Dig It - Crawford Lake - April 2014

We like Crawford Lake because we're geeks. It's as simple as that. Way back in the Dawn of Time I went there as a kid with my family, also Geeks, because it was was in the news as a newly discovered Iroquois site. What made an lasting impression was the lake itself; so sensitive that one was not even allowed to walk on the ice or allow the dog to wade and swimming was definitely forbidden. The lake's very geography, petite but deep, makes it mystic. The fact that it was so protected in 1982 makes it Legendary.

Times change. In 2014 the lake is still protected, as it was then,  under the auspices of the Halton Region Conservation Authority. The fencing that hid the Iroquois site all those years ago is gone, replaced by a longhouse re-construction which is, for the most part, authentic but well trussed up with modern construction tricks. The lake and the archelogical dig are linked. A Scientific PhD type still takes lake bottom samples. Reportedly, he has 40 years of work sunk in Crawford Lake. Impressive.

 This is not said lightly. The land was deeded to Halton Region CA by the Crawford Family. Along with the giving of the land came the family lore concerning land use. Lumber was milled in a steam powered mill on the south end of the lake. Ice was quarried out of it in the winter for sale to keep iceboxes cool. The family believed it was bottomless. When a team of horses fell through the ice surely there were lively discussions over where that team ultimately emerged. 

If one can't have a bottomless lake, one may as well have the next best thing, a Groovy Lake. This one fits the bill. It is a meromictic lake, one of only twelve in Canada. The ratio of normal to meromictic worldwide is about 1:1,000. 

To become a meromictic lake the local geography has to hand you a basin deeper than your surface area and, ideally, low water input and output. Crawford Lake is spring fed and exits through a swampy area which is is why the mill was not water powered. This winning combination will allow water to circulate on your top half and practically no circulation to occur on the lower half, resulting in very low oxygen levels and sediment buildup that will sit undisturbed, layer on layer, on your bottom for all the days of your life. Scientists will find you irresistible since a study of all those layers will yield volumes of information about the past, largely connected to pollen count and particulate matter. 

 
One of the things science discovered was corn pollen counts from the 1400's and this led to the speculation that perhaps there was an occupied Iroquois site in the area. This suspicion was corroborated by a local farmer who had a rock he simply could not budge that proved the be a ancient quern. Also, his plow was churning up all kinds of artifacts. 

That kind of information, bruited about,  tends to end up in scenes such as the one above. That's the Crawford lake dig from back when, all laid out in neat squares. Each square was excavated and all the stuff found in it was meticulously documented. To date, about 10,000 artifacts have been cataloged from Crawford Lake and please note that an artifact can be anything from an entire stone knife to a small fragment of a projectile head. Size matters not.

Very cool. Archeology informs history and history informs sociology (and vice versa) and all of this was touched off by pollen counts in a meromictic lake and a rock that refused to budge.

Why bother? 

The answer to that is also part of the cool-ness of Crawford Lake. In this year of 2014 Halton Region CA offer a school trip to explore archeology; specifically, in relation to the site. They've come a long way since 1982 and so also has our understanding of First Nation cultures. Take a moment to contrast what your kid learns in school today concerning First Nations with what you learned. Chances are the information they get is much more detailed that who made totem poles and who used teepees. That's because of archeology.

Suppose you did up a piece of obsidian. Then you say to yourself, this is not local to the area. You do some research and note that it is not even local to Ontario. Data comes in from other sites, also citing the finding of obsidian. Suddenly a possible trade route pops out of the mapped sites. Thus you discover that Native society was much more complex than you assumed it was. Suddenly your definition of the word "primitive" changes. It may even begin to look more like a tag applied due to culture shock than an accurate objective and scientific adjective. 

Bloodroot

Bloodroot

 Science, of course, is not perfect. It is as prone to trends as the next thing. Back in 1920 Egyptology was trendy in archeology and medicinal compounds were trendy in medicine. As it turns out, archeology also informs pharmaceutical science. 

