Life well-blended
RD: Thank you for your paean to Stephen Poplawski and his home kitchen blenders (“Midwinter mix-up,” RD Dec. 2019, pg. 5). When I was 10 years old my mother made me wonderful milkshakes in her brand new Osterizer blender. I am now 72, and that same blender is now making me wonderful breakfast smoothies. In the interim it has produced various alcoholic concoctions (my mother’s whiskey sours come to mind), ground up ingredients for “edibles,” mixed endless batches of pesto, and puréed many soups and vegetables. Some things were built to last!

Bruce Blakemore
Purgatory Point, N.S.

Tough poly!
RD: As a long-time supplier for the greenhouse industry in the Maritimes and Newfoundland, we want to update a bit of information about the change in the poly material properties, as referenced by Rupert Jannasch in the last RD (“Battening down the hatches,” pg. 28). The reason behind supplying 7.2 mil poly as a replacement for the long-held supply of 6 mil poly is a direct response to the increasing occurrences of severe weather conditions that are affecting not only the greenhouse industry but farming in general throughout the world.

This new product is stronger, has a longer life, and has better light transmission qualities than the 6 mil. Yes, it is a bit more expensive, but as the saying goes, “you get what you pay for,” and if that outlay results in a stronger, more durable product, then it is worth the investment. In your January-February issue on greenhouses, I hope that you will share this information, in an effort to keep folks informed and current.

Paul and Elaine Bourque
Octa Greenhouse Sales Ltd.
Amherst, N.S.

Country store revival
RD: I was happy to read in the December 2019 issue that the Brook Village country store is going strong under new management (“Reconceiving the country store,” pg. 17). A few years ago, I had a little expedition around southwestern Cape Breton by bicycle – having no appetite for the Cabot Trail and those fishtailing tent trailers. Passing through Brook Village en route from Mabou to Whycocamagh, I stopped for a drink and snack at the country store. Sitting opposite the store on the stoop of the Baptist church, I had the opportunity to admire this perfect little burg and notice, too, the “for sale” sign on the store. “What a treasure that will be,” I mused, “for a creative new owner who has respect for what is, and imagination for what can be.” Though for a moment I might have thought that person should be me, I am yet happy to hear that another such person has turned up. I hope to pass through again someday with freewheel clicking ... perhaps by then Ms. Allen will have put her brewmaster skills to work and will have something besides orange sodas for a small thirst. These little stores are the countryside smiling.

David Boehm
Truro, N.S.

Remembering Greta
RD: I’m not sure, exactly, when I first met Greta Mathewson. It may have been when – in another lifetime, it seems – I reached out to Greta and Bill for advice on sheep farming. Later, following Bill’s untimely death, it was Greta and Ruth Mathewson with whom research partners Kenny Corscadden, Jaclyn Biggs, and I (and a few others) of the NSAC/Dal AC team worked to find ways to make small-scale sheep farming more sustainable.

I admired Greta for her strength. I admired – adored, really – what Greta and Ruth and their team made and sold at the farm gate and at farmers’ markets. Restful sleep could be found beneath those beautiful comforters, made of high-quality muslin brought in from Quebec, but filled with their own sheep’s wool – wool that became wool batts through the hard work of Greta (and, later, Ruth).

The comforters were so wonderful I even sold one out of country, inadvertently. I brought one of mine with me to camp out at my farm in West Virginia. My potter and arts-and-crafts supportive friend Renée Margocee (who became director of the Tamarack Foundation) fell in love with the look and the feel of these works of art for the bed. And although her husband Rory found the comforter a bit warm for southern West Virginia nights, Renée prevailed, and Greta’s handiwork is in Charleston!

Most definitely, on these long, sometimes cold nights in Nova Scotia … well, the comforter made at Upper Brook Farm remains on my bed about 10 months out of the year.

There’s also the matter of wool socks and slippers … an ill family member in the U.S. was sent a Christmas gift of a pair of wool-lined slipper-booties from the Mathewsons’ shop. She thanked me again and again for providing real comfort for her feet.

Indeed, what would winter be in my old lumberman’s house in Pictou County, without those wool-stuffed slippers? And, for years, my autumn-to-spring fashion statement has been various wool socks, with my boots, of all colours and textures, accompanying leggings or skirts or dresses.

I also adored the jams and jellies Greta made. One time, I remember being at the Mathewson farm, perhaps introducing a student or Rural Research Centre staff member to Ruth and Greta. Former NSAC Principal Garth Coffin and his wife Trinkie showed up with a bunch of quince. Now, quince may be unappealing in the original, but in Greta’s hands they became ambrosia on toast! And while most of Colchester County will remember her breathtaking collection of jams and jellies from the market in Truro, I have these wonderful, though too few, memories of buying them right off the farm. At least one time I was taken down to the basement pantry. It was a magical and astonishing sight – all the varieties and abundance of preserved food, in half-pint, pint, and quart glass. It was like being back in my grandmother’s root cellar again – jarred glory! My Grandma Stiles, like Greta Mathewson, knew how to preserve.

Nova Scotia, the sheep industry, indeed all of Canada lost a sustainability pioneer when Greta left this earth in April 2019. She was plain-spoken and honest, kind and hard working. I wish for all the world that I’d been successful in my fight to develop rural studies courses at Dal AC. Much more wisdom gets disseminated in a farm kitchen than ever can be found in a laboratory or spreadsheet. To bring students to Greta, to have her be able to share more widely the knowledge and skills that truly are both craft and art – now that would have been giving students knowledge, as well as a means toward fully understanding both what is sustainability, and what is sustenance.

This morning, writing this tribute, and putting final revisions to the sonnet I composed in honour of Greta, I lay the tea to warm on the woodstove, put the scrambled eggs also on the woodstove, to cook, while the biscuits baked in the oven. Took out of the fridge the blackberry jam, from Greta. Though I have my favourite combinations – strawberry jam on hot buttered biscuits, raspberry jam on my homemade, Speerville 12-grain porridge bread (again, with lots of that still-thank-God-supply-managed butter), red currant or grape jelly on peanut butter sandwiches, quince, or gooseberry, or blackberry on toast – this morning I got a little teary as I realized I had used up the last of the strawberry jam. Blackberry does just fine. But oh, she will be missed.

Deborah Stiles
Iron Rock Farm
Sunnybrae, N.S.