Cabin Fever Contemplations

Make it stop.  Please.

The snow just slid off the roof of the house, its own mini avalanche, rattling these old windows and freaking out the cats and causing a vibration under my feet. 

It’s April 9.  This is uncalled for.  I’d call Mother Nature a b____, but she seems peeved about something already and I don’t want to antagonize her further.

A couple of days ago I was lamenting the bog that I call a driveway.  It happens every spring, and to most of the Adirondacks, and although at the time it seems unrelenting, it does go away.  As I look at everything covered in a couple inches of snow and sleet today, the mud would be a welcome sight.  That’s what I get for grousing.

Since leaving my day job at the end of the year, I’ve spend a lot of quality time with our woodstove.  I’ve concluded that when it’s a secondary source of heat, it’s fun to futz with wood and nice to smell the smoke.  But when you’re counting on it for your survival in sub-zero temperatures, it loses its luster.  By April, I can’t stand dealing with it anymore and curse profoundly at every piece of wood that doesn’t quite fit.  I’m resentful of the 24/7 commitment it demands and tired of smelling like a piece of charred wood. 

Because we got off to a late start on the firewood this fall (due to the house painting project), Larry cut nothing but ash.  I love it because it splits so nicely.  And you can burn it green, which was the plan.  It’s burned very well for us, considering it only had minutes to age.

Our new house in Mississippi has two fireplaces, and I’m trying not to be elitist towards them.  One has glass doors and was obviously used more regularly than the other one.  Neither are intended to be a real source of heat, but should be useful in getting the chill out on those damp days.  I haven’t used a fireplace since our camp in Lake George, so in yet another aspect, I’m coming full circle.  The smell and sound of a freshly stuck wooden match still reminds me of my grandfather.

I debated whether or not to bring the woodsplitter south.  For a brief insane moment I 

considered selling it, and ran the idea past Larry, who looked at me like I’d lost my mind.  What was I thinking?  We’ll always be playing with firewood.  Larry loves to drop trees and work with his chainsaws and I find splitting to be very zen.

Meanwhile I’m grateful for having a warm, toasty house, the fact that we had more than enough firewood to get us through the winter, and I’ll welcome the mud when it resurfaces.  I don’t want to irritate Mother Nature any further.

It's (Gonna Be) the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

This year Larry decided we should be pumpkin ranchers.

In search of a garden goodie that would not take a ton of maintenance yet yield an easily

Yikes!

salable product, he planted all pumpkins in the front garden.  Their leaves have now exploded, literally filling the garden, and blossoms are visible.  

The blueberries out back, after doing squat the last few years and being afflicted by some sort of creeping crud last season, are bearing beautiful fruit.  Larry also planted a few beets, cabbage for his sauerkraut (oh, the humanity) and basil because what’s summer without fresh basil and mozzarella salad?

This past winter’s long, icy grip is a not very distant memory.  When the sweat is running down my back, I remind myself of how I couldn’t get close enough to the woodstove last winter.  I will not complain about the heat this year.  Not once.  It’s become a personal challenge.  Anyone who hears me do so has my permission to slap me.

Our big news is that we’ve put the house on the market in anticipation of Larry getting a job transfer and moving to warmer climes.  In an effort to look more mainstream, we mowed our yard this year.  I admit, it does look nice.  I left a few pockets of wildflowers, where they were actually in greater population than grass or weeds.  They provide pretty bursts of color.  I wouldn’t exactly call what we have a lawn, more like evenly cut green stuff, which, from a distance, could pass for a lawn.  To my dismay, it all grows pretty fast.  I’ve gotten back into the lawnmower groove, which is good exercise.

The front of the house has been power washed, scraped and repainted, and the porch has been reroofed to match the rest of the house (kudos to Larry for working like a dog on all this).  Rehab projects take forever when you’re chipping away at them on weekends.  The painting of the porch seemed like the never ending story and I wouldn’t wish painting lattice on my worst enemy.

When it was done, though, Larry couldn’t stop admiring how much better it all looked.  “We should have done this years ago,” he said, and it was hard to disagree.  We didn’t because we were always too busy working out back on pastures, which have gone by the wayside this year.

And we still have our Final Five chickens.  Tough old broads, they are.  They’ve become fixtures, following us around and gracing us with one to three eggs a day.  

I’m enjoying the yard more this year – futzing with my perennials and doing small yard projects I haven’t had the time to do before.  I don’t have the niggling guilt in the back of my mind that I’m not doing enough with the horses, because they’re out of my equation.  I’m getting the itch to ride again, but it’s not a burning desire.  At least, not yet, not here.  I’m not sure where I’m at with that right now.

Meantime, we’re enjoying our summer immensely – watching the gardens grow, giving the house some long overdue sprucing up, enjoying our time together right here, right now.  And oh yeah, we need to cracking on firewood.  So I can huddle up to the woodstove next winter.

