Alan Skeoch – Page 91 – Alan's Oeuvre

September 10, 2020September 10, 2020

EPISODE 115: INVADER? HUGE COHO SALMON CAUGHT BY ANDREW SKEOCH, SEPT. 5, 2020, PORT CREDIT

EPISODE 115 INVADER CAUGHT! HUGE COHO SALMON CAUGHT BY ANDREW SKEOCH, SEPT. 5, 2020, PORT CREDIT, ONTARIO

alan skeoch

sept. 9, 2020

“Dad, just caught a big one this morning….about a mile out in the lake.”

“Holy Cow, what is it?”

“Big Coho Salmon…lots of them down deep…These Coho’s love dining on the little alewives.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Already done….I got the remains of my lure out of its mouth then put it back in the lake.”

“So what kind of a fisherman are you?”

“Catch and Release…guess I would be called a sport fisherman.”

“Why do it?”

“Because these big salmon…the Cohos and the Chinooks…they put up a real fight when snagged…takes

a lot of work to get this Coho hanging from my index finger…a lot of work.:

“I hear the Coho’s are an invasive species…not natural to the Great Lakes.”

“True.”

“Don’t they disrupt the natural balance of underwater life. What has happened to the giant lake Trout

that were once the top predators?”

“Some are still around. A breeding group are still in a spot in Lake Superior”

“Ever caught one?”

“Sure. Not much fun though.”

“Fun?”

“No challenge catching a big Laker. They just float up to the boat. Often dead by the time they are landed…no point in

catch and release.”

“Why don’t they fight like your big Coho.”

“Bladder problem. They live in the deep water…200 to 300 feet down. When caught and hauled up their bladders expand

and pretty well knocks them out. The Cohos on the other hand burp as they come up.”

“Burp?”

“Bladders adjust to shallower water. So they come up mad as hell and ready for a fight.”

“Looks ugly enough.”

“These big salmon are all muscle…the giant Lake Trout have a lot of fat. Some old Lakers have been

weighed at 200 pounds. They can live for a hundred years. These Cohos have a short life spent gorging

on alewives.

“Seems a shame to let an invasive species like that Coho loose in the great Lakes…must have

changed the whole ecology of the Great Lakes. They must gobble up all the small fish.”

“They do…and that is why they are here…to eat the alewives by the ton.”

“Dad, look up that guy Tanner…a Yank from Michigan He changed the Great Lakes…totally. He dropped in these Cohos and

also Chinooks…two kinds of salmon from the Pacific. The alewives were killing the Great Lakes fishery. By the time Tanner

came along 90% of the fish life in all the Great Lakes were alewives.”

“What is an alewife.?”

“Another invasive species that thrived in our waters. Small…might be called a bait fish. Spend their lives eating fish eggs…killing the natural fish that way. Seemed they could

not be stopped because our natural predators…the big Lake Trout the lurked deep down…were being sucked to death by another

invasive specie…the Sea Lamprey….ugliest thing in the Great Lakes. Sort of a snake with a head full of Velcro. They feasted

on our Lake Trout. Swam up alongside them and ‘zap’ they shoved that Needle toothed most into the Lakers and sucked their

blood until they weakened and died One lamprey could kill 40 pounds of Lakefish in a season. With no predator fish the alewives

multiplied into the millions…billions. So many that a few lost to Lampreys was insignificant..”

“Have you ever caught a Coho with a Lamprey attached?”

“Occasionally. We are ordered to kill any Lamprey we catch. Never release them. God, are they ugly. Killers.”

“How did the lampreys and alewives get into the Great Lakes in the first place.?”

“Canals. We built some great canals. The Erie Canal in New York State was a highway for the alewives from the 1840’s. Then

the Welland Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway became super highways for he lamprey. We did it to oursleves. We murdered

the Great Lakes by overfising and by opening those canals.

“…Dad, why don’t you look up that guy Tanner. He saved the Great Lakes.”

“What’s his first name?”

“I’ve forgotten. But I remember one thing he said just before he dumped the first Coho or Chinook Salmon into the Lake Michigan watershed.”

“What?”

“He was flying over Lake Michigan and notice a huge white thing floating on he surface. He asked the pilot what it was. “Those alewives,,,

millions of them die when water temperature changes. They float.” Tanner asked the pilot to bank the plane and go lower for a better

look. The white patch was seven miles long and half a mile wide. Millions…billions of dead alewives.” Tanner never forgot that sight.

By the 1950’s and 1960’s the

Great Lakes were packed with alewives. Often there were so many dead alewives on some beaches that front end loaders and

dump trucks had to be hired to scoop them up and bury them in pits. Something had to be done and Tanner was the man that changed everything. Look him

up, Dad.”

I spent the months of studying the impact of invasive species on our Great Lakes. There are many fascinating stories about the changes in biomass in the

Great Lakes. Some stories are very disturbing. No story is quite as dramatic as the story of Howard Tanner. Normally I would like to tell the story in my own

words but the words of Lou Blouin, writer and public radio producer, are so good…so dramatic…so multi-faceted that I have quoted him below.

NOTE: HOWARD TANNER BROUGHT ABOUT “ONE OF THE BIGGEST BIO-MANIPULATIONS THE PLANET HAS EVER SEEN.”

BELOW IS THE FULL STORY OF HOWARD TANNER

Featured in the November 2015 issue of Traverse, Northern Michigan’s Magazine.

Howard Tanner is not a man who likes to talk about himself. But there are moments when he can’t help but beam with some degree of self-satisfaction. Like the time he was just coming ashore from fishing and a 10-year-old boy identified him simply as “the man who invented salmon.” The latter isn’t such a bad shorthand for what actually happened. Because the fish that many assume has always been here is only in the Great Lakes because Tanner said it should be.

