RD reception Down Under
RD: I am a country music broadcaster on Radio 4K1G 107.1-FM, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. I recently came into possession of the January-February edition of Rural Delivery. There is a very nice feature about Michael T. Wall in this edition. I have recently been in contact with Michael, and I feature his music in my programming, and I can guarantee that the set of music on his CD From Newfoundland to Australia is well worth the effort to obtain and put into anyone’s collection.

Being from a rural background in my younger days, and a packaging representative for 25 years selling to fruit and vegetable growers, I found Rural Delivery to be a brilliant magazine and well worth the read. Many thanks.

Barry Cannon
Townsville, Queensland
Australia

A wipeout and a washout!
RD: It’s been a while since I wrote anything. Had a bad fall, broke bones, and been in hospital, etc. Getting better, so I want to write again. Some people love my stories – all true ones.

I used to drive out past St. Martins, N.B., to a small river for a picnic with my kids. There was a covered bridge we drove across, to a grassy knoll on the other side for a picnic and a bit of play. The small river wasn’t too far from the ocean, and there were deep, clear, salmon pools. You could see to the bottom, where the salmon came to spawn.

We had a good afternoon on this sunny spot, so the sun was setting as we prepared to leave. We crossed the covered bridge again on our way home. Well, luck was on our side, ’cause that very night the bridge went out in a storm. No one knew of its weakened condition! When we went to see, all that was left was one board caught on rocks on the opposite bank. Otherwise, not a trace that there had ever been a bridge there – all washed out to sea, I presume. Miracles do happen. We could have been washed out to sea, or landed in a deep salmon pool.

PS. I used to live in Burton, N.B., before my fall.

Esther Bradley
Moncton, N.B.

Fired up over foolish fires
RD: It’s the second time fire trucks are called to a yard fire on West Lawrencetown Road, noon on Monday, Aug. 3. People wantonly calling in small smoke, to feel important, should be charged the expense of a fire truck and the time of volunteer firefighters. Cost it out, and if the caller feels maltreated, it should be appealable like a traffic fine. One big reason is volunteers can get discouraged by roaring out foolishly. In this case, the call likely originated at a beach across the channel. Anyone who does it regularly, if a few limbs are smoldering, should pay double the upfront thousand or two – in part because things are dry, and any call should be sensible.

Today the truck was too big to fit a narrow driveway, so the three volunteers used a portable extinguisher. Last summer, the mess was a homeowner burning eight-foot slabs. If the caller utilizes a landline, chances are the fire department can trace the call. The province should force cell-phone providers to use traceable means. (It belies nuisance callers, along with hustlers.)

I noticed a restaurant used to freeze halibut before serving it raw, and your article regarding salmon (“Salmon Not Social Distancing,” RD July-August, page 38) indicates viruses in salmon. So does freezing kill viruses too?

Dan Hogan
Lawrencetown, N.S.

(Interesting thoughts, Dan. Although nuisance calls are a terrible drain on firefighting resources, I’m not sure we should discourage people from reporting minor flare-ups during a drought. Maybe some volunteer firefighters would like to voice their opinion on this one. As for viruses, my limited understanding is that while freezing won’t necessarily kill them, those affecting fish are probably not a threat to human health. But again, I would welcome a response from someone who has knowledge of the field! DL)

Sweet talk
RD: I looked over your recipe for Orange Celebration Cake (Household Notes – Eat local, eat fresh,” RD July-August, page 40), but I don’t think I’d dare eat any. Shades of, “He said he ordered a large canister of insulin to go with it.” Ditto! Taberduker! As an aside, my recipe for Bootleg Moose won me a copy of The Moose Cookbook and got printed in the Family Fare local cookbook. I must say that I honestly got nice comments on “Double-Bitted Axe” (Atlantic Forestry Review, July-August, page 8). I sincerely appreciate your using it.

Dean Butterfield
Kilburn, N.B.

(Thanks for the good words, Dean. Sweet tooth aside, talk of moose has us salivating and eager to sink our teeth into something a bit different and exotic. Dean’s Bootleg Moose recipe can be found in Household Notes on page 18. MB)

Summer’s end
RD: It’s been a beautiful but dry summer so far, and the flowers are blooming regardless.

