has 59 images to break up the text.

The book can be read on just about any electronic device using free Kindle software or software for your browser.  Links to the software and the book can be found here at this site.

Harvey Would Be Proud

Raymond's Gut and The White Oak River

Years ago in 1974 my wife and I moved from Saint Croix Cove, Nova Scotia to Tay Creek, New Brunswick.  It was a big move for us.  Saint Croix Cove was a tiny spot not particularly friendly to outsiders unless you married into the community.

Tay Creek was a wonderful community that accepted us with open arms. It was a totally different atmosphere, and we loved it.  Our farm was tucked in on a hillside just above the Tay River.  Part of the joy of living in our little spot just twenty miles north of Fredericton, the provincial capital, was that the previous owners of our farm moved just down the hill from us.

For most of their lives Harvey and Thelma farmed the ground where we were now living. They became great friends and mentors.  In the summer Harvey was the one person whom I hired to help me with haying.  Harvey went from the world of modified horse-drawn equipment pulled behind a small tractor to being comfortable raking a field with a 21 ft rake behind a huge International tractor.  He handled the change well and he was a great worker.

He was also quite willing to prod me into spring shores like fencing which was never one of my favorite pastimes.  Harvey also helped me build a couple of large barns.  We became good friends and swatted a lot of black flies in the woods together.

It took him a while to believe in my theory of running our cattle in the woods instead of penning them up in damp barns in the winter.  However, when he saw how healthy the cattle were and how much less work it required, he was all for it.

There were a few things that I always tried to do to keep Harvey happy. One was to clean the snow from his driveway before I even finished mine.  About the time the snow would stop flying, I would see Harvey come outside with his snow scoop and start cleaning the snow away from the front of his garage.  That was so that I did not have to get my huge 100 HP  tractor too close to his garage doors.

I never hesitated when I saw Harvey signal with his scoop.  I would pull on my snowsuit, and unplug the block heater from the tractor, fire up the big diesel engine, and blow my way out of our driveway,  The big tractor cleaned Harvey's driveway up in about four or five passes. Then I would head back up the hill stopping only to clean a little around his mailbox.

Only then would I start cleaning our own driveway and then blow the road out to the cattle.  The road was over a mile long and I had to blow it each way to keep it open.

There was one thing that Harvey and I disagreed on and that was turkey soup.  I love turkey soup.  My wife, Glenda, makes some of the best in the world. I never tasted Thelma's turkey soup, but sometimes early in the morning, often just after daylight, I would see Harvey sneaking out to the woods with a turkey carcass.  He would never take a chance that it might end up as soup.  He would make sure that it disappeared into the woods before Thelma got her morning coffee.

I always got a good chuckle out of it and would kid him about it.  He was serious about not eating turkey soup, but he took the kidding with a smile.  Harvey died several years ago, but every time we have turkey soup I think about him. In fact in my mind's eye, I can still see him heading to the woods with a bag of turkey bones.

Glenda tried a new way of cooking a turkey recently.  We both looked at the carcass and pronounced it devoid of any further use. It looked like it had already been boiled for soup so I took the carcass out on a plate and raked it into Raymond's Gut behind our home.  We've found that the blue crabs and other creatures of the marsh clean up all the bones that we drop in the water.

As I was scrapping the bones into the water, I got the feeling that Harvey was smiling down on me.  I hope he noticed that I still have a snow scoop like the one he used in Canada.  It was invaluable when we lived in Roanoke, Virginia.  I only keep it for memories down here on the coast.

The memories are good ones.  There will be more of them in my forthcoming book on my recent trip to New Brunswick.

North Carolina is a long away from Tay Creek and our cattle farm, but the people are much the same.  I grew up in North Carolina so it is easy to love it as much as I did New Brunswick.  However, the weather and absence of black flies make North Carolina a little more pleasant.  No one misses snow on the ground in April and May.

Update, November 2023 - We moved from the coast in February 2021 to North Carolina's Piedmont. Last year, Thanksgiving 2021, we spatchcocked a turkey on grill. It was enough to get my wife, Glenda, to declare that she was never cooking a turkey again even a turkey breast.

In 2022, we ordered a Fresh Market precooked turkey dinner with a 10lb turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, and cranberrys sauce. I picked up some collards from a favorite barbecue place. All together it cost us a little over ninety dollars. The food ended up being very good but not as good as home cooked.

Turns out, even with precooked food, putting a big meal on the table was still a lot of work, the cooking alone took over three hours. By the time we were finished with dessert, deboning the turkey, getting the carcass ready for soup, and loading the dishwasher, it was over five hours from when we got the turkey out of the fridge.

