One of the challenging things about owning a weekend home in Priceville is getting to it – and getting around once you’re there.  There is no inter-community public transit in Grey County, or in most of rural Canada.

If I want to go from Toronto to Flesherton (forget direct to Priceville) you can get a Greyhound bus. Of course you still have to get to Priceville.  No idea if there are taxis in Flesherton.  If there are they don’t have websites.  Maybe I could hitchhike.

I’d have to make sure I had groceries with me because once I arrived in Priceville it wouldn’t be easy to get to Flesherton, Durham, Hanover, or Markdale to get groceries.  Of course that won’t be as important once the general store opens.  Yes, we’re going to have a general store in Priceville!

Inter-community public transportation is a thing of the past in rural Canada

I was quite excited today when I saw this link in my Google Alerts – Charter sought for railway line past Horning’s Mills. I clicked the link and read the article.   I have to admit that I found the language a bit old-fashioned and formal but the idea was terrific.  I was all ready to blog about it when I noticed this at the top – 125 YEARS AGO Thursday, October 21, 1883.

I often think about how communities were connected in the past, that it was much easier for people to go from town to town.  We rely so heavily on cars now that we can’t get from one town to another.

Tony McQuail proposed a Rural Rideshare program as part of his platform in the 2008 election.  We need something.  I wonder if it’s possible to use school buses as inter-community buses when they aren’t taking kids to school.  It’s not particularly friendly but it is better than everyone driving their own car.

There’s a discussion group about trains at the Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board.  Trains are a great idea. They don’t have to be huge, they can be just one car.  Unfortunately Canada did away with the rail infrastructure in the 70s.  A lot of old rail beds are now hiking paths and bike trails.  I can’t see anyone rushing to convert them back.

We do need ot do something but maybe the solutions need to come from individuals, not from government.

Well…it saddens me to write this; but our Ontario ash trees are under attack. I love trees and my place is surrounded by them Some are 100 years old. But everything on this earth has a lifespan…including trees.

Remember Dutch Elm Disease? Well now we have the Emerald Ash borer and it is killing our ash trees – all of them. If you have one on your property,
you might want to go take a close look at it…check to see if there are holes in the trunk…and if there are…you may be sure that the tree’s days are numbered.

Once the ash borer strikes, it’s over.

Trees are important to us. Trees help the earth and they help people too. They help us breathe
      
because they filter out pollution, help recycle water, prevent soil loss, give shelter and shade, provide homes for animals and birds. Trees are symbols of life and that’s why when a child is born, many people plant a tree to mark the birth. So, it was with great sadness that I noticed a tree at my place starting to die. Some of the higher limbs were bare last spring and this spring, there were more limbs without buds or leaves. Then a friend of mine approached me at our morning coffee gathering and said, "Jim…you better cut that ash tree now, it’s dying fast."

He came around to my place after coffee and we walked together to the big  tree…at the northwest corner of my lot and he said "Look". Lo and behold the huge trunk was filled with holes…some of them quite large. "That’s your ash beetle", he said. "He’s been boring into this tree for years now.

In a way, trees that have been with you for a long time become friends. This particular ash tree has been part of my life since I was a young child. This tree was so big that I couldn’t reach my arms around it and here it was at the end of its life. My friend…who happens to be the same age as me…said, "She’s gotta come down". He went to his truck to get out his chain saw. (I thought, oh no, he’s going to cut down my friend). I said to him that I didn’t think of the tree as a female…he looked at me and just laughed. then he revved up the saw and I watched in horror as the chain bit into the bark and he cut out a wedge of wood. "That’s so she’ll fall thataway", he said…pointing along the bottom of my garden. "But we can’t fall her today. Wind’s wrong".

Part of me thought that was good. My old tree friend was getting a reprieve.

But there was still
that huge gash in the trunk….ughh. The next day, the wind changed and the tree came down.

My friend guessed it was about 80 years old.

Almost exactly 10 years older than me.

A moment of silence.

And then we started cutting her up for winter fires.

You’d think that making a fire would be making a fire and that it wouldn’t matter whether it was in a fireplace or in a wood stove.  Apparently this isn’t true.  Of course I’m the woman who actually had to Google ‘how to make a fire’ in order to be able to use my fireplace in France so I’m not exactly an expert.

We have a wood stove in the house in Grey County.  When we bought the house last year we assumed it would just be like a fireplace, that we’d use it on lazy winter weekend afternoons, atmosphere as much as anything. 