Hope you and your readers enjoy.

Monique Carrier
Lorne, N.B.

Bloomed
by Monique Carrier
The sunflowers bowed and bent on the stage
And the cosmos bloomed into space
The daffodils shine and smileAnd the Black-eyed Susans went party dancing
Irises white, shy and pure
Tiger lilies prowling
Bleeding hearts cry and cry
But the vie toujours will never die
The astilbes just stand around
And the Purple coneflowers
Are the tallest in the crowd
Hostas, like belles of the ball
Take all the space and
Cover all.

Bumblebee hotel now taking bookings
RD: Good things still happen, despite COVID; they’re just harder to spot nowadays. Most of mine involve nature. For instance, only last week, doing my morning Tai Chi workout on our south deck, a nearby movement caught my eye. The mover was a large bumblebee, a queen actually, entering a hole in our weatherproof outdoor kindling box.

“What’s good about that?” you might ask. “Don’t they sting?”

Well, yes – if you grab or swat ’em. My Grandma Saunders once got stung by stepping on one in her shoe – and her arthritis stopped for a week! “’Twas worth the pain,” she said. No, bumblebees are normally easy-going – much gentler than your honeybee, that European import. I’ve had bumblebees peacefully fly back and forth between my bare legs while I fixed a doorstep they were living under.

Bumblebees are native to North America, which has many species and subspecies – which means our East Coast species are adapted to our East Coast climate, which makes them ideal Maritime pollinators, especially during our cool, drawn-out springs when honeybees falter or fail. Between them they fertilize a third of our food crops.

And my Good Thing? That queen’s arrival meant that my wood-box bee nursery was recovering. For we’d had plenty there two years before, and then very few in 2019. Puzzling – until I recalled how, in the spring of 2018, wanting to rest a third of my vegetable garden (and have less grass to mow), I’d tilled up a patch of lawn and sowed it to Red clover. That fall, our bumblebee population mushroomed, and some of them colonized that kindling box. I’d unwittingly helped by boring six three-centimetre ventilation holes along the bottom. (Normally, bumblebees are ground nesters: under rocks, in abandoned mouse holes, and such.) The box became a bumblebee hotel. Incoming, pollen-laden workers jostled with their outbound counterparts. By late fall, when the small workers die, their pregnant queen was inside preparing a waxen honey cup, laying eggs inside it, sealing the top, then brooding it like a hen. The kindling was now off-limits, but I was tickled. Lots of bees now, lots of pollination next year!

Alas, that didn’t happen. Turns out that bumblebees are the only local bees able to reach the nectar inside clover’s deep, tubular florets. My clover patch was their food mart. So last year, when I plowed the clover under and planted spuds there, my artificial colony collapsed. (Which, by the way, is more or less what’s happening worldwide to most bees – the chief culprits being urban development, pesticides, climate change, and Big Ag. Our local cornfields are part of that lethal monoculture. To a bumblebee, or any bee, a field of corn – which, being a grass, is wind-pollinated – is a food desert, like a town without grocery stores. No wonder our local bumblebees welcomed my clover patch.)

Anyhow, last year, unhappy with my yield from that plot (too shady, too near our fruit trees), I put the patch back into lawn. And though the queen reared her brood, that’s when my humming box fell silent. Peeking inside late last fall, I found only a fist-sized, empty ball of wax. I felt pretty stupid.

However, this spring, spotting clumps of Red clover among the new grass while mowing, I purposely left a circular island. By late June, the regrowth was knee-high. Besides clover, it boasted Queen Anne’s lace (aka wild carrot), St. John’s wort, daisy, vetch, dandelion, yarrow, hawkweed, eyebright, and timothy – pretty much the same wild pasture mix we’d found on buying the lot in 1969.

With such a mix, I didn’t expect another bumblebee surge. Still, I kept an eye on the box. Which is why seeing that queen enter made my day – my week. Now, if only she raises a brood next year!

Gary Saunders
Clifton, N.S.