In 2023, we got Tiny Tom Turkey weighing in at less than eight pounds.  We cooked smaller versions of everything. We had no schedule so we ate when it was ready. I washed dishes all day except for making the broccoli casserole and the mashed potatoes. My wife did the stuffing and gravy while watching over the turkey  that was cooked in a bag. It was more relaxing than 2022.

Next year, we might have bagels and cream cheese. Our very civilized area even has restaurants that are open on Thanksgiving.  That might be another alternative.  Harvey is still smiling.

Back to the Trees of the North

 

Looking South at The Tay Valley, October 2012

This has been a year of changes.  Our home in Roanoke, Virginia finally sold after two years on the market.  Saying goodbye to Roanoke was tough, but it was time.  We lived there even longer than the sixteen years that we lived in Canada.

With the challenge of taking care of two houses gone, we could plan a trip back to New Brunswick.  The trip has been at the top of my agenda for a few years, but it always seemed like we were too busy.

We managed to get on road October 19, and drove to the Northern Virginia area where two of our grown children live.  We spent the night with them and visited the next morning until just before noon.  We managed to make it north of Baltimore before stopping for a lunch at diner that turned out to be a disappointment because of mediocre food and slow service. Lunch taking over an hour put us in line for some serious traffic.

That day which was a Friday, we did great until we got across Tappan Zee Bridge.  Just forty-five miles from our planned destination in Connecticut, we ended up in stop and go traffic.  It took us nearly two hours to go those last forty-five miles to Danbury. Then when we got off the Interstate, we couldn't find our hotel.  I finally called from the parking lot of a local Target.  We were only one quarter of a mile from the the hotel, but their maintenance man had forgotten to turn on their external lights so they were practically invisible.

Fortunately there was an Outback attached to the hotel so we didn't have to get in the car again for dinner.  That next day we drove from Danbury, Connecticut, to Bangor, Maine.  We managed to get on the road early and avoid any slow diners so we could reach our destination at a reasonable hour.

I wanted to arrive early so I could enjoy a couple of lobsters for dinner.  We asked the folks at the front desk for the best spot for lobsters and headed out for Captain Nick's.  The two lobsters that they brought me were delicious.  Having lobsters for dinner made up for eating lunch at a Subway in Littleton, Massachusetts.

Our fourth day on the road, Sunday, October 21, we headed off for Houlton, Maine, where we had lunch at a McDonald's before attempting the border crossing.  You never know what kind of mood you will find at a border spot.  We didn't slide through like we have so many times.  We were asked to go inside and wait for an immigration agent.  It being Sunday, there was only one on duty so we waited over forty-five minutes.  I was beginning to get a little worried until I figured out that the agent was busy processing a family that was actually trying to immigrate.

When we finally got to talk to him, it started off slow, but as soon as we mentioned that we had lived in Canada for sixteen years and farmed in New Brunswick for over ten years, he immediately waved us on through.  It only took about forty-minutes after crossing the border to wander up to Carleton County and find the beautiful home of our friends George and Alberta.

We were quickly welcomed and quickly taken inside in case our thin Southern blood started to freeze.  Fortunately it actually wasn't very cold and the grass was still very green.  In fact it was greener than our centipede grass down at the beach.  Before going inside we met another guest, Bear, a wonderful dog staying a few days while his companion was away.  We were treated like special guests, and we didn't hear a single political advertisement while staying there.  There was no worry about getting cold since George and Alberta heat with wood.

I had forgotten how much of a treat it is to be in country.  The next day I got a great tour of the countryside and visited with an old friend from our cattle days.  I was struck by the beauty of the area and how clean and pure the air smelled.  It was just a wonderful experience with some great friends.

After two nights in Carleton County we headed off to visit some friends who just lived down the road from where we used to farm.  Kerry and Brenda quickly made us feel at home in their lovely remodeled farmhouse, and the next day I got another tour. This time I got to drive through our old farm.  While it was nice to see the old farm.  Some of the changes were tough to take, but once you don't own a piece of property, you have to let it go.  It was much colder that first morning in Tay Creek with the temperature dropping to 20F, but again the wood heat kept us from even noticing.

Kerry was kind enough to take me to the Fredericton area.  It seems to have prospered since we left.  I have a feeling that it would be a great place to live.  Kerry also took me to see his maple sugar operation and we even came home with some delicious homemade maple syrup.  I would love to visit again when the snow is on the ground and the sap is running.

