Victorian Secrets

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We have been completely distracted this week by the start of renovations on the old Victorian house. Like children, Christine and I have been playing the role of amateur archaeologists.

As we started work on the west wing of the house, the old manor started to reveal a few secrets. Some of these surprises have now completely altered our plans.

First, it is now clearly evident that the manor has been the subject of extensive renovations over the years. More recently to address modern amenities such as plumbing, heating and electrical systems.

However, much older renovations are evident from the earlier part of the 20th century. Presumably, while in the hands of the old cannery and before the Great Depression, this home was greatly altered to create four separate apartments.

Furthermore, we now have much more evidence that this home was itself built upon or extended from an older brick-walled homestead.

The official construction of the house is dated as 1880, however since the site was acquired by Josiah Ward in 1865, it seems he may have built an earlier home on the site or perhaps extended the structure of an existing homestead prior to finishing this Victorian manor. In fact, the Victorian manor itself seems to have been built or assembled in at least four distinct phases: the main house (built upon and using material from an older structure), the tower (encompassing the widow's walk), the west wing and a southerly extension to the west wing.

Although the house shows signs of various bricked-in doorways and windows on the outside, it was still a surprise to see these openings from the inside. It started to give us a much better feel for the "flow" of the original home.

One of the rooms, we expect to transform into a large dining room. We also wanted to join it to an adjacent room with what seemed to be an old blocked-off archway where we suspected would have been "pocket doors". This space would be a small sitting room which I refer to as our " Brandy Room", overlooking the backyard.

The results surprised us.

First, the archway does not seem to have been original but perhaps a renovation carried out in the earlier part of the century. The casings which would have complemented the rest of the room simply did not exist and the depth of the wall would have never allowed for it.

Second it was fascinating to see the location of an old back door going into our "Brandy Room". This is in fact a back wall where we have an additional layer of brick (beyond the standard three layer Victorian configuration), suggesting this may have been the back door to the original homestead.

Another real surprise was a hidden doorway and passageway in the corner of the dining room. The door itself seems to be an early renovation while the passageway seems to have been an original link between the dining room and what was evidently the kitchen. This passageway winds around the back of the circular staircase in the centre hall.

This along with the additional discoveries of the week have completely altered our plans. We are now thinking of relocating our kitchen and opening up once again this original passageway. Basically returning the old home to its original configuration.

Finally, one wall of the dining room had been covered with a more modern (30 year old) bookcase and a mantle surrounding a gas fireplace. We've removed this to expose an existing door. We hope to use this door as a decorative architectural element to the dining room.

Other interesting discoveries in this portion of the house included some of the original wallpaper.

After peeling back four layers of ceiling, we were also able to expose the original painted ceiling (which was referenced in the account of an elderly lady that had lived in the house as a child just before the Great Depression).

The painted ceiling was a bluish green with a geometric pattern. Regrettably, it was in incredibly bad shape not only having suffered from multiple renovations, but as well from major water damage.

What also altered our plans were the discoveries in what would have been our renovated kitchen.

It turns out that the north wall of this kitchen is brick (basically the wall to the original west wing extension). We even found a "mail box"or "milk box" in this brick wall.

We also found evidence of the old chimney.

This kitchen seems to have been made up from two rooms. One of which showed a very early doorway which we now suspect would have gone to a coach house. This narrow room also had direct access to the food cellar where we still see evidence of older stairs.

Given the beauty of the old exposed brick walls and beams, we've now decided to preserve this part of the house in as bare a finish as possible and turn it into our art glass gallery.

It turns out that the original wall to the main house is also evident in what we were to turn into a "mud room" (the north end of the west wing). Again, we found an internal brick wall. This room will now also become part of the gallery.

I leave you this week with the final touches to the barn. Our store is pretty much complete and awaiting furnishing.

Meanwhile, the kitchen has just been paneled with a fire retardant and hygienic laminate, while powerful fluorescent lighting has also been installed.

We can hardly wait until it all "comes together".

Cattail Crepes

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This having been the week for "Pancake Tuesday". We decided to throw a completely different spin on the concept of a pancake. We decided to make Cattail Crepes.

Of course we're not talking of the cat tails of the animal kingdom, but rather those "weeds" often found in marshes and also called bulrush.

Somewhere I had read than an acre of cattail produces maybe ten times more food than an acre of potatoes! This was quite interesting since one part of our land proved problematic for me.

Our acreage is divided into two parts by a stream which feeds a pond. The pond was created by a beaver dam and downstream we now have a large marsh overflowing with cattails.

We had to discover their use. So this week we started harvesting some cattail rhizomes (roots). The frozen edges of the marsh made it relatively easy to get to these plants and we dutifully pulled our first cattail root.

