Alan Skeoch

Year: 2021

  • EPISODE 267 WHEN TARA GOT PREGNANT: A DOG STORY

    EPISODE 267    WHEN TARA GOT PREGNANT: A DOG STORY


    alan skeoch
    Feb. 2021




    We called her Tara.  Named after the estate in the movie Gone With the Wind.  She was a coonhound.  Not so
    common in Southern Ontario.  Those  who know much about dogs and like to impress said “Never get a coonhound…hunting
    dogs…they will take off on you following a scent and never return.”  Well, that never happened.  Tara to our family was as porridge is
    to breakfast.   We could take her to the sugar bush and let her loose to nose around but she never lost sight of where we were.
    And not just because she liked the taste of maple sap.   She liked us.  And  we felt the same about her.


    We knew something about animals  but not nearly enough. 

     “Alan, don’t you think Tara should have pups?”
    “Never gave it much thought.”
    “Well, I am going to search around for a male…seems every dog in
    Ontario has been neutered.  Not easy to find a male.”

    Marjorie found one…purebred male coonhound.  Perfect.  She introduced
    them to each other and fell in love. Too fast for Marjorie.  Tara was about as
    heterosexual female as they come.  Her lover felt the same. 

    This is where things began to go wrong.  They were both left alone for a
    time in our backyard.  Almost instantly he jumped on Tara’s back holding on
    tightly with his front legs.  His thingamabob was ready…heading in the right
    direction.  “Houston, we have made contact,” as they say in the space industry.

    They certainly made contact.   Next time Marjorie looked Tara was facing south
    and her lover facing north.  They were locked!  Normal when dogs have sex.
    But Marjorie did not know that.

    “Oh, dear, she’s going to snap his thingamabob in two pieces.”

    And  Marjorie ran to the house and got a pail of cold water. Ran back
    and dumped the whole pail on the two lovers.  Marjorie figured that
    would cool off the love affair and allow him to get back to his owner
    in one piece as it were.

    Later, Marjorie discovered that it was normal for dogs to get locked
    in this rather disgusting fashion.

    All was not lost.  Tara was very pregnant and one fine spring day she
    delivered eleven…yes, eleven…coonhound pups.  Now that posed another
    couple of problems.  Our back yard was deep…400 get and unfenced.
    The pups ate like stink. And grew and grew.  I tried to contain them by building a walled enclosure but
    the higher my brick wall got the higher the pups got…over the wall.  Lucky
    that Tara was a good mother.  She cornered the pups if they got too far away.




    The Mississauga news  got wind of our good fortune and sent a photographer
    …big news.  Nice clipping in the paper that has been on our refrigerator for
    decades.   Kevin and all the puppies.

    “Marjorie, what are we going to do with 12 coonhounds?   Start fox hunting with the idle rich?”
    “No, Alan, I will run a sign and we will find owners for them.”
    “Hunters?”
    “Get serious.”

    So Marjorie interviewed all the potential owners of our pups.  Lots of men came
    because coonhound pups were rare.  The interviews went something like this.

    “Lovely dogs,”
    “yes, they are lovely.  Do you hunt?”
    “Yes, Ma’am.”
    “Well you better head home because you  are NOT getting one of our pups.”



    The reason Marjorie felt that way was because one late November day we found
    a beautiful hound sleeping on our farm verandah.  He was not ours.  His owner was no
    where to be found.  A day or so later the owner arrived saying. “I left my old coat
    for him back in the bush.  Usually he finds it and waits for me.  He goes  off on a 
    scent and I cannot keep up with him.”  That line of B.S. did not cut it with Marjorie.
    Neglect, she concluded.

    And the other reason was another hound we knew about down the Fifth line.  Nice dog
    chained up in the barn all year.  Only let loose in hunting season.  Two weeks of freedom
    then back on he chain.  There was a circle around his kennel in the barn where his chain
    had rubbed the ground.  That was the limit of his world.

    Another  story kept surfacing of people finding hounds abandoned  at the end of the hunting 
    season.  Left to run wild.  Left to die or get picked up by the humane society.  Or shot by a
    farmer for worrying sheep.   Not sure how true the story was but it was enough
    for Marjorie to conclude that no hunter would get one of Tara’s pups. And none did.

    There also was tragedy. We kept one of the pups and named him Shadow.  A beautiful loving kind
    of dog.  Obedient.  Too obedient.  He got loose one day and wandered down the street following
    a scent of some kind.  We saw him … only about four houses down from our place.  

    “Shadow, you get back here right now.”

    He turned.  Looked  at us an came prancing back. He never saw the car coming south
    and the driver had no chance to see him.  We cried…and cried.















    Tara looks a little ferocious in this picture.  Not os.  Gentle as a lamb.



    She did not bark much but when she did bark then her booming vice echoed through the bush or down a city street.


    Did she miss her pups?  Take a look at her face and draw your own conclusion.


    Alan Skeoch
    Feb. 2021

  • Fwd: EPISODE 266 MAPLE SYRUP TIME PART TWO: GOOD TIMES AND PROLEMS



    Begin forwarded message:


    From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
    Subject: EPISODE 266 MAPLE SYRUP TIME PART TWO: GOOD TIMES AND PROLEMS
    Date: February 27, 2021 at 12:48:49 PM EST
    To: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>, Marjorie Skeoch <marjorieskeoch@gmail.com>, John Wardle <john.t.wardle@gmail.com>


    EPISODE 266    MAPLE SYRUP TIME :  PART TWO:   GOOD TIMES AND PROBLEMS

    alan skeoch
    Feb 2021

    Just having something constructive to do on March week ends was exhilarating.  We were all out
    and about…whole family and Tara the Coonhound.   The maple trees were at work…drip, drip, drip…
    pails filling but no overflows because I was able to get to the bush on week days just as dusk
    was settling.  Alone on weekdays. Communicating with nature.  Lugging the milk cans of sap
    from the bush to my truck.  No easy task as 10 to 15 gallons of sap was heavy going. Especially as 
    the snow melted and the sleigh system was useless.



    Lugging the sap back to Mississauga where our outdoor boiling side was located.  Our city 
    lot is 400 feet deep with Mary Fix Creek meandering along the eastern edge.  At one time this
    area was held by the Mississauga First Nations before they moved (or were forced to move) to
    the New Credit reserve near Brantford.  Lots of space here for converting sap to syrup.
    Or so we thought.



    THE FINISHING SITE:  SAP TO SYRUP

    The sap boiling system.
    1) Set up the sap pan high over the fire pit.
    2) Find a large supply of firewood.
    3) Get a fire going 
    4) Pour in the sap 
    5) Place a nice comfortable chair near the fire for warmth
    6) Keep a close eye lest too much evaporation occur and
    the sap turns into burnt toffee at the bottom of the pan.
    7) Check regularly with the Maple Syrup thermometer….
    8) Clean the Crown sealers.

    Finding a large source of free firewood was not difficult.  Each spring back in the
    1970’s huge piles of lumber would float down the Humber River, out into Lake Ontario
    then back to Sunnyside Beach where the lumber was eventually cleared by
    the Toronto City Parks people.  Where this bonanza originated I never knew   I got to the
    beach before the city work crews.   Loaded the truck with 2 x 6 and 2 x 4 and even 2 x 12 planks
    …some with nails but most of them nail free.  Piles of them.  Also 4 x4 and 6 x 6 timbers…and lumps of
    maple, oak and pine that had been dumped upriver somewhere.  Enough lumber came down
    the Humber each spring to boil my sap to syrup. Smoky of course because water soaked
    wood churns out one hell of a lot of water vapour.   Which led to a problem as neighbourly
    tolerance of my fire pit led to problems.  For the first year or two there was no problem until
    a neighbour with severe Athsma moved in two lots north of us.  As it turned out the smoke
    from my fire angled right to their back door.  I never noticed.  Smoke is smoke. Here now,
    gone tomorrow.

    I loved sitting beside my fire pit on those cool March evenings…right up to 11pm. and
    bed time.  Safe fire, lots of space free of flammable materials.  I could leave the fire
    burning as long as the supply of sap was ready to refill the pan..





    Neighbours thought we were a bit eccentric but some of them dropped around to see the sap
    boiling.  Our kids and other kids liked to taste the stuff.  Of course some kids and adults were a
    little leery.


    Even Tara, our coonhound, had a fancy for maple sap.






    About the third year we tapped the maple trees we made an alarming discovery.  Most of our sap pails were
    illegal.  not ever to be used for sap again.   Why?  Because they were put together with lead solder.  Lead is
    a poison.  POISON!

    Look closely at the sap pails above. Most are old lead soldered pails.  A few are modern aluminum sap
    pails.  The safe kind.  

    Since we had consumed most of our home made syrup it would be best to tell no one…the way I
    figured.   I have one big bottle of our maple syrup at the farm in the fruit cellar.  Told no one.
    Why keep it?   I have no idea except it reminds me of those grand March maple sap days.




