Canadian Thanks Giving Weekend

This year Tanks Giving in Canada was Monday October 13th. I drove to Hay River to spend it with some friends there. When I arrived in Hay River which is where the Hay River reaches the Great Slave Lake, I was surprised to see how there was a lot more leaves on the trees and things were generally not as "wintery" as where I am.

Beautifully bright crab apples in somebody's yard.

Still the fall colours were out

One of the best things about Hay River from my point of view is the lake. I love going for walks along the lake shore.

But once Thanks Giving was gone,  but before I left, I woke up to this and delayed my return home for a couple of days so I wouldn't have to drive on sloppy wet and half frozen snow.

More buffaloes, I Love buffaloes

Maybe one day I will get tired of taking pictures of buffaloes, but not yet.

All these are wood buffaloes in Wood Buffalo National Park along highway 5. I have never driven this road and not seen buffaloes. Maybe I am just lucky, but truly every single time I see them.

This one is a mature, but not old, male.

I have this thing for their eyes.

This is a young female. You can really see the difference. Look at her colours, amazing! And notice the shape and size of the horn compare to the male buffalo.

and this is a calf.

Random Photos of October Here

Early October was beautiful. In fact it has been a gorgeous fall.

Salt River

Slave River

and then a little snow. You can just see the cabin with the truck and the camper in the photo.

some cool but beautiful days, and the river sometimes is like a mirror, though canoeing it it is known to be possibly dangerous because of the waves.

A little more snow

and the first ice on the river, just the Salt River so far

Posing for the Photo

If you just ask her to pose for a photo but are not specific about what you want, sometimes this is what you get.

She is posing for the photo!
Kids are great.

Traditional Moose Hide Tanning - Part 2

Ok, so I stopped at the part where you have scrape both flesh and hair off the hide.
At this point, and it can be done at any point really, we went into the woods to collect rotten spruce wood. It cannot be jack pine or the hide will turn black.

 Because our wood was not dry we had to put it in a tent and dry it.

Next you spray the hair side of the hide with the tanning "medecine" traditionally it includes the moose brain, but we did not have the brains so it was a mixture of water, mayonnaise, sardines, lard, liver and alkaline soap.
You then fold the hide and let the medecine soak in for at least one night. Because it was quite cool at that point we had to keep the hides warm so the fat would sink into the hide and we put them in the smoking house. Typically you would just put them in the sun. Below you can see the hide has already taken some colour from the smok. If it had been warming in the sun it would still be white.

Then the medecine has to be washed off and scrape off when wet in a very different way than previous scraping.

Then you wring it to take out as much water as possible

 Then dry it completely, and again because it was raining and snowing at this stage we had some difficulties.

And when it is dry it is ready for the final smoking.
It is sewn into the shape of a bag and hang over a fire of rotten spruce wood.

Here are the first two hides we did in the course, the next two were nicer as we had a better sense of what to do and not do.

Princesses and Monsters for Halloween 2014

Tey are ready now we just need Halloween to come!

Traditional Moose Hide Tanning - Part 1

As I was saying I took a traditional moose hide tanning course. It was great but incredibly physiscal and work intensive.

Here are some photos:

The very start is stretching the hide on the frame. As an aside I have to add that the hide stretches quite a bit over the process so pulling on the ropes and re-stretching the hide.

 At this point the super work intensive process of "fleshing" starts.
 With the tools below you scrape the flesh and a membrane below it off the hide.

you flesh the hide keeping it wet. The next process requires for it to  be dry, and this is why tanning is best done in spring or summer. Several times the hide has to be dried and we had more and more problems trying to dry them as the weather was getting worse and worse. First drying (below) the sun was still out and that went fairly well.

Then you scrape the hair off... all the way to the follicle, everything has to go or later on it creates problems.

This is the the home-made tools we used.

This is what the scraped hide looks like, very much like the type of hide you see on drums I thought.