The clock hanging on the wall of Howard Tanner’s dining room—the one he insists every guest pay a visit—is little more than a rectangular piece of wood, heavily lacquered, with thin gold hands. It has the look of something that was made in a trophy shop—which is appropriate, given that it’s really more of a plaque than a timepiece. Lean in closely, and you’ll see it is an award from the Freshwater Fisheries Hall of Fame; a memento documenting the day, according to a small inscription, that Tanner was “eternally enshrined” in fishing history.

“Doesn’t it sound like I’m already dead?” Tanner, now in his early 90s, shouts from his chair in the living room.

His morbid quip is clearly a well-worn joke—an attempt, perhaps, to blunt pride with a little self-deprecating Midwestern modesty. Because, in truth, Howard Tanner has been “eternally enshrined” for good reason. Some have dubbed his work of the 1960s as nothing less than the largest and most successful biomanipulation project ever attempted.

Howard Tanner

Meet Howard Tanner

Hear Tanner’s own version of the story and he’ll tell you he was simply in the right place at the right time. The Michigan native and fisheries biologist who grew up in Bellaire had returned home after several years in Colorado to take the head job at the fisheries department at the Michigan Department of Conservation. In 1964, there were certainly more uplifting jobs he could have moved his young family across the country for.

By mid-century, the Great Lakes had become, by many measures, an ecological disaster zone. Invasive species had devastated lake trout, the Great Lakes’ native trophy fish, and overfishing was finishing off what was left. Pollution had grown so intense that environmental groups were collecting dead, oil-soaked ducks from the Detroit River and dumping them on the lawn of the State Capitol. Rotting alewives were washing up on Lake Michigan beaches in a layer described as “a foot thick and 300 miles long.” And the Department of Conservation’s strategy for dealing with any of it, to the extent that there was a strategy, had been labeled a disaster. So when Tanner took the helm, he did so, he admits, aided by low expectations. In fact, as he remembers it, he was only given one directive: To “do something,” and if he could, “make it spectacular.”

As it turned out, Tanner was well-practiced in dealing with loose instructions. Back in Colorado, regulations were thinner and bureaucracy more flexible within the fisheries division. “I wouldn’t say it was the Wild West exactly, but there certainly was a Western style,” Tanner remembers. As he talks, you can tell he has a certain degree of fondness for the time he accidentally got shot with a cyanide gun, or the winter he almost died in an avalanche. Official work, he says, often evolved into leisurely fishing trips where missions were accomplished with the aid of relaxed campfires and plenty of beer. Ecologically, his team played fast and loose with the rules as well, experimenting with all sorts of “crazy things”—for one, introducing non-native species into lakes and reservoirs. One of Tanner’s team’s most unusual and promising experiments in Colorado had been introducing Pacific salmon—a saltwater fish—into freshwater. Despite skepticism that a saltwater species could adapt to freshwater, the salmon thrived and the fishermen loved it.

Now back in Michigan, faced with new challenges, Tanner began wondering if salmon could play a role in restoring some the Great Lakes’ former glory. Void of a top predator fish, the lakes had become ecologically and economically unviable—overrun by smaller, non-native fish like the alewife. Fish that the public actually wanted to catch were on the wane. If introduced, Tanner thought, the salmon could give the Great Lakes a much-needed new kingpin—and give the people of Michigan one of the world’s top trophy fish right on their doorsteps.

To be clear, what Howard Tanner was now contemplating was nothing less than the intentional introduction of a non-native Pacific species to the largest freshwater system in the world. And when he worked up the nerve to start speaking publicly about his idea, people were quick to raise concerns. First and foremost, no fisheries biologist had ever attempted to manage water even close to this size. In Tanner’s case, his master’s degree program had put him in charge of a 27-acre lake; his doctoral program, six lakes—the largest of which was six acres. Lake Michigan alone was 23 million acres. “It was like somebody who had gotten good at raising geraniums in flower pots was now being given a cattle ranch,” Tanner says.

There were also logistical questions. Some argued salmon would die in freshwater or simply head into the St. Lawrence River and out to the open ocean. Others pointed to the many failed attempts to introduce salmon to the Great Lakes dating back to the late 1800s. The plan also faced one giant, undeniable obstacle: coho salmon, the fish that Tanner had identified as the species of choice, simply couldn’t be had. At the time, every single coho egg harvested from the hatcheries of Oregon and Washington were spoken for—part of a grand attempt to re-establish salmon in the heavily dammed Columbia River.

Then came the phone call.

Howard Tanner was sitting in his living room, having his usual pre-dinner cocktail. On the line was one of his old Western colleagues. He was calling to let Tanner know there was an anticipated surplus of coho eggs on the West Coast.

“It was just like the chair fell from under me,” Tanner remembers. “That night, I didn’t sleep much. I just sat there most of the night, thinking, What if … What if?”

The following morning, he was in his office watching the clock tick. With a three-hour difference between Michigan and the coast, he had to wait until midday to confirm the rumors that coho were available. The hearsay turned out to be true. Still, to get some of the eggs, he and his contacts in Oregon would have to navigate a gauntlet of bureaucracy. On top of that, they were working with an immovable biological deadline: If the surplus coho eggs were going to be viable for hatching and release back in Michigan, the whole plan would have to get every bureaucratic stamp in no more than six weeks. But, in a scenario Tanner can characterize only with words like “miracle,” the approvals came. Within a few weeks, one million coho salmon eggs were on a plane, bound for the Great Lakes. Tanner’s spectacular experiment was now underway.