A Visit to the Adirondack Meat Company

Big doings around town lately has been the opening of the Adirondack Meat Company, a processing plant (slaughterhouse) in Ticonderoga.  Local producers of local meat have had to go to Eagle Bridge or other fairly distant locales to have their animals butchered for sale.  AMC provides a much needed service in our area.  

Their primary focus is threefold, according to owner Pete Ward:  Humane treatment of the animals, sanitation and profitability. 
  
AMC processes beef, pork, goats and sheep.  To butcher buffalo, elk, etc. they need an exotic animal license, which they don’t have at this time.  They also don’t butcher poultry, so my girls are safe for now. 

It’s wonderful to see how a new local business is taking off, and what they’ll provide to the community in the way of jobs, and a delicious end product.  A retail store is in the works as well. 

Larry and I took a tour of the facility during their open house and received a valuable lesson in processing.  Before taking the tour, I had a broad understanding of how the animal gets from Point A (animal) to Point B (barbeque).  And here is, I believe, the opportunity for real learning.  

In brief, the animal comes in from the holding pen into the kill room, where its dismembered and gutted.  It then goes to a cooling room when the carcass temperature is lowered to approximately 39 degrees.  From there it goes to an aging room, where it stays for an average of 7-10 days. 

At that point, the carcass is cut into specific pieces parts and packaged.  Some is turned into ground meat.  It all ends up in the cooler for either pick up by the customer or for direct sale to the public. 

While it was awesome to understand the entire process, I found the kill room the most interesting.  Here’s where things really happen.   

A participant on the tour asked if someone could be in the kill room when the action was taking place, say someone who brings in their animal for their own personal consumption, and wants to watch the process.  The answer was no; only the processors and the USDA inspector are allowed in the kill room.  Understandable.   

But this is the opportunity to really educate people.   

I would like to put in the Suggestion Box that AMC install a viewing lounge adjacent to the kill room.  Bring in school groups for field trips – particularly little kids, educate them early - and let them see how this part of their nutrition pyramid comes to fruition.  Call it “Meet Your Meat Day.”  The permission slip sent home for parents to sign could have a smiling cartoon hot dog and hamburger on it, symbolic of some childhood innocence about to come to an abrupt end. 

Before it was a hamburger or hot dog, it was a critter on four legs coming in from the holding pen, none the wiser.  Then it becomes a hanging carcass, with its heart, liver and lungs on one tray and its head on another, to be inspected by the USDA.  Its hide is skillfully peeled back so as to not contaminate the meat, its hocks removed and innards eviscerated and put in a refrigerated holding tank, to be collected for rendering.  

I’m reminded of one of the few episodes of Duck Dynasty I’ve been exposed to. Phil Robertson graphically demonstrates for a group of elementary school kids how to dismember a duck.  Later, as he recounts the event to his wife, he says “And that’s when the little girls started to squeal.” 

I imagine there would be a lot of squealing going on in the viewing lounge at AMC.  Some of it would probably be coming from me.  But that’s okay.  Nobody ever said reality was pretty.  It is tasty, though.

Click on this link to learn more about the Adirondack Meat Company.

When All Else Fails, Wait for Mom

Chicken tracks in the snow are adorable.

It looks like little dinosaurs have traveled around your house, which isn’t so far from the truth.  

The girls seriously dislike the snow.  I can open the door to the coop in the morning after a snowfall and they look out with an attitude of “Yeah, well, no.”  Only after I have cleared or packed the path a bit will they start to come out.

One of their favorite hangouts is underneath the porch of the house.  There the dirt is sandy, loose and begging to be dug into.  In the summer it’s a great spot because it’s cool.  In the winter its appeal is that it’s loose dirt amongst nothing but frozen ground and this annoying, cold white stuff.  

With the weather we’ve had this winter – some snow, lots of rain that becomes ice – the chickies have stayed around their coop.  Over the summer they kept me company as I convalesced on the porch, by hanging out in the front yard, working their way up the porch steps until I yelled at them, and roosting on the pioneer fence.  They endeared themselves to me on a whole new level.  Because they were only five of them, personalities became distinct. 

We still have Wheezy, the chicken I nursed back to health after a weasel attack several years ago.  There’s Broody, the only one out of the original flock who has shown any inclination to set on eggs.  She’s the smallest and Queen of the Coop.  There’s Spot, named only because she has a dark spot on her lower eyelid that’s noticeable. The other two are indistinct – sorry – and nameless.  They're all hale and hearty and coming through the winter in great condition.

A few weeks ago, the girls started coming down the path through the snow and going under the porch again.  When I came home for lunch, I’d hear them coo under the stairs and sometimes they'd stick their heads out looking for a treat.  The other day they got the motherlode of my failed attempt at King Cake, devouring it with great relish.  I know I'm supporting negative behavior with positive reinforcement (pestering me for treats and getting cake for their trouble), but I’m beginning to feel sorry for them given the winter we’ve been having.

One day last week, as dusk was approaching, I looked out the kitchen window and saw three chickens by the woodpile.  It was an odd place for them to be hanging out.  Usually by that time of the day, they have instinctