This Week in Deerwood Forest

You can barely see the outline of a this trail with new growth.

This is the most flourishing time of the year in the Seguin forest. Flowers bloom, fruit ripens, and all the animals are storing up food for the wintertime.

I walked around Deerwood for a few hours looking for edible mushrooms and captured some images along the way. Normally I don't pick wild mushrooms because of the danger of poisoning, but Florence, a friend of Ma Pocock's, found some oyster mushrooms and gave me some for dinner. And she promised me I wouldn't die or get sick (see pictures at end of post).

The fact that I'm writing this post the next day means I survived the meal. Don't eat wild mushroom, kids, unless your expert mushroom-picking-parents say it's OK.

What is that ant doing?

'Frog.

Toad.

Bumble bee.

My favourite time of year - blackberry season!

Right beside the blackberry bushes I found some bear scat with
my trusty Zippo beside it for scale. I'd say that's 100%
ex-blackberries.

Another treat for black bears are wild cherries.
Bears will actually push over small black cherry trees
in order to get to these berries.

A huge pine trunk split into four equal branches,
reaching high into the sky.

And then, kids, I found a mushroom at least 10 metres tall!

I amuse myself to think I'm some kind of rough 'n ready forest
ranger. Then some tricky deer (like this one) sneaks up on me and I
only spot it when it's 20 feet away. Time to hand in my Ranger Card.

This is what oyster mushrooms look like, says Florence.
I do not advise anyone to eat wild mushrooms unless you
are an expert at identification.

Livin' off the fat of the land thanks to Florence. I'd starve to death
before I could scratch together a meal on my own.

Mushrooms by solar light. They tasted just like they look -
weird, slimy fish from another planet.

Doe and Fawn

I'm back from a month of building a waterfront sauna in Burk's Falls and ready for more Seguin politics.

I use a chalk line on a cedar shake

roof high above Three Mile Lake near Burk's Falls.

But first, I've got to feed a couple of deer - then politics.

A doe and fawn stop for a visit.

Beaver Complex

Here I go again with another forestry/environment type of blog post.

All of this nature stuff may seem off topic on a political campaign blog, but maybe not. The more I talk to people about Sequin politics, the more I realize that people want to know who I am. This blog will certainly express my views on local issues and - more importantly - quotes from Ward 1 people I talk to. But I want to avoid the shallow, often meaningless sort of political website that is so sanitized or scripted that you don't get to understand the real me. I write these personal blog entries to show you who I am by the things I do every day.

So, onto the topic of my relationship with the local beaver population....

Enemy Headquarters.

On the edge of my family woodlot (we call Deerwood) is not a beaver lodge, but a beaver fortress. I have no idea how many beaver lodges there are in the fortress, but it's more than I can shake a stick at. Whether they're all currently occupied is another question. You see these beaver are secretive in their ways. They and I interact in a rather passive aggressive way toward one another.

You see, these beaver, who have created a large flood plain around their fort, are always looking to expand operations. One of their many local projects is damming up a lowland in Deerwood with the grand scheme - I'm sure - of drowning the Pocock family out completely.

A vision of the beaver Master Plan.

There's a key, low, beaver dam that floods a good part of Deerwood forest that I'm in the habit of opening up now and then.

It's both frustrating and amusing to know that the very next night, one or all (who knows?) of the fort beaver will waddle out then wattle up the dam again with mud, stick, and rock (up to the size of ten pin bowling ball).

My famous channel through the beaver dam.

Sure, the beaver ought to be allowed to make their way in this world, but what about me? Don't I have any rights?

The other day I walked past the beaver dam which I'd cleared some time ago and was both pleased and disappointed to see that the dam wasn't repaired. I take it as a bad sign that the beaver might be getting a little lazy. I don't want them to go away - I mean we've got 'relationship'. Then again, the beaver do go further afield in Spring/Summer, to conquer new lands, then return in fall to collect saplings for winter fuel.

A happy compromise.

The upside to a small amount of flooding is the creation of micro-ecologies in Deerwood. Forest flatland is slightly flooded, but not to the extent that the trees die off. Forest diversity is an important thing to sustainable foresters to me, as well as the forest's thirsty inhabitants.

And as this year may shape up to be a rather dry one, I better go back and fix that darn dam myself. Now where did I put that beaver suit?...

Some Wildlife Photos

Here's some photos taken while working at the office today - Deerwood Forest. These photos are all part of my cynical campaign to grab the environmentalist vote.

The Deer Return!

I'm happy to report that the deer have returned from their winter yard to Deerwood Forest!


This is the start of fair weather indeed. Only one yearling is missing from this band of moochie characters. It's always good to see them back.


This is the start of fair weather indeed. Only one yearling is missing from this band of moochie characters. It's always good to see them back.