Everything happened so fast that Tanner didn’t yet have money for things like fish food. And he didn’t know exactly where he was going to raise the fish once they hatched. Michigan’s hatchery system, which had been largely devoted to restoring lake trout, was 40 years out of date and in no shape to undertake a program of this size. He went to the legislature and asked for a million dollars—half of which he finally won by promising the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee that 150,000 of the salmon (and the promised economic boom) would land in the senator’s district. Tanner and his team then embarked on a tour of the state’s hatchery system, looking for just the right place to raise the fish. Eventually, the hatchery on the modest Platte River in Benzie Countywas chosen as the spot where the salmon would start their lives—and, theoretically, return to spawn—if everything went according to plan.

Tanner remembers the moment when the fish were finally ready to be Michigan Department of Natural Resources mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-768×1152.jpg 768w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-683×1024.jpg 683w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-400×600.jpg 400w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-1140×1710.jpg 1140w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-970×1455.jpg 970w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-480×720.jpg 480w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b.jpg 1334w” data-src=”https://mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-200×300.jpg” data-sizes=”(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px” class=”alignright wp-image-153147 size-medium lazyloaded” src=”https://mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-200×300.jpg” sizes=”(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px” srcset=”https://mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-200×300.jpg 200w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-768×1152.jpg 768w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-683×1024.jpg 683w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-400×600.jpg 400w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-1140×1710.jpg 1140w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-970×1455.jpg 970w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b-480×720.jpg 480w, mynorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1115_TVM_feature1b.jpg 1334w” style=”box-sizing: inherit; border-style: none; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: right; margin: 12px 0px 24px 24px; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 400ms 0ms;”>released as one of the great moments of his career. It was April 2, 1966, and the now year-and-a-half-old coho were ready to enter the Platte River near Honor, Michigan. He had a special wooden speaker’s platform built for the event. Public officials offered words touting the benefits of the salmon program. The press took photos. Then, Arnell Engstrom, the Traverse City house representative whose vote had been critical in funding the salmon program, picked up a golden bucket and dumped the first batch into the Lake Michigan watershed. Tanner got his turn later in the afternoon on Bear Creek, a tributary of the Manistee, at a site just below Tippy Dam. Swimming with the current, the four-inch “smolts” would find their way to the open water in less than two days.

If everything went according to plan, the young coho would spend a year and a half in the open water before returning to the Platte River in the fall of 1967. And early indications suggested the fish would indeed find their way home. In the fall of 1966, the “Jack” salmon—a small class of precocious fish that spawn a year ahead of schedule—started showing up in Platte Bay, many in a form that astonished Tanner’s Western colleagues and foreshadowed a potentially colossal spawning run the following year. “On the coast, the Jack will maybe weigh a pound and a half or two pounds,” Tanner says. “Some of our fish were coming back at seven pounds. The guys from Oregon just shook their heads and said, ‘You’d better get ready. You’d better get ready.’ ”

Even today, what happened next still stands as the biggest “big fish” story in Great Lakes history. In late August 1967, tens of thousands of returning salmon suddenly announced their presence—this time without a formal speech. coho rushed into Platte Bay, and the fishermen followed—largely learning of the spectacle by word of mouth. Tanner has aerial photos from that fall showing tiny Platte Bay jammed with 3,000-plus boats, many of them canoes and little aluminum dinghies not suitable for open water. The boats formed a near-solid mass; some fishermen joked you could almost walk from boat to boat and never get wet. And in between, the fish were so thick, they were porpoising out of the water.

Tiny coastal towns like Honor, Empire and Frankfort suddenly found themselves overrun with tens of thousands of fishermen and wannabe fishermen. The tiny boat launches grew tails of cars and trailers that ran miles long. One man, Tanner remembers, even started a taxi service to ferry people back and forth. Another guy was selling hot dogs. Lures sold out, so people started renting lures. In September, Sports Illustrated even showed up to cover the event they dubbed a “boom on Lake Michigan.”

People who had never caught any fish of any size like these were catching five, and their tiny little boats were just full of salmon. Nobody had to embellish the stories. It was madness.

The impacts of the salmon were huge and immediate. The value of riparian property in the surrounding area doubled almost instantly. Hotels and businesses sprouted up in Michigan’s new salmon country. Tiny Honor, Michigan, population 300, even christened itself the state’s new “Coho Capital.” The joyful hysteria was only briefly interrupted by tragedy on September 23, when the crush of mostly inexperienced anglers ignored small-craft warnings and found themselves overrun by a violent Lake Michigan storm. One hundred fifty boats were swamped; seven people drowned. But it hardly blunted the public’s appetite for salmon. Now, every coastal town’s bait shop and city hall were lobbying for the fish to be planted in the local stream. And the state delivered, stocking millions more coho across the rest of the Great Lakes in the following years, and furiously expanding the antiquated hatchery system to give the people what they wanted.

Doubling down on its great salmon experiment, the state added an even bigger trophy to the mix of Great Lakes fish the following year. The Chinook salmon was a Pacific species two to three times bigger than the coho, was cheaper to produce, and had a diet that consisted almost exclusively of the hated alewife. Within a few years of the new super-salmon hitting the open water, reeling in a 30-pounder became common. Fishermen loved it. Sunbathers loved the fact that alewives weren’t rotting on their beaches. And the fisheries department kept the big fish coming, flooding the Great Lakes with millions of coho and Chinook every year—the state’s economy, in turn, flooding with the windfalls of a world-class fishery that seemed to have been created overnight.

“It almost gave us the impression that the system was unlimited,” says Randy Claramunt, a fisheries research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “The more salmon we put in, the more salmon we got out. Literally, we went from zero stocking to almost eight million a year in the 1980s, and we still had record-high harvest levels.”

