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The golden mountains
Angry, fight the autumn winds
Turn to steel. Winter.
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Trick or Treat???
(I think God is having fun with this one!)
The snow started yesterday… and we woke up to about four inches on the ground…It is beautiful…and I’m glad Pat has a really good supply of firewood this year! We had an early frost, the nuts and leaves fell early, the squirrels started cutting hickory nuts two weeks early and we noticed that the deer turned dark very early this year - how do they know it is going to snow in October???
New York has only had three measurable snows in October since they started keeping records 135 years ago!
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Three miles
It is three miles from our house to the end of the pavement, then Upper Back Creek Road turns into a gravel road for the next seven miles. (Pat calls it “the end of the hardtop”.) Often, in the evening, we will drive to the end of the hardtop, spotting game, and just seeing what (and who!) is out and about.
One recent evening we went for our drive and spotted 41 deer, seven wild turkeys, a golden eagle and a Cooper’s hawk. Who needs dinner and a movie?!
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The day i fell off the face of the earth…
April 4, 2011. Beautiful day. Gracie & i were walking up to the sugar house when she was attacked by two dogs (a pit bull & a boxer - oh, surprise!). While i was trying to rescue Gracie, the owner of the other dogs came out, she tripped just as she got to me, knocked me over a 10’ embankment, then landed on top of my legs… and i never saw her coming! I knew i wasn’t going to walk again for a very long time…my right tibial plateau was broken - in several places… surgery, three months with no weight on my leg - but a great pedicure! (Thank you, Heidi!)
I won’t bore you with all the gory details, but now i am down to only using one crutch, and physical therapy is going well, so i am starting to resume some of my normal activities. I am just starting to drive…
Oh, and Gracie required two courses of antibiotics to overcome the infections, and her hair is just now starting to grow back in - she looked like a well-used stuffed animal! But she is thrilled that i have started walking up the driveway, again… progress!
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A Very Sweet Season!
I was planning to blog about our different sugarbushes and do an update throughout the season, but instead we were inundated with sugar water! We made a record amount of syrup (for us) and are still working on cleanup… Actually, it has been so cold (snowing again today!) the trees are still running! Finally, we had enough and decided to take off our last pan of syrup (March 18th), and when we walked in the door that evening, there was a message on the answering machine asking if we needed any more sugar water! We hate to say no, but we said, “NO!”
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Bob’s
This is our first year to open the sugar trees at Bob’s…Let me tell you about Bob Harold….Bob drove the school bus when Pat was young, and it wasn’t like any school bus you or I ever remember. Bob carried a Winchester Model 270 behind the driver’s seat, and would open the school bus door and shoot ground hogs right from the his seat. He chewed Brown’s Mule tobacco and spit into a gallon bucket stationed beside his seat. In the winter, when the roads iced up, he would stop the bus and make the kids put chains on the bus! A typical conversation on the bus, “Shut up you d..m young’uns! Ya can tell its gonna rain, y’all are raisin’ hell this evnin!’”
That was before Pat started driving the school bus - at age 16! But that is another story…
It is a pretty little sugar bush, it is flat, and the trees are too far apart for tubing, but the buckets look like they belong here. The trees are nestled right next to the creek in the shadow of Little Mountain. The rushing waters make me want to empty buckets faster, faster. But that old sugar house makes me think that if we opened the door, Bob would swear at us, and then invite us in to sit by the fire and tell stories while the sap boiled.
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It’s Maple Season!
They say that Maple Season starts when the crows start to caw in the springtime… everything is right on schedule this year!! Yesterday, a flock of seven crows flew overhead just squawking their hearts out, like they could SEE the warm weather just around the corner…
And we are tapping our trees! So far, we have tapped our sugarbush, Bob’s, Gibby’s and Thorstad’s. Pat is trying something new this year - Stubbies! These new two-part spiles include a check valve… Let me explain - For a sugar tree to run, the sap is pushed up and out because of the pressure within the tree. When the sap stops running (due to below freezing temperatures) the negative pressure draws sap back into the tree. These new spiles were developed (in Vermont, of course!) with a check valve which helps maple syrup production in two ways: 1. It keeps the sap from running backward, thereby increasing sap production and 2. Bacteria in the sap will close the tap-hole, keeping the bacteria out of the tree keeps the tap-hole open longer. I’ll let you know what happens. Right now we are just waiting for this cold front to pass through…
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“White is not a mere absence of color, it is a shining and affirmative thing; as fierce as red, as definite as black.”
G. K. Chesterton, English philosopher
Back Creek was definitely “shining” last week!
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There is something lonesome and cold, yet warm and beautiful about old barns in the snow… shelter from the storm? or is it my love of black and white? It is the man-made totally enhanced by the creative hand of God… Every time it snows i run outside to take more pictures of barns… one time, Pat & i drove all the way to Bath County through about 2 feet of snow, just taking pictures! (Unfortunately, that was pre-digital!)
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I was fascinated by this shell-covered orb which Christina picked up at a thrift shop! And it looked so beautiful with her frosty Christmas decorations… millions of little crustacean homes… what will become of our home when we don’t need it any more? “I think we would do better to view reality not as something permanent. It is, really, you see, the petals of a flower that exist for now - today - until God’s holy breath and will poof them all away.” Laurie Beth Jones
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