Of moose and men .... and gardens

Moose are amazingly big. We saw another one grazing on the side of a road and one ambling through a village at dusk. There are always fresh footprints and droppings on camp sites and walking trails. Today we saw more than we’ve seen the whole trip. Hunting season started at midnight. By morning the back of the pickup at the park registration office was full of moose parts. There were lots of pickup trucks and quads on the side of the road. You’d see trailers with moose parts and antlers. Fathers with their boys walking with bloody chainsaws. Campers parked together in woodlots. This cage for moose jaws caught my eye. (The ministry checks the age and health of the moose people get.) A moose isn’t really that big when it’s cut into bits.
People are still getting their wood ready. For a $25 permit you are allowed to cut 4 bush lots of wood, enough to heat your house for the winter. There are long cords of wood along the highway.
Families also garden along the side of the road nowhere near their homes. The ditches usually have the best soil. (Almost all peat moss with kelp fertilizer.) The garden is out of the wind and there is often a water source near by. They all have a good strong moose fence around them. Most gardens are entirely of potatoes. Sometimes there is carrots, turnips, onions and cabbage. Today we stopped at a road side vegetable stand. This guy had a 2 acre garden. Half of it was turnips. Turnip greens are really popular right now. Families take 1 or 2 young leaves from each plant and eat it like spinach. This field is almost all picked over. He was busy bagging up jiggs dinners to sell at the grocery stores. Each bag had a few potatoes, carrots, onions, a turnip and half a cabbage. You cook it all together in one pot with pease porrige and salt pork but serve it separately. (Google it for the recipie) We’ll have to try it.
Henry is trying to master a cod dinner. He had to start with fresh cod instead of soaking dried cod. I’m hoping it doesn’t make much difference. After you pan fry the cod, you throw in your potatoes and onions. In the meantime you make your scrunchions. Cut up some salted pork fat and fry it. When the veggies are almost cooked you add your hard bread. (Hard bread looks like one of Jasper’s little dinner rolls except it is rock hard. You have to soak it in water over night first.) After the bread is cooked you add your scrunchions. Basically that’s it. He loves it. (This is not the time for me to cut back on carbs and fat I guess.)
It’s also berry picking time. There are still blueberries to be had although cloudberry season is over. It is a little early for partridge berries. After the first frost people will be out in droves for them. The frost makes them sweeter and drives out the little worms and insects that live in them. Partridgeberry sauce over cheese cake, now there’s my NFLD treat!
Grace
Listening to Henry humming a song from 'Poor Angus'