Blue Cohosh

  
 If your dig turns up evidence of stored bloodroot then you may well ask, what is that all about and investigate the living plant. It is poisonous, so do not eat it, but the sap in the root happens to be an anesthetic. Blue Cohosh works sort of like Midol. It also aids childbirth. Birchbark, interestingly, has much the same properties as willow, the plant from which we derive aspirin. Cedar and Eastern Hemlock brew up a nice tea that is rich in vitamin C. Thus the tendency for the Jesuits to call cedar, lignum vitae. In 2014 herbal medicine is so trendy that one can get a degree in Naturopathy. Archeology informs sociology. Due to archology, your shaman, who looked pretty terrifying to a Jesuit, suddenly seems a lot more saavy than was previously thought based on prime source documents.

Societal lore gets lost as society changes. 80 years ago the average Joe knew much more about horses and harness than he does today. The point was made than an archeologist finding a jolly rancher candy wrapper 600 years from today would not automatically know what it was. Unless documentation came in from a different dig at a jolly rancher production factory, or a prime source account of a visit to same, the use of the wrapper might well remain a mystery. 

 The invention of DDT brought a rapid close to lime production along the Niagara Escarpment. Visit the Ring Kiln south of Forks of the Credit PP and ask yourself what you might think it once was did you not have the handy signs explaining. For that matter, do you know what an icebox was?

The artifact on the right is on the official "We Dunno" list. We concluded that since it had been lovingly polished it had more than simply utilitarian use. An archer thought perhaps they were arm guards. The Geek Family, consulted, wonders if maybe they were used to tighten guy wires. Aside from the polishing, the different sizes of the bored holes is very interesting. Also, sort of humbling, is the sure an certain knowledge than some person, living, breathing and feeling, over 600 years ago, made them.

 Archeology is cool science. If you're going to grow up to be a Geek, consider obtaining a Ph.D. Those field scientists get to do nifty stuff. Enough nifty stuff can end up in books like The Orenda, winner of Canada Reads:2014.

Link to info on the Hoffman Lime Kiln
 http://www.caledonbrucetrail.org/hoffmanlimekiln.html 

Link to info on some well researched historical fiction concerning First Nations:

http://www.gear-gear.com/people_longhouse.shtml

Link to the Crawford Lake site:
http://www.conservationhalton.ca/crawford-lake

Some Positive PR for the Wasps

Most of us will admit to tolerating honeybees. This may have to do with the fact that most of us know that honeybees produce honey. Also, honeybees are not all that prevalent in our personal space and tend to be found out in the meadow, possibly in a hollow log or fighting off a bear on the end of a balloon. One can wax nostalgic over honeybees.

While on vacation last summer we were invited to sign a petition on behalf of honey bees. Hive failure is a problem big enough to make it into international media on a semi-regular basis. Note that in the last 6 months or so someone has actually published the belief, and some proof, that hive failure is related to pesticide use. This may bode well for the honeybee. It seems someone, somewhere, is facing the facts instead of maundering on about some hypothetical suber-bee-flu.

Wasps, though, ahhhh, wasps. Take an informal poll and find out A) how many people actually like wasps and B) how many have never asked the question, Would we not be better off WITHOUT wasps?

You have to figure that wasps, along with skunks, rate high on the list of animals no one wants to deal with, ever. In fact, if you google wasps ontario your first page will be filled with wasp extermination offers including, I might add, some nice descriptions of wasps. Futher investigation will bear out the notion that, really, what one wants to know, when googling the word wasp, is how to get rid of them. Even the skunks get better PR.

So, what good are wasps?

Well, figure that about 80% of multi-cellular life on Earth is of the insect variety. 800,000 species in fact. Of this 120,000 count as wasps and bees. Of that number, about 15,000 sting. Of that, about 3 are the ones we're noticing: the yellow-jacket, the paper wasp and the hornet and of THOSE what we're really complaining about the yellow-jacket.

Meanwhile, the other 14,999, call it 14,996 to be safe, species of stinging wasp or bee are either out there making honey as best they can given the pesticides or pollinating or feeding on the larvae of other insects or, in some cases, on adult other insects. Ahah! This is what the wasps do. They kill pests without the need for pesticides. In fact, some farmers out there actually encourage wasps as a means of crop pest control. Which means that wiping out the wasps would not be the brightest idea mankind ever had and likely be detrimental to a secure source of honey in the future.