By the mid-1980s, there was no arguing that Tanner’s original vision had indeed evolved into something worthy of the word “spectacular.” Just two decades after his coho fingerlings were released into the Platte River, the salmon had brought under control one of the area’s worst invaders, alewives. The sport-fishing industry, previously non-existent, was now valued in the billions of dollars. And people came from all over the country to fish the Great Lakes.

But the record catches and the new trickle-down salmon economy in which everyone seemed a winner weren’t telling the whole story. Though no one knew it at the time, the Lake Michigan fishery, the crown jewel of the lakes, was beginning to strain. The system did indeed have limits. And without warning, the once-mighty Chinook, the adopted king of Michigan waters, all but vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.

In a plot twist worthy of the theater, it was the demise of the fish everybody hated that brought down the fish everybody loved. The alewife—the invasive saltwater species that was best known for dying and rotting en masse on Michigan beaches—had given the Chinook salmon what seemed like an endless food supply. In fact, when the salmon program was first conceived, it was never done so as an alewife control program; the small invaders were so prolific that the idea that their populations could be significantly impacted by a predator seemed like wishful thinking.

In less than two decades, however, the Chinook began to chip away at the alewife’s dominance. In fact, by the early 1980s, alewife biomass in the Great Lakes stood at less than 20 percent of historic highs—largely because of salmon predation. With less to eat, the salmon being reeled in from the lakes started to get smaller and thinner. Then, in the mid-1980s, the already-stressed Chinook was overcome by an outbreak of a mysterious kidney disease, one that would later be linked to the high-density hatcheries unknowingly pushing out diseased fish to keep up with the public’s demand for salmon. Though the less-fished and more-adaptable coho toughed it out, the mighty Chinook soon disappeared from Lake Michigan.

More than a decade later, the story repeated itself in Lake Huron in an even more devastating fashion. Better rates of natural reproduction and heavy stocking led to a scenario in which the Chinook ate themselves out of an ecosystem. To make matters worse, new invasive species like the zebra and quagga mussels—both of which filtered plankton out of the lake—undermined the alewives’ own food supply. Faced with pressure from both the bottom and top of the food chain, the alewife population collapsed in the early 2000s, the Chinook population following close behind. Stories of big fish harvested from Lake Huron were quickly replaced by those of gas stations, hotels and restaurants going belly-up. There were even stories about charter boat fishermen moving west to try to start over on the Lake Michigan side, where salmon populations had started to rebound.

The salmon bust revealed new truths that had gradually become latent fundamentals of the salmon program. For one, if the state was going to maintain salmon as a top predator in the Great Lakes, it needed a more nuanced policy than raising as many fish as it could and dumping them into the water. It was also obvious now that the salmon economy had grown too big to fail: The experiment that Howard Tanner had started almost on a hunch had now evolved into a $7 billion economy and a vital tool for restoring balance to the largest freshwater system in the world. More importantly, though, the salmon program had inadvertently ushered in an era whereby the Great Lakes would now be a highly managed entity, and from which there was no turning back.

Long gone are the days where the only thing limiting the number of salmon the DNR puts in the Great Lakes is how many salmon the hatcheries can produce. Today’s approach to managing salmon has evolved into a highly nuanced, high-tech venture. You can see it on the boat that fisheries biologist Randy Claramunt takes out on Lake Michigan every August, when he heads out to do a census of the lake. One of his favorite tools: A hydroacoustic survey unit that allows him to count prey fish like the alewife, and in turn, figure out how many salmon the lake can support.

“Less than 15 years ago, it took two months to survey the entire lake,” Claramunt says. “Now we survey the entire lake in less than 10 days. It’s getting to the point where we can almost make annual changes to our salmon stocking rates based on how many prey fish are in the lake.”

One of Claramunt’s newest research frontiers is getting a better handle on how much natural salmon reproduction is happening in the system. To do that, the fisheries division is now tagging every Chinook salmon that it stocks in the Great Lakes; when an angler catches a tagged fish, he or she turns in its head at their local research station. Knowing how many wild fish are in Lake Michigan lets the fisheries department know how many more hatchery-raised fish they can afford to add to the mix without pushing things out of balance.

A strategy that involves so much less shooting in the dark is important to avoid periods of boom and bust like the Great Lakes have seen in the past. “The debate over salmon now is whether we can use them as a tool to control things like the alewife, or if they’re just a bomb waiting to go off,” Claramunt says. In particular, many biologists are now fearing the devastating collapse in Lake Huron could be soon be repeated in Lake Michigan. With some of the same biological forces now at work, many are surprised it hasn’t happened already. Zebra and quagga mussels, which undermine the food chain that all fish species depend on, are both abundant in Lake Michigan. Just as in Lake Huron, their pressure on smaller prey fish like the alewife has a direct effect on the Chinook. Indeed, Claramunt’s last two surveys of the lake, which revealed major declines in alewife reproduction, are cause for concern. “Three consecutive failures of prey fish reproduction almost always equates into a predator crash, which is exactly what we are managing to avoid,” he says.

Some argue, though, it’s not worth all the effort. Many would rather see the fisheries program reorient itself toward a focus on restoration of native species rather than deepening the lakes’ dependence on an introduced species like the salmon. From their perspective, the salmon have done their job: bringing the alewife population under control, and even conveniently pressing their own self-destruct button. Indeed, since the Chinook collapse in Lake Huron, some native species seem to have rebounded, though biologists say this may have more to do with the lack of alewives, which preys on the eggs and juveniles of native species, than the lack of Chinook.

