Wildwood

by Elinor Florence

  Colin noticed my blank expression, and explained. “The dryness is measured in percentage points. Over 10 percent is considered damp. If you store it in the bins while it’s still damp, it can overheat and spoil. But if you leave it in the field too long, it might freeze. It’s always a gamble.”

  “Before I moved here, I didn’t even know crops could grow this far north.”

  Cliff McKay answered me. “Yep, we are pretty high, but that means we have long summer days. The daylight and the topsoil together make things grow like mad.”

  “I’ve been reading my great-aunt’s diary. It says farming started here even before the First World War.”

  “Yes, the early fur traders planted gardens and were astonished at the results. Then in the late 1800s some bright spark realized that grain could grow here as well as vegetables. My parents, John and Julia McKay, started farming around the same time as your great-uncle.”

  He chuckled. “Boy, things have sure changed since then. I’m looking forward to seeing what will happen in my lifetime. Old man Johnston got his sixty-eighth crop off this year. I should be good for another twenty.”

  Roy Henderson nodded. “Peter Warkentin was ninety-six when his wife saw the tractor stalled against the fence, and she went out to check on him and found him dead in the saddle. That’s how I’d like to leave this world.”

  Their attitude was refreshing. The older people in my office were always discussing pensions and retirement plans. It appeared these farmers didn’t intend to retire, ever.

  “It makes all the difference to have a young guy around.” Cliff smiled affectionately at his son. “I just operate the machinery, and he figures out all the computer stuff and keeps the financial records.”

  The talk turned to travel plans. Everyone but me had travelled extensively. The McKays had been to Hawaii and Mexico so often they had lost count. They had travelled through Europe several times, from Russia and Finland right down to Greece and Turkey.

  Even the Hendersons travelled widely, although their preferred mode of travel was the cruise ship. They had cruised as far as South America and Japan. Colin had hitchhiked through Southeast Asia and climbed Machu Picchu in Peru. All of them had driven across the United States. They had seen more of my own country than I had.

  It sure didn’t sound as if farming provided the subsistence living that Franklin Jones had described. Maybe these people were part of a special farming elite.

  “And what about you, dear?” Eileen turned to me. I was forced to admit that I hadn’t travelled far. Since Bridget was born, we had been on only two holidays. I had taken her to Disneyland one weekend, and she hated the noise and the crowds. The second time we had gone to a Mexican beach resort, and this had been more successful. Bridget was happy to squat on the beach all day, piling up sandcastles and decorating them with neat rows of tiny pebbles and seashells, as long as I sat nearby and made frequent exclamations of pleasure. And as long as nobody talked to her.

  While Bridget hid in the bathroom, I helped Eileen clear the table and load the dishwasher. It was a relief not to have to wash all these dishes by hand. A couple of times I heard Colin laughing. He had a nice laugh.

  “Are you ready for winter?” Cliff asked me when we returned to the living room.

  Bridget was dragging on my skirt so hard that a couple of inches of my bare hip showed. I clung to my skirt with one hand, surreptitiously pushing her aside with the other.

  “Yes, I had my winter tires installed, so I’m ready for anything.” I sounded braver than I felt. I lowered myself to the couch and Bridget burrowed down beside me.

  The whole crowd stared at me doubtfully before launching into their worst winter driving stories. There were tales of people getting stuck for days, shovelling snow until they fell down dead with heart attacks, losing blackened fingers and toes, freezing to death within sight of lighted windows.

  Finally Eileen looked at my face and changed the subject. “Colin, why don’t you show the girls your hobby?”

  Colin didn’t look too excited at the prospect, but immediately he rose to his feet. “You don’t need your coat. I live right behind the house.”

  I took Bridget by the hand, and we followed Colin out the back door. A mobile home sat behind the house, invisible from the front yard. “Have you always lived here?” I asked.

  “After I finished my agriculture degree, I took a couple of years off and travelled around the world. Then I came home and settled down.”

