Living with nature

Growing up in the middle of huge forest in Ontario

meant Ella McCarthy was in touch with nature. She learned

the names of the wild flowers in the woods and meadows.

She learned the names of the trees. In the early spring, Ella picked little dandelion leaves for salad. From the stream, her mother brought home watercress. These greens were made into delicious salads. By the end of May, Ella and her father looked for berries on the Juneberry tree. They picked the

plump berries and took them home for a fine sauce. Next the pin cherries were ripe for picking. They picked these tiny

bright red fruits from a tree in a meadow near the town. No one else wanted the pin cherries, except some birds, so Ella

[IMG]file:///C:/Users/ADMIN/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg[/IMG]and her father picked them for cherry juice. These cherries were sour but full of vitamins, her father said. The McCarthys drank the juice to prevent colds.

In the summer, Ella went with her father to

pick wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries,

and blackberries. They took the berries home

in baskets, sat at the kitchen table, and

cleaned them. Bits of leaves and stems

went into a pile, and the clean berries

went into an iron pot with sugar. Ella's

mother cooked the berries and made

jam for the winter. She poured the jam into clean pint jars.

She poured some hot wax into the jam jars to protect the

fruit from spoiling. These small jars waited on the basement shelves.

In the fall, Ella and her father went to the wild apple

trees in the woods. They collected the fruit and carried home bushel baskets full of apples. They peeled the apples for canning. Ella's mother prepared the glass jars, and when the apples were cooked, apples for winter pies and applesauce went into jars. The gleaming quart jars of apples went

to the shelves in the basement too, for winter meals. They preserved the fruit for later use.

A month later, the wild nuts were ready to be gathered.

[IMG]file:///C:/Users/ADMIN/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image004.jpg[/IMG]The McCarthys knew where there were hazelnut bushes, and every year they picked the bushes clean before the squirrels took them all. They also picked the rose hips from the wild rosebushes. These rose hips made a very good winter tea, and they had lots of vitamins in them. Ella loved the taste of the rose hip tea.

It was a dark red color, and it tasted wonderful with honey.

Fall was also the time for collecting wood for the winter.

The McCarthys gathered dead wood, of course, and had a

pile of logs ready to burn. They also gathered pine knots.

Several years earlier, there had been a forest fire near the

pine river. Ella's family planned picnics there every fall.

They went to pick up the pine knots. The area where the fire had burned was several acres in size, and all the pine trees there had burned. But the places on the tree where the big branches grew out from the trunk were harder than the rest

of the wood. These parts had not burned. These small pieces

of wood lay on the grass and in the sand, sometimes partly buried. Ella, her mother, her father, and her younger brothers all collected the pine knots in bags. they piled the pin knots

into the little trailer that was hitched to the back of the car.

Those pine knots would burn slowly all winter in the furnace and keep them all warm.

[IMG]file:///C:/Users/ADMIN/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image006.jpg[/IMG]One fall, Ella's dad found a wild beehive

in a dead tree. He covered himself with thick

clothes. He put on a big hat with strong net

and heavy gloves. He put a smoking piece of

wood into the middle of the tree, and most of

the bees flew away. He collected two gallons

of wild honey, but he left a lot of honey for the

bees. He didn't like to rob the bees, but the

wild honey tasted sweet. He got some bee

stings too, but the honey was worth it! Anyway, he said to himself, the bees had more honey than they needed.

In the winter, Ella was sometimes able to go fishing with

her father. Of course, she had to go to school, but on weekends, they went to ice lake. The ice on the lake was

four feet thick. It was cold for months at a time in their part

of Canada. And there must have been millions of fish in that lake. Ella's father made a hole in the ice, and they lowered

lines into the water.

The fish must have been hungry! They took the bait that

Ella and her father put on their fishhooks. Their metal tubs were quickly filled with fish. Each person could take 100 fish home. Ella's father covered the fish in the tubs with snow.

He tied ropes around the tubs, and together they pulled the tubs of fish to their car and took them home.

Then they had the job of cleaning the fish. Ella's father

taught her how to remove the scales from the fish. Ella got

very good at that part. But it can take a long time for one person to clean 100 fish, and twice as long to clean 200. So Ella's father taught her how to hold the fish, how to slit it up

the belly with the tip of the knife, and how to scrape the fish clean. Soon Ella could keep up with her father, fish for fish.

When the fish were cleaned, they had to be washed and

then wrapped in two kinds of paper. First Ella and her father laid about ten fish on a piece of waxed paper. The family

usually ate ten fish for a meal, and they were making meal-

size packages. Next that package went onto a piece of

a newspaper and was folded. The packages of fish were laid into a cardboard box in neat way. The paper had to be dry.

Otherwise all the packages would stick together. Then the

box, covered with more newspaper, went into a gunnysack.

Ella's dad put it on the roof to freeze. When the family

wanted fish to eat, the packages of cleaned fish were ready.

Ella's family lived close to nature. They depended on

nature for much of their food. They needed the forest to be able to live in comfort. They didn't think that their way of

life was unusual. To them, it was how all people should live.