“Some people would rather see us try to bring the lake trout back,” Randy Claramunt says. “But the question is, can a restored lake trout population control alewives? And before we have that debate, I wouldn’t want to eliminate a fishery that is providing both an economic and ecological benefit in hopes that the lake trout can do the job. As long as we’re going to see invasive species play a major role in shaping the ecosystem, we will have to have fish hatcheries and ways of manipulating the system to mitigate those impacts. And for the foreseeable future, salmon will likely be one of those tools.”

Howard Tanner, for one, is happy the salmon will keep coming—not just because it’s his legacy, but also because he feels like it’s good management. He still likes to debate such issues, and though long-retired, he still talks about the department’s new ideas for the salmon program in the plural first person, as in “we.” A lifelong fisherman, he still likes fishing for salmon. In fact, every summer, he still makes the pilgrimage to “the Big Lake” in hopes of reeling in another big Pacific fish. Thanks to him, it’s an adventure that’s just a short drive away. So we say, thank you, Howard Tanner.

Lou Blouin is a writer and public radio producer. He lives in Pittsburgh, where he covers environmental issues on public radio.

September 10, 2020September 10, 2020

EPISODE 114 NUBS AND CROOKS…CUCUMBER CONTRACT DISASTER

EPISODE 114 NUBS AND CROOKS….CUCUMBER CONTRACT DISASTER

alan skeoch

Sept. 9, 2020

This a ‘nub’. We grew a lot of nubs. A nub is worthless.

Bob Root said that farmers have to take risks all the time. Sometimes the risks pay off but

a lot of times the risks do not. Years ago Marjorie, my brother Eric and I decided to get

into real farming by raising cucumbers for the Matthews Wells pickle factory in Guelph, Ontario.

Their pickles were sold under the Rose Brand label. Many of my readers must have eaten

these pickles at some point.

How did we get into the business? My cousin Ted Freeman, was at the

time in charge of contracting farmers to grow cucumbers. His mom and dad, Frank and Lucinda

Freeman got a contract and we decided to give it a go as well.

Now just imagine that we were real farmers who needed a source of income just to pay

the property taxes or to cover fertilizer costs or maybe just to pay off debtors who were

hounding us. Just imagine we needed the job. (Forget the fact that Marjorie, Eric

and I had other jobs that paid our bills. Imagine we were real young farmers trying

to make a living.)

“Now Alan, our pickle company really want gherkins…the smallest cucumbers, maybe

2 to 3 inches long.”

“How will we be paid?”

“AT the end of the summer, maybe October, we will calculate what we owne you after we

have measured and weighed you production.”

“You mean we put up the front end money?”

“Not entirely, Matthews Wells will give you the cucumber seeds. After that it is up

to you.”

“How do our cucumbers get to the factory?”

“Once a week a truck will pick up your produce as long as the sacks are

placed at the corner of the fifth line and #5 sidereal with your name.”

“And Alan do not send any nubs, crooks or oversized. They are worth nothing.”

“Three questions, Ted, what is a nub? What is a Crook? How big is an oversized cucumber?”

“Is that a joke, Alan?”

It was not a joke but I never told Ted. Instead we got ready for our adventure in real farming.

We bought a rather decrepit Farmal A tractor for $400. First big expense. Then we hired George

Johnson to plow up our cucumber field. He did a great job. Unfortunately we did not think of

harrowing the upturned sod. So our field was a little bumpy. Then we got the seed bed ready by

hooking a single furrow plow to the tractor. Dad was helpful although he thought we were goddamned

fools.

The land was good. Nothing had been growing here but twitch grass and timothy for more than two

decades. The soil was ready for cucumbers… to fight the bad weed seeds versus good seeds war. We helped by

weeding. In no time at all the cucumber vines were stretching like long garter snakes through

the field.

Up the road, at Uncle Frank and Aunt Lucida’s farm the cucumber field was clean as a whistle.

A whole bunch of school kids were hired to pick cucumbers every day. “Get the gherkins!”

I think my uncle and aunt were amused in a kindly way. “City people will learn something

about farming this summer.” They sacked their production…gherkins mostly

We did have some gherkins but they were darn hard to find. We sacked everything

in the mistaken belief that even the lowliest cucumber was worth something. So we

bagged up quite a few of our specials…nubs, crooks and oversized. Wow, we raced

through the field picking whatever we could. The cucumbers outraced us.

Our sacked production looked good. But turned out to be nearly worthless.

“Alan, those nubs and crooks just go to the dump…along with the oversized.”

This is a NUB. WORTHLESS

This is an oversized cucumber. WORTHLESS

These are Crooks. WORTHLESS

Then we got a letter from Matthews Wells. it ran something like this. “Dear

Grower, this has been a bumper year for cucumber growth. More cucumbers

than we can handle. Only need gherkins but even ghekins are oversupplied

so we have to cut the price paid to growers.”

“Look at this! The company has cut the price in the middle of the season.

How could they do this?”

“That’s the nature of farming. Prices fluctuate. You never know what you

will be paid until the end of the season…same for grain, green beans, water melons,

cattle, sheep or hogs. The only farmers that get a guaranteed price for their production

are the dairy farmers.”

“But we have put a lot of money into this cucumber field. We bought a tractor,

a plow, some sacks, fertilizer, and that old wood wheeled buggy to drag the sacks

up the road. Then there is our labour. Surely our work is worth something.”

“We’ll just have to wait and see…come October we will know. That is when

the checks are sent out.:

YES… and sure as God has made little green apples, a check was sent

to us. I think it was for $35.00. I think the price of seed was taken off at the

end of season. Take price of seed off this check.

