Yukon bush life

We’ve few ingredients to choose from, so when our friends came to stay last week I thought I might liven things up with a fried oriental squirrel starter. (S ee footnote ) Norm and Aedes live in the bush too so we hoped they’d be OK with it. Unless they had squirrel for lunch, perhaps. Our friends and their fearsome dog Chewie between Norm's legs Turns out I should have boiled up the anuses that I cut out when I skinned them and made an exotic soup. The oriental ‘wings’ went down a storm. Then Aedes informed us that, when working with hunters and elders in the territory, she’s been presented with live warble grubs (larvae of the warble fly that exists in the hides of living caribou) and a delicacy called Bum Soup. Warble fly larvae Bum Soup is made from the anus and lower intestine (and contents) of a moose, all boiled up into a hearty stew. Wow. What will I have to do to impress these folk? Our poor guests helping us move logs. Traditionally, just about ever...

(Lou, Yukon) Don’t wash squirrels. I learned that this week. They don’t come out well. The amber, feather-light tail never quite recovers and the fur has the look of rat skin. That’s sewer rat, not muskrat. Washed, tanned, oiled and drying Au naturel We’ve been trying to ignore our squirrel problem at the old cabin all winter. After fixing the roof and stuffing it with some old insulation this autumn, we are now using it as a storeroom and, perhaps optimistically, guest cabin. And here's the master bedroom... Our plan is to keep the insulation in the roof to prevent heat escaping, the squirrels' plan is to take it down to the cold cellar to make nests and use the space above the floor as a toilet. The original roof was insulated with a tonne of mud which we had to remove before we could rebuild it  My understanding was that squirrels fiercely defend their territories so we could only have one, or possibly a pair of them, using the cabin. No. We got ...