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Apsley Acres
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001
Hello List Members;
I hope this isn't too long! I am a newbie to the list.. My name is Sharon and live in Ontario, Canada. About half way between Peterborough and Ottawa. We have about 130 acres of pristine forest; with several acres cleared about the cabin. We call our acreage Apsley Acers as there are quite a few Maple laden ridges on the property. We use the one beside our cabin for making maple syrup the old fashion way every second year. It is such a lot of work, we make a two years supply, which works out well as long as I do not get too "giving" when visitors come ;-0 There is a large variety of trees, both deciduous and evergreen; growing throughout woods, and we have wonderful trails meandering through the forest half closest to the house which are tractor width wide. We still selectively harvest our firewood as it our only heat supply. This maintains our forest in a healthy fashion. Narrower foot paths take off to many "other" areas deeper in the woods from the larger trails. We run large organic gardens, herb gardens producing most of our "vegetable food" for the year. I start most of our plants hydroponically and this year we hopefully will build an attached passive solar greenhouse. I will enjoy being able to extend our short northern growing season. We freeze, preserve/can or root cellar and dehydrate most of what we grow, so it lasts the whole year. I have been wild harvesting for a great number of years. Starting many years ago after learning the sub arctic wild plants while prospecting in the far North with my husband.. this interest grew as my knowledge of plants increased.. This "wild" knowledge allowed me to learn annuals, biennials and perennials easily and I was off and running. I eventually took my degree in horticulture and eventually owned and ran my own garden centre.. whilst raising our six children and my dear hubby continued his geology work at many sites around the globe. (LOL I should add with one hand tied behind my back as that paragraph looks like a ludicrous statement.. but truth often does)
Now we are retired; the kids grown and hopefully being productive citizens, scattered in different countries. We moved up here five years ago and we are living in a wonderful circa 1875 Log Cabin + with a newer 1965 addition . Now I am able to return to my first love "the wild things"! We wild harvest numerous berries, mushrooms, wild leeks, fiddle heads and different medicinal and culinary herbs. I am deeply into herbalism and probably would be classified as a "witch" or at least an eccentric old hag in other times. I have a passion for old and new books on wild things/herbs ; and my collection slowly grows. It is such a joy and pleasure to "know" most of what grows about us as I walk on our beautiful acreage; we are fortunate to have found such a wonderful Shangri-La.. It is a rare thing these days for me to find something totally new.. I get so excited when I do... last year my discovery was a group of Allegheny Vines on an old logging road; they were hard to locate in my source books as they are a long distance from home.
On Apsley Acers we have about 130 plus wild herbs; both medicinal and culinary. We are on the cusp of north and south and there is a wonderful overlap. Our acres have several types of growth areas, swamp, natural meadow, hardwood ridges; damper lower areas; plus a natural bottom fed pond with an island, great for swimming on hot days. As we are in the midst of what is called a "Vacation Wonderland"; which really just means lots of rocks, lakes and trees and few people except in the summer, then our numbers swell by the thousands.. wild life abounds. Thus our main gardens are fenced in to protect them from deer, moose and I assume some day elk which are just being re-introduced to our area. I can't think of any local wild life we haven't had.. the newest being a Bobcat this past winter. With an upswing in squirrel numbers noticed already this spring hunting will be good for it and perhaps it will stay awhile. We have just finished (last year) a large studio in the newer addition section of our home; in which I work at a couple of my other passions painting and making jewelry. Needless to say the wilds about me enter into the creations I design .
The next item in my list of enjoyments is cooking from scratch as I try to live without modern food additives for health reasons. Thus my second book collection is very old cook books. With some of the above; I am hopeful I will have a bit to share that useful and interesting to this group. Below is the Addy for my web site Apsley Acers. Please remember it was my first site ever made and it needs updating badly as I made it the first year up here. I hope you will come to visit as I have a wonderful section with some nice photographs on "spring" wildflowers found up here; of which there are several types of violets shown and we have huge patches of eye bright on our "wild" type lawn .. someone was mentioning them today also. I have a wonderful camera with a macro / maxi lens which allows me to photograph right up close for detailed pictures.. someday I hope to finish this project and get summer and fall done also. I hope you will enjoy visiting Apsley Acers.
The following is a site with several photo albums of some of my artistic work, if any of you wish to view some of my creations. This will be also updated soon as I have things from late winter not yet in an album. I am always it seems "behind".. too many irons in the fire.
I found your "list" when it was mentioned on another list I belong to, sounded interesting so here I am.. I will be very quiet for a bit as I am off on holidays for two weeks as I am off to Lake Tahoe on Saturday. Hopefully our snow will finish melting, the ground will start to dry and it will be clean up time when I get back.. I'll continue to read and then enter into things more fully when I get home. It will be enjoyable getting to know some of you and to see what things "spring" brings up on the list. Have a wonderful Easter.. ((hugs)) sharon
Last fall I collected pink Lady Slipper seed pods. I am amazed that each hold millions of seeds. I sprinkled a pn (pinch; grin) on a corner of one of the hydroponics after stratifying them . It will be interesting to see if they germinate. Has anyone had success with germinating these? We have a great number growing in our damp mossy cedar wooded areas; including a clump of albino ones discovered just two years back. dadada
Joan Russell