After a couple of nights in Tay Creek, we noticed that Hurricane Sandy was making its presence known off the coast of North Carolina.  We made a wise decision to head back before Sandy managed to make landfall in New Jersey.  Our border crossing back into the states lasted about forty-five seconds.

We had planned to drive back by way of the Jersey shore, but you don't win any agruments with hurricanes. Our quick trip home allowed us to slide down the coast before Sandy got serious.  I'll be writing a short book about our Canadian experience.

It was nice to get home after driving 2,800 miles.  The weather hasn't been perfect this year, but it looks like the worst might be past us.  As this Nor'easter is disappearing, things are starting to look better.  At least a little blue sky has finally shown up.

The Point Beyond the Yellow House

Beyond the Yellow House at the Point

I lived in Canada for sixteen years.  I moved to Canada because I fell in love with its beauty, wildness, and the feeling that I had gone back an era.

Those days were some of the most memorable times in my life.  I made great friends and loved living in the north country except on particularly American holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. 

Eventually all the snow, the cold, and distance from home began to wear on me, but still our time in Canada was a magical one.

That I went to Canada in search of wildness is a tribute to youth and not fully appreciating what was right on my doorstep.  Having grown up in North Carolina, I was no stranger to the state's beaches. 

I even have a cherished photograph of me on the Point at Emerald Isle in the late sixties.  Little did I know then that over forty years later I would rediscover a treasured place and find all the wildness that I need just a few miles from my current home on the White Oak River.

A few years before we moved back to the United States, we came back home to North Carolina and took the kids for a beach vacation.  On our drive from Mount Airy, NC to the Northern Outer Banks, we stopped for lunch in Tarboro, NC.  It was so hot when we got out of the car that the asphalt in the parking lot was sticky.

Glenda, my wife, casually said to me as we were walking to the restaurant that she was warm all the way to her core.  I got a chuckle out of it then and when she said it later on a trip to Kure Beach with her parents.  Today it makes me reflect on how different life by the water is in North Carolina and Canada.

During our Canadian years we had three homes, our two Nova Scotia homes were both in the sight of the water.  We had brooks coming out of every hollow on Tay Creek farm.  I used to love to pitch my blue mountain tent down by the shore of the Bay of Fundy.  I can still remember the salty taste of a steak grilled over driftwood.

In Canada we lived by the water, here on North Carolina's Crystal Coast, we live on or in the water.  It is a fundamental difference.  I still remember being surprised that my young Labrador retriever puppies loved taking a dip in the Bay of Fundy even when the water temperatures were in the forties.  Unfortunately even in the summer the water rarely got to sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

If you spend much time on the water in a small boat, you quickly learn that your air temperature is pretty much whatever the water temperature happens to be.  In the winter when I take a ride down the White Oak River on a seventy degree day, I still have to bundle up if the water temperature is below sixty.

Conversely in the fall when the air is cool and the water is still warm, it is a real treat to be on the water and enjoy its warmth.  While the water in Canada is beautiful to behold, the water here on North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks invites you to get wet.

July of 2012 has proven to be stubbornly warm along the most of the east coast of the United States.  North Carolina is certainly no exception.  Even along the coast it has been very warm.  At our home just three miles up the White Oak River from the Intracoastal Waterway, we have seen plenty of temperatures in the low to mid-nineties.

It is the South, and we do expect warm temperatures in July and August.  We are seeing them, and they have warmed the area waters.  I watched the area fireworks from our skiff on the evening of July 4th.  My GPS/depth finder showed that our water temperature in the river at 9 PM was over 86F.  The surf over at the beaches in the low eighties.

Surprisingly eighty plus degrees out on the water at night in a stiff breeze is pretty comfortable.  In fact it is a lot more comfortable than sixty degrees in the wind.

When it does get hot here on the coast, we head for the water.  On July six just before noon when the temperature was around ninety, I went kayaking.  There was a great breeze out on the water.  With my kayak parked in the marsh grass I could have stayed there for hours if other things weren't calling me.

On July 5, I left for a beach hike around 4 PM.  It was close to ninety when I left home.  When I arrived at the beach the temperature was 86F.  There was also a good ocean breeze.  My hike of 4.5 miles in those conditions left me wishing that I had more daylight left so I could hike even further.  That day I took these pictures.

If you view the album you will see a surprising lack of people (short YouTube video panorama) for a popular beach on the day after July 4th.  This time of the year once you get out beyond the yellow house that marks the last line of homes along Inlet Drive and Bogue Court, you will find lots of sand but few people.

There is plenty of beach for people to spread out on closer to the beach access points.  The beach beyond the yellow house is almost like a park.  It is waiting for those of us willing to walk a little.

