Eleanor Deckert
There is a season in between winter and spring. It is not cold, but there is still snow. The daylight comes earlier, but there is nothing growing yet. The mud and clouds are dreary grey, but the swelling buds on each twig hint with a blush of yellow-green. Changes are coming but they’re just not quite here yet.
It is interesting, during this in between season, to consider how much we have in common with the people who lived here in the early days.
Very differently, we spent winter indoor hours with “screen time” while their winter indoor hours were spent by lamp-light.
Then and now, when this in between season arrives, children are so glad to be able to play outside after supper. In both times mothers’ voices scold, “You’re tramping in mud all over the floor!”
As the wood shed gets empty but the nights remain cold, Bob Jensen remembers his childhood in McMurphy, cutting down standing dead saplings, branches and breaking apart stumps to provide firewood during this time of year while his Dad was working away from home.
Anne Baker keeps an eye on her root cellar so nothing goes to waste.
“I make creative and inventive dishes with whatever needs to be used up,” she explains. Squash and pumpkins might be getting soft. Potatoes start to sprout. Beets look wrinkly. Turnips might develop a mouldy place. Carrots are getting limp.
“They don’t have to be tossed. Make soups! Try new combinations! Last year I noticed three turnips that sprouted in the root cellar and I planted them. They grew again and made seeds.”
That in between season also involves a great deal of self-discipline. When food is running low, it might be tempting to eat the grains, seeds and potatoes that need to be saved to plant the coming year’s crop.
Running low on food
Abstaining from what is within reach is an agricultural custom that endures to this day.
Lent, the custom observed for 40 days before Easter, includes fasting, confession, penance, prayer and works of charity, such as giving money to feed the poor. Ena Chiasson explains “... giving up something you enjoy” as both an exercise in self-discipline and a sign of respect for all that Jesus gave up during his life and death. Lent marks this dreary in between time – in contrast to Easter, which is a time to celebrate “new life” with flowers, baby birds and animals, abundant foods and the joyful colours of spring.
Cold mornings. Warm afternoons. It is easy for children to leave their coats, sweaters and jackets at school. Jump rope, hop scotch, ball games in all their variations reappear.
Flying kites, bows and arrows, smashing rocks through the ice, stomping in puddles, building dams in the water trickling down the road. These and other childhood early spring activities are nearly identical then and now.
After months of wood smoke, soot and bits of bark in the house, it is time for spring cleaning. The longer daylight makes it easier to see the places that need attention, including the windows. The warmer weather means the doors can be left open for traffic in and out while rugs are taken up to be beaten, bedding is hung outside, cobwebs are swept from rafters, floors are scrubbed.
Not yet, but very soon, chickens setting on eggs will appear with their brood. Lambs, calves, piglets and colts will be born.
Fawns, calves, bear cubs, pups and kits of all the furry folk enter their first spring. Chicks, tadpoles and all kinds of hatchings will take place. Soon the buzzing insects will awake.
Outside workers welcome warm weather
The hazards of cold, dark, snow and ice are receding. Now flooding, mud slides, falling trees challenge the people who work outside all year.
Trapping season ends. The furs need to be prepared to sell.
Logging comes to a halt during “break-up” - the period from when the frozen roads thaw until they become dry enough to drive on safely again.
Highways crews watch for places where a tiny crack might fill with water during the daytime, freeze at night, expand and sheer rocks off.
The railroad crews, in the days before electricity, hauled blocks of ice, packed them with layers of sawdust for each section crew to store food all summer.
Archie McRae, now deceased and a former resident of Avola and Clearwater, used to harvest birch sap. Much like maple sap, this clear liquid can be slowly simmered to become a thick, sweet syrup.
A special feature of this in between time is a favourite with children: crusty snow.
“It doesn’t happen every year,” Deryl Cowie, a lifelong outdoorsman explains. “Warm days and cold nights are necessary.
"As kids, we used to play soccer and the little guys had a big advantage since they didn’t break through the crust.
"As a forester, it was so much easier to walk without snowshoes."
But it is important to have them with you! In the afternoon, when the snow is soft again, it can be a real difficulty to have to make it back out through the deep, wet snow.
For animals, crusty snow is to the wolves’ advantage with their wide paws to run to hunt moose and deer who break through the crust with their hooves.
Below: With a little adult supervision and experimentation, a suitable bow and arrow using flexible saplings was made for six-year-old Johnathan Deckert in early spring. Photo by Eleanor Deckert
