Le Neuvième Jour a Ferme Poulet de Grain a l’Ancienne ou ‘La Psychologie des Chiens’

Pirate miles ahead, Shaggy trotting behind, Pollox taking a break

There has been snow on the ground for a few days, but it’s been slushy underfoot and the kind of damp cold that gets into your bones. I’ve been constantly grateful that I decided to come here instead of to somewhere where I would have had to live in a trailer or cabin.

This morning it was grey again, but cold enough that the ground was frozen and the snow was falling as gorgeous flakes instead of clumps of mush. I started off down the road towards a trail that Guillaume had pointed out to me, but the dogs were so upset that I was abandoning them that I backtracked and took them up across the field, past the hides and into the woods again. It’s Pirate’s first snow and she’s loving it. She spent the entire time racing around like a lunatic. Shaggy is a little older and wiser. She plodded behind stepping carefully into my footsteps so as not to expend too much energy. Pollox was not at all sure what to do with himself. He has a sore hip and limps when he walks normally, but this was just too good an opportunity to waste. “Pirate, you’re it!”

As I walked over the crest of the hill I was greeting by a gorgeous view of the Appalacians and the sound of happy dogs trying to kill one another. I’m not a dog person. Not by a long shot, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love dogs. Their constant enthusiasm is infectious though their adoration can get a bit wearing. I am by every definition a cat person. I may appear completely disinterested, caught up in my own thoughts, but when I do want to play or have affection, watch out. I will sit right in the middle of your book until you can’t ignore me any more.

p.s. Guillaume has just brought me some freshly backed cookies! Lucie’s boys are really nice, in a boyish kind of way. They really, really like killing t hings on the computer (even until 5am, when I finally put my foot down and two very sheepish looking boys apologized and crawled bleary eyed off to bed), they don’t like doing the dishes or keeping the fire going and they do anything to avoid going in the chicken barn. However, they do bake, do the dishes under duress, lift heavy stuff, make supper (though, this is more likely to happen when Marie France and Danieve are about) and both Alex and Guillaume insist on speaking French to me now even when Lucie lapses. Were I thinking about adopting, I’d pick Danieve (she’s enthusiastic about everything and loves helping out on the farm) but for guys, they aren’t half bad:-)

Le huitième Jour a Ferme Poulet de Grain a l’Ancienne ou ‘La Psychologie des Poulets’

A huddle of chickens

This morning I got up early to give the hens their final meal. At 12 noon the feeder will be switched off so that the hens will travel to the slaughter house with empty guts tomorrow morning. I can’t say that I’m sad to not have to haul any more sacks of feed in to them (They get through approximately a 25kg sack every hour during the day) but of course I do wonder if they have any idea what lies ahead of them. Well, of course they don’t. Hens are not known for their powers of deduction.

When I was at Blue Chicory I showed Malcolm and Kristine a clip on Youtube of a squirrel intelligence test where squirrels had to pass through an assault course, which got progressively more complicated, in order to earn peanuts. When I was a kid I remember that there was a TV show which I tuned into avidly to watch squirrels figure out how to solve complex problems of this kind. The squirrels could be trained to press a certain colour button. To do things in a specific sequence. To relearn how to do something if the rules changed.

Being a hen is thirsty work

As for the hens. Well, they have learned over the past week that the arrival of a person means that food is coming. As soon as I walk through the door they run over to the feeders and start pecking, or at least the hungry ones do. A lot of them just sit there, huddled together, often all facing in the same direction, though sometimes forming a complex interlocking pattern; head to head, tail to tail. None of them have figured out that the food is in the bucket I’m carrying, thank goodness. If I got mobbed by over 1000 hens every time I went into the barn to feed them, I think that by now I would have developed a severe chicken phobia.

Oh Chicken, if only you knew what was in that sack

As I haul the food across the barn to the hoppers of the automatic feeders, the hens sometimes get out of my way, but often just sit there while I try to gently encourage them to move, using my feet. Luckily the floor of the barn is soft with the bedding so that if I do accidentally step on any of their feet, they just sink in. Which brings me on to the subject of their feet. They may look scaly and dry but they are soft and warm and feel just like fingers. Not that I ever had any desire before, but chicken feet are right off the menu now.