Not surprisingly to those of us who live here on North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks, much of the area we call the Crystal Coast has special places like the Point or nearby Hammocks Beach where you can find all the solitude that you want. 

It is amazing that we can have all the modern conveniences of the world, almost no traffic, and scenic beauty rivaled only by a few places in the world in our coastal paradise.

From my days in Canada, I remember how Canadians used to flock to Old Orchard Beach in Maine or the beautiful shores of Prince Edward Island.  They are wonderful places, but they aren't places where the water invites you to get wet from May through November most years.

If this makes any Canadians or even land bound Americans yearn for a trip to our area, consider buying my book, "A Week at the Beach, An Emerald Isle Travel Guide."  You won't regret visiting this area where you can explore the unknown without going very far.

 

It is the people more than the snow

We moved from Canada back to the states in the summer of 1987.  I  still remain amazed at the great impact that my sixteen years in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia had on my life.

Most people might think that what you remember most after living in Canada is the snow. Not surprisingly I remember lots of snow from our time in Canada, but what I treasure most are the people of Canada.

My first trip to Canada was in the late sixties.  One of the things that struck me from those early trips was how quiet restaurants were in Canada.

At the time I was college student so perhaps I was accustomed to more noise than the average adult, but still the restaurants we visited in Nova Scotia on those first trips were stunning quiet.

It was obvious that people were actually listening to each other instead of trying to talk over one another.  Listening and debating with each other was one of the Canadian traits that I grew to love.

If you lived through the debates on Canada getting its constitution and on Quebec independence, there is no question that Canadians are willing to talk and debate issues in order to settle them in a civilized manner no matter how long the debate takes. Sometimes it did seem like a good idea that maybe the talk should stop and the action begin, but somehow the issues seemed to get resolved.

Over the years, our family has moved a lot.  Yet we still stay in touch with a few Canadian families.  I love to hear their views on what is happening in the United States.  I like the way that Canadians can talk about an issue without getting angry.  I find it is rare that Canadians turn a political issue into a personal issue.

In my mind the three day attack by Rush Limbaugh on Sandra Fluke would have caused national revulsion in Canada.  While many people in the United States are appalled at the attack, there are plenty who still listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Perhaps the best word to describe Canadians that I know is "civilized."  They go about their jobs, realize that politicians are politicians, and make the best of a situation that they know will probably not change.

It is not that Canadians don't complain about their government, they just seem to better understand than most Americans that a change of government really isn't going to change very much.

One of the reasons that I fell in love with Canada in the first place was that living in Canada in the seventies and eighties was like living in the United States in the fifties and sixties.  I don't mean that from a sense that Canada was behind life in the states when it came to modern conveniences.  What was great about Canada was the basic trust in human nature that seemed to remind me of my days growing up in rural North Carolina.

When we moved off our farm in New Brunswick in 1984, I had to go to town and buy a padlock which I installed on the front door.   We didn't lock our front door for the eleven years that we lived on the farm.  I had a hard time getting the key out of the ignition of my farm truck because it had rarely been taken out.

We also found Canadian people to be some of the friendliest and most supportive people that we have ever met.  We have friends in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia whom we have never really been able to replace.  It always seems that many American friends are too busy to take the time to be friendly.  Perhaps we Americans could learn something from Canadians by slowing down our lives a little.

People dropping by just to visit when we were on the farm in Canada reminded me of those Sunday afternoon visitors in my youth in rural North Carolina.   Even after moving to the city, I remember neighbors in Canada stopping by for visits.  One such visit ended up in an impromptu pizza party for our two familes.  I always felt our children were safe in Canada. In Halifax they even walked to school and came home for lunch.

I am proud to count my Canadian friends among the best that I have made over my lifetime.  Some that I haven't seen in years are still the same friendly people that I knew when we lived in the same province. 

There are places that I have lived which are no longer on my list of places where I might consider living, but Canada is not one of them, and it is because of the people.

With the cold, snowy weather that Canada gets in the wintertime and the great weather in our current Coastal Paradise, you know the Canadian people have to be mighty nice to keep Canada on my list of places that I would live.

 

Winter thoughts turn to Canada

Many Americans think that it is winter in Canada all the time.  Canadians like to prey on those American fears.

I once had a Canadian neighbor who claimed that our weather in Tay Creek, New Brunswick, was eleven months of winter and one month of damn poor sledding.  It was more like eight months of winter.

Even that is somewhat of an exaggeration since the worst that I can remember is snow being on the ground from mid-October until mid-May.