  “How long has it been since you moved back?” I tried to keep my tone light while mentally calculating his age.

  “Three years,” he said. “I’m twenty-eight.”

  I was surprised to find out that Colin was four years younger than I. He seemed older than twenty-eight, but perhaps I was accustomed to the metrosexual boy-men who worked in my accounting office.

  I didn’t know anyone who made their living from manual labour, except the Mexican gardeners at our condo complex. There were outdoor lovers, of course, the kind who wore L.L. Bean jackets and had $5,000 mountain bikes racked onto their sport utility vehicles. But this guy was so rugged, he probably drank beer for breakfast and spent his weekends watching football. Or hockey, more likely.

  He opened the door and stood aside to let us enter. Clearly, this was a masculine domain, but it looked very comfortable and was surprisingly clean. A man-sized black leather couch and recliner almost filled the living room, facing a big-screen television. Beside it was an old-fashioned legal bookcase, and behind the glass doors the shelves were crammed with books — a quick glance registered Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Jo Nesbo, P.D. James, and The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Over the couch hung an oil painting of a bright yellow field under a burnished blue sky. A small, tidy kitchen adjoined the living area.

  Colin led the way down the narrow hall, and I followed with Bridget still clutching my skirt. I wondered what kind of hobby he had — stuffed animal trophies, perhaps. But when he opened the door at the end of the hall, I was struck with the warmth, the humidity, and the overwhelming fragrance.

  Orchids, hundreds of them.

  Surrounding us were shelves of plants reaching from floor to ceiling, mounted across the full-length windows that overlooked the fields beyond. I stepped into the room to have a closer look.

  I recognized the traditional orchids, the kind worn as corsages, but the others were unfamiliar. The variety of shapes and colours was amazing. Many of the blossoms were pink, ranging from palest rose to deepest fuchsia, shaped like bells with ruffled edges. Some appeared to have tiny dark faces peeping shyly from inside their pale yellow velvet bonnets while others were as bold as shooting stars, with long, pointed petals. A few of them sported an unlikely combination of colours, lime-green petals with tiny purple tongues. Others were striped and spotted like wild animals.

  There were plants with sprays about three feet long cascading from their stems, covered with tiny speckled-yellow blossoms. “I call those my dancing ladies,” Colin said. Each tiny blossom looked like a flamenco dancer holding her ruffled skirt out on both sides. Bridget and I stared at them in silent wonder.

  “This is extraordinary,” I said at last. “However did you get interested in orchids?”

  “I’d seen a few of them in the wild, called lady’s slippers. They used to grow by the thousands around here, but now they’re quite rare. A few years ago I went into a flower shop in Edmonton to order flowers for my mother’s birthday. There was a bank of orchids on display, and I just fell in love with them. I brought one home, wrapped in blankets on the seat of my truck, and then I started ordering more. I can have them shipped here quite safely at certain times of the year.”

  He gestured around the room. “Eventually I acquired so many that I added this sunroom on the back of my trailer. I installed these shelves across the windows, with zinc trays underneath, and a drainage system so the water drains outside.”

  “How often do they bloom?”

  “Only once a year. But when
they do, the blossoms last for two or three months. I stagger the different varieties so they never come out all at once. That way I can enjoy the ones that are blooming, a few dozen at a time.”

  “It must be fascinating.” I spoke in a hushed voice, as if we were in church.

  “Each plant is a small miracle. It’s a mystery that a simple green shoot can put forward a flower that is so incredibly beautiful.”

  Colin’s face was alight with enthusiasm as he bent over one tiny, perfect orchid.

  “This little lady here embodies all the power of nature. In the morning I sit here and wait for the sun to rise, and when the first light hits her, she releases the most intense fragrance. It’s her way of attracting insects. Some of them smell like citrus. Some have a heavy floral odour, and others have a very delicate scent. This one smells like chocolate.”

  “They must take a tremendous amount of work.”