Yesterday when we hauled in more bags of feed, Guillaume opened up the front of the barn and the chickens all stayed right where they were. This was no ‘Chicken Run’. Eat, Drink, Snuggle, Poop. That’s what these babies do. During the summer Lucie’s flock of meat birds is able to go outside. They can range freely on the grass, feel the sunshine and run back into the barn when it rains, but during the fall and winter they prefer to stay indoors where the amenities are.

Outside, three of Lucie’s pet hens were wandering around in the snow. They know that they can find grain underneath the grain hoppers. They scratch for grass under the snow. It may be cold outside but they aren’t rushing to get into the barn.

Extremely free range hens

Each group of chickens has been raised differently. The barn hens to a life of warmth, constant feed and water, company, noise and the smell of chicken poop. The outdoor hens, to a life of greater hardship, foraging for much of their feed, extremes of heat and cold and possible attack by predators. But they seem just as happy as the hens in the barn, and tomorrow, these girls won’t be getting packed off to their final destination.

Its the perfect demonstration of the effects of nurture vs nature. When you provide a population with all of their basic needs, their desire for freedom ebbs away to the point that given the choice between freedom and food they choose food. While those that never had the choice are perfectly happy leading a tougher, but freer way of life.

One population is both protected and slaughtered by their owners. The other fights for its own survival. Which would you choose?

Les sixième et septième journées a Ferme Poulet de Grain a l’Ancienne ou ‘On peut le faire!’

Anyone who has ever watched kids TV will have chanted « We can do it! » along with Bob the Builder and friends. Today Lucie, Danieve and I got to do a bit of chanting for our own benefit. Lucie’s chickens will be making their final journey next week so she needed to make some more space in her walk in freezer so that she can stash away all 100 boxes of chicken meat. It’s -18C in the freezer; at that temperature any molecules are hardly moving at all so it greatly reduces the risk of food poisoning due to bacteria moving around,  so we wanted to spend as little time in there as possible. For that reason, most of the basic construction work was done in the prep area and then the units were transferred into the freezer for final assembly. First Lucie trimmed down the 2 by3’s, then we made the 6 shelves and finally we hauled the whole lot in and screwed it together complete with braces because the shelves are going to be holding a lot of weight.

Ladies with power tools

It was a strange sensation, emerging from the freezer and taking some layers off to step into the snowy but relatively balmy world outside. We did take a moment to stand and proudly survey our work before the cold got the better of us. George, Lucie’s Colombian boyfriend, stopped by and looked suitably impressed. We explained that girls could use power tools too:-)

Don't mess with these ladies

Lucie is a single Mom of three boys and has been raising them alone for over a decade. She has a healthy attitude to men. She doesn’t need them, is perfectly capable of managing her life with the support of her friends and family, but she enjoys having certain men around. A few years ago, she and a group of other single Moms banded together to provide each other support, a shoulder to cry on and the chance to have some fun in the midst of all the coping. Once a month they would go to one of the ladies houses, pack the 11 kids off with two childminders, open a bottle of wine and clean, tidy, cook, do the taxes, weed the garden and whatever else needed to be done. They figured that they could cope alone, but helping each other out was much more fun. A single Mom’s organisation in the area thought that it was such a good idea that they decided to try to use it as a model for other single Moms.

I empathise strongly with that sentiment. If I ever farm again I know that I want to have someone to actively farm with. Someone to share the excitement of the harvest, someone to encourage me out of bed on the days when I’m feeling sluggish, someone to encourage in return when they are feeling overwhelmed by the weeds. A wise lady farmer said to me last year “Rowena, we are strong women, we can cope, but should we have to?” My answer is that if we do things alone, we just cope, but with the help of community we can turn the most tedious task into a fun social activity. I’m not really looking for a man to be my Farmer Husband, but I do like the idea of having a farming partner or partners which once again leads me down the road towards intentional community.

Someone asked me recently what exactly an intentional community was. I explained that it could be a street in a town, a village, an island, a group of huts in the woods, a collection of farm houses, a communal building or anything really. The only difference to communities in general is that you get to choose your neighbours, that you agree to actively interact (support, be supported by and have fun) with the other members of your community and that you have a common goal, whether it be living lightly on the land, producing art, worship, growing food or sharing skills and resources. I know that this is a bit of an idealised view and that there are challenges to community living, but I also believe that, with a clear plan and structure, it sure as heck beats the alternatives.