Now the yellow-jacket on the other hand, would appear to have evolved, or developed, a keen sense of where the living is easy. Sure, it could go out there and prey on larvae and insects but it seems to have occurred to the species that snitching bits of hamburger, hot dog and ham works just as well. Try leaving some ham out in late August and watch what happens. The wasp will snip off a tidy little piece with her mandibles and fly away happy. She'd prefer not to fly far which is why you'll find yellow-jackets building nests under your deck.

This will give you a chance to look like an urban hero and also deploy a skill set not unlike those used by elite warriors in an effort not to get stung. Arguably, even the yellow-jacket has its uses.


http://canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/species/insects/hemipterahymenoptera.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/vespids/intro.html

http://www.pollinator.ca/canpolin/beesandwasps.html

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/wasp/

http://removeandreplace.com/2013/05/07/how-to-easily-make-a-beehive-in-a-jar-backyard-project-diy/

The Weird Thing About the Iris

 Cast your mind back, waaaay back, to the Spring of 2012.

It was uncommonly dry that spring. In fact, it heralded a drought that persisted right through into 2013. The hay crop that year was abysmal. Farmers sold off livestock. Renfrew County called a Class 3 drought and plowed over its dismal corn crops. For the first time in living memory, the spring was not at all green.

fiddleheads

red admiral buterfly

The snow melted on time. The weather grew warmer; however, the land did not even approximate lush. Leaves were smaller than usual, blossoms were later than usual. The spring green showed against a vast wash of late autumn brown. Both pictures here were taken on May 15th 2012. You can contrast them with looking at wet spring growth, such as we will see if it ever warms up. The spring will be late this year but for a completely different reason than in 2012.

violet and woodland fern

 Some things have to happen in the spring. The deciduous trees leaf out. The fruit trees blossom. Bees pollinate. Life wakes up from the long sleep and gets on with growing and procreating and producing. Crocus, daffodil, tulip and iris are all spring flowers, all typically flowered and finished by mid-May at the latest.

watercress

Spring flowers, if you look closely at them, have in common thick leaves. These leaves snap quite easily which make the flowers delicate. The colour of the flowers is bright, this being attractive to bees and other pollinators. All are grown from a bulb. When they have finished flowering they photosynthesize and feed the bulb so that it can hunker down and endure another winter. Eventually the leaves wither off and by June you have no more traces of most spring flowers in the garden

In 2012 spring came. The iris leafed out as iris does and then could not help but notice that the rain was not coming. This clearly posed a bit of a dilemma for the iris. It began to wither.

What is interesting is the way in which it withered. Large beads of water formed inside the leaf. The cell structure of the leaf broke down so that the water in the leaf could feed the bulb. In essence, the plant began to consume itself. That is the reason for the thick green spring leaves. There is a lot of water stored in them.

The plant did this slowly
over the course of 3 weeks. It did not immediately turn brown. It became thin as the water was drawn out of the leaf and then, at last, it began to turn brown and curly. Presumably, so long as the leaf was green it contained chloroplasts and could feed from the sunlight.

Plants such as cacti and jade are called succulents. This means that their leaves store water so that the plant can go for a long time between rainfalls. It seems that the iris also is a succulent, which is kind of cool if you consider that it blooms during what is typically the wettest part of the year.

Even the spring of 2012 contained some rain. Also, since this particular iris was in our front garden, we watered it from time to time. The water reversed the damage to the leaves. No new ones sprouted. Rather, the blisters healed and those bits that were not completely sere fleshed out again. In time the iris bloomed and the spring of 2013 showed that it had survived the drought of 2012.

Others things were not so lucky. The apple harvest in the fall of 2012 was virtually non-existent. This was a combination of drought and also a late frost, which affected both the blossoms and the pollinators.

 If you look at the coniferous trees in the ditches along the roads you will see that many of them are burnt. True, conifers usually look brown-ish at this time of the year and true, salt damage to trees is common, but also you are seeing the effects of two abnormally dry and hot summers.

