Anything But Blue (winter getaway packages to smile about)

Fern Glen Inn • www.ferngleninn.blogspot.com

What's all this about "Blue Monday"? The expression has been in the news for the past couple days with the pundits telling us we have a lot to be miserable about. 

Apparently, the third Monday in January (coined Blue Monday) is the most depressing day of the year. A scientist calculated this date with a formula based on post-holiday debt, broken New Year's resolutions and the weather. Hmmm. The scientist and pundits should have spent Blue Monday here before blasting a fine winter day.

Like many January days, it was beautiful, sunny and exhilarating. The only thing 'blue' about it was the sky! It did start out quite cold, I will admit, but by the afternoon it had warmed up to comfortable snowshoeing temperatures.

Snowshoeing and other winter activities also address the problem of broken resolutions. On January 1st many people resolve to exercise more, get fit, and take better care of themselves. That doesn't just mean going to the gym and eating rabbit food. The best forms of exercise are the ones that feel like play and get you moving muscles you forgot you had (oh, you'll feel the effects of dog sledding, tobogganing and skiing the next day). For good health, fuel your body with a wholesome, colourful, well-balanced breakfast (we've got that covered, too!).

Another reason to smile this time of year: winter getaway packages. A few days away to relax or play in a winter wonderland will lift spirits and recharge batteries without breaking the bank. There's no need to take a whole week off work or add up all the fees and surcharges of air travel — not when a weekend road trip fits into most budgets and schedules.

We'd love to show you how wonderful January (and all winter) days can be here at Fern Glen Inn. To make it easy, I've listed three popular winter getaway packages that will have you feeling anything but blue.

Snowshoe with your Sweetheart

Sweep your sweetie away for some quality time together, far removed from the pace and pressures of everyday life. Getaway Package includes:

• two nights accommodation
• breakfast both mornings
• use of snowshoes and trails on site
• hot chocolate, bath bubbles, and a box of gourmet chocolate truffles from the Nutty Chocolatier

$269/couple*

Country Winter Getaway

Experience the best of winter in the country. Snowshoe private trails, whoosh down a toboggan hill, warm up by the fire with hot chocolate and biscotti. Play, explore, unwind, then end your day with a delicious dinner at the inn. Getaway Package includes:

• two nights accommodation
• breakfast both mornings
• use of snowshoes and trails on site
• gourmet hot chocolate, homemade biscotti
• dinner at the inn one evening

$299/couple* 

Discover more winter activities in Muskoka and Almaguin to enjoy during your getaway.

*Prices do not include applicable tax. Add $10/room/night for long weekends and holidays.

Book your Winter Getaway online at www.ferngleninn.availability.ca (mention package in the notes section). Or email or call us for more information.

Winter Events in Muskoka & Almaguin

Fern Glen Inn • www.ferngleninn.blogspot.com

Winter is a great time to visit the area. There are loads of fun winter activities to keep you busy and laughing all winter long, as well as scheduled events to make your visit even more special.


We'll add more events as we hear of them. If you have a winter event in Muskoka or Almaguin for us to share, send us an email.


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Banff Mountain Film Festival
Huntsville
Be inspired and exhilarated by films that take you around the world, to the tops of mountains and down raging rivers. From adrenaline-fueled action sports, to an exploration of wild landscapes and remote mountain cultures, the films in this year's Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour are sure to captivate the explorer within you.
Algonquin Outfitters is the host for the tour's stop at Huntsville's Algonquin Theatre. Two evenings of shows. Discount at the Algonquin Outfitters store for people attending both shows.
Festival Special: Stay two nights at Fern Glen Inn and attend at least one night of the festival and get $30 off your stay. That's the cost of two tickets!
For descriptions of the films, visit the Algonquin Outfitters blog. Purchase tickets online from Algonquin Theatre.
Jan 18 & 19