Le Cinquième Jour a Ferme Poulet de Grain a l’Ancienne ou Applicabilité

When we study a foreign language our teachers often make use of scenarios to help make the learning process more approachable. They choose these scenarios based on things that we might actually do. However, my experiences of using French have little or nothing to do with anything I learned in school. I am still looking for an opportunity to use my favorite expression “les embouteillage m’énervent” or “traffic jams irritate me”. One day I will actually be in a traffic jam and have someone French speaking in the car with me and I will, in all likelihood, forget to say it and then get home and beat myself around the head with a plank.

School example #1

You are on holiday in Paris and you go to a cafe to order a coffee and a croissant.

Real Life example #1

You are Wwoofing across Canada and you are trying to find a cheese-making farm to Wwoof at for a month.

Rowena’s bad Vocabulary

Fromagerie : Cheese makers
Laiterie : Dairy (Cows)
Chèvre: Goat
Le Wwoofing : Wwoofing
Traiter les vaches? = To milk cows

School example #2

You have to call the dentist because you have toothache and you think that you need a filling.

Real Life example #2

You have to call your host at work because the automatic feeder for the hens in the barn has run out of feed.

Rowena’s bad Vocabulary

La Grange : Barn
Nourriture des poulets : Chicken Feed
Vérifier :To check
La machine qui donnes la nourriture des pouls : Automatic Chicken Feeder
Vide : Empty
Remplir : To fill
Poulets qui ont faim : Hungry hens

School example #3

You have supper at a little family restaurant and describe to some friends how you spent the day lying on the beach, reading a book and getting a suntan. You ask what they like to do in their spare time.

Real Life example #3

You have supper with your host family and describe how you tool a walk in the woods with the dogs, found a huge pile of carrots and apples and a bunch of hides with beer bottles in them. You ask if they ever go hunting and discuss hunting accidents.

Rowena’s bad Vocabulary

Tirer : To Shoot
Chasser : To Hunt
Un Chasseur : Hunter
Chevreuil : Deer
Les armes a feu : Fire Arms
Un tas des carottes : Pile of carrots
Un cache? Une cabine caché en arbre? : A Hide
Tuer par hasard : To kill by mistake

School example #4

You ask the son of a friend what he did at school today. He tells you that they had a field trip to a museum where they learned about the Romans and that one of the students nearly missed the bus home. You tell him about some beautiful Roman remains near your home in England.

Real Life Example #4

You ask the son of your host what he did at school today. He tells you that they had a ‘drill’ for if ever a shooter came into the school and started killing people. He describes how the plan to barricade the doors with desks and chairs won’t work because the doors all open outwards. You try to tell him a story about the atomic bomb drills during the Cold War and how they taught elementary school kids to hide under their desks to avoid getting blown up (about half way through you give up because you have none of the vocabulary that you need for this one)

Rowena’s very bad Vocabulary

Tuer: To kill
Se Barricader : To barricade oneself in
Bombe Atomique : Atomic Bomb
La Guerre Froid : Cold War
Cacher: To hide
Peur: Fear
Exploser : To blow up
Les Russes : Russians
Communisme: Communism
Le Mur de Berlin :The Berlin Wall
La Crise du Missile Cubain : Cuban Missile Crisis

My grammar is terrible I grant you but in school you only ever use just one tense at a time. Here I am constantly switching between them and tying myself up in knots. Then there is the whole tu and vous thing. I try to use tu with the kids and vous with Lucie, but I keep using the wrong one by mistake. Sometimes I get halfway through a sentence and I can see the confusion in their eyes. I was trying to tell Guillaume’s cousin Danieve that Wwoofers were like buses, farmers don’t get any for months and then 4 arrive at the same time. By the time I’d tried to get my point across in 3 or 4 different ways it just wasn’t funny any more.

Courage Rowena, Courage!

Days 3 and 4 at Ferme Poulet de Grain a l’Ancienne or Headless Chickens

I spent the whole day yesterday functioning in French, from listening to the radio and watching some kids TV in the morning (Dora l’Exploratrice et Bob le Bricoleur) to reading the paper, writing some journal notes and chatting with Lucie in the evening. I didn’t do anything in English. Not even think. By the end of the day things were becoming easier, though I was exhausted.

