{"id":6496,"date":"2020-11-16T14:01:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T19:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=6496"},"modified":"2020-11-16T14:14:51","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T19:14:51","slug":"episode-172-wland-recovered-at-a-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=6496","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 172 WLAND RECOVERED…AT A COST"},"content":{"rendered":"
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EOPISODE  172      WETLAND ROCOVERED\u2026AT A  COST<\/p>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
Nov. 2020<\/div>\n

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Our farm is not a good  farm.   My grandparents managed to make a sketchy<\/div>\n
living on the 25 acre farm.   They had no car\u2026no horse and buggy\u2026no way  to <\/div>\n
get to town except with their sun, Uncle Frank who owned a  neighbouring farm.<\/div>\n
Both farms are glacial dumps.  Rubble from the Canadian Shield  pushed down<\/div>\n
by ice two kilometres high.  Ice that scoured the bedrock making indentations in<\/div>\n
the flat surface wherever possible.  <\/div>\n

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Those indentations filled with water when the ice sheet melted  10,000 years ago.<\/div>\n
Ponds.  Lots  of ponds were scattered across the rock surface of ancient Ontario.<\/div>\n
Plants eventually got a grip on the rocky soil.  The ponds became hubs for <\/div>\n
vegetation.  <\/div>\n

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And eventually over the 10,000 years a great number of those ponds became<\/div>\n
swamps\u2026thick with spongy mosses and other watery plants.  In some cases<\/div>\n
the pond  water totally disappeared and was replaced  by wetlands.<\/div>\n

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A third of my grandparents farm was  wetland that drained in two directions.<\/div>\n
Some of the swamps drained into the Credit River drainage basins.  The rest,<\/div>\n
the larger, drained into the the Grand River basin.  Lots of water.<\/div>\n

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HERE IS THE STORY\u2026IN OUR FEW  YEARS OF OWNERSHIP<\/div>\n

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About 20 years ago Marjorie and  I decided to hire JIM Sanderson\u2019s family to <\/div>\n
bring their big excavator to open up one of the large swamps.  This was  no small<\/div>\n
task.   Jim had to remove the plant life that had taken 10,000 years to<\/div>\n
pile up\u2026living plants succoured by their dead  predecessors.<\/div>\n

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The excalator got caught in quicksand  and  slowly sank into  the swamp.<\/div>\n
So deeply that Jim\u2019s son had to abandon the cab as the huge machine<\/div>\n
slipped deeper and deeper into the pond.   Much excavation had  been done<\/div>\n
successfully and the swamp was  now a pond as it had been long ago.<\/div>\n
A  pond with a huge iron, steel and rubber dinosaur slowly sinking deeper<\/div>\n
and deeper into what had once been a sandy beech.<\/div>\n

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\u201cHow will you get it out, Jim?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have to float the machine out?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cFloat?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNeed to bring in truckload or two of giant timbers to encircle<\/div>\n
the excavator then use another excavator to lift it up\u2026a giant raft, if you will.\u201d<\/div>\n

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The project took a long time. Days and days.  The fifth line in front of our farm<\/div>\n
was lined with machines and  truckloads of timbers.   Eventually the excavator<\/div>\n
was recovered.   I offered to help with the costs  but Jim would not accept help.<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe got it into this  mess, so we will get it out.\u201d<\/div>\n

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The new pond was a bit of an embarrassment so we sort of forgot about it.<\/div>\n
The pond was surrounded by large ancient white pines and a line of immense<\/div>\n
spruce trees  planted by my grandfather.  The pond was invisible.<\/div>\n

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Wild animals knew that.  One summer a  bank beaver moved in and chomped down<\/div>\n
a grove of small poplars.  It was an old beaver.  Almost tame.  But it was really dying<\/div>\n
so we left it alone in its small watery world.  Other creatures  came and  went. A pair<\/div>\n
of muskrats burrowed  into one bank  and have been raising  a whole bunch  of young muskrats<\/div>\n
that we hardly ever saw.  A family of mud hens had lived in the former swamp and<\/div>\n
now lived in the pond.  Deep dear tracks were incised  into the mud now and then.<\/div>\n
Sadly one summer we saw a doe with a crippled fawn emerging from the piece of wetland.<\/div>\n
 Shrubs thrived forming a veil of low life that made the pond<\/div>\n
more and more invisible.<\/div>\n

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Just one giant spruce\u2026felled by a windstorm\u2026was  enough to reveal the pond  that we had forgotten.   <\/div>\n

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Then, last spring, a big windstorm brought about a major change.  The pond suddenly<\/div>\n
become visible.  The tree carcass was down flat…we could now see the pond<\/div>\n
clearly.   Work with the Bobcat and a  brush cutter revealed  a wondrous patch<\/div>\n
of open water surrounded by all kinds of  plant life the had been formerly shielded<\/div>\n
from view by  the giant spruce tree.<\/div>\n

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A wetland that we had forgotten for years was  now visible.<\/div>\n

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The muskrats were rearing a family of four in the pond.  They did not<\/div>\n
like the improvements one bit.<\/div>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
Nov. 2020<\/div>\n

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P.S.  Milkweed plants seem to like the pond margin.  If they have their will they will take over a wide swath and maybe\u2026just maybe\u2026we will get our Monarch butterflies back again.<\/div>\n
Farmers hated  mllkweed.  Poisoned cattle.  So the plant was  condemned for years.  But now, in 2020, there are only a few cattle grazing on the Fifth Line and the milk weed<\/div>\n
has returned.   Not as  much as in the past though.  Why?  Because corporate agriculture has  \u201cimproved\u201d Ontario farmland  by removed so many fencerows where wild plants<\/div>\n
and  song birds once thrived.  The same is  happening to wetlands.  They are being drained.  Not on our property though.  We are doing the reverse.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
alan skeoch<\/div>\n
Nov. 2020<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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P>S.  The Excavator looked like this\u2026and  it finally rested<\/div>\n
about deep in the pond.  How would you get it out?<\/div>\n

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EOPISODE  172      WETLAND ROCOVERED\u2026AT A  COST alan skeoch Nov. 2020 Our farm is not a good  farm.   My grandparents managed to make a sketchy living on the 25 acre farm.   They had no car\u2026no horse and buggy\u2026no way  to  get to town except with their sun, Uncle Frank who owned a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}