Shoveling snow was something like opening the garage door in the South.  I did it almost every morning without thinking.

Tay Creek, home of Tay Ridge Angus, our old farm, is in the rolling hills north of Fredericton, New Brunswick. It is just enough colder than Fredericton to be labelled as a snow belt in a very snowy Canadian province.  I think that I recorded twenty three feet of snow in 1974, our first winter in Tay Creek.

I could tell snow tales for hours, but snow is just part of life in much of Canada. I loved it when I was living there.  There are few nicer things to do than go cross country skiing on six inches of fresh snow which just nicely covers your packed trail from the day before.

We also had the tools to handle snow from my tractor mounted snow blower which would eat through a three foot drift and blow the snow 150 feet away to well equipped provincial snow plows that never seemed to stop grooming our rural snow banks.  The biggest problem that I can remember was when the city snow banks got so high that it was hard to see before making a turn from one street to another.

There are a lot of good things about snow.  The first snowfall that stays makes for a much more pronounced changing of the seasons than leaves falling off the trees.   When everything is covered with a foot of snow, you shift into a different gear with much of the focus being on next year.

Snow also brings a sense of peace and even cleanliness. When you are far enough north that the snow stays white, it brings a sense of timeless beauty to the land.  Most farmers in the north want the snows to come.  A good couple of feet of snow on the ground protects the land from the minus twenty to forty degree temperatures.

Beyond the cities along the country roads, snow also makes driving safer.  When you get huge snowbanks along the roads, you can slide off a road and do no damage to your vehicle. Most Canadian snow bears no resemblance to the snow that we have in the South.  Cold dry Canadian snow makes for decent traction and smoother roads.  Southern snow quickly packs or melts to ice which also plagues Canada in warmer winters.

The picture at the top of the post is farmhouse where we lived in from 1974 to 1984.  It has had some remodelling but that doesn't take away the memories.  It was a good house to be in during a blizzard. There used to be a series of sheds attached to the house.  One contained the wood that we used to provide most of the heating for the house.  We had a high efficiency wood stove that would drive you out of the house with little effort.  Our house also had gravity fed spring water and plenty of provisions from our summer garden.  It is hard to even comprehend how my wife, Glenda, managed to can and freeze all those vegetables and raise three children while I was taking care of our two hundred head of cattle.

The only problem with enjoying snow from the inside was that I didn't get to stay in the house during a blizzard.  I was often outside clearing a road to our cattle which wintered nearly a mile back on the farm.  The cattle stayed in woods near what we called the back field.  We had some amazing snow storms and brutally cold weather, but I always managed to take the cattle their daily big round bale.

My favorite part of winter coming was the end of gardening.   The ground between the bush in the foreground and the house was where we gardened.  Each fall, the garden had to be cleaned up and a few loads of composted manure were worked into the ground.  We had  a wonderful garden and grew almost all of our food except for chicken and turkey.  Chickens were for making eggs, and no one would have considered eating one of our hearty hens who survived on chicken feed and a scoop of fresh snow instead of water each winter morning.

As much as I enjoy the vegetables from our much smaller garden patches in the South, it never seems to end.  Already it is time to order my tomato seeds.  I need to get the order in before the end of the year so I can get the seedlings going before the middle of January in order to be able to plant them around the third week of March.   And of course I should mention that we are still getting lettuce out of our winter garden.  I was also working on wild onions in our Southern Outer Banks yard early the third week of December.  You won't be digging any wild onions out of your yard in Tay Creek in December especially while wearing shorts.

Almost like the always connected, never-really-away-from-their-desk business world of America, a Southern gardener gets little rest.  Canadians have a long time to plan and contemplate their gardens which often don't get planted until the first week of June when we are already enjoying the first tomatoes of the season.

I have little interest in returning to the long, cold winters of Canada, but when you have the right clothing, and a positive attitude, snow isn't so bad.  There aren't many farms that don't look better organized and more scenic with a couple of feed of snow to cover those things for which there are never enough time like weed eating around the buildings or moving the pasture harrow back to the implement yard. 

However, it is hard to lust for snow when you know how much shorter the winter can be with a few spectacular December beach days in your pocket.

Thanks go out to my friends, Kerry and Brenda, for the picture of our old farmhouse.

There are some changes to my blog.  There is a new blog search tool at the top of the right sidebar.

Also at the end of the post is a new tool for sharing my post.  It is now very easy to share one of my posts with almost any social media service.

 

 

Ah, Canadian Summer?

When I moved to Canadian in the summer of 1971, one of the reasons that I headed north was to escape the heat.  The other reason was to find some cheap land.  I bought my first farm, complete with 140 acres, a house and barn for a little over $6,000.