Three people, tractor, wagon buggy, sacks, fertilizer, land, … front end costs

were about 20 times the final payment.

A lesson learned and never forgotten. I am sure our uncle and aunt were

amused…gently amused….not viciously amused. They had also had their contract

reduced. I am not sure if even they made a profit. I know it was the last

year any of us grew cucumbers.

Cousin Ted will correct this account. He was embarrassed by our failure for

it reflected on him I imagine. We were a joke and even laughed at ourselves.

Ted went on to build his own successful business. He got out of the pickle game.

alan skeoch

Sept. 9,2020

Springtime nearly here in our cucumber year This is our transport system. The wood wheeled Democrat hooked

to our lovely Formal A garden tractor.. In the background id a barn i was building atop our old barn foundation.

I hope you love the skill being applied. The barn collapsed eventually.

This is my cousin Ted Freeman (right) and Eric Skeoch .. handshake had meaning. Ted took us through the pickle factory

before we signed the contract.

Dad and I … picture taken a little earlier when I was still in high school. Dad

did not carry that stick to give me a rap on the ass. He spent most of his time

laughing at our ignorance about farming.

P.S. Perhaps I should not write this postscript. Eric got married that summer and

asked me to be best man. I took a sack of our nubs, crooks and oversized to the

wedding feast at the Old Mill in Toronto. Some people were offended. I think

I know why now…but did not at the time.

P.P.S. Worse happened. I loved our little Farmal A tractor. When winter

came I tucked it in the cedar hedge beside the back house. When spring

came I discovered the block had cracked. No one ever told me that

the tractor had no anti freeze. I nearly cried. The final blow as it were.

This is a picture of a nub and an oversized cucumber. And also a picture of a very stupid farmer.

September 8, 2020September 8, 2020

EPISODE 112 RAY CLOUGH…ROOFER … ECCENTRIC

EPISODE 112 RAY CLOUGH…AN ECCENTRIC WHO DID OUR FARM ROOF.

alan skeoch

Sept 6, 2020

Ray Clough…farmer and part time roofer. I hired him. A very interesting man.

This is not Ray’s house. Ray’s place had a good roof. But the front door was similar…very similar. Upstairs windows closed down because

no one ever went upstairs.

This was a good farm sale to talk about a roof. Not far from Ray’s farm. Might be where we met and stick up the

roof conversation. Take a look at the next picture.

An astounding picture. someone climbed up that ladder carrying those sheets of metal

I MET Ray at a farm sale much like the sale pictured here.

Not far from Ray’s place was another bachelor farmer. He needed to hire Ray but likely could not afford it.

How did he ever get those patches on the barn roof? Look at that long ladder. Dangerous way to live.

When I described the restoration of our farm house by Wayne Shannon, I did not

mention the roof.

Before the robbery…before the renovation I hired Ray Clough to put a steel roof over

the asphalt shingles. Ray was not a roofer. He was a farmer over near Ospringe.

A very unconventional chap. The kind of person I admire. His own man as they say.

Ray put a new roof on the farm all by himself. How he did it mystified me. Great long

sheets of ribbed steel. Green. How could Ray manhandle the sheets up to the roof

and then pound in lead headed roofing nails. He only had two hands. I never

saw anyone help him. Must have been helpers. Matter of fact I never saw him doing the roof. It was

done in the same week I hired him. While I taught school, Ray hammered the roof in place.

This is not Ray nor is it our farm house roof but the picture gives some idea of the danger involved.

After Ray finished the job, he asked if he could live in the house. That was a

surprise. A bigger surprise came one Halloween night when Marjorie was having

a bunch of her women friends in the house for a grand supper. Darkness. There was a nock

on the door. Jean or Cathy or Elizabeth opened the door and there was Ray. Just standing there. She screamed and

called Marjorie. Ray had one set of clothes and a Fedorah hat that had seen far

better days. He did not shave as often as some men do. He was single. Women

scared him … especially when they scream. The night was dark and Ray just

disappeared into the darkness. He expected to see me. “He said nothing, Alan,…

just faded into the night. I think we scared him.”

Then a day or so later…payment.

“Marjorie, you just stay in the car while I pay Ray for the roofing job.”

“Why?”

“Ray lives alone.?

“So?”

“He may not be a fastidious as me.”

“You? That’s a laugh. I do all the cooking and cleaning. I even cut the grass.”

“Now I know you get my meaning.”

Ray invited me in via the woodshed doorway. The front door had not been used

for years. it was hard to even see the door as some great wild shrubs had taken over.

The woodshed was the closest way to the barn where Ray had his cattle. No need

for a front door. Ray was efficient. There was a foot trail to and from the barn. There

was also a foot trail in the kitchen. Ray’s path over the worn linoleum led to great greasy

stove…blackened with old grease. Then from stove to his big easy chair which

was worn and tufted here and there. The floor was black except for that trail from back door to stove to

the big easy chair.

As I mentioned Ray was not fastidious.

This is not Ray’s kitchen Same kind of stove. Ray’s was better than this

A year or so later, Ray died. Alone. On his farm. Marjorie and I went to his auction

sale. I do not know who dealt with his estate. Not much in terms of household goods. Not much that anyone would want.

Someone suggested a tour of the house. I think I dissuaded Marjorie from going.

In conclusion. I hope my story about Ray is seen the way I see it. This is not a put down. I really

liked him. Marvelled at our new roof. I wish I had taken the time to find out more about him. Cousin Helen Parkinson

and husband Bill lived on a farm near Ray as did Shirley (Awrey) Freeman and cousin Ted. So did Barb and Bob Root

(‘Rooter’) I am sure they knew Ray because their farms are close.