  “Yeah, this isn’t exactly their natural environment. I warm the room with electric heaters and keep the air moist with humidifiers. I’ve arranged the grow lamps on timers, to fool the orchids into thinking the sun is shining, even when it’s dark outside during the short winter days.”

  He paused, and his thick brows drew together.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said defensively. “It’s environmentally unsound to grow plants that require so much energy. But I do have solar panels on the roof.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything of the kind!” I exclaimed. “It would be pretty presumptuous of me to complain when I come from a place where water is piped across the desert for thousands of miles, and air conditioners run day and night.”

  Bridget moved closer to a tiny pale pink orchid sitting at her eye level. I was proud of her for not touching it. She kept her hands behind her back while she leaned forward and inhaled the fragrance with a look of wonder. Her little face looked like an orchid itself.

  “Would you like that one?” Colin picked it up and held it out to her. Bridget immediately cowered behind me. I grimaced at him and shook my head, but he ignored me. “I’m going to wrap it in a towel so it doesn’t freeze on the way home. If you keep it in a warm place with plenty of sunshine, it should be fine.”

  As we left, Colin held the wrapped orchid out to Bridget. She didn’t speak, didn’t look at him, and refused to reach for it. I accepted it instead, with effusive thanks.

  It was late when we got home, but Bridget wanted to unwrap her orchid and find a good place for it. We placed it in the bay window where it would get plenty of sunlight.

  We had survived the whole event. My child hadn’t created a scene, and for that I was immensely thankful, an appropriate emotion for Thanksgiving Day. After I read her a story and sang her a lullaby, we rubbed noses and she went straight off to sleep.

  The moon was rising over the creek, looking like a huge orange ball in an indigo sky. I put another stick of wood in the stove and assumed my favourite position — sitting in the rocking chair with my feet resting on the open oven door — and began to read.

  October 11, 1924

  The threshing crew has come and gone. It arrived like a juggernaut — we could hear its piercing whistle and see a plume of steam above the treetops before it appeared on the trail. The threshing machine itself was enormous, with red painted iron wheels higher than my head and the firebox larger than my back kitchen.

  Behind the thresher came the shiny steel separator, as long as our barn; a wooden caboose on wheels where the men slept; the water tank drawn by horses; and finally the wood wagon, loaded with spruce and poplar already cut into four-foot lengths.

  As soon as this train arrived, the men went straight to work. They tore apart the stooks and tossed the sheaves into the thresher, which devoured them like some great prehistoric animal, almost as hungry as the men themselves!

  My job was to produce prodigious amounts of food — meat and potatoes, gallons of gravy, bread and butter, pies, cakes and cookies, pickles and preserved fruit — enough to feed sixteen ravenous men. The better the men are fed, the more likely they will come to us early next year, and the better prospect of getting the crop off. Every housewife competes to see who can feed them the most!

  It made for four long days, with breakfast at five, dinner at noon, luncheon at three, and supper, being the remains of dinner, plus whatever else I could manage to cook in the meantime. I baked pies and washed dishes until midnight, then was up again at four the next morning to start the bacon and flapjacks. The men were lavish in their praise of my cooking although they called it “grub.” Such a nasty word!

  Oh, the joy when they were finally gone and the grain was safely stored in the barn. It was very peaceful when that roaring, belching machine lumbered off to its next destination. Later I found that one of the horses had thrown a shoe in the barnyard, and I nailed it over the front door for good luck. The luck only works, according to an old Irish proverb, if the shoe is found, rather than taken from the horse.

  Luckily we didn’t run out of food. We have no shortage of vegetables, as the long daylight hours have a magical effect on everything that grows. The tomatoes and squash are gigantic, the cabbages and cauliflower bigger than my head. I served corn on the cob for the first time. You must boil it and roll it in butter and salt, and then take it in both hands and eat along the rows. Not a dish for a dinner party, but very good nonetheless. The men ate it as if they were beavers gnawing down trees!

