An Expedition to the Frontier

I am having trouble sitting still at my desk this morning.

It might be my wake-up coffee, or, more likely, it is my barely contained excitement and enthusiasm.  I fly to Norway House, MB (part of the Frontier School Division)  this afternoon, to deliver two days of custom interpretive programming!

-Anything.  Anywhere.  Anytime.:  Not actually Perimeter Air's slogan, but it could be.

Tomorrow, 70 students from the Helen Betty Osborne Inniniw Education Centre will be conducting a "Forest Inventory" - counting and classifying the life in the forest around their school.  This is the beginning of an outdoor "lab" space, where students can encounter their local landscape on many levels.  My plan is for it to be a load of fun, too!

I'm spending Friday with teachers from the school, dreaming and planning on how to best use this new resource.  The hope is students have more class time outdoors, engage more with their local landscape, and see a direct application for their science classes.

Two days of increasing outdoor education time.  Two days of helping students learn and grow as citizens of their local environment.  Two days of playing in the bush...with a purpose.

No wonder I can't sit still!

I'll let you know how it goes...until then, have a good one!

-Barret

Chicken Wrap-up

Hello, Blog Readers!

I must apologize for the chicken story - long story short, with enough duct-tape and willpower, we saved the chickens.  To protect the chickens, the weasel (who is innocent until proven a chicken-eater), etc.  I was not able to finish the story with the level of detail contained in the first two installments.

I hear that the weasel, and at least one of the chickens, have a book deal and have sold the film rights to their story...perhaps the full tale will be yet spun, but not by me.

-Barret

Feathered Follies Episode Two

Chickens are highly exciteable birds.  As I stepped into the midst of the escaped flock at FortWhyte Farms, I think I must have spooked them - the chickens scattered in front of me.

I walked over to the chicken tractors, the mobile pens designed to keep the chickens safe and contained, but with room to move, scratch the ground, and peck - in essence, the devices making "pastured poultry" a reality.  Two were completely bereft of chickens; bird-size holes had been made in the wire on the front of the tractors.  In addition to two empty small tractors, several laying hens were moving in and out of their tractor, about ten yards south of where the meat chickens were pastured.  The hole on the laying hens tractor was larger then in the other tractors.  This hole would be my first priority - the laying hen's tractor housed more chickens than the smaller tractors.

I walked over to the laying hen tractor.  I got down on one knee, and began twisting bits of chicken wire together, attempting to repair the breached tractor, or at least make the hole smaller than a chicken.

Eyes forward, intent on my task, I ignored the unhappy clucks around me.

I felt I was making progress.  It was not a perfect repair, but it was working.  Small successes fed my eagerness to get the job done.

I was so eager, I did not notice the large rooster, who had been guarding the hens, had disappeared from my field of vision.

In fact, I wouldn't notice him again until he jumped on the back of legs.  Clearly, he was not happy with my work, and chose to express this with his talons and beak.

Not being a chicken, I was able to express my thoughts and feelings using words.  Not necessarily printable, repeatable words, mind you - but, in all fairness, I did have an angry animal attacking my leg.

I jumped sideways.  The rooster jumped back.  We stared at each other.  He broke off the stare, and but watched me closely.

My loud shouts had scared most of the white meat chickens back inside their tractors - an unintended, temporary benefit, but appreciated, because the commotion had actually scared two laying hens so much they'd hopped the electric safety fence, and were running towards a nearby treeline.

The very same treeline where I'd last seen the weasel.

Weasel+Chickens+dense vegetation=trouble.

I jumped the fence and ran toward the trees, determined to be the variable that would make this equation turn out more positively for the escaped hens.

Do the tractors get repaired?  Is the weasel faster than Barret or the chickens?  Tune in tomorrow for the third installment of Feathered Follies!

Feathered Follies: Episode One

The best adventures for staff here at FortWhyte Alive always seem to happen right at the end of the work day.

I was due for an adventure.  My days had been ending far too normally of late - I was getting used to shutting down and heading home.

Yesterday, my number came up!

As I drove down Sam Fabro Way to lock our front gate, I passed FortWhyte Farms chicken pasture.  The pastured poultry live in large, moveable pens, called chicken tractors.  However, the poultry were not so much pastured as...everywhere...including outside the knee-high electric fence in place to keep out animals like weasels.

I pulled my vehicle over, and quickly took stock of the situation.

(One could even say I took "chicken stock" of the situation, if one was fond of puns..  Not being that person, I won't...but one could say it if one was so inclined.)


White meat birds mingled with golden laying hens.  A rooster was chasing hens, panicking them, and often as not causing the hens to take a short-hop flight, and land outside of their safety fence.

Stepping out of my vehicle and hopping the ditch, I realized that though I'm not a worker on the farm, this was my problem.  Everyone else was home for the day - judging by the food and water supply, the farm had set the chickens up to be self-sufficient for the long weekend.  I had to at least find some way of getting the chickens back inside their safety fence for the night.  After all, what if a mink, skunk or a...

WEASEL!!!*

There it was!  Fifteen yards from where I'd crossed the ditch, a long-tailed weasel popped up!  It crawled to the edge of the safety fence, and stood on it's hing legs to get a better view of its prospective dinner.

I ran towards the weasel.  It dropped to all fours, and slithered back into the well-vegetated ditch.  The instant I turned my back, it poked its head out of cover, scanning for an errant chicken close enough to catch.  I yelled, it hid.  We played this game for a few minutes. More and more chickens hopped the fence into the danger zone.

I had a multi-tool.  I had a first-aid kit; I wasn't sure how it might help, but there it was, on my belt.  I had tried calling farm staff as soon as I saw what was going on, and received no answer, so my phone was not very much help.  I had my trusty FortWhyte Alive ball cap.

I had escaped chickens.  I had a hungry weasel watching the escaped chickens.

It's been said that heroes are not born, they're made.  I tend to think they're not made, they're called.

An agricultural adventure was calling.  Collect.  I accepted the charges, and waded into the clucking, feather-flying, dropping-slicked whirlwind.  Where was this going to end up?  The only thing I knew for sure:  I was not going to lose a chicken to the weasel.

Does Barret slip on chicken poop?  Does the hungry weasel have a chicken dinner?  Is the first aid kit actually useful?
 
Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of Feathered Follies.

* This weasel image is courtesy of the US National Park Service, and is in the public domain.  The author acknowledges that though this is a fine-lookin' weasel, it is not the actual weasel from the story.  This image was used without the weasel's permission.

Smoking Frame/Drying Rack Complete!

Did the tipi encampment project work out?  Were Chantale and Barret able to make the wood and ropes dance together?  Are they still out on the prairie, tied in knots?

Yes, Yes, and No.  The FortWhyte Alive tipi encampment is home to a new smoking frame/drying rack.  We completed work on the new frame in about an hour - and the strong winds gave it a good test, even before work was done!  Chantale had learned to use the knots I  taught her - which probably says more about her learning skills than my teaching skills, but hey, I'm not going to over-analyze.  I'm too proud of the resulting camp improvement to overthink the process.

We even started drying some crab-apples in the...sun?  (It was sunny and windy when the apples were tied on yesterday - but today's rain was not great for drying anything).  We're supposed to be back into sunshine tomorrow. 

Which is good, because a hearth and other improvements to the encampment are waiting.

The tipi encampment is looking good, and will be looking even better soon.

-Barret

PS:  Tomorrow's Outdoor Skills For Everyone is "Keeping Critters out of Camp - or, how to make every wildlife encounter a positive encounter."  Learn to tree your food pack, what to do when confronted by an angry goose, and many other hands-on, useful tips for maximizing your outdoor experiences.  6 PM, free with admission to FW @ the Interpretive Centre.  Call 989-8358 for details!

Tipi Encampment Enhancement

Super exciting morning here at FW!

My colleague Chantale and I are packing up to go and do some improvements around our tipi encampment.

Specifically, we're building a drying rack, meat smoker, and, if time and supplies allow, a hearth.  We cut some poles on Friday, have a bunch of cordage at the ready, and are going to lash up some furnishings for the encampment.

This is a test of my skills as an outdoor skills instructor, as well as a living history project.  On one level, as the guy here at FortWhyte who taught the knot-tying session of Outdoor Skills For Everyone last Wednesday, I had better be able to lash a basic structure together. On the next level, this is Chantale's first lashing project...ever.  I started teaching her late last week.

Will the student surpass the teacher?  Have the skills of ropework been successfully transmitted?  We shall see in the next hour or so.

-Barret

Snapshots of the last week

It's been a warm week here at FortWhyte Alive.  Good weather means more visitors - and more visitors means more adventures happen!

Last week, during a "Rent-a-Naturalist" program, I did an edible wilds walk.  The idea behind Rent-a-Naturalist: for $15, a group of up to six visitors can hire one of our interpretive staff to do the program (hike, talk, tour, paddle, etc.) the group has always dreamed of!  One gentleman in my group had a keen interest in wild edible plants - so we did a customized walkabout, nibbling as we went.  Though no wild fruit is ripe yet, we found no less than ten tasty wild edibles within twenty metres of the Interpretive Centre.

Loyal followers of the blog know that though I appreciate the aspirin content of willow-bark tea, I'm not a fan of the crushed-aspirin-in-brine flavour...my guest's suggestion:  mix the tea with tomato juice to hide the taste.  I've not yet tried the idea, but it seems like a good one!

This was all happening at the same time my colleagues Dana and Melanie were busy leading a fishing experience for Grandparents and Grandkids.  The fishing line might have only been five-pound-test line, but the memories the participants walked away with are strong enough to last forever...it was great fun to watch that group as we foraged through the forest.

- A fisher, not unlike FortWhyte's!

Just in case you think the action ends with the Education Team, our accountant saw our resident fisher later in the day as she biked home.  We normally see fisher tracks in the winter, but this summer, we've had reports from all over the property, about one a week.  You can go for a lifetime in the forests of Manitoba and rarely, if ever, see a fisher...understandably, we're thrilled to have people seeing them!

We had Bison Safaris on Sunday, I had the thrill of making botany come alive to a group of older adults yesterday, and summer camp is in full swing....whew!

FortWhyte really has been alive these past few days.  Sometimes, I wonder if it sleeps!

-Barret