Muskoka Loppet
Arrowhead Park
A classic ski tradition at Arrowhead Park just north of Huntsville. 15 km and 30 km classic events; 3 km and 9 km individual and relay snowshoe events; 5 km classic for social skiers. Visit the Arrowhead Nordic Club website for details.
Jan 23


Canadian National Pond Hockey Championship
Huntsville
Teams from across North America come to compete for two weekends of outdoor pond hockey. For info on registering your team, volunteering your time, or schedule of events, visit the Canadian National Pond Hockey website.
Jan 28 - 30, Feb 4 - 6


Family Fun Day
Oxtongue Lake
An activity-packed day with something for everyone. Winter games, ski lessons, winter camping demos, camp fire, door prizes and more. Located at the Algonquin Outfitters Oxtongue Lake store. Visit Algonquin Outfitters for details.
Feb 12


Valentine's Day
Fern Glen Inn
The best gift you can give your sweety is some time away with you! We think any getaway here at Fern Glen Inn is special, but if you want to add some extra treats, order our Snowshoe with Your Sweetheart package. The package includes 2 nights accommodations, breakfast both mornings, a box of gourmet chocolate truffles, and bath bubbles. Every winter stay includes complimentary use of snowshoes to enjoy on our trails. Book online or email us for details.
Feb 14


February Long Weekend
Fern Glen Inn
Make the most of your mid-winter break by getting out of the city and coming out to play in the snow! Go snowshoeing and tobogganing (complimentary on site), hand-feed the chickadees or unwind by a real wood fire. This weekend always fills up so reserve your room soon. Visit www.ferngleninn.com.
Feb 18 - 21

No-Bake Butterscotch Noodle Cookies

Fern Glen Inn • www.ferngleninn.blogspot.com

If the clock is ticking and you need to whip up a batch of sweets to have on hand for holiday visitors or to bring to a party, you've found the right recipe.


These cookies are a family favourite. More than that, they are family Christmas tradition. My mom has made these every year for the holiday season for as long as I can remember. They may not be as pretty or as festive-looking as many shaped, decorated and colourful cookies you'll find on many dessert trays and tins, but they are soooo good. Be warned: It's impossible to eat just one!


Quick and easy to make, these cookies require no chilling, rolling, cutting or baking. Just mix the dry ingredients, cook the wet ingredients in a pot, then mix together and drop by the spoonful onto waxed paper. They take a bit of time to set, but not long. They keep well so you can make them weeks ahead if you're one of those well-organized people; and they're quite sturdy, making them easy to transport.


Another nice thing about these cookies is they are great to make with kids (or grown-up kids). When I was home to visit my family recently, I pitched in with my mom, my nephew and his friend and we all helped make a big double batch of these. Mom sent a package of them home for Jim and I, but they didn't last long around here!


I asked Mom if she would mind sharing her recipe with the world, and she was happy to oblige. I hope you enjoy them as much as my family does.


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Butterscotch Noodle Cookies 
The crispy noodles, sweet butterscotch and crunchy nuts are an addictive mix. For a chocolate noodle cookie variation, replace the butterscotch chips with chocolate chips. Recipe can be doubled.

3 to 4 cups chow mien noodles, broken so the pieces are about 1” long
1 1/2 to 2 cups chopped nuts (best are pecans)
2/3 cup solid honey (not the liquid kind)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 300 gram package butterscotch chips
50 – 75 grams pure chocolate chips
 
Place the noodles and nuts in a large bowl.
Place the butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil.  Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla, butterscotch and chocolate chips until the chips have melted and the mixture is smooth.  Pour over the noodles and nuts.  Stir with a large wooden spoon to coat the dry ingredients.  Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper and leave to harden up.  Place in an airtight container.  Enjoy.

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Thanks Mom!!!

Secret to Winter Happiness

I have discovered the secret to a happy winter, and it can be summed up in just two words: fleece longjohns. (Or should that be three words?)