My four years of college were in the Boston area, and I spent most of the last summer in classes. Anyone who has spent a summer in Boston will tell you that the city can be pretty nasty in the summer even for someone like me who grew up in North Carolina when air conditioning was still something of a novelty.

Sixteen years later when my North Carolina born wife and I moved back to the states, we were ready for some warmth.  I can still remember my wife saying on a vacation to the North Carolina coast while we were still living in Canada, that she was finally warm all over for the first time in years.

When she made the statement, we were just getting out of the car in Tarboro, NC on a triple digit day.  It was hot enough in the fast food parking lot that the tar of the pavement was a little sticky.

While there are plenty of places that it gets hot in Canada, Halifax, Nova Scotia which was our last Canadian home is not normally one of them.

I can remember putting on a light down jacket to attend a soccer game that our daughter was playing one July.  The jacket felt great.  With fog and mist never far away, Nova Scotia can turn out to be the perfect escape from the heat, but it is not the place to go if you want to swim in the ocean.

Summer in Canada can also be fleeting.  Canadian summer reminds be a lot of the narrow passage from the inlet to the river in the picture at the top of the post.  It takes a while to get to Canadian summer, but the time you're actually there is very minimal.

One of the old timers who lived near our farm north of Frederiction, NB used to joke that you could sum up the area weather with this phrase, "eleven months of winter, and one month of damn poor sledding."

While Canadian summer isn't quite that bad, it is fleeting and sometimes hard to find, and by the middle of August if you haven't found it, you might be out of luck.  It doesn't take long for the evenings to start cooling in August.  Unlike our area along NC's Southern Outer Banks, there is no great expanse of warm water to make for an extraodinaryly pleasant fall.

In September 1973 we were living on the Nova Scotia shore of the Bay of Fundy.  We got surprised by an early season snow storm that knocked the power out for a week.  Snow in September is not something we see here on the Crystal Coast where even snow in January or February is a rarity.

Still I know relatively few Canadians who are unhappy enough with their climate to seek a warmer area.  Perhaps if you grow up with snow for six months of the year, you end up missing it if the snow only shows up a couple of times of a year and is gone by noon,  even before you have time to shovel it.

We do get lots of Canadian friends as visitors, and I am very happy with that.  Their visits remind me of just how nice Canadians are in general and how much we enjoyed living there.

Our beaches are always open especially for friendly Canadians, and the best time of the year to visit is often the fall when the air is cooler and the water is still warm.

We live in an area where riding down the river is not only possible but a regular event even in the depths of winter.

Why Carolina Fog is Better than Canadian Fog

Fog can be a way of life when you live in some places.  In the early seventies, my wife and I lived on an old farm on the Nova Scotia coast along the Bay of Fundy. 

While the view of the water across our neighbor's sheep pasture was often stunning, it was also more often than not obscured with fog.

My theory as to why so many homes like our old farm house were painted bright colors was that it added some life to the ever present fog.   The only benefit that I could see to the fog was that it made growing some vegetables like broccoli almost too easy.  When your broccoli plants are as tall as Labrador retrievers, you know that they like the area.  It was also a wonderful place to grow English peas, but tomatoes and corn were more of a challenge.

My wife and I decided we wanted to have a commercial farm so we moved to a "better" spot for farming at least if weather is your main consideration.  We found sun for drying hay much easier to count on when we moved to Tay Creek in central New Brunswick. Of course I am not certain that trading cool breezes and fog for black flies and minus forty temperatures balanced out, but it worked for us.

Now we live on North Carolina's Crystal Coast.  While it shares some characteristics with Nova Scotia, it is a far different climate.  I have written before about how little fog we see along the Southern Outer Banks.

What I have learned in the almost six years that I have been on the NC shore is that fog here is a lot more beneficial than it was in Nova Scotia. At least it works that way if you are a home owner trying not to use your heat pumps.

Nova Scotia had so little heat along the shore that cool morning fogs often brought out jackets. Here on the North Carolina coast, we have plenty of heat, and usually a little fog just cools us down nicely.

My wife and I play a game each spring.  We try to see how long we can go without either heating or air conditioning.  Some years we can stretch it to nearly two and one half months.  All it takes is a little work at opening and closing windows at the proper times.

On April 10 after my boat ride on the White Oak River which runs down to the Intracoastal Waterway, I sentenced myself to pulling some wild onions from our front yard.  I spent about an hour out there in the heat which probably got close to 80F unless you believe the thermometer on our bedroom window which registered 106F. 