Today I gave myself a break and allowed myself some English as I had to do some work on the Organic Record-keeping book. And Alexandre pretty much refuses to talk to me in French. He’s 16. It’s a funny age, so when he does speak to me in French its really fast and out of the corner of his mouth  while looking in some direction other than directly at me. Needless to say I don’t catch half of what he says, so he gets frustrated with me and speaks in English. What he doesn’t realise is that when I reply in English I’m doing so clearly, slowly while looking directly at him and avoiding any slang. 4 years of teaching in a foreign country has left its mark and the Japanese Wwoofers who came to our farm always loved the fact that I was patient and took the time to try to make communicating with them work. Yes, it is tiring and frustrating trying to understand someone who can’t speak your language very well, but it’s a heck of a lot harder being that other person. A bit of empathy goes a long way.

I’ve also spent a fair amount of time in the hen barn. The feed was delivered in sacks so we (read Lucie and I) have been having to load up the feeder hoppers by hand. Today I hauled 8 25kg sacks of feed (decanted into buckets) through the sea of chickens (trying my best not to stand on their feet) from one end of the hot and stinky barn to the other. They are eating far more than would be expected. Lucie ordered enough to get them through to Tuesday, but we’re going to run out tomorrow morning… which means that they are eating roughly double what they lady at the feed store said they needed. I have no idea why.

The hens going crazy for their food

While I was doing this Guillaume was hanging out with his girlfriend, sleeping, listening to music loudly, taking over the world or shooting things loudly on the computer, sleeping some more and not doing the dishes, lighting the fire or cleaning out the freezer. It happens time and time again that I, as the Wwoofer, pitch in to try to do as much as possible while the kids do diddly squat. On more than one occasion I’ve considered suggesting that they ditch the kids and adopt me, but love is a funny thing.

Lucie shows off her Chicken Breasts

I also got to spend some time with the other end of the chicken spectrum – the frozen, processed meat. Lucie sells a lot of her chicken through Organic buying clubs. She’s not certified organic, but I guess she’s as close as they can get and her birds seem to be very popular. In order to fill the orders quickly the meat is sorted by weight and then inventoried. It was my job today to sort out the breasts (or chests as Lucie calls them) and the whole birds. It took me several hours and I was glad Lucie had given me some thin gloves so that I could handle the meat without losing my fingers.

The 'after' photo

When I came in at the end, Guillaume was making some lunch. He offered me some but I’d eaten two hours before (he only gets up at noon). I told him in stilted french that I had been sorting chickens “J’ai organisée les poulets”. He looked confused . No, no, not chickens, chicken meat. I can’t sort chicken. “Non, non, pas les poulets, la viande des poulets. Je ne peux pas organise les poulets!”

My God, learning a new language is difficult. I think that I have one thing under control then, when I try to learn something new, I forget the first thing. It’s like trying to herd chickens.

p.s. After writing this  Guillaume made supper, Alexandre lit the fire and they both made a huge effort to speak French to me over supper. Thanks guys, I do appreciate it!

Day 2 at Ferme Poulet de Grain a l’Ancienne or A Long Way Outside Of My Comfort Zone

I spoke French a lot yesterday. With Guillaume, Alexandre, Danieve (their cousin who dropped by), Christian, Lucie and the dogs, cats and chickens. I should have been feeling proud of myself that I was actually speaking the language at all after not speaking any French for a year, but instead I was busy finding fault with myself. I can’t cope with the future tense (or tenses) at all. I keep getting confused between Jusque and Depuis which aren’t even that difficult, and there are these massive gaping holes in my knowledge that just drive me nuts. I want want to be able to flick a switch Et Voila! Je suis Francophone! Its like I thought that the only thing holding me back was my lack of confidence and now I’m realising that its also a lack of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and ability to remember things five minutes after I’ve been taught them. Urgh!

Then I decided to be nice to myself. I’ve only been here for 2 days. If I could already speak French perfectly there wouldn’t be any point in me coming here to learn it. I need to learn to be patient. As patient as my hosts are being with me. It’s one step at a time.

So today Guillaume went back to Montreal. It’s a bit of a mixed blessing. It means that I couldn’t talk to him today, but it also meant that I didn’t have to listen to his music. It’s not that it was bad, just that it was loud and angry and listening to loud angry music does not usually help me to feel calmer.

I was left with a list of things to do, although Lucie assured me that I didn’t actually have to do any of them (!). I’m her first Wwoofer so she’s also on a steep learning curve. So first of all I cranked up the volume on the french radio and started my first task, applying ‘double glazing’ plastic to the windows, to the sound of Brian Adams singing ‘Everything I do’. It wasn’t even the french version. Next I was treated to some Celine Dion followed by some ‘Men at Work’. The radio got shut off at that point.