    “Dad, do the sap and syrup days have to end?”



    I wonder if there is some way to slow down the process of human growth so we could keep the boys as children.


    “Well, boys there are some good reasons we stopped boiling sap into syrup on cool
    March days.  Some of the reasons make sense.  Some of the reasons made no sense at all.

    REASONS WHY OUR SAP TO SYRUP PRJECT ENDED.

    1) Those lead soldered sap pails were unsafe.  We could not give the sap away to friends.
    2) The neighbours had serious athsma and our smoke blew directly into their house.
    (They mentioned this nicely)
    3) The labour made no sense.  Cheaper to buy maple syrup, far cheaper.
    4) The City Parks crew got the firewood faster than I could…and the supply
    began to dry up anyway.
    5) The last season some low life creep parked his truck beside our sap trees 
    …cradled his rifle and shot holes in our sap pails just to watch the sap drain out.
    6) The boys, Kevin and Andrew, grew older…less interested.  Amazing how children grow up
    so fast.   When they are little kids their aging seems slow and then, in the twinkling of
    an eye, they are adults.

    7) And finally, our Coonhound Tara got pregnant and had 11 puppies.  Suddenly no one
    wanted to go to he sugar bush with me any more…including Tara.




    “Dad, suddenly it’s springtime.”


    “Alan, why don’t we make apple cider from all the windfalls in the orchard each fall?”
    “Good idea, no one will ever know those apples were wormy.”


    “Marjorie and Alan, I have news for you.  I am pregnant and will not be running through
    the sugar bush this month.”  (said Tara)


    NEXT STORY:   HOW TO GET A COONHOUND PREGNANT…

    alan skeoch
    Feb. 2021


  • EPISODE 266 MAPLE SYRUP TIME PART TWO: GOOD TIMES AND PROLEMS

    EPISODE 266    MAPLE SYRUP TIME :  PART TWO:   GOOD TIMES AND PROBLEMS

    alan skeoch
    Feb 2021

    Just having something constructive to do on March week ends was exhilarating.  We were all out
    and about…whole family and Tara the Coonhound.   The maple trees were at work…drip, drip, drip…
    pails filling but no overflows because I was able to get to the bush on week days just as dusk
    was settling.  Alone on weekdays. Communicating with nature.  Lugging the milk cans of sap
    from the bush to my truck.  No easy task as 10 to 15 gallons of sap was heavy going. Especially as 
    the snow melted and the sleigh system was useless.



    Lugging the sap back to Mississauga where our outdoor boiling side was located.  Our city 
    lot is 400 feet deep with Mary Fix Creek meandering along the eastern edge.  At one time this
    area was held by the Mississauga First Nations before they moved (or were forced to move) to
    the New Credit reserve near Brantford.  Lots of space here for converting sap to syrup.
    Or so we thought.



    THE FINISHING SITE:  SAP TO SYRUP

    The sap boiling system.
    1) Set up the sap pan high over the fire pit.
    2) Find a large supply of firewood.
    3) Get a fire going 
    4) Pour in the sap 
    5) Place a nice comfortable chair near the fire for warmth
    6) Keep a close eye lest too much evaporation occur and
    the sap turns into burnt toffee at the bottom of the pan.
    7) Check regularly with the Maple Syrup thermometer….
    8) Clean the Crown sealers.

    Finding a large source of free firewood was not difficult.  Each spring back in the
    1970’s huge piles of lumber would float down the Humber River, out into Lake Ontario
    then back to Sunnyside Beach where the lumber was eventually cleared by
    the Toronto City Parks people.  Where this bonanza originated I never knew   I got to the
    beach before the city work crews.   Loaded the truck with 2 x 6 and 2 x 4 and even 2 x 12 planks
    …some with nails but most of them nail free.  Piles of them.  Also 4 x4 and 6 x 6 timbers…and lumps of
    maple, oak and pine that had been dumped upriver somewhere.  Enough lumber came down
    the Humber each spring to boil my sap to syrup. Smoky of course because water soaked
    wood churns out one hell of a lot of water vapour.   Which led to a problem as neighbourly
    tolerance of my fire pit led to problems.  For the first year or two there was no problem until
    a neighbour with severe Athsma moved in two lots north of us.  As it turned out the smoke
    from my fire angled right to their back door.  I never noticed.  Smoke is smoke. Here now,
    gone tomorrow.

    I loved sitting beside my fire pit on those cool March evenings…right up to 11pm. and
    bed time.  Safe fire, lots of space free of flammable materials.  I could leave the fire
    burning as long as the supply of sap was ready to refill the pan..