The first root was so small we were somewhat suspicious of the claim that a lot of food could be gathered. However, this first root did allow us to identify the general morphology of the plant. As shown in this picture, the longitudinal root has a tendency to spur new growth called a "corn", a distinctive hook-shaped bud.

After a short period of time, we started to gather some rather large roots and were quite surprised with the amount we could pick over a rather small area. We were pleased to return home with a good harvest to experiment with.

The first step to processing cattails is simply washing. Basically these rhizomes come out of the ground with a rather significant amount of mud.

The next step is to cut off the "corns". These small shoots are actually edible on their own. They are small and from our harvest we did not have much to try. However, I couldn't help feeling that I was gathering "cat teeth" rather than "cat tails".

We took these and pan fried them. The result was surprisingly good.

Even though I expected them to taste like swamp water, these small shoots have a nice mild flavour and would go well in any stir fry.

A quick note here: the corns are structured almost like an onion with multiple layers. The outer layers are tougher than the inside. I would recommend you peal one or two of the tougher outer layers before using these "corns".

The next step in the processing of the rhizomes is to peal them. We used a sharp knife but a potato peeler would probably work just as well, as long as you peel lengthwise.

Now you simply chop them up and place them in water. I found that to chop up the rhizomes, it was easiest to slice them lengthwise (exposing a soft almost creamy interior) and use scissors to "slice" them (allowing you to more easily cut the very fibrous exterior).

Using your hands you can mash the very fibrous roots in the water and the result is a gooey soup (the texture reminds me of Chinese corn soup). In fact, this is where you begin to realize how much starch these roots hold. Your hands will come out almost feeling soapy from the residue.

Once this is done, we strained the roots from the fluid (I also washed them over the colander to get as much of the starch as possible)....and stepped back to wait for the starch or flour to settle.

This is where Christine comes in. Coming home to find a "pot of dirty water" on the kitchen counter she decided to toss it out! Tristan and I had to go back to "square one".

Returning through all of our initial steps (perhaps a little wiser in our approach), we got back to the settling of the starch. After about 3 hours, we took the upper clear portion of the liquid and decanted as much of it as possible. The bottom of the container was loaded with a wet starch or flour that we put in the oven (for a lack of a dehydrator) at its lowest temperature.

We did not wait until the starch was completely dried before using (being somewhat impatient). The colour had turned orange on the edges which I believe was due to the stove being on too high (I think next time using a dehydrator and baking sheets for a more even process should do better).

Tristan being the resident expert on crepes (a thin French pancake) took it up from there. He added an egg (to what was maybe half a cup of cattail starch), some milk and brown sugar.

Our first crepe fell apart, but actually was quite tasty. The texture had a slight grit to it almost like a corn meal. We decided that the texture of the cattail starch may not allow for proper binding so we added a very small amount of flour....and the results were superb!

We added a dollop of our blackberry jam (processed earlier this summer) and had a crepe that had a slight taste of corn and whole wheat. This was definitely a worthwhile discovery for us (we're now thinking breads, pastas and cookies!).

Having succeeded in this first experiment with cattails, we can hardly wait for the year to progress. Apparently and to my surprise, cattails produce different food throughout the year. In the spring you can eat the shoots - cooked or raw (in Russia they refer to these as Cossack Asparagus). Later you can eat the flower (that distinctive brown pod). It is eaten just like corn when it is green. And if this was not enough, you can also collect the pollen and use it as a flour! Needless to say, we'll have quite a few additional experiments to report on.

On the farming front we encountered quite a few set-backs this week. We continued with our pruning and managed to finish off the McIntosh and Empire Apple trees.

However, we did encounter difficulties with our pole pruner. It kept stalling. It turned out to be a carburetor issue. Luckily our friends at Pic's were quick to help us out.

This allowed us to move to the more challenging row of Pippin apple trees. They do not seem to have been pruned for decades and have grown to well over 30 feet. They were also infested with vines (which is one reason it took us a while to identify them earlier in the season).

Nevertheless, we tackled our first tree. The key issue was the cutting of major limbs. Invariably we would get our pole pruner stuck in the limb while cutting it. We also faced major issues when a limb would fall. First large portions of the branch would be damaged by "tearing" the bark. Then these large branches would be entirely entangled in the remaining portion of the tree (the remaining vines in the canopy did not help).

The bottom line is that we will have to develop a new approach to our cutting before we tackle the remaining 4 Pippins.

One of the issues we also discovered is that pruning largely neglected trees produces a lot of wood. Some of this will make good fire wood, but we still had to dispose of the smaller branches.

We could not set a burn close to the trees. We were too close to our barn and our raspberry crops.

We decided to use an old flat bed trailer with our trusty Massey Ferguson tractor.

