Spruce Grouse Living Up To His Name
This photograph has been cropped a good deal to bring the bird into easy view - sorry about the lack of resolution here but I liked the scene of him(her?) almost out of sight in his favorite haunt.
Port Hood Island
Originally, Port Hood Island was connected to Cape Breton Island by a sand spit. It housed a booming lobster cannery, however, during a winter storm in the late 19th century, the thin sand spit connecting Port Hood Island was washed away. In the late 1950s, a road was constructed from the (then) main fishing wharf of the mainland to the fishing wharf on the island but it did not stand up to the weather and washed away shortly after completion. Rocks that made up the road still remain and now form what residents call the "Breakwater".
The island was originally settled by Protestant Loyalists, giving contrast to the Catholic majority in the Port Hood area. In the 1950s Port Hood Island had approximately 28 families, mostly fishermen and small lot farmers, along with a one-room school which handled grades 1-8/9, after which students boarded in Port Hood and attended Port Hood Academy. The island church enjoyed the services of the Port Hood minister who also served Mabou.
Currently the island is mainly lived on during the summer months, with about half the residents having prior connections to the area. One of the previous permanent residents died in the summer of 2003, and there are now only two people living on Port Hood Island all year long.
Single Malt Pig – actually 'How To Raise A Whiskey Pig'
A friend of
mine (I’ll call him Brian for the while) sent me a clipping of an article from
the October issue of POPULAR MECHANICS entitled ‘How To Raise a Whiskey Pig’
(p20). And for those of you like myself,
not quite a vegetarian but put off from eating the flesh of poor animals raised
under modern standards of quantity at any cost to thought of consideration of
the living conditions of those animals and the use of antibiotics as growth
enhancers at any cost to the proliferation of ‘super-bugs’ that have now
outstripped out ability to fight them with our ‘magic-bullets’ (as they said in
the innocent days of the 30s) of vaccines, [wow long clause, eh], the thought
of animals raised in small quantities in humane conditions that might actually
taste great lead me briskly into this interesting article with its’ somewhat
humorist twist. You should read the
article in its one page entirety to get the full well written impact but for
now a quick synopsis.
Scott Bush,
founder of Templeton Rye had the great idea to raise a batch of pigs on ‘spent’
rye mash to possibly get the unique flavor of the rye whiskey in their
meat. He hired a specialist (doctorate
in swine nutrition) to determine just how much spent mash would be suitable for
proper nutrition in the daily diet of the pigs – a breed called Duroc that they
jointly decided upon as being best of choice.
Starting with 9 week old little piggies they fed them the crafted menu
for 20 some weeks till they were each around 210 pounds and then turned them
into marketable meat for upscale restaurants.
Top Chef winner Stephanie
Izard who cooked one at her Little Goat Diner cheerfully says that there is
nothing in the taste to indicate that there was 20% rye mash in their diet –
but that indeed the meat was flavorful with guests commenting that the pig was
the best they had ever eaten.
So score one
for small scale farming and one for trying an unusual feeding technique to
jointly turn out a best in show.
Afterglow
After sunset – and
before the night -
when red tinged
purple fills the dome of sky,
one can trace the
imperceptible change of light
from the faded golden
promise of sun on high
to the east where the
black creeps in.
But not to signify
the end.
Change it is that
draws our eye from that mystic silhouette,
where all somber
ochered hues have reached blackened fingers
against the grieving
evening – ahh! sad nostalgia is that color, wet.
For night too
signifies the friend
that gave us the
diamond brilliance of black velvet
strewn with baubles
of stars
and then the moon.
have posted this poem before but it fits this photograph well