    Neighbours thought we were a bit eccentric but some of them dropped around to see the sap
    boiling.  Our kids and other kids liked to taste the stuff.  Of course some kids and adults were a
    little leery.


    Even Tara, our coonhound, had a fancy for maple sap.





    About the third year we tapped the maple trees we made an alarming discovery.  Most of our sap pails were
    illegal.  not ever to be used for sap again.   Why?  Because they were put together with lead solder.  Lead is
    a poison.  POISON!

    Look closely at the sap pails above. Most are old lead soldered pails.  A few are modern aluminum sap
    pails.  The safe kind.  

    Since we had consumed most of our home made syrup it would be best to tell no one…the way I
    figured.   I have one big bottle of our maple syrup at the farm in the fruit cellar.  Told no one.
    Why keep it?   I have no idea except it reminds me of those grand March maple sap days.



    “Dad, do the sap and syrup days have to end?”



    I wonder if there is some way to slow down the process of human growth so we could keep the boys as children.


    “Well, boys there are some good reasons we stopped boiling sap into syrup on cool
    March days.  Some of the reasons make sense.  Some of the reasons made no sense at all.

    REASONS WHY OUR SAP TO SYRUP PRJECT ENDED.

    1) Those lead soldered sap pails were unsafe.  We could not give the sap away to friends.
    2) The neighbours had serious athsma and our smoke blew directly into their house.
    (They mentioned this nicely)
    3) The labour made no sense.  Cheaper to buy maple syrup, far cheaper.
    4) The City Parks crew got the firewood faster than I could…and the supply
    began to dry up anyway.
    5) The last season some low life creep parked his truck beside our sap trees 
    …cradled his rifle and shot holes in our sap pails just to watch the sap drain out.
    6) The boys, Kevin and Andrew, grew older…less interested.  Amazing how children grow up
    so fast.   When they are little kids their aging seems slow and then, in the twinkling of
    an eye, they are adults.

    7) And finally, our Coonhound Tara got pregnant and had 11 puppies.  Suddenly no one
    wanted to go to he sugar bush with me any more…including Tara.



    “Dad, suddenly it’s springtime.”


    “Alan, why don’t we make apple cider from all the windfalls in the orchard each fall?”
    “Good idea, no one will ever know those apples were wormy.”


    “Marjorie and Alan, I have news for you.  I am pregnant and will not be running through
    the sugar bush this month.”  (said Tara)


    NEXT STORY:   HOW TO GET A COONHOUND PREGNANT…

    alan skeoch
    Feb. 2021

  • EPISODE 265 MAPLE SYRUP TIME PART ONE: GETTING THE SAP…THE HALCYON DAYS

    EPISODE 265     MAPLE SYRUP TIME   PART ONE:  GETTING THE SAP…THE HALCYON DAYS


    alan skeoch
    Feb. 2021



    Those soft winter days are nearly here.  End of February, beginning of March.  Maple Syrup making time
    when those emblems of Canada, our thousands and thousands of sugar maple trees
    are sniffing the air and sending a message to their root systems.

    “NOTICE…Time for sugar to move up the tree trunk.  Soon be needed
    for life to begin again.  Sleepy time is over.”

      That is maple tree talk…the branches telling
    the roots to start generating sap.  The message is relayed via the thin communicating system
    between the bark and the wood.   

    And I was determined to intervene…to ‘bleed’ off some of that life blood of some
    of those maple trees.

     SYSTEM…MAKING MAPLE SYRUP



    “Marjorie, let’s see if we can make maple syrup.  Something to do 
    in the gap between winter and spring…cheaper than skiing and
    we’ll end up with s gallon or two of pancake syrup…our own hand
    made maple syrup.  Better than the store bought stuff maybe.”

    “Where will you find enough trees?  Not enough on our farm.”

    “The Saunders farm runs right across to the Fourth Line where
    they have about 20 acres of maples….I’ll ask Lorne if he is
    willing to let us tap a few of his trees.”

    Some farm laneways remain lined with mature maple trees for a good reason.  Maple syrup


    “You certainly have enough sap pails.  How many
    trees will you tap?”

    “Maybe twenty or so.   I have about 200
    sap pails and  lids.   About the same amount of spiles…way
    more than we can ever use in a lifetime.”