Once again, we had another set-back. One of the trailer tires was flat and the tractor could not pull the trailer since beneath our snow we had a good amount of ice.

The solution: a bicycle pump.

Of course once we gathered all our wood, things could not go smoothly. Tried as we might we just could not get a burn going. The wood was much too "green" to build a sustainable fire....We'll now have to continue to gather wood and perhaps wait until Spring before cleaning up this entire mess.

I leave you this week with a couple of notes on the renovations and restoration projects. While working on the farm, we still managed to move all of the major furniture from the "West Wing" of the house into our container.

We also took delivery of a dumpster, indicating that yes new work will finally start on the old Victorian home this coming Tuesday.

The barn itself has progressed marvelously. It is really looking like new.

Inside the store walls are now paneled with pine boards and all of the wood has been stained and finished. We're so pleased with the final look, it has given us new ideas on how to transform the second floor of the barn.

The floor is tiled and waiting for grout. The only things remaining are the electrical fixtures, and the finishing and equipping of the new tea room kitchen.

A New Web Site

To view the latest from Ridge Berry Farm visit our new blog and site!

With the snow on the ground, our farm work has slowed. So it was time to do some "inside" work this week.

The result is the launch of our "URL" and home web site. This is still in a "draft" version, but we hope to make it the location where our friends and customers can link to all of our web presence and also get updates on both the farm activities and the new country market. The site can be accessed on www.ridgeberryfarm.ca (yes there is a Ridge Berry Farm in the US...so we could not get ".com").

Although the snow really slowed us down, we still managed to get some "farming" work done. We finished clearing our row of grapes and completed our rather crude pruning.

In the process, we found ourselves cutting down a lot of 10-20 year old hard wood. We've decided to build up an inventory of fire wood and we are now planning the home renovations with a wood fireplace/stove in mind (today there is only a gas fire place and the old chimneys have been dismantled).

We've also decided to tackle the pruning of apple trees this week. Again this is something rather new to us. Luckily pruning apple trees is a well-documented process on the web and it was just a matter of getting the "hang of it".

We have so far identified 9 apple trees on the front portion of the property. They include a Crab Apple (which produced very well this year); 2 McIntosh and an Empire (which had few apples and most were infected by bugs); and, a row consisting of 5 Pippin apple trees. 

We did not even know the Pippin apple trees existed until late into the year.  By this time the few apples they produced were on the ground. As a result, we are not certain of the exact variety. All we know is that they are very old, apparently rare and when producing fruit generate an apple which is ideal for cider.

The state of the apple trees were in different stages of neglect. The one which seems to have been pruned in the past couple of years was the Crab Apple. 

So, we decided to start on this one. After a few cuts, it became clear to us how fruiting branches were generated (from the evidence of previous pruning) and we were able to move forward with some ease. It helped that the tree was rather small, however it still took us the better part of half a day.

We're pleased with the results, but as for everything else that we have pruned so far, we're still learning and we will only know how well or how poorly we've done next fall.

The group of Empire and McIntosh are in bad shape. They do not seem to have been pruned in a few years. As a result they have a multitude of "sucker" branches not only growing at the base but it some cases all the way up the main branches. 

Some sort of fungus is also evident on the bark of the trees. I am not sure pruning (and eventually some form of organic spraying) will help, but we are going to try to bring these back into production.

In tackling these trees, I recall one British orchard owner saying that he can "throw his hat" through a properly pruned apple tree. Basically the ideal is to get as much sunshine into the canopy as possible. So this is what we've started to do.

While working on these trees however, it became quite evident that we were somewhat ill-equipped for the larger trees (the Pippins in particular will be a major challenge). We have been using hand-held Fiskar shears including extendable shears which are set on a rather long pole.  In two days we broke 2 of the extendable shears! Luckily these have a lifetime warranty which is honoured by Canadian Tire.

For the larger branches, we have also been using a chainsaw. This is the part that felt very uncomfortable or rather unsafe. Climbing a ladder or into a tree with a chainsaw became a concern. It did not help that some of the branches were not easily accessible.

The solution was a new Sthil. A pruning chain saw on an extendable pole!

We've grown to love our Sthil tools (our chainsaw, auger, weed waker and hand-held tiller have proven so reliable), so it was natural to return to our favourite local dealer Pic's Motor Clinic in Fonthill for this new piece of machinery. They've been expertly servicing all of our tools and were also the local source for our amazing BCS tiller (if anyone in the area is looking for these kinds of tools, we highly recommend them).

To our dismay, our pruning work was brutally interrupted this week by the major snow storm that hit the Northeast, so I leave you with pictures of the "winter wonderland" in our backyard. 

PS. We also again have to thank the neighbors for getting us out of our driveway! I'm not sure what we would do without them.