Perhaps they will make a comment.

Take a close look at Ray. His face. Not his clothes. That is a nice face. The creases are

warm creases. The eyes are amused eyes. Ray shaved every other day. His hat must be a farm heirloom.

The hat was not put in the auction sale. if it was there I would have bought it.

Ray believed in layered clothing. Count the layers.

alan skeoch

Sept. 7 2020

September 7, 2020September 7, 2020

EPISODE 111 “ALAN, NEVER LET YOURSELF BE HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE.”

EPISODE 111 ALAN, NEVER LET YOURSELF BE HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE.

alan skeoch

Sept. 6 , 2020

OUR farm house was built around 1870 or 1880. The owner at the time had very little money…he had to cut corners as we discovered

in the renovation a century later. The design was common … available plans in Eaton’s catalogue. Mom, grandma and their dog Punch

on front lawn.

We inherited the farm in 1958. Condition? Not so good. We could barely afford to look after our

city house.

Our family around 1958 when we inherited the Freeman farm. We were not wealthy so owning property like the farm

was a novel and frightening thing. Only later, around 1990 could Marjorie and I afford to renovate…and even then it

took the shock of the robbery to force us into action. Picture: left to right…Eric, Elsie (Freeman) Skeoch, Alan, Arnold (Red) Skeoch

We laughed a lot…in this case someone broke wind Just as I set the camera for a delayed picture.

Months after the farm robbery we had to give serious thought to the farm future.

Should we keep the farm or put it up for sale like was happening to so many

other historic farms. The debate was just awful.

THE choice? Sell everything or pour a lot of money into restoration of the farm house.

Depressing thoughts. The loss of so much. Family treasures gone. The usual ‘poor me’

comments by persons who have been robbed. grieving that deep

sense of loss when someone you love is gone. Anger. Feeling violated. All

that and more. For the first few hours.

Then the clouds of doubt cleared away.

Granddad made small wheelbarrows for us. Note the sad dog house in the background. Fancy living on a farm? Not so much.

Then I thought of Evan Cruickshank who had such a powerful influence on my life.

“Crooky” had been our history teacher at Humberside. A man of deep intellect.

And later he hired both Eric and me as history teachers at Parkdale Collegiate in

west central Toronto. I got to know him really well as did Marjorie. Respect and

friendship. “Crusher” Cruickshank had many words of wisdom which he shared

Never heavy handed sharing. Never patronizing.

Our robbery was hurting. At its worst when I suddenly remembered “Crooky’s”

comment regarding material things in life. “Alan, never let yourself be hostage

to fortune.” Said another way. “Never let things own you. If you do you will

have an unhappy life.”

We were grieving the loss of the furniture and everything else in the house. What we

should have been thinking about was the house itself and the future direction we would take.

NOTE: The term hostage to fortune means that wealth, family, possessions can hold

us hostage. Crooky added ‘Never be’ to ‘hostage to fortune’ which I believe meant

to never let the material things in life hold you hostage. Do not worship your wonderful car,

for instance.

I am not sure this point if clear. We decided to put our money into a dream rather

than save it for who knows what . Maybe that is not even clear. We took action.

That is clear.

Many many Ontario farm houses that were built far better than ours have been destroyed.

SO A DECISION WAS MADE: WE WILL RESTORE THE FARM HOUSE

“Let’s do it…restore the farm house.”

“That means a total gutting of the interior.”

“Give the job to Kevin and Andy…strip back to the bricks.”

“The boys will enjoy it…demolition and teen agers go hand in hand.”

1) So Andrew and Kevin using crowbars, sledges, hammers and a wheelbarrow

began stripping away the plaster which was already in decay…then the lathe

some of which was even ancient split lathe. Wheelbarrow loads were dumped

outside.

2) Beneath the plaster they discovered that our brick farm house was really

not a brick house at all. Underneath was a barn frame…heavy hand hewn beams

pegged together as was the custom in 1870. This was not a house at all. Had

we depended on the bricks to hold the ouse up then there would be no house.

The bricks were soft as a baby’s bum. They had been shaped and fired less

than a mile away near #5 sidereal. Weak. I wondered why other brick farm houses

had collapsed and ours did not. Now I knew. Ours was a barn.

3) But The big beams had not been made here. No group of men with broad axes

had spent a year or more preparing white pine beams. No. Our farm house

was made from beams collected here and there across the township in 1870 or so.

How did we know? Because many beams had burn marks. The beams had

been gathered from older burned out buildings…barns, drivesheds.

4) Nothing special about the beams. The great floor beams were only rough

hewn on one side…sometimes two sides. The other sides still had the bark.

This house was not an example of fine art carpentry.

5) The board floors had been worn to nubs by hundreds of feet over the century.

The nubs were the knots. Harder than the planks and therefore when worn and

stamped on left a wavy floor that I always found charming. But it had to go and

so the boys got crowbars to lift the ancient slabs. Too bad. Loved the old floor.

6) They made one amazing discovery. Hard to believe I know. The centre of

the house was held up by one long carved beam. Crucial piece to which all

the other beams were attached directly or indirectly. “Guess what, Dad?”

“What?” “The main beam hangs in the air.” The main beam never touched

the ground. It was free standing. How that happened we will never know. had

we not stripped the walls that fact would remain a little secret. How the roof

held up for 130 years or more I will never understand.

Ricky the Raccoon was a pet of ours until he reached puberty when all things changed. While young Ricky would scamper up our

shoulders to sit on our heads. Here he is being gently removed by David S.

Did Ricky the Racoon sneak back and take up residence behind the plaster and lathe of the farm house? Not likely. We let him

go in a farm field far away. But raccoons are smart.

