Episode 93 - Snowshoes and Uproarious Applause
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
We finally get a live audience and boy do they ever like us. Ok, so it helps that they are family and well bribed with food and liquor. My applause sign probably didn’t hurt either. Everyone went snowshoeing today and it was nice to just go for a quiet walk in the woods and enjoy the peace and quiet of winter in the back country. Now most people don't realize that there are lots of different designs and they all serve a unique purpose. Largely determined by the aboriginal tribe, the area where they lived, and what they used them for. There is everything from bearpaw for maneuvering through...
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Episode-92 - Rain chains and roasting coffee
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
I solved the sagging rain gutter problem by installing a rain chain. This is a concept from ancient Japan that became popular in North America during the Victorian and Craftsman eras. I did a Kottage Knowhow video on our YouTube channel. I experiment with roasting my own coffee beans using a hot air popcorn popper and it worked out really well. I sourced some green beans from Ashanti Roastery Cafe in Elora. Then I dusted off the old Proctor Silex Popcorn Pumper. I dropped in about ¾ of a cup of beans and plugged it in. The whole process took about 12 minutes to get to a medium dark roast. All...
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Episode-91 - Tornados on Six Mile lake?
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
We had some serious storms with high winds come through the north end of the lake. Everyone thought it was a tornado that cut a path through the forest, but it was actually a “downburst” that flattened all the trees. Everyone had to literally cut their way down the cottage road but at least there will be lots of free firewood. With all the trees down, power was out for quite a while. Hydro One has a pretty sweet mobile app that lets you see where the outages are and what the expected repair time is. Really cool. Bruce mentioned “The Dam Grill” in Port Severn. It’s a great little...
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Episode-90 - The scurge of Invasive Eurasian Milfoil.
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
<p> We start out with a whole wheel of <a href="https://www.fromageoka.ca/en" target="blank">Oka cheese</a> and nobody likes to cut the cheese more than Walter, Bruce , and I. Nothing beats Charcuterie at the cottage. </p> <p> We mostly talked about one of the latest invasions in Muskoka. Its not party animals from southern Ontario, Its Eurasia Milfoil. A water plant that grows incredibly fast and can literally kill a lake if not controlled. This is definitely not a project for the cottage mower. Even with a snorkle. Here are a couple of links where you can find...
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Episode-89 - From canoes to steampunk?
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
<p> Boy when Bruce said Deb dragged her canoe from out east, he wasn’t kidding. There were some serious holes worn all the way through the fiberglass. Luckily, Walter has lots of experience repairing fiberglass boats, so we put him to work. </p> <p> After most of the prep work was done, we headed into Honey Harbour for the jazz festival. It was surprisingly impressive. It was a small festival, but the talent was fantastic. </p> <p> Once we had our fill of classy jazz music, we headed over to Coldwater for the <a...
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Episode-88 - The vanity is not in vain
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
We started the weekend by visiting Christie’s Mill in Port Severn for a nice dinner together. There was a wonderful musician named R. G. Peever playing guitar that we thoroughly enjoyed. He has let his domain laps but is on twitter and last posted in 2017. He also seems to have a new domain called . We finally got around to installing the new vanity in the master ensuite and boy was it a challenge. We had to pull all the rabbits out of the hat for this one to get all the plumbing into a three-inch space behind the cabinet drawers. Of course, we have been calling Bruce "squirrel" for...
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Episode-87 - Ten pounds of rotting flesh.
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
Well I think Bruce and I were in fine form this time. Our segment on Cottage Cheese finally aired on Cottage Life TV so that's our seven minutes of fame. We are going to have to do one more show and a commercial if we are going to get to 15 minutes. The snow has been so heavy this winter that it tore the snow guards off the new steel roof. Its black fly season again and they are swarming like mad this year. Either Deb is going to have to sacrifice herself to them or we need ten pounds of rotting flesh. We also poked some good fun at the proverbial red neck. Of course we did get to our beer of...
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Episode-86 - "Someone get me a hoe"
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
It became blatantly obvious that beer belongs in glasses and not potato chips. And just to ice the cake, mother nature is keeping us snowed in well into the spring. Even the cottage road looks like it belongs in the winter Olympics. Thanks to the heavy snow pack the spring runoff is flooding the crawl space. We had to engineer some kind of floor drain to move the water to the sump pump well so it could then be pumped out to the still frozen lake. Skating anyone? And of course I always wanted to get away with saying “someone get me a hoe” so that’s the tool of the day. How childish! Of...
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Episode-85 - What the heck is a growler?
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
We started out with a project that we thought was going to be at least a three or four beer job. It turns out we were in and out in under an hour. Bruce has a “Greenway” UV light as part of the water filtration system and it fell apart and started leaking shortly after the warranty expired. Fortunately, Greenway stepped up to the plate and sent Bruce an entire new unit at no charge. Full marks for the excellent customer service. I also figured out that I could spin the fittings inside the PEX pipe without it leaking. This saved us having to cut up and dismantle several elbow fittings and...
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Episode-84 - The Ugliest Bird In The Woods!
Kottage-tek - MP3 Edition
Well this time we had to deal with a leaking hot water heater. Somehow the pressure release valve failed and sprung a leak. We also discovered that not all presure release valves are the same so you may want to take the bad one with you when you go to town to get a new one. We also talked about wild turkeys. These have to be the ugliest bird ever to grace the fields and forests of Canada. Apparently they are rather good eating because hunters keep shooting them. Either that of hunters hate ugly birds. Of course we did get to our beer of the day from Lake of Bays Brewing Company in Baysville...
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We talked about the history and traditions of cottaging in Muskoka as well as most other places in Canada and even around the world. It seems a lot of people have either lost sight of the meaning of cottaging or have never had it in the first place. And to that end, the rest of us will continue to fight. In fact, maybe this is one of the reasons we do what we do here on Kottage-tek. Not as much the techie stuff, but the tradition of storytelling about the cottage experience. Maybe we listen to too much Garrison Keillor and Stuart McLean but is that really a bad thing?
We told stories about moving the outhouse, cooking on a real wood stove and of course the town pump which we still do today. If that's roughing it, I'll take it any day of the week. Fortunately there has been a lot of documentation of the history and traditions of cottaging and we mentioned 3 books that we are very familiar with and recommend. There is also a rich visual history as well. Everything from the group of seven to YouTube, Flickr and Instagram.