This is archive footage from January 11, 2011, recorded on a Sony Digilife DDV-H71Z during a deep mid-winter stretch.
Bundled in full winter gear — snowmobile suit, goggles, and ski mask — I take a light-hearted walk around the property I was living on at the time. Everything is frozen, white, and quiet. I stop at “the drain” — a frozen ditch that becomes a surprisingly serious obstacle — pass an old hunting blind, and carefully cross without falling in.
Along for the walk is my husky Luka, playful as ever, following close and turning an ordinary winter moment into something memorable.
No narration. No lesson. Just a snapshot of life, winter, and place — exactly as it was.
00:00Hey, this is Wolf. We're here today in Episode 1 to take you on a guided tour of our property. Come join us.
00:12So here we are at the back of the yard. And look what's just over my shoulder here. A drain.
00:31Now the difference between a drain and a creek is that a drain is man-made.
00:37It probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, but it makes a huge difference when it comes to development around the area.
00:43Anyways, let's see what else we can go on and find.
00:55Over my shoulder here, you will see a wind mover.
01:00Now this is not a traditional turbine to generate power, but what it's designed to do is to keep those crops behind me,
01:06which are all grapes or cash crops or tender crops, depending on your name you know them,
01:12to make sure that during the frost, when the frost starts to settle down onto the fruit,
01:18that thing moves the air around and stops the frost from going.
01:21Now, unfortunately, there's a significant amount of controversy surrounding them, but that's not for this video.
01:27As you can see behind me, we have the rubbish pile.
01:35Unfortunately, when you have a lot of empty land here in the Niger region,
01:39what happens is people take the opportunity to dump their rubbish all over the place.
01:44Unfortunately, most of this contains nails and metal, pieces of doors, things like that,
01:50things that we can't burn very readily.
01:52So, unfortunately, it's just going to sit here and rot, so the landowners come and fix it up and remove it,
01:58or, of course, they do try to burn it and then just cover up the metal and nails and anything else that stays when they're finished.
02:06Behind me here is the woods. Now, this woods, although it may look like a bunch of trees,
02:12provides important habitat for things like red-tailed hawks and owls and mice and all sorts of other things.
02:18It's a complete miniature ecosystem built up all around us, even though we don't really take much notice of it.
02:25So, let's continue on our trip, see what else we can find.
02:29So, this sign right here says, no hunting.
02:47And although we do have evidence of people who have hunted here, it is specifically posted that we don't.
02:53In Canada, no trespassing or no hunting is simplified by the small red circle in the middle of a white sign.
03:02Leaving the no hunting sign and taking a look around, what we come across is one of Niagara region's largest greenhouses.
03:12These greenhouses cover quite a few acres of land, and you can see them back there in all their glory.
03:20They produce fruit and vegetables and flowers for us that we wouldn't normally be able to acquire in these terrible, horrible Canadian winters.
03:29Being as this is woods, we do have evidence of life here.
03:41Potentially rabbit tracks, being as we have two rear tracks that are quite long, as well as short front tracks.
03:50You can see that they seem to go off into the distance, but they do come out of the woods and over along this tree line just to see if there's any food here.
04:07What we have here is a series of large round bales.
04:15Now these hay bales are done by machine instead of by hand, which gives them their round appearance.
04:21These particular ones have just been made out of field grass and aren't really that useful for feeding to cattle.
04:27But what they are useful for is things like your garden and sheds and anything that you want to cover and make sure that you keep the frost off in winter.
04:36So let's travel on and see what else we can find.
04:39So now what you can see behind me is we've come up to another section of that public drain.
04:51So now our biggest challenge is to get us through that drain and to the other side.
04:56Thankfully in winter everything is all frozen so it won't be that big of a job.
05:01That wasn't so hard now was it?
05:06So behind me what we can see is a deer blind.
05:11What this is used for is people who like to come out here and hunt, even though it does say no trespassing,
05:16and they can hide from the deer, let them think that there's nothing around, and then as soon as they get near, bam, they're dead.
05:23Let's go over there and have a look at it, shall we?
05:25So climbing up this blind I can actually see that it's kind of rickety and very poorly put together,
05:41but I suppose in an emergency it will do what it was designed to do and allow you to hide from the deer.
05:46Let's take a look now and see what we can see from the inside out.
05:51Understanding the concept of the deer blind you'll notice that in a nice rotation we can see all the way around.
05:59We're pretty much camouflaged.
06:03Now in the background I'm sure you can hear traffic and noise.
06:07That's from our local Highway 55, also known as Niagara Stone Road.
06:12This is one of my favorite parts of this journey.
06:34As you can see there's been a pathway cut through these trees behind me that leads into the property ahead of us.
06:40Now although it's beautiful in winter, and this is a winter hike in January of 2011,
06:45you'll find that in the summertime when the leaves create the canopy overhead,
06:49it's even more stunningly beautiful than it is today.
06:52Let's take a quick run through this and I'll meet you on the other side.
07:10So there we are, we made it through the forest.
07:13Now behind me you can see more property and further off into the distance you can see Highway 55.
07:19That's the actual car noise that you can hear rumbling by.
07:22So we're going to continue on our hike now and we're going to head towards home and see what we can find.
07:26He shows up on film very well, but this is what I like to call Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.
07:40Unfortunately, although we use a beautiful pine, what you'll notice is that all of his pine needles are missing,
07:45at least all bit out of shape.
07:48He's kind of nice, but certainly wouldn't do for a house.
07:51Anyways, let's continue on, see what else we can find.
07:55Just over my shoulder there, you can see, that's my house.
08:08So we've made it about a kilometer, kilometer and a half out on the hike today.
08:13So now we just have the final leg of our journey to head home.
08:16There isn't too much else interesting to see, but either way, we've got to go back that way.
08:25So this brings us to almost the final leg of our journey.
08:53As you can see over my shoulder, it's just shortly where we started, next to the rubbish pile.
08:58Directly behind us is the air movement device that we spoke about that causes a lot of controversy here in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
09:06So that's all for now, but thank you for tuning in to this episode of Around the House.
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