7) That was only one discovery. There were others. Like finding a nest

of raccoons in the upper bedroom wall. They had made the house a home

for years it seems. And then there were the red squirrels who can chew there

way into any house. Mice, of course. A plentiful supply that the garter snakes

must have found convenient food. A bunch of snakes lived in the field stone

foundation. They may still be there since the foundation was never changed only

braced.

8) The basement floor was dirt. Hard packed dirt. Three rooms down there, each

with a function but all with dirt footing. In spring this cellar was wet…pooled water

often. But the walls held. One room had big dirt floored stalls…one for coal, one for potatoes,

carrots, etc. The other room Grandma called “the Dairy’ where she kept food in

the cool dark. Slabs of beef hung here which was why I liked to slather our meals

with Worcester Sauce. I never trusted the Dairy. No good reason. Grandma and

Grandpa Freeman lived here deep in their 90’s. The other big cellar room

had an old but huge cook stove with a pipe hole exit carved into the foundation. This was

grandma’s ‘summer kitchen’ but was never in use when we were growing up. There

was a rickety staircase and a trap door that gave access to the main house.

Granddad had his carpenters tools there as well. As a kid I stole one of his

chisels and got caught. I ran and hid in the tall summer grasses and golden rod

on that day. Humiliated because I was caught. I still have the chisel somewhere.

Granddad gave it to me. He was a master craftsman.

9) Kevin and Andrew also had to clean out the attic…a long unfinished room

that ran eastwards from the upstairs bedrooms where the raccoons lived.

That attic was a wonderful treasure trove. For most of my pre teen years I explored this

room endlessly. For years it was full of spinning wheels, walking wheels and all

the wool processing things of the 19th century and other treasures that were to me

a mystery. I remember when most of that stuff suddenly was gone. “OH, Elsie (my

mother), a wonderful man came by and paid us money for the things in the attic.”

“How much?” “Ten dollars” Bastard.

10) The scavenger missed a 1920’s “skin” book called Smokehouse. Lots of rather

off colour jokes and some suggestive drawings of stockings with legs in them … at least

as I remember. And, oh yes, the explosive novel “Tobacco Road” by Erskine Caldwell.

At tale of poverty and prejudice in the American south. That book would even be

scandalous in today’s liberal world. It was falling apart as it had been read and re read

and re read again by me.

11) So the house was stripped bare…a shell. No, a folderol i.e. A barn within a brick house.

Now we had to find a builder. By good fortune we noticed a truck while getting ice cream cones

in Erin. WAYNE SHANNON, BUILDER No beating around the bush we hired him to renovate

and reconstruct the farm house. He had some great ideas. Open concept.

12) And he said a couple of things I had not counted upon “Where do you want the bathroom?”

My response was “What bathroom?”…because we had a perfect backhouse I had built. Marjorie

chimed in and so we got two bathrooms. His next question was about the trap door to the

cellar. “Of course we will close that trap door and put a stairway to the cellar.” “What? I love that

trap door.” Then everyone chimed in so we got a stairway. And another question I had not

counted upon was the furnace. “What furnace? Isn’t the old wood stove good enough?” That

thought was also put to rest when Wayne found us a good electric furnace.* (Note..furnace

will be subject of major story later…a story so big that my picture replaced the Sunshine Girl

on the Toronto Sun. No vanity involved…just a very bitter fight with Hydro One)

13) Wayne and his worker crew spent the whole winter changing the farm house. What a

terrific job they did. The house became a home. We have entertained there so much

since. Grand dinners. Wayne did not stop with the house. “Alan, you need a barn.”

On this, I agreed so Wayne built us a barn with a cement floor. These were good times.

TO WHOM DO I OWE MY GRATITUDE?

I really must thank the robber that stripped the farm house of furniture and who knows what else.

Without him we would have never taken such drastic action Good things do often emerge from

what seems bad at first.

Renovating the farm house has enriched our lives. Lots of friends have joined us. In this case the Christophersons. They

seem to have pillaged the garden. Brenda’s father was a crop duster in Manitoba with a plane much like the one that

tried ti kill Cary Grant.

alan skeoch

Sept. 6, 2020

September 7, 2020September 7, 2020

EPISODE 111 “ALAN, NEVER LET YOURSELF BE HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE.”

EPISODE 111 ALAN, NEVER LET YOURSELF BE HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE.

alan skeoch

Sept. 6 , 2020

OUR farm house was built around 1870 or 1880. The owner at the time had very little money…he had to cut corners as we discovered

in the renovation a century later. The design was common … available plans in Eaton’s catalogue. Mom, grandma and their dog Punch

on front lawn.

We inherited the farm in 1958. Condition? Not so good. We could barely afford to look after our

city house.

Our family around 1958 when we inherited the Freeman farm. We were not wealthy so owning property like the farm

was a novel and frightening thing. Only later, around 1990 could Marjorie and I afford to renovate…and even then it

took the shock of the robbery to force us into action. Picture: left to right…Eric, Elsie (Freeman) Skeoch, Alan, Arnold (Red) Skeoch

We laughed a lot…in this case someone broke wind Just as I set the camera for a delayed picture.

Months after the farm robbery we had to give serious thought to the farm future.

Should we keep the farm or put it up for sale like was happening to so many

other historic farms. The debate was just awful.

THE choice? Sell everything or pour a lot of money into restoration of the farm house.

Depressing thoughts. The loss of so much. Family treasures gone. The usual ‘poor me’

comments by persons who have been robbed. grieving that deep

sense of loss when someone you love is gone. Anger. Feeling violated. All

that and more. For the first few hours.

Then the clouds of doubt cleared away.