Viewing post #1040726 by Sorellina
You are viewing a single post made by Sorellina in the thread called #7 Piggy Swap and Friends Chat The sowing begins.
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Yesterday, Duane and I took a drive out to St. Jacob's, a rural Mennonite community a few hours west of Toronto. You can still see people in horse-drawn buggies in this area from time to time. We went on a sleigh ride as a belated Valentine's date. It was VERY cold and I wasn't quite sure how everything was going to turn out for me. I get cold very easily, so I put on what seemed like a thousand layers and could barely move. It was a wise decision. Duane showed me how to wrap my face after putting on my ear coverings and ear flap hat with a scarf all around so only my eyes were exposed and that worked quite well, especially when we were riding out in a meadow with no tree cover. There are many sugar maple trees along the route we took and they had tap lines in them for collecting sap. They're doing that now, boiling it down in big sugar shacks for syrup. The warming hut had a lovely wood-burning stove and hot apple cider for us after we returned from our ride and it used to be the old Mennonite sugar shack once upon a time. That's tough, cold work. I can't imagine what it was like for those ladies back in the 1800's in their dresses stirring the big pots of sap outside over a wood fire.  Our horse, Dolly, is a 17-year-old Percheron with enormous feet and a sweet personality. After the ride, we explored the little town and watched a man make a broom corn broom with very simple tools. His tiny little operation supplies brooms to huge hardware stores in Canada like Home Hardware. He showed me how to make a broom by hand, should I ever want to grow broom corn myself. I do have seed for it and I never really thought about growing it because like most corns, it requires a fair bit of space. It does look like a fun project and the bottom 2/3 of the stalks can be donated afterwards for cattle feed.   Grazie a tutti, Julianna |
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