Alan Skeoch

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  • OCT, 7, 1989…FREEDOM CAME AND NEAR DEATH: ANDREW IN SOUTH PACIFIC

    FREEDOM AND NEAR DEATH:  ANDREW IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC,
    BEGAN OCT. 7, 1989
    alan skeoch
    march  2018
    Parents have to let go at some point.  If they don’t want to let go then their kids will take off anyway.  That is our experience.
    About the time the Berlin Wall came down, both Andrew and  Kevin took off. Left the nest to explore the wider world.  I think it was October 7, 1989…the Berlin Wall  came down a  month later…both boys just took off in different directions.  We didn’t know why their rite of passage occurred on the same day but it did.

  • Lower Wooton Farm…Marjorie and Nancy plucking chickens

    LOWER WOOTON FARM, HEREFORDSHIRE, CIRCA 1965
    alan skeoch
    march 2018
    LOWER WOOTON FARM is  a designated  historic  property near Almely, Herefordshire, England.    When I first visited the farms back in 1960 the farm was just a name…no directions, no real  address.  But Grandma  and Granddad Freeman talked  about the place  regularly back in Canada and since I was
    working in Ireland the chance to find  Lower Wooden Farm presented  itself.  I was travelling blind. Flew to London when Irish job was over then took a train from London to Hereford and then stood on the platform, a confused and obviously lost 22 year old Canadian.

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  • LAST RITES FOR A GRAND MACHINE OF DAYS LONG GONE

    LAST RITES FOR A GRAND MACHINE OF DAYS LONG GONE
    ALAN Skeoch
    March  2018

    “Son, I can  no longer walk and can only get around on this god-damned SCOOTER but there were days not so long ago that…”

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  • Blacksmith shop at Balinafad: Rejuvenated

    REJUVENATED BLACKSMITH

    A few years  ago I took this picture at the back door of the Balinafad Blacksmith Shop which was no longer functioning as such.  Today,  I suppose this would be considered a  picture in bad taste.  To me it just said something about that blacksmith and men in general.

  • Ah! March and the sap is running. ’22 RIFLE KILLED THE VENTURE’

    OUR MAPLE SYRUP MAKING DAYS:
    alan skeoch
    March 2018
    There is  an old expression…a sad  one…”My days are in the yellow leaf.”  This comes to mind always in the month of March because many years ago when the kids  were small and Marjorie and  I were naive that month was maple syrup month.  A family enterprise.  We tapped  the  trees in the maple bush at the back of the Saunders farm close to the fourth line road. By chance we purchased all the stuff we needed from a couple of farm sales…50 to 60 sap pails with hooks on the side, a bucket full  of smiles, a hand drill, a big boiling pan, another smaller finishing pan.  and, oddly, a dozen old milk cans.   The system worked.  On  week ends and after school we would zip up to the sugar bush, slosh  the sap into the milk cans,  haul them by sleigh to the truck and drive back to the city where a huge pile of drift wood had been gathered from the shores  of Lake Ontario over the winter months.

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