Hello from the Sugar Shack!

Posted March 14, 2012

I am sitting in the sugar shack right now, after just getting the fire going to full-tilt. I brought my wireless router out to the shack and thought it might be neat to be the first to send a ‘sweet’ blog from the shack : ) To date, there has been 52L, but with the […]

Amphibians! Should we be surprised?

Posted March 8, 2012

Out with a class today and we encountered two different types of Amphibian. A Spring Peeper (Psuedacris crucifer) was found hopping through the leaf litter, not ‘peeping’ at all. The big X on his back however clearly identified this tiny frog. The other amphibian was a Grey Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor), half buried in the […]

Maple Syrup – First Boil of 2012

Posted March 5, 2012

We fired up the evaporator at the Camp Heidelberg Outdoor Education Centre today to start the maple syrup season.  It was also our first day of classes, and it isn’t often that we have enough sap to boil this early in the season.  The trees were tapped last week, we did collections of about 300-400 […]

The Sugar Bush is Just Awesome

Posted February 24, 2012

On Monday, we will tap the trees at Laurel Creek for the start of our maple syrup season. Tuesday, we tap at Camp Heidelberg.  This will be my 13th season as a “sugarmaker.” I also play a little guitar on the side, and I had written a few songs about life in the sugar bush. Seems a […]

Warm Winter

Posted February 23, 2012

Last week I had students from the grade 4-8 enrichment program participate in an exercise on climate change. Students and parents were asking if I thought this warm winter was a symptom of climate change. Good question! Climate change is reflected in a rise in the Earth’s air and ocean temperatures that are averaged world-wide. In […]

What Stew at Laurel Creek

Posted February 9, 2012

This week, grade 7 students from Three Bridges Public School came out for a Fur Trade program. Their teacher Mr. Stocco brought a homemade stew for the class to eat at lunch. We heated it up over a fire just like real trappers! Mr. Stocco called it, “bear stew,” but it tasted like beef. It also had cabbage, […]

This ‘n That…

Posted January 27, 2012

Congratulations to Sean and Al as the number of bird species they record at their OEE Centres grows.  They have a long way to go to catch up to the birder mentioned in a previous post who, in his Big Year of Birding quest, claims to have seen 120 species as of January 26th . […]

Birding update

Posted January 27, 2012

Just an update on the friendly birding competition between Al Woodhouse and myself… (Al and I are going to track how many species of birds we see at our centres in 2012). So far Al has seen 24 species, the last one being a Rough-Legged Hawk. I have seen 21 species, the last one being a  […]

Spring Songs

Posted January 25, 2012

This week has continued to be unseasonably warm, and with the day-lengths increasing a few birds have begun to sing their songs. Black-capped Chickadees were singing yesterday morning and today it was the White-breasted Nuthatch. Keep your ears open and you might hear a few birds expressing their ‘feelings’ for the coming of spring. I […]

We Got Mail!

Posted January 23, 2012

It sure is nice to work at a place where people send you thank-you letters for just doing your job. Mrs. Grant’s grade 3/4 class from Lincoln Heights came to Laurel Creek for a Habitats and Communities program for which birds was the focus of study.  Comments from the class included: “I thought it was pretty cool when we went […]

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