Actually, any kind of thermal underwear will do, but I find fleece is particularly high on the happiness scale. There's something about the feel of the soft, fuzzy fabric against bare skin that signals pure contentment. Perhaps it echoes the secure, snuggly nature of childhood pyjamas. In any case, fleece longjohns (or FLJ's, as I like to call them) are my new favourite winter gear.

If fleece isn't your thing, there are all sorts of light- and mid-weight base layers available in a variety of natural and synthetic fabrics. Choose something with warmth in mind but also in a fabric that will breathe and will wick moisture away from your skin. This means NO COTTON! Cotton kills, as the saying goes, because it absorbs moisture, holding it against your skin and leaving you clammy and chilled.

An extra layer of warmth means you can make the most of winter. People know to dress in layers for activities such as snowshoeing, skiing, and tobogganning; but for winter happiness all season long, don't just don your FLJ's (or other thermal underwear) when you're going out to play. They'll also keep you warm and comfortable as you go about your regular day... waiting for public transit, traversing a mall parking lot, walking the dog.

The lighter-weight technical fabrics aren't bulky or too hot, so you can wear them under your regular clothes and forget they're there. FLJ's can be worn under a skirt for the trek to work and are easily slipped off once you're at the office. Just because you'll only be outside briefly, en route to wherever you're going, doesn't mean you have to suffer the cold.

As I like to say (again and again): There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. If you add appropriate apparel when the temperature drops—as it has in many parts of the country lately—you can not only endure the season, you can actually enjoy it!

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You can find thermal underwear at many department and chain stores, such as Canadian Tire and Mark's Work Wearhouse; and at specialty outdoor stores such as Mountain Equipment Co-op and from our friends in Huntsville at Algonquin Outfitters.

Find out how to keep your feet warm by choosing the right winter boots. Learn about how to dress for dog sledding and other winter activities, too.

What about the chickens?

The question on everyone's mind is "what do you do with the chickens in the winter?". Okay, maybe it's not on everyone's mind, and it's not likely keeping you up at night, but it is a question we're frequently asked by friends and guests. And since this is our first winter with the ladies, we've had to do some leg work to figure it out.


Since our chickens are layers and not meat birds—ie. we got them for their eggs and not for the roasting pan—we'll keep them over the winter and not send them off to the local abattoir. Knowing this, we built the hen house with our heavy winters in mind. (Before Jim rolls his eyes all the way out of his head, I should clarify that when I say we built the hen house, I mean Jim and our neighbour, Bob, built the hen house.) 


It's a compact coop, the idea being that we could move it around to different parts of the yard, but it ended up being so heavy we can't budge it without Bob's tractor. The reason? It has more insulation per square inch than our own house! It's also positioned in a nicely sheltered spot, protected from the prevailing west winds and with some southern exposure. 


Insulation and location aren't enough, though. Chickens' feathers are great for keeping their bodies warm, but apparently their feet and crowns are susceptible to frostbite. Plus, the coop has to be warm enough to keep their drinking water from freezing. So we added heat with a simple 175w red heat bulb. It looks a bit like a club scene, but it makes for a nice warm coop and the ladies seem to be happy.


For now, we're still giving them access to their outdoor pen, and they're often outside regardless of the weather. Soon, though, the snow will be too deep and the really cold temperatures will settle in. Then we'll have to keep the girls in all day, every day. I guess this is where the expression "cooped up" comes from. We're thinking of getting them some cat toys so they don't get bored. Really.


They do have a window for some natural light, but Jim's planning on rigging up another light fixture—one with a plain, white bulb—that we can turn on during the day so the ladies aren't just in the dark red light all the time.

Egg production will drop and eventually stop for the winter. Partly due to the shorter daylight hours and partly to the stress of the cold, but for now we're still getting 6 eggs a day. That's one from each hen. Our neighbours up the road have 26 hens and they've already slowed down to less than 10 eggs a day. This could mean our ladies are spoiled, pampered chooks. But that's fine by me. You go girls!

Popular Picks

We have a rather eclectic selection of books available in the guest lounge and it's interesting to see which ones are popular with our guests. For instance, we often find the Book of Dog Breeds left out on the table or couch. Who knew it would be such a riveting read? 