    And so began a wonderful adventure.  Making maple syrup.  Earthy
    March when the snow was beginning to melt on some days then
    new snow falling on other days.  What a grand time to be outdoors.
    Week end work mostly but some weekdays as  well which meant
    I had to rush from teaching high school at Parkdale C.I. in the heart 
    of Toronto to my maple trees on Fourth Line of Erin Township, Wellington
    County.  On days when the sap would be running.  Warm days…cool warm
    days. I know it sounds like a contradiction.

    I was not alone. Tara, our coonhound, Marjorie, the kids…Kevin and Andrew…
    and sometimes Phil Sharp one of my fellow history teachers.   So the truck
    was loaded  but still had room for the milk cans of maple sap.  Milk cans?
    Along with the sap pails, I had bought about 10 or 15 milk cans…big 10 or
    15 gallon cans with pop up tops.   These big cans were needed to haul
    the sap from maple bush to the truck using a heavy sleight.

    EQUIPMENT LIST

    -20 SAP PAILS
    -20 SAP PAIL LIDS
    -1  HAND  DRILL
    -20 SPILES
    -10 MILK CANS
    -1 HEAVY DUTY SLEIGH
    -1 LARGE SAP BOILING PAN WITH HIGH SIDES
    -1 FINISHING TROUGH
    -PILE OF CROWN SEALING BOTTLES WITH LIDS AND RINGS
    -PILE OF WOOD FOR FIREPLACE
    -SOME BOULDERS TO KEEP SAP PANS ABOVE FIRE PIT
    -MAPLE SAP THERMOMETER…
    -PILE OF FILTERS AND  MILK CAN FILTERS
    -GAS …ENOUGH TO DRIVE UP TO THE FARM
    AND BACK TO THE CITY THREE TIMES A WEEK
    (This venture was not cost effective…cost more than it was worth
    was the conclusion of my critics)

    The system worked well for three or four years and then
    came to a abrupt end.   So I will treat the story into two parts.
    First were the halcyon days of sap collecting.   Dream of those
    days on March evenings…still do.


    Lots of glass sealers around…some full of edible food…others full of bolts or porcelain insulators for hot wire fences.













    “Dad, this is the way to tap a tree.  Angle the drill up a few degrees so the sap can run down the spile into he pail.”



    There is no joy quite like gathering maple sap in a snowbound forest.














    “Alan, remember how we knew the maple sap collecting was over? When the forest floor was covered with wild garlic.
    Easy to identify…smell, taste, look.  Thousands of the spear like plants suddenly emerged in early spring.  carpeted forest
    floor in green.”

    “I was reading that wild garlic is a fine medicinal herb…eases toothache, sore eyes, colds, coughs, …fends off warts, measles,
    mumps and rheumatism.”

    “If it’s that good why have we never seen anyone picking wild garlic?”

    “look around …lots of people eat wild garlic.  Recipes easy to find on the internet.   The plant grows in deep forest in late
    winter or early spring…when the wild garlic appears, I know the maple sap season is over. Easy to identify by its strong 
    garlic smell”

    “AN easier way to tell the maple syrup season was over was when the flies appeared on the spiles or drowned in the sap.
    Time to pack up.”

    END PART ONE EPISODE 265

    POST SCRIPT

    WILD GENSENG ONCE GREW HERE

    “ Marjorie, remember the Ginseng story? Deep in forests of maple, oak and other deciduous trees where the tree canopy was dense, Canadian ginseng once flourished  Reputed to 
    be the best ginseng in the world.   I have no idea why.  The market in the 18th century was so good that the plant was wiped out.  Years ago I did
    a CBC radio story on that Ginseng and a listener near Simcoe phoned in with an offer to show me a few surviving wild ginseng plants
    deep inside an ancient hardwood forest.  He showed us the most unremarkable scrawny little plant that I would never be able to find
    again. “

    “lots of ginseng farms in Ontario today…easy to spot because he field are darkened with elevated panels…to simulate the
    natural darkness of a maple forest.  Korean Ginseng roots are not the same…“

    “Back when we tapped those maple trees, We nosed around the forest but saw no ginseng…would not have known it if we did find it.”

    “Why do people eat ginseng or drink ginseng tea?”

    “I have no idea.  The internet says to be careful with the plant.”

    “Better to drink maple sap before the flies arrive….or slather maple syrup on pancakes or French toast.



  • EPISODE 265 NOBODY WORKS HERE ANY MORE

    NOBODY WORKS HERE ANY MORE


    EPISODE 265  NOBODY WORKS HERE ANYMORE.

    alan skeoch
    Feb 2021

    I Think this was the old siding to the Massey Harris factory in West Toronto…or taken
    at a factory siding on way to Ottawa from Toronto about year 2000