I’d met Jim nearly twenty years earlier during a six month personal development course – that's a whole other story. He’d been watching my travels he saw that I was tracking a course towards his new home near the small town of Warkworth Ontario, population 1100, and invited me over for cocktails and conversation. On arrival, Jim immediately came out to shake my hand and without skipping a beat insisted I park the bike inside his house to escape the rain I’d been riding in. Not in the garage, not under the awning of his trailer, but through the front door and right in the middle of the living room. I haven’t parked inside someone's house since South America when theft of a foreign bike was a bit more commonplace. Up a set of wooden pallet steps wet from the rain is a brand new bright red door, Jim opens it up and tries to help me navigate through to the living room. Trying to avoid being the first to scratch the door I slowly rev my way through before getting trapped by my saddlebags. I’ll need to dismount and remove them to get the rest of the way inside. Jim holds the door, and Heather (whom I have never met) watches with reserved concern from the holiday trailer a short distance away. With a lot of revs, some crafty clutch work, and Jim keeping an eye on the door paint and my handlebars, I’m able to slide Goose into the living room without a scratch. With an engineering background and retirement-sized time on his hands, Jim figured that he and Heather could be the general contractors to build their new home, as well as do a large amount of the actual construction. My timing was perfect; I had arrived after the framing but before the floors and finishing. Tonight I would camp inside the master bedroom and Goose would sleep in the living room next to the fireplace. Ahh, just the way I like it!  Outside overlooking their hobby farm is the holiday trailer they’d been living in for the last two years while they chip away at their dream home in the country. One widowed and one divorced, Jim and Heather found themselves while trying to rebuild their lives and opted to rebuild together. Looking like a couple of smitten school kids, I’d say it was going well. They take me on a garden tour and explain they are more experimentalists than horticulturists and have been planting a variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains to see what works. Under the greenhouse canopy are Chicago Hardy & Black Mission figs, corn, peas, Dryland rice, bananas, strawberries, potatoes, cilantro, and marijuana. All your typical garden plants 🙂 As a bonus, their property included a number of sugar maples and Jim, originally from Montreal whom I’d met while he was living in Calgary, has been learning how to harvest the sap and create his own maple syrup. The tour wraps up with some explanation about how they are trying to make the house and their environment as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible. To help with this they have built a composting toilet that “flushes” with wood chips. My last composting toilet was at the home of Pascal in the frigid woods of British Columbia earlier this Spring. The pair invited me back to their trailer hitch home for dinner. They’ve been living here for so long it’s quite organized and homey. A mini bookshelf lines a small window, and there’s a framed Home Sweet Home tapestry hung on one wall giving the place a warm hug while a string of Tibetan prayer flags along the other wall emphasizes their love of exploration. Jim brings out a series of jarred goods presumably from the farm. Some crackers materialize along with some chunky antipasto from one of the jars and what looks like cheese from a farmer's market or a neighbor's house. We snack, we chat, and then from the bbq this Fred Flintstone-sized platter of meat lands on the table with an echoing thud. I can feel the vegetarian hippies from two towns away shuttering. Aside from these wonderful “meat” and greet meals, my main food supply lately has been pastas and grains from a dusty pot tied to the back of the bike. I’m all too happy to stuff my face until I’m stifling in meat sweats. The plates clear, the music shifts from dinner to dancing, and out comes a mason jar half full of an amber liquid marked “Maple Syrup, Heatherfield, 2022-16”. After experimenting with the sugar maples until he was pleased with the sweet sappy results, Jim decided to push his alchemy a bit further. After a few tipsy nights of boozy trial and error, Jim's Maple Rye Cocktail concoction had been perfected! Like a Penn & Teller magic trick, from out behind the homemade bottle of Maple Syrup, came a bottle of Centennial 10 Year Old Canadian Whisky – it’s cocktail time! One ounce of syrup meets one ounce of whiskey; in goes an ice cube half the size of the rocks glass, a quick stir ensues allowing the ice to dull the sweetness of the syrup just a little and then the glass hits my lips. I draw a long breath of air through my nose to alert my senses as the sweet and smokey bespoke desert slides across my lips chased by a hint of charred oak, then washed out by the sweet syrup – magic! I take comfort knowing that two hours from here someone in Toronto has just shelled out $300 for dinner and drinks to tell the girl across from him that she is enjoying one of the best beverages money can buy. I’m sure he’s never heard of Jim's hand-harvested Maple Rye Cocktail served trailer-side just outside of Warkworth, population 1100, but I sure have! Recipe:
In a rocks glass add equal parts of the syrup and whiskey, add the oversized ice cube, have Jim mix lightly, and enjoy over travel stories like a couple of smitten sweethearts.
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