Urban Hippy

Here is an interesting item that is making the day of a lot of homebrewers out there. Last year when Bruce Oland passed away, he donated to the Dalhousie archives a huge treasure trove of old material from the Keith's brewery. For those not in the know, Keith's got bought by Oland's in the 1920s, and then Oland by Labatt in 1971. As a bit of an aside, the Oland family brewing tradition has another branch which ends at today's Moosehead breweries in New Brunswick.

Homebrewers have always bristled over the "India Pale Ale" moniker on Alexander Keith's flagship beer. Those who know beer, know that this beer is most decidedly NOT an India Pale Ale. An IPA should be a fair bit darker in colour, and significantly more bitter from hops, and higher in alcohol. Here are the full details on the style, from the Beer Judge Certification Program website. That tells you what certified beer judges look for in an IPA. Incidentally, the style of beer gets its name from the fact that it was brewed hoppier and higher in alcohol to survive the trip to India, to supply the British troops there when they were colonizing India. Both alcohol and hops are a preservative. Alexander would have been one of the brewers shipping his beer overseas at the time.

Homebrewers have always said that there is no way in heck Alexander Keith brewed a beer that was anything even remotely similar to the beer which today bears his name.

As I wrote about the other day, the boys and I dropped out to Saffire Farms on Friday to learn how to tap maple trees. Of course, since there is never any rest on a farm and always another job that needs to be done, we got more than we'd bargained for and learned quite a bit about the care and feeding of the cattle. When we arrived we knocked at the farmhouse door to be greeted by Janet, who told us that Gord and their son Brad were over at the barn dealing with the cattle. Being familiar with the lay of the land on the farm, I headed off that way with the boys, to find Gord rounding up some calves into the pen, to tag their ears. This is how each animal is identified and tracked. You'll notice my comments in the video that the jittery calves must mean that the tagging hurts them, but Gord explains it is more a matter that this was the first time these calves were getting this close to humans, and this was a far bigger issue for them.

In the video you get a glimpse at the vast pastures on Saffire Farms, which is impressive given there are only a dozen or so animals which get to share them. The video is shot mostly in the pens where the tagging takes place. We get to see how pens are used to segregate animals for various reasons. In one case there is a pen for calves that are being weaned. In another case, there is a pen for the 2 grain fed cattle - Gord rounds them up into the pen long enough to feed them their daily dose of beet pulp, soy, and barley. This is the first year they are doing grain fed beef at Saffire - something Gord agreed to try at the request of some of his customers. The majority of the cattle are still 100% grass fed, but by making use of the pens he is able to do some grain fed beef as well, yet still allow all the animals relatively free roam of the land.

Here is a great 2 part video from 2007 which foretells the global financial crisis, explains why Iceland is in so much trouble right now, and essentially points out that nothing has changed in the least. He even predicts the problems with pension plans we are seeing today.

I especially like the way in the 2nd video he draws parallels to the volcanoes in Iceland :-)

Just so you do not think something is broken I thought I'd point out that I'm working on a new look for the site. Yes, I know that I should have a sandbox to do this in - but I don't :-) So I will be doing it on the live site. The content is all the same, so I hope this will not chase anyone away.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm going to start doing a series of videos and stories on farm life around the Ottawa Valley, and in particular my farmers Gord and Janet, who own and operate Saffire Farms, a beef farm and CSA. I got to know Gord about 9 years ago now when he showed up at our homebrew club's 1st Big Strange Brew event to learn how to make beer from grain. We've been good friends since then, and over that time I switched most of my farm business over to him. When I mentioned my video project a month or so ago, he was keen to have me do it. I told him to just keep me posted when there were any new "farm activities" going on, and I'd come out to film them.

Yesterday he emailed me and told me that the sap was running, and it was time to tap some trees this weekend. Normally I'd be keen to go out on a Saturday but we've got a huge weekend with a birthday party for one of our boys, and a visitor coming in from Alberta. So I called him back on the phone and asked if I could pop out at about 4pm. I leave work early on Fridays to pick the boys up at school, and so we could just jump in the van and head out to see him. He assured me that would be no problem at all, so that is what we did!

Every Sunday afternoon I take my 6 year old son to dance, a sport which he absolutely loves for the high-flying acrobatics that the men get to do. Well, not so much at his age, but they are starting into some of the fun stuff and he gets to watch the older boys do it. This kid is a natural artist and we want to encourage that in every way we can. A couple of weeks ago now he asked me completely out of the blue if we could take some snacks to dance with us, which I thought rather odd since we had not done that sort of thing in a very long time - since he was maybe 2 or 3. When the boys were young we used to fret about going anywhere without having a supply of snacks on hand for them - I guess this is probably common with all new parents. Better to have a happy child than a whiny child. But it has been years since have done this and it struck me as odd that he'd ask for it out-of-the-blue.

I managed to shoe him out the door without the snacks, but then when we arrived at dance I finally clued in as to where this request really came from - every single kid at dance had a constant supply of snacks being shoveled into them by their parents. It was literally non-stop eating, and got me to thinking a lot about this.