I think because many visits are too short to start and finish a book from cover to cover (especially when readers are spending part of their time out exploring), the most popular books are those which don't require a big commitment of time. Collections of short stories, essays, anthologies, comic strips, poems, lists and how-to's.

Guests with a literary bent enjoy browsing through short stories from critically acclaimed authors such as Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, and Anais Nin. These we find on night stands and beside muskoka chairs. We also have some sci-fi/fantasy anthologies for short fiction to really take you away from daily life.


Some folks opt for lighter fare. The Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side volumes are popular and always good for a laugh. Non-fiction collections of lists and Canadiana must be great to read out loud and share as they're often found on the coffee table in the Coop. Books of lists and trivia are great to spark some interesting conversations with your travel mates. 


Bite-size reads can be the perfect way to unwind on a short getaway, but don't worry if what you're really craving is a good, meaty story. We tell our guests if they start one of our paperback novels while they're here, they're welcome to take it home to finish. Hopefully they'll pass it along to another reader when they're finished. Good books, like so may pleasures in life, are best when they're shared.

Recommended Reading for a Backwoods Getaway

Since November is the perfect month for a book-lover's getaway, I thought I'd share some of my favourite reads with you. The list of 'Books I've Loved Before' is far too long to trot out in its entirely, so I've chosen a handful that seem to me suitable companions for a quiet getaway here at the inn.


Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast
by Bill Richardson
An obvious choice since it is about a (fictional) B&B, the brothers who own it (Hector and Virgil), their "gentle and bookish and ever so slightly confused" guests, and a cast of local characters. Originally published in 1993, The Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. Author Bill Richardson spins his tales with a wonderfully Canadian warmth and wit. Every time I read about Hector and Virgil, I want to check in and spend a week under their roof.


Crow Lake
by Mary Lawson
Set in an agricultural pocket of northern Ontario's Canadian Shield, Crow Lake is the story of a family touched by unexpected loss and the ripples of that loss through their lives. Canadian-born author Mary Lawson captures the multi-faceted spirit of a stoic yet compassionate northern community, resisting the urge to paint with broad strokes. It's easy to forget the book is fiction; I saw glimpses of my own family roots and values in her story.


Under the Tuscan Sun
by Frances Mayes
The non-fiction memoirs of an American writer who buys and restores an abandoned villa in Tuscany, Italy. Author Frances Mayes takes us with her on her incredible journey and shares with us the challenges, triumphs and tastes along the way. The book resonates with anyone who has ever followed a dream that others might call a folly; and it inspires those who have yet to take such chances. Mayes also shares her love of food and some authentic Italian recipes.


The Day of the Triffids
by John Wyndham
I found this book here when we moved in and read it that same winter. Perhaps reading about walking, carnivorous plants while isolated and surrounded by vast amounts of trees is not the brightest of ideas, but it certainly made an impression on me. First published in 1951, some aspects of the story are perhaps a bit dated, but it still provides a fascinating "what if" scenario that is excellent fodder for conversation when you're sitting by a fire in a little cabin in the woods.


Through Black Spruce
by Joseph Boyden
A beautifully told story that belongs on any reader's list, I add it here for its rendering of the north. Author Joseph Boyden creates a vivid picture of Northern Ontario at the southern tip of James Bay and the people who call that land home. The characters and the landscape come to life, making me yearn to sit down beside protagonist Will Bird and learn what he knows, to share in his world. The story lingered long after I turned the last page.


Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw
by Will Ferguson
A wonderful, insightful, humourous collection of essays about this collection of places and people we call Canada. Author Will Ferguson shares his experiences from various outposts across the country, tying together the threads of our colourful national fabric. A great book for getting Canadians to look at ourselves, and a great look inside for visitors to the country.


All of these titles (and more!) are available to borrow during your bookish getaway. Or bring your own selection and recommendations for me to add to my ever-growing "must read" list!