That was before Meg and John experienced the limitations of the oil furnace and the reality of a Grey County winter.  The price of oil being one, the inefficiency of an old furnace being another, and the lack of insulation in the house being the kicker.

We’ll slowly deal with the furnace and the insulation but renovating a house when you’re only there on the weekend takes a while.  In the meantime the wood stove is playing a key role in keeping us warm.  When we can light the fire and keep it burning.

I arrived in Priceville yesterday at about 3 pm.  Meg was coming from Toronto and the plan was that I would get the house warmed before she arrived.  Good plan.  Didn’t really work.

• You need kindling to light a fire – in fact I suspect that a key to lighting a fire is kindling.  We don’t have any. 
• The wood needs to be dry – even if you have kindling it takes a lot to light damp logs.
• Fire needs a draft – it’s important to know which way to slide the little bar to  open and close the damper.  And to understand when the damper should be open and when it should be closed.
• You need to feed the fire once you get it going – if it took 5 hours and at least as many disappointing false starts to get the fire going you better remember to keep adding wood.

Meg and I finally got the fire burning at bedtime.  Finally. 

I slept in.  Meg didn’t think to put wood on the fire when she got up.  The fire has gone out.  I’m wearing so may layers that I look like the  Michelin man.  It’s hard to type.

It’s decision time. 

• Do I try and find and axe and some dry wood and make kindling?
• Do I hope that John arrives tonight and let him make kindling?
• Do we buy a bag of firewood and use it as kindling?
• Do we cheat completely and use those little fire starter things?

Only time will tell.

winter beauty – I’m learning to appreciate it.

I rely on the internet to earn a living.  In Priceville there is no high speed internet access available.  In fact, I think that the dial-up access is possibly the slowest in the world.  19.2.  Did you know that the internet could be that slow?  Do you know how slow that is?  Unbelievable.

And it costs $30.00 a month!  Add to that the fact that when it rains the new phone line that was installed just for the internet doesn’t work and you’ll understand why Bell Canada isn’t my favourite company.

The good news is that parts of Grey County will be getting high speed internet access by the summer of 2008 thanks to an OMAFRA grant.  The really good news is that Priceville in in the proposed service area.

To get a sense of the immense frustration rural residents feel it’s worth reading the open letter to Geoff Hogan posted by Darrell Markowitz on Hammered Out Bits.

This summer, as I drove around Grey, Bruce, and Huron County one of the things that struck me was the lack of abject poverty.  In fact, the lack of anything that looked like poverty. 

There are large ‘factory’ farms, the traditional ‘mixed’ farm seems to have almost disappeared.  You can argue the benefits of either side of the question.  Personally I think there’s room for both. 

Admittedly we tend to focus on the upside of life in the country.  And just in this part of Ontario.  In England things aren’t so rosy. 

This video of Show of Hands singing Country Life gives us a glimpse into the darker side of living in the country in the UK. and helps explain why so many Brits are buying property overseas.

Thanks to Charlie at Yahoo 360 for posting it.

I spend a lot of my time living in the country in the south of France and there’s a downside here as well.  The market for French wine is shrinking, even among the French, and vines are being pulled out.  So far no one seems to have articulated any kind of sustainable agrilcultural plan to replace wine making as the main source of income in the Corbieres, where I live.   The government focus is now on tourism which will create service jobs, notoriously low paying. Still, the kinds of problems highlighted in the video don’t exist here.  At least not in the country. 

There was a violent storm yesterday at about 6 pm and the electricity went off at about 6.30.  Sometimes no electricity is a gift, a little holiday from the mundane.

We lit the wood stove when the storm started.  No particular reason, it wasn’t that cold, it just seemed like a nice idea.  We were sitting and talking, sipping wine, and watching the storm when the power went.  We gathered candles – always be prepared, have lots of candles – and kept on chatting.

And then thought about dinner. Hmmm.  We could have peanut butter sandwiches, or cereal, or cheese and crackers, or …  we could cook on the wood stove.  Adventurous souls that we are we opted for the wood stove.

And cooked a real dinner.  Chickpea curry, baby bok choy, potatoes with coriander, naan, homemade green tomato salsa (we made the salsa last week, we aren’t insane).  Lovely.  Delicious dinner by candlelight.  Left the dishes til morning and went to bed.