Troy is back in town, and he brought meat! Moose shot on a river trip three weeks ago and bison hunted last March. Troy says bison tastes like the finest beef you’ve ever tasted. Can’t wait to try them!!

He told us all sorts of stories about the hunt. Apparently bison are quite difficult to hunt, even as a herd, even in light woods. They can just disappear. After killing one, it took them 12 hours to carve it up, drag the pieces down to the snow machines through deep snow and pack up.

Edit: Here a shot of the moose on the way to my tummy. Okay, okay, everybody else’s too.

Yesterday we spent a lovely day at an open-house at Windreach Farm, a 109-acre farm outside of Whitby that is fully accessible for the disabled. Windreach was founded in 1989 by Alexander J. Mitchell, who has cerebral palsy, loves farming and nature, and wants people with special needs to be able to experience it.

All week Jon was truly excited about “going apple-picking at the farm!”, though he showed apprehension about other things: he didn’t want to see cows (Jon doesn’t like them because of an extremely loud THX commercial involving mooing); once at the farm he didn’t want to go on the hayride.

Jon ended up tolerating (though not really liking) the cows; laughed at the pigs’ snorting; admired the alpacas (a relation of the llama, a character in one of his favourite book series); but fell in love with the goats, feeding them lots of pellet treats and happily scratching their heads. Meanwhile, Peter made friends with the pigs, giving them some good back scratches and having them fall all over themselves (literally) to get closer for more. Since the pigs are so muddy and (somewhat) stinky I don’t think they generally get much affection from visitors!

Jon with very calm rabbit

Jon and Dad with one of the three little pigs. Yes, those are their names.

Jon with Jazz, a Nubian goat

The apple-picking was fun and easy—we quite quickly collected 20 lbs. of McIntosh, Empire and Wealthy apples (the last variety I hadn’t heard of before, though they resemble Macs somewhat). The trees are all dwarf trees, so are accessible to people of all heights. The Empire trees were virtually covered in fruit—they looked almost like clusters of grapes. So I guess I’d better git me some pies a-bakin’!

Jon and Mom in front of the apple trees

We coaxed an anxious Jon onto the wheelchair-accessible “hayride” (the wagon had a ramp and one space with chair tie-downs—”just like my schoolbus!”—among the hay bales). Of course, as soon as it started to move a big grin split his face, and he thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the ride.

Add to that facepainting and a lunch of hot dogs and nachos, and all-in-all Jon was pretty pleased with the day.

Lookit my warpaint!

As promised, Mark Scriver’s photo of me doing a little surfing on Pushbutton, before the inevitable flip. The water’s going from right to left, the object of the game is to slide into the wave as its base and resist its request for you to leave. If you get into the sweet spot, you don’t have to fight the current: you stay still and the river flows past you. Talented people like Paul and Mark can stay quite a while, and do wild tricks. It’s really kicky to be in the middle of this massive deluge of water. Then, the wave twists the boat and it’s time for a nose full of water.