All posts by cottageinmuskoka

Listing

NOW SOLD! Sparrow Lake, Severn River Home/Cottage

Looking for a beautiful place that is easy to embrace? Level lot, easy drive from the GTA, fronting on the Severn River and literally a stone`s throw from Sparrow Lake, if you have a decent arm.

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Priced at $550,000.00, this four bedroom, four bathroom beauty is poised to host large parties, large families and to be the backdrop for fabulous cottage memories. You will want to live in the Muskoka Room, but there is so much more.  So many choices of venues – great room, fabulous dining room table, living room, spacious kitchen. There is a waterside deck and dock with a covered boat port. Oversize bedrooms invite pajama parties for the young and the young at heart. Located on a municipal, year `round road, make this cottage your own, or live here all year long. There’s a brand new septic system, and the place has been immaculately maintained.

The listing is available here, and be sure to see this virtual tour.

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Located on the Severn River, two cottages from Sparrow Lake, this property gives you boating access anywhere from Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay. Minutes to Lake Couchiching and Lake Simcoe, you can also head in the other direction and be in Georgian Bay in less than a day.

 

Algae, cottage life, Invasive Species, Lake Joseph, Lake Muskoka, Lake Rosseau, Muskoka Activities, Muskoka cottage life, Muskoka Lakes, Muskoka Watershed Council, Volunteer, water quality

In Muskoka, the environment is the economy. For cottagers, protecting the Muskoka watershed, protects your investment.

This is the most important thing you can do today to help protect the Muskoka watershed which gives us all so much everyday!

The Muskoka Watershed Council has launched an online campaign to bring the 2014 Watershed Report Card to life! This new user-friendly digital report card will provide information on water quality; phosphorus levels in your lake, the likelihood your lake will get algal blooms, the health of your wetlands and tons more. What is not measured cannot be managed. If you love Muskoka and care about protecting its natural beauty please get involved! There are many ways you can help:

  • Leave comments on the campaign page
    • What do you think of this project?
  • Share the link with interested friends and family members
    • Know anyone who loves our scenic environment? Fwd this email!

Please visit the campaign page for further details about this project. It is important to have active participation during the first week of the campaign, so please do what you can to share the care of this special place of rocks, trees, and especially water, that we all love. A small contribution can make a big difference to the protection of our environment. Tell us what you think of the campaign by leaving a comment on the campaign page: www.igg.me/at/StewardshipWorks.

 

We are very fortunate to have such a passionate network of people supporting our mission to champion watershed health in Muskoka and its associated watersheds.

 

Thank you!

cottage life, Muskoka Activities, Muskoka cottage life, Muskoka Watershed Council, Stewardship, Volunteer, water, water quality

Muskoka’s Lakes: The Calcium Story

Dr. Watmough explains implications of calcium losses on lake ecosystems.
Dr. Watmough explains implications of calcium losses on lake ecosystems.

As mentioned last month in this cottageinmuskoka blog entry and this news story from the Huntsville Forester (Cottage Country Now), the decline of calcium in our lakes can affect our lakes recovery from acid rain as well as zooplankton in our lakes, which are are very sensitive to declining calcium levels.

From the Muskoka Watershed Council Lecture Series I have just finished editing and have just posted this video on the Muskoka Watershed Council’s YouTube page.

This is interesting information of value not only for those who own a cottage in Muskoka, but all of us who live in or visit Muskoka. In the presentation Dr. Shaun Watmough of Trent University helps us understand:

Why should we care about calcium in the environment?

How are calcium levels in lakes, vegetation and soils changing?

What is causing these changes?

What will be the impact of timber harvesting on lake calcium levels?

What are the critical uncertainties?

Declining calcium slows the recovery of acidic lakes.
Declining calcium slows the recovery of acidic lakes.

 

 

client activities, cottage life, Lake Muskoka, Muskoka Activities, Muskoka cottage life, Stewardship, Volunteer, water quality

Reminder: The Great Muskoka Paddling Experience is this Saturday!

Even if you aren’t paddling in the event, it’s an … ahem… Great Experience to watch.
This Saturday, at Annie Williams Park in Bracebridge, come out and see why The Great Muskoka Paddling Experience has become an epic one in Ontario paddling and beyond.

https://vimeo.com/76351898

The Great Muskoka Paddling Experience generously supports the work of the Muskoka Watershed Council. Past cottageinmuskoka.ca post, and here are some additional links to published articles on the event:

– Muskoka Watershed Council media release: story
– Town of Bracebridge media release: story
– What’s Up Muskoka : story
– Muskoka Magazine: story  (scroll down a page).
– Bracebridge Weekender: story

Bracebridge, client activities, cottage life, Muskoka cottage life, Muskoka Lakes, Muskoka Watershed Council, Stewardship, Volunteer, water, water quality

Timber harvesting and the health of our lakes: The Calcium Story

©www.cottageinmuskoka.ca
©www.cottageinmuskoka.ca

Mentioned in a number of Muskoka Watershed Council lectures over the past few years, calcium decline in Muskoka Lakes and in particular, the consequences of timber harvesting on lake calcium levels have been hinted at as a potential direct cause of declining health of our lakes in Muskoka. Here’s a past primer news story from the Huntsville Forester (Cottage Country News).
This week, we have an opportunity to discover more.

Dr. Shaun Watmough, an Associate Professor in the Environmental Resource Science Program at Trent University in Peterborough will present.
Here is a synopsis of the lecture:
Decades of acid deposition have depleted soil calcium reserves and, when combined with timber harvesting, predicted losses of calcium from soil are considerable and may ultimately threaten long-term forest health and productivity and lead to negative impacts on lakes.
In this talk, Dr. Watmough will provide an overview of our current understanding of calcium biogeochemistry and describe the reasons for the widespread decline in calcium levels in lakes and the implications of calcium losses on soil fertility and forest health in addition to impacts on lake ecosystems.
With an emphasis on south central Ontario, Dr. Watmough will document a nutrient budget for a selection harvesting regime in central Ontario hardwood forests. This work is then extrapolated to regional harvesting activities and management issues are discussed.