Next I went outside to rake some leaves. It’s been a glorious day so I ended up stripping right down to a T-shirt as I built up a sweat doing something that I consider to be fairly pointless. I will always be the annoying neighbor who refuses to rake their leaves and lets them blow all over their neighbours lawns.

Pollox helps me to rake the leaves

Lunch was left overs from last nights supper – always my favourite – accompanied by Dora the Explorer on Tele-Quebec. It was kind of weird watching a program designed for Francophone kids to learn English. I’m not sure I picked up any French, but I got to practice speaking English with a heavy French accent.; chanting along to ‘We did it!’ and encouraging the balloon to move by joining in the chorus of ‘Up, up, up!’

I popped in to check on the chickens in the barn after lunch. Last night we had to feed them by hand because the automatic feeder had shut off at some point during the day and the 1200 hens were more than a little peckish. As we poured the food into the hoppers the chickens were going frantic. Chickens basically eat, drink, poop and scratch the ground if you take it down to basics. In the barn they spend 1/3 of their time eating, 1/3 of their time drinking and 1/3 of their time wandering around trying to decide whether to eat or drink next. They poop constantly. Its quite the contrast to Kristines 23 or so hens running around outside, roosting in trees, scrabbling in the dirt and cleaning out the old plant material from the garden at the end of the growing season.

Lucie's Hens, happily eating, drinking and wandering around.

Lucie’s hens are clean, healthy, well fed and watered and supervised by a loving farmer. However, being a confined space the smell is fairly unpleasant and it’s triggered my asthma a few times. Lucie explained that it’s the time of year. In the summer and in the winter it’s dry, but in the Fall it’s humid so they need more bedding to absorb the moisture in the air and the pee from 1200 birds who spend 1/3 of their time drinking. 1200 birds in a barn is a lot of birds. Lucie opened up the other half of the barn to allow them to wander around and to dissipate the ammonia scented air. It did successfully air out the place, but when I checked in on the hens this afternoon all but 12 of them were still in the stinky bit of the barn because that’s where the food and the water is. I suspect that if she opened up all the doors and tried to chase them outside they would do everything they could to stay in the warm interior. It reminded me of the barn raised hens that Dawn had delivered to Northern Sun who did not want to be outside thank you very much!

Lucie would really like to try some more unusual birds. The ones she raises come from the same place that the previous owner of the farm bought them. They are the standard, white, meat bird, engineered to get big enough to slaughter, approximately 60 days after arriving at the farm as a day old chick. During that time the 1200 birds will consume roughly 5 tonnes of feed. Except that today when I went to check on the birds the hoppers were empty again and this time it was because there was no feed left in the grain bin. They’ve been consuming more than they normally do.

I scraped the last bit of feed from the sides of the bin and fed it to the hens, who went nuts again, and then called Lucie to tell her the bad news. She said she’d put in a call from some emergency feed and we could feed them this evening.

It is much better to buy chickens that have been cared for, given enough space, provided with clean bedding and fresh air and good quality feed, than those that are just treated like lumps of plastic on a production line.  Lucie clearly cares a lot about her birds. She does everything that she can to keep them happy and healthy. Every evening she walks around among the hens checking them for any problems. The hens get a bit flustered when we walk through but Lucie said that this flock is particularly jumpy. She’s heard that the first hatch of eggs from new hens are always flighty so she’s going to ask for the hatchlings of older hens next time.  However, they are still in a barn, and while it’s safe to say that every piece of chicken that you buy from the supermarket came from a chicken in a barn (even the Organic chicken) it’s still not my favourite.

I still can’t get beyond the fact that when chickens are raised to be used to being outside, they prefer it. They roost in trees. They scratch in the dirt. They have dust baths, they get a more diversified diet. But they also size up more slowly, are often taken by predators, and cost a lot more to raise just because of all the additional space and time that they take up.

I have to accept that if I want to eat free range chicken then I’m going to have to pay a lot more for it, or raise them myself, and for those people who genuinely can’t afford to pay more, a gently raised barn chicken is the next best option.

Gros Tom and Family

While I was raking up the leaves outside ,Gros-Tom (Big Tom) the Turkey strutted up and down gobbling and fluttering his feathers at me dramatically. He, his wife and their babies roam freely in the garden and come and knock at the door in the morning, just to say hello. They are fine looking, healthy birds and Lucie calls them her mascots. All the birds here are cared for well, but given the choice, I know that I’d rather be Gros Tom than Petit Poul Blanc.

Arrived in Quebec!

I am going to have to keep this brief because I am on dial-up. I can only update this on the weekends for the next two weeks because the connection is so slow that I canèt add pictures and also strange things keep happening when I try to use punctuation (francophone keyboard!).

Speak to you on the weekend, by which time I will be fluent in French – hah!

Day 1 at Ferme Poulet de Grain a l’Ancienne or Hunting Season

Ferme Poulet de Grain a l'Ancienne

Last night I stayed up late reading a book aimed at young teenagers. I managed to get through 10 pages in about 2 hours, with a dictionary propped up on my other knee. Tonight I’m going to reread the same ten pages so that the new vocabulary sinks in a bit better. At least I can honestly say that I did understand what I read which was not the case when I’ve tried this exercise in the past. Back then I was quite literally looking up every single word and had no idea what was going on when they connected.

I woke up during the night with an itchy eye and rubbed it a bit before falling asleep again. Then this morning I woke with a swollen piggy eye. Fabulous I thought, it’s bad enough having to speak French all day, but I’m going to have to look like an idiot as well as sound like one. I threw everything that I had in my pharmacy at it; eye drops, antibiotic cream, antihistamines and the swelling has subsided, though I don’t know what fixed it, just that it is fixed.

Guillaume was bottling beer in the kitchen and Lucie went out early to work, so I went for a walk out in the back field. It was a beautiful morning with frost on the grass and a gorgeous blue sky. Pirate the terrier and Pollox the collie/labrador mix farm dogs came with me.  Pollox is named for Castor and Pollox the stars and, yes, I did mishear his name the first time we were introduced.

Tree fort or ...

I found what looked like a tree fort and went up to explore and then a bit further along I found another two. How nice I thought, one for each of Guillaume, Alexandre and Christian, but what is the huge pile of carrots, apples and corn for? Then I woke up. They weren’t cute tree-forts but hides for hunters shooting deer. The pile of carrots was only about 15m from one of the hides. At that distance even I could hit a deer, I’m sure. I wondered if they had added tranquilzers to the carrots too to make the process even more biased towards the hunter. There were quite a few beer bottles in the tree forts so maybe the hunters need to skew the odds in their favour.

skewing the odds

When I arrived in Canada I was very anti-hunting. I associated hunting with pompous fat men on horseback charging across the British countyside with a pack of dogs , drunk on cider, causing all kinds of damage to farmland and then finally tearing to pieces the unfortunate fox just for sport. Then, as I settled into the life of what is still a frontier country; three patches of urban sprawl and a whole lot of suberbs hanging onto the southern margin of a great mass of wilderness, and my perspectives changed. I wanted to learn how to shoot so that I could catch my own supper. It seemed to me that hunting was far more humane and sustainable than raising cattle in unthinkable conditions then slaughtering them en masse in massive abattoirs.

Then the pendulum swung back the other way a little. I would still like to learn how to hunt and trap, mostly just so that I have the skills but also because I really like venison and rabbit. However, the vision of the noble hunter has been expunged from my mind after hearing countless stories of hunters accidentally shooting cows and each other. Apparently they get so jumpy on their own in the woods that they start shooting at the first sound, even if it is a cow bellowing from the middle of a field, or your buddy asking you if you’ve got any more beer.

And there is no point in talking about hunting without talking about beer. It seems like half of the point of going hunting is to drink beer. Needless to say the combination of alcohol and weapons put the fear of God into me each time I wanted to take a walk on my own property during hunting season. And now we don’t even have Sundays for respite. Birdwatching in the woods during hunting season requires wearing bright orange and waving your arms around yelling ‘I’m not a deer. Don’t shoot me!’ Not exactly conducive to interacting with nature.

I am always intrigued when ATV drivers and hunters insist that what they do is about appreciating nature. . ‘Become a hunter, explore nature and appreciate it’s boundless beauty, then kill it, take it home and stick its head on your wall’. There are many other ways of appreciating nature, but they don’t bring in as much revenue for the Provincial Governments, so birdwatchers, watch out. The hunters have all the rights and they’re armed, jumpy and likely drunk.