After I came in the house and cooled off, we headed over to the beach about 6 PM.  Before we left I opened several windows in our house including the upstairs ones in my office which are especially useful in cooling down our house.  With windows open in an adjoing bedroom, the open office windows create a nice crossflow of air that sucks the heat right out of our home.  The temperature upstairs was 80F when we left for the beach.  By the time we got back around 7:30 PM, the upstairs had already cooled to 77F, and the downstairs had gone from 77F to 75F. Of course the only energy that cost us was my climbing some stairs.

We left the windows open all night.  This morning the temperature in my upstairs office was 64F.  Our downstairs temperature had dropped to 69F.  I closed all the windows before the morning air started to warm up.  If the Accuweather forecast for the Swansboro area is correct, we should get close to 80F again on April 11.  We are usually a little warmer than Swansboro.  With our location being farther inland about 3 miles up the river, 80F is easily possible.

With a little luck, we can avoid running the heat pumps for another day.  That's a whole lot better than having to build a fire in the fireplace to warm up on a summer day in Nova Scotia.

Of course, after escaping the heat and crowds of the big city of Boston in the seventies, I thought sitting by a fireplace in July on the Nova Scotia shore was pretty neat.  It all depends on where you are in your life and what your goals are.  Mine have changed drastically.

One of my goals now is to be outside as much as possible with as few clothes on as decency requires. Another is to be on the water as many times as I can in a week's time. That means being able to use my boat every month of the year. Then there is walking on the beach whenever possible.

Carolina fog works better for all that, but I will never forget those times in Canada.  They taught me to never take civilization for granted.

 

A Canadian crop you can count on

I spent much of the seventies and early eighties running a cattle farm in the Maritimes of Canada.  Today I live along the Crystal Coast which is part of the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Many people have heard of Kitty Hawk, Nags Head, Duck, and Cape Hatteras which are all part of the Northern Outer Banks.

Few people know about the Southern Outer Banks. 

The Southern ones extend south from Cape Lookout and are at their best when the beaches become south facing along the Crystal Coast. 

The area is about as far away fromt the Canadian Maritimes as you can get in climate. The name for the area comes from the way the water looks in the summer sunlight.

A couple of weeks ago we had a visit from some friends who were neighbors of ours when we lived in Tay Creek, NB. We had a couple of large farms there and about 200 head of cattle.   When we moved from our Tay Ridge Farm in 1984, one of the things that the neighbors gave us was a rock with "Tay Creek" painted on it.  Rocks are part of life in Tay Creek.  Someone once said that if any of the farmers who settled Tay Creek had any idea of how many rocks they would have to pick over their lives most would have never started farming.

Tay Creek was especially rocky piece of ground which was reserved only the Scots and Irish.  The English settlers got much better land.  I was lucky in that one of my farms had red soil which had many fewer rocks, but it still had plenty.  Sometimes in the spring when we were working our garden on the home place which is just to the right of the red marker on the linked Google map, it would appear that we had more rocks in the garden than soil.

Each time we plowed a field we got a new crop of rocks which mean you had to haul them off the field.  A local saying was that the one crop you could count on was rocks.  The extremes of temperature and frost always brought more rocks to the surface. We actually witnessed minus forty degrees Fahrenheit in Tay Creek.   

We also got nearly twenty-three feet of snow the first year we were there.  Some years snow would come by the end of October and not leave until early May.  One former neighbor from the area visited us one spring and drove down the Shenandoah Valley in April.  He asked my wife, "Tell me why in the world you left this and lived in Tay Creek?"

That perhaps is another story, but we now live in Carteret County which has no rocks and hardly gets any snow.  In fact we have to manufacture our rocks for driveways and ditches.  The soil is deep and rich.  You might find a sea shell, but there are not rocks that have not been hauled into the county.

A couple of days ago the forecast came out that we were going to have a late frost.  That put me in a quandry since I had already planted some small tomato plants.  Finally I decided that I could put clear plastic cups on top of them.  However, with the winds that we sometimes get, I was worried that they might blow off.   I could have dug around and found about half as many lead fishing sinkers as I needed, but putting a small rock or two on each cup made more sense.  The only problem was that I had no rocks and of course there was no where locally to go pick rocks.

I solved my problem by buying a bag of rocks.  I am sure if this news ever gets back to Tay Creek, they'll likely want the rock that they gave me back, or they will probably try to charge me for it.  However, I think my purchased creek rocks did great on top on top of my minature greenhouses.

Hopefully my tomato plants will come through as usual.  We normally get our first homegrown tomatoes around the first week in June which is about the time when the folks in Tay Creek put their tomato plants in the garden.

