The Art of Construction
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Published: December 20th 2009
Before I left Sweden/UK, I was telling people about WWOOFing and how we were planning a stay on a hippie commune and on a ranch... Well, Ro fitted in the commune before I got to Canada (fortuitously as it turns out - not sure I would have been prepared for the public nudity involved in showering in the middle of the lawn) and ranches seem to be rather too popular. I tried to get us on to one for this, my last farming week, but Linda Proudfoot regretted to inform me that although we sounded “adorable” (have I suddenly turned into a
">fluffy bunny on the phone?!) she had no room at the inn. So Gordon got us instead. Lucky Gordon.
Gordon is an artist and farmer who runs The Art Farm in Duntroon, Ontario. He lives there with his wife Teza (pronounced Tay-zer), a TV/film producer, and their three children - Orion (12, hockey player, just entering moody teenager phase), Lilah (7, delights in teasing her sister) and Rozlyn (3, extremely precocious and loud) - plus 2 dogs (Autumn and Pearl). Completing the farm-based family is Barb, Gordon’s mum who lives in a house next door. Unfortunately, Teza was on
location in Halifax with Jason Priestley (children of the 80s will know who he is) so we only met on Skype, with the result that Gordon was being “Mom” during our visit. And very good at it he was too. Our visit was a study in role reversal - while Ro and I tackled a range of physically demanding, manual farm jobs, Gordon spent much of his time ferrying various children around to parties, hockey games and school, as well as keeping the house in order and cooking us delicious meals for when we returned from our day’s labour 😊 All the more amusing as Gordon is the spitting image of Jim Carrey!
Although he says he doesn’t have much time for it these days, Gordon’s art is also very much in evidence around the farm. We stayed in the attic “suite” which also houses a small studio. The farmhouse is littered with works by Gordon, his father and his father-in-law (also artists), and there are various sculptural features all around the farm and its outbuildings. He even has some works in his toolshed for some reason - presumably they’re works in progress or rejects. Art was therefore a
regular topic of conversation for Ro and myself - mainly about what actually constitutes “art”. I admit we got a little silly at times and hope we didn’t offend Gordon with the bits he must have heard...
The area around Duntroon and Collingwood was beautiful and not at all what we expected. I’m not sure what we did expect, but Ro was reminded of the Forest of Dean - lots of trees and fields and gentle rolling hills. It’s right on Georgian Bay which is a popular tourist destination for residents of Toronto and further afield, offering all kinds of hiking, biking, watersports and so on during the summer. Barb very kindly took us on a guided tour when she picked us up from Collingwood, during which she gave us a non-stop running commentary... I think I only absorbed a fraction of what she told us though - it left us even more exhausted than we were after our bus ride! But I did pick up that I had accidentally picked us a farm in a ski resort 😊 OK, so not a well known or large ski resort, but there are a number of private clubs in the
area, as well as the
Blue Mountain public ski area. Nothing too extreme on offer there (and sadly no snow at this time of year), but a good place for a few days apparently.
So what did we actually do during our time on the Art Farm? Well, we...
• put the vegetable patch in order - pulled tomato canes, dug potatoes, picked chard, pulled stray beets
• collected windfall apples for the animals
• created another woodpile (there’s a theme here) - thankfully the log splitting was done by a fancy gadget on Gordon’s tractor - and piled dry firewood high in the lean-to and on top of the dog kennel. Hope we didn’t pile it so high that the thing collapses...
• used sledgehammer and crowbar to salvage wood to be used for roofing on the sugar shack and piled it high on an extremely rickety looking trailer
• dug up dozens of black locust tree seedlings from the garden and replanted them in the woodland (Gordon used to be a tree planter in northern Ontario so continues this work at home)
• completed construction of the back wall of Gordon’s sugar shack - a hut in
the woods which will eventually be used to make maple syrup from the sap of surrounding trees - according to Barb it’s the WWOOFer “fort” and only progresses when WWOOFers are in town. We left our mark for future generations... I am now officially a vandal 😊
• hauled an enormous pile of tree trunks on to a wagon, then threw them off the wagon again as Gordon drove it around his field, before digging holes and erecting them as fenceposts. We were not entirely sure what we were fencing - elephants? Dinosaurs? Keeping the children in?
• dug beds and planted next season’s garlic
• fixed two stable doors using salvaged parts from old stable doors and random pieces of wood found around the farm, all the while avoiding an unhappy ram and his “boys” (the young male sheep had been separated from the flock, and were penned up with the billy goat - the air was a little pungent)
• shovelled several tons of animal “output” in the pouring rain
After 4 days of this, I think I could probably qualify for entry into the World’s Strongest Woman competition... Thank goodness we’d started with a rest day
when we got here! Gordon was looking after kids stuff and then off on a “gentlemen’s weekend” (not as dodgy as it sounds apparently!) so Barb took us into Creemore, the local town. The original plan had been to see the Mocks (local filmmakers documentaries) but we’d spent so long walking and talking in the morning that we missed them! So we contented ourselves with wandering around the brewery, the wonderful local bookshop, the “100 shop” (local produce store - called the 100 shop as everything in it comes from within 100 miles), the coffee shop and multiple galleries. This is not some hick town! And definitely a pleasant interlude before all the hard work started, particularly after the nightmare journey.
Our stay on the Art Farm was certainly not all hard work - we had a lot of fun too. Silliness whilst cooking - one person does what they like with the food prep whilst the other plays their selected track on the “jukebox”... resulted in interesting food combinations. Amusement over online personality testing and profiling... And much entertainment provided by the resident llama. Yes, llama. Called Rio. Except in our heads he has the voice of Alan
Rickman, particularly as he looks snootily down his nose at the yapping dogs - “YOU are a dog. I am a llama. Now get out of my way small yapping thing”. Alan is the Collingwood version of the Pyrenean Mountain Dog - he scares off coyotes. And occasionally escapes onto the highway. Happily he obliged us with such an escapology act whilst we were there, which resulted in the arrival 3 cop cars (one officer helpfully pointed out he had a gun - not sure what he was intending to do with it) and the news travelling round town before Gordon had got back to the house! Good work Alan 😊
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