The climate around you is changing. It is adapting where it can and it will, of course, die off where it can't. lose study shows survival mechanisms at work, such as the one concerning the weird thing about the iris.

Here as a link to the Ministry of Natural Resources for Ontario and what is has to say concerning drought in Ontario.
http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/Water/2ColumnSubPage/STEL02_165451.html

The Worm Turns - April 18th, 2012 - Copeland Forest

The goal today was to gather edible plant life and to study pond life. There was a slight problem with the goal in that the weather has been extremely dry. For a definition and discussion of drought in Canada click here: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/drought

Since the weather has been dry, things are finding it extremely difficult to grow this spring and that includes the edible plants. Pond life is trucking along normally enough but anything that needs rainfall or snow melt in order to thrive is not doing to well. 

Amanda is a very resourceful person. Since she knew that the lack of rain pretty much meant a lack of plant life, she taught us how to make an earthworm farm. Worms like moist soil and they like darkness since they are nocturnal. To find the worms we had to look under the trees where the earth still had some wetness to it left over from the melting snow. 


A quick google on the www shows that there is much information about worms. Some starting links are here:

 http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/earthworms/

 http://urbanext.illinois.edu/worms/

http://www.biologyjunction.com/earthworm%20facts.htm 

 http://www.naturewatch.ca/english/wormwatch/

The last link has links also to Plantwatch, Icewatch and Frogwatch.

All in all, earthworms get a lot of press and so they should. They are more than just bait. They're integral to the decomposition of matter and the health of the plant life around us.

After lunch we put the worms to rest and went to examine the pond. Unlike the land based life, which relies on rain and snow melt, the pond life is trucking along more or less as it should.

We noted quite a bit of beaver activity along the stream. Beaver seem to be quite artistic and also very persistent. They're also patient. A beaver can fell a tree with a circumference of 35cm or so, presumably to get at the branches on the top, although, as you can see from the treescaping below, they also know how to chop up the trunk.

For beaver info:
http://www.couplesresort.ca/Attractions/Articles/Animals/beaver.htm

For a cool song about beaver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWX8uWf2LhQ

Hey, they may be a nuisance, but we kind of like beaver.

Right, so there were beaver around somewhere, likely sleeping since beaver are  nocturnal - something they hold in common with earthworms.

There was also evidence of the activity of the Husquavarna Beaver.


In the stream, which the kids helped us ford by way of a makeshift bridge, they discovered frogspawn. Amanda told us that it takes 28 days for tadpoles to hatch. The strength of life and the abundance of it is quite amazing. Nature does things in excess, especially births because the survival rate for life is not as high as one might think. Look up sea turtles for instance.

In fact, some of the eggs we found were in danger of dying because the water level was so low. This afforded a great look at the egg sack but did not bode well for the tadpoles. We tucked them back in to the stream before continuing.

In the pond one of the kids caught a newt or possibly a salamander. Deciding what it is will take a bit of research. Either way, it counts as pretty nifty.

Here we have the link to newt info: http://www.ontarionature.org/protect/species/reptiles_and_amphibians/eastern_newt.php
This to salamanders: http://www.torontozoo.com/adoptapond/AboutAmphibians.asp?am=6

While we were at the pond the kids renovated the Fairy Hotel. The included a salad bar, a front foyer and some upper level housing. They also decided that the numerous sapsucker holes in the tree could count as rooms. The Fairy Hotel has more going it for it than even the Ritz.

Also, Amanda identified a new twig for us. This is Basswood and the buds are edible. You can tell Basswood from Black Ash because the buds on the Basswood alternate whereas those of the ash are opposite one another. basswood is the tree that leafs out with the enormous green leaves and is largely a ground hugger.

All in all, it was a great day to be out and discovering stuff up to an including small green striped garter snakes, so new n'all.

As the afternoon warmed up and the sun hit the pond we saw it come to life. The water boatmen below were not in evidence when we arrived and were there in abundance when we left. The spring is dry but it's determined to get there.