Living in Canada was a wonderful experience, but I don't miss the rocks, cold weather, and black flies.

February, the cruelest month of the year in Canada

When we lived in the Canadian Maritimes, I used to really hate February. Winter at that time of the year reminded me of a crow just waiting for an opportunity to steal any hope of spring.

By the middle of February, every phone call that we made to our relatives in North Carolina would bring some report of the imminent arrival of spring.

It is bad enough that folks in North Carolina get to enjoy pansies which bloom all through the winter, but when they start plowing the ground and planting stuff, it is really hard for a farmer to take especially if he is looking at two feet of snow on his fields.

This February 17 morning we are perched on a mountain near Roanoke, Virginia just beyond the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley. 

The south has endured a tough winter in 2011 but right now we are basking in some great temperatures and likely to see some 100 year records fall today.

This morning we awoke to 61F or 16C.  This afternoon we should make it to 75F or 24C.

Those are pretty nice temperatures for the middle of February.

The nice thing about living in the South is that you do get to see signs of spring in February.  Earlier in the week I noticed the first bulbs sticking their green leaves above ground.

Down on the coast of North Carolina where we spend most of our time, I recently saw some of the wild grasses turning green. 

Even harder to believe, in about four to five weeks, it will be time for the first mowing of the year in Virginia's bluegrass country.

Early spring bulbs will be blooming by mid to late March even in the mountains of Virginia.

While I think many eastern Canadians take the easy way out and fly off to a warm beach, and then have to face an abrupt re-entry into Canada's lingering winter, I have often thought that the best way to really appreciate spring and get away from the snows of Canada is to drive south through some warmer spots.

While it was only a weeks ago when 65% of the US was covered with snow, today the number is probably under 25%.  The national snow map shows that once you get half way through Pennsylvania, you will be out of the snow even in the middle of February.

And if you time your trip right, sometime between the middle of March and early April, you can watch spring unfold as you drive down Interstate 81 through the Shenandoah Valley. There is always a chance of spring snow storm, but you get even worse ones in Canada.

I can recommend taking Interstate 81 all the way down to where Interstate 77 heads south from Virginia into North Carolina.  North Carolina is an easy state to wander through.

The people are gracious and happy to see Canadians.  They might not know much about Canada, but they wrote the book on southern hospitality and cooking.

I can recommend swinging off Interstate 77 and heading towards Mount Airy, NC where you will find traces of Mayberry and the Sobotta Manor which is our old homeplace and now a wonderful bed and breakfast.  It you can't get in at the Manor, there is a very nice Hampton Inn there.  You can check out Goober's Restaurant, Odell's Drive-in, or Snappy Lunch.  Be aware, you might get asked for documentation in Snappy Lunch if you are there early.

After Mount Airy, I would follow Highway 52 south to Interstate 40 and stay on it until Greensboro where you can pick up 421 South to Siler City and then 64 East towards Cary and Raleigh.  It is a very pleasant drive through the countryside.  Try some barbecue or Brunswick stew at Smithfield's in Siler City.

You might want to swing off the road at Pittsboro and take 15/501 North a few miles to Fearrington Gardens.  They can be spectacular in early April. There are some fancy places to eat there.

Then I would head on back to 64 East which will take you eventually back to Interstate 40. An hour east of Raleigh, take exit 373 off of Interstate 40 and follow Highway 24 to Jacksonville where it exits towards Swansboro.

You can find lots of information about the area in my Beaufort, Swansboro, and Emerald Isle travel guides which are links on the left side of my homepage.  Make sure you take time to walk on the beaches and visit some of the area restaurants where you can enjoy some great fresh seafood. Nicky's is my current favorite unless you want some of the best grouper on earth, then you need to go to Riverside Steak and Seafood.

If you get to the area in mid-April, it is the perfect time to visit Tryon Palace and their amazing gardens. A dose of their tulips will keep spring fresh in your memory for a long time, maybe even long enough for spring to arrive in Canada.

If you are in the area in mid-April, you might just get to taste some fresh local strawberries.

From New Bern, Interstate 95 isn't very far, and if you are brave and clever, you can head north and maybe even avoid traffic around the DC area.

If you decide to stay, we can handle that also, check out my real estate page or my Crystal Coast Life blog for more information on the area.

Even more fun than the strawberries is the cascade of local produce that we get starting in May, and by the first week of June I will be enjoying my own ripe tomatoes.

A ride through a southern spring is much better than having the crow of winter waiting to steal away your hope of warmth.