The lecture is this Thursday, October 10, 2013 from 7:00 – 9:00 pm at Nipissing University – Muskoka Campus, 125 Wellington Street, Bracebridge, P1L 1E2. As always, admission is by donation

The link for this lecture and registration is here.

Bracebridge, Muskoka Activities, Muskoka cottage life

The Great Muskoka Paddling Experience

I’ve just finished post-processing and editing this video for the Great Muskoka Paddling Experience. This event, held annually on the Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend is a great opportunity for anyone – even if you don’t have a canoe or kayak, you can rent one there – to get out on the water for perhaps the last time of the year. It was a fun video to shoot and create and I hope it captures just how much fun the event can be.

The Great Muskoka Paddling Event benefits the Muskoka Watershed Council and helps give them a bit more of a budget to do important work. It’s a really well organized event and fun for all ages, and all levels of paddling experience.

Why don’t you try it this year?

GMPE_Flyer_v2

Algae, Muskoka Activities, Muskoka cottage life, Port Carling, Stewardship, Volunteer, water, water quality

Muskoka and Global: Environmental Good News Stories.

Did you know that Gravenhurst Bay in Lake Muskoka is 4 to 5 times cleaner than it was 1970?
Did you know that everyone alive in the 70’s had toxic levels of lead in their blood?
Did you know that Muskoka has only half as many acid lakes as it once did?
Well, how about this then: if it wasn’t for the life in lakes, we would all be blind, deaf , stupid and dead.

Dr. Norman Yan
To be blunt; we would all be blind, deaf , stupid and dead if it wasn’t for the life in lakes.

From the Muskoka Watershed Council Lecture Series I have just finished editing and have just posted this video on the Muskoka Watershed Council’s YouTube page.
Dr. Norman Yan, an extremely engaging speaker, revisits some past environmental successes, what we have learned and the steps we need to take to solve today’s environmental problems.

Phosphorous is the conrolling factor in eutrophication.

Learn how the reduction of phosphorus resulted in a clean up in Gravenhurst Bay while the International Joint Commission was still debating whether its carbon or phosphorus that spikes algal growth? This local Muskoka cleanup helped convince the world that phosphorus is the cause of cultural eutrophication. This phenomena is of increasing concern as population grows and the climate heats up; after all, we learned from this lecture, that algae really love heat.

Current photo of lake in China where people swim in an algal bloom.
Current photo of lake in China where people swim in an algal bloom.

Revisit the change to unleaded gas which got the toxic levels of lead out of our blood. Dr. Yan also discusses the many benefits of the ban on DDT, as well as the immediate benefits of the recent Ontario ban of cosmetic pesticides and herbicides. Also be sure not to miss houses disappearing from view as the Sudbury environment improves over 40 years!

cottage life, Gravenhurst, Lake Muskoka, Muskoka cottage life, Muskoka Watershed Council, Stewardship, Volunteer, water, water quality

Muskoka. Our environment is far more than our economy.

From the Muskoka Watershed Council Lecture Series I have just finished editing and have just posted this video on the Muskoka Watershed Council’s YouTube page.

All of us should be familiar with the fact that in Muskoka, our environment is our economy; over half our GDP comes from tourism and cottaging. In this lecture, Peter Sale attempts to convince us that our environment is far more than our economy.
sale

Every year some 5 billion cubic metres of water pass through Muskoka – that’s 3 1/2 times the entire volume of Lake Muskoka. Half is evaporated or transpired by Muskoka’s forests and plants, the other half – some 2.5 billion cubic metres flows into Georgian Bay. As climate change affects Muskoka – producing warmer and wetter winters, but dryer summers with more intense storms – we may be trying to find ways to hold on to that water, just a little longer; maybe the beaver has a solution for us.

wetlands 5

Peter, who describes himself as a strange, but harmless ecologist, talks about some of the many creatures in Muskoka including the beaver, the expected effects for Muskoka from climate change, an idea or two on solutions, and that there are other ways of valuing our environment other than simply to value it as a storehouse of resources to dig up and take away.

Muskoka Activities, Stewardship

Tired of environmental finger wagging? Come and hear some good news and how we can all move forward.

Wed. August 15 th at the Port Carling Community Centre at 7:00 is the latest of the Muskoka Watershed Council’s Environmental lecture series.

Did you know that Gravenhurst Bay is 5 times cleaner now than it once was? That Muskoka has only half as many acid lakes as it once did? That lead pollution, once a common environmental and human health problem, has all but disappeared? That the concentration of pesticides in the environment fell 10 to 100 fold once the cosmetic use of pesticides was banned?

We can, and often have, solved very large and complicated environmental problems that affect our health and the condition of the watersheds we share with thousands of other species. In this Muskoka Watershed Council lecture, Dr. Norman Yan will celebrate our past environmental successes by briefly reviewing the history of several good news stories. More importantly, he will talk about what we have learned from the past and the steps we need to take to solve today’s environmental problems.

We have created global environmental problems, but we have also solved environmental problems of a global scale on more than one occasion. Come learn how we can move from creating to solving such problems.

Listing

NOW SOLD! Classic Muskoka Cottage & Boathouse – Virtual Tour

895 feet of frontage on Lake Muskoka; very level with wonderful privacy.  This iconic Muskoka cottage property for sale, is definitely a rare find.

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The virtual tour is a good way to get some sense of this rare property. It’s nothing like walking the real thing though.

There’s more information on the ad details here and in this previous post.