  My pastry is quite light and flaky now, although we are still using my first pie crust for Riley’s dog dish. The secret ingredient is bear grease, which is very pure and white. The yield of lard from a bear is considerable if he is killed in the fall before he dens up, and we have enough to last until spring. George polished a chunk of poplar for a rolling pin, and I think it imparts some flavour as well.

  Being accustomed to a peat fire and not this fast-burning wood, I have had my share of mishaps. The first time I made pasties, they were nothing more than blackened cinders. (This was also the first time I ever spoke the word “shite” aloud, although I confess to having thought it on several occasions.)

  We have a few hens now — despicable silly creatures. This summer when eggs were plentiful, I packed dozens of them in water glass so I need not depend on those cackling ninnies over the winter. I ordered the crystals from Eaton’s catalogue, dissolved them in water, and poured the mixture over the eggs. This will keep them fresh for months.

  Our cow, Pocahontas, produces great quantities of milk. After the calf has nursed, I gather a bucket of milk and place it in the cellar overnight. In the morning I pour off the cream into a five-gallon crock for drinking and for making butter. This is a chore most satisfying. I “churn by ear,” listening to the watery slap-slap as the cream throws up its rich bounty. After precisely twelve minutes, the sound changes and the cream forms yellow clumps that cling together on the surface. I strain them with cheesecloth, then work out every drop of buttermilk with a scalded wooden paddle before I add salt and mould the butter into shape. My wooden mould has a carved shamrock that makes a pretty imprint on each slab.

  Sugar is costly here, so next spring I will make birch syrup according to Julia McKay’s instructions. Wooden spikes called “spiles” are stuck into the birch trunks, and the sap runs down them and drips into buckets. Many gallons are required to boil down one cup of syrup, but I’m determined to become as self-sufficient as possible.

  After the threshing was finished, George and I spent several days picking berries on horseback. We tied the ten-gallon cream cans onto our saddles and filled them in no time. Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, cranberries, pincherries, chokecherries, and saskatoons all grow in wild profusion. Wild strawberries are tiny and must be plucked on hands and knees, but so plentiful that I collected enough for two dozen jars of delicious, intensely flavoured jam.

  There are far more berries than we can ever gather. When ripe, they fall from the bushes and form a jewelled carpet that sinks into the earth, no doubt enhancing th
e richness of the soil.

  I have even mastered rosehip jelly. At first I was convinced I had done something wrong since the pot boiling merrily on the stove was filled with brown sludge, but after I poured it into the sealers, it miraculously changed into a clear, amber-coloured jelly.

  George was twenty-eight years old yesterday. We ate rabbit stew with potatoes and onions, and I baked a spice cake and wrote his initials on the top with currants. He said he had never tasted anything so delicious.

  I closed the diary as I recalled the meal we had eaten at the McKay household. If my teenaged great-aunt could feed an entire threshing crew, surely I could cook something more appetizing for the two of us!

  Days remaining: 299.

  13

  October

  I was on my knees beside the fireplace, searching in vain through the shelves for a cookbook. My great-aunt must have taken her cookbooks when she moved into town, and I had forgotten to bring one with me. In fact, I didn’t even own a cookbook. I went to the internet on the rare occasions I needed a recipe.

  Until now I hadn’t missed technology. I had never used my cellphone except to call home and check on Bridget, and my home computer was necessary only for financial records. And I certainly didn’t miss the nightly news. Here I was blissfully ignorant about current events, relieved not to hear about innocent bystanders gunned down at a Phoenix restaurant or civilians beheaded in Syria.

  I returned to the kitchen and opened the green-painted pantry door. I hadn’t bothered cleaning in here since the shelves were crammed with an assortment of wooden and metal implements that I assumed I would never use. A set of pale-blue canisters painted with bouquets of flowers and tied with curling ribbons, labelled Flour, Sugar, Coffee, Tea. Amber and cobalt glass bottles, a wooden rolling pin, a metal flour sifter, tin cookie cutters in the shapes of clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds. A tin bearing an image of Queen Elizabeth on horseback, wearing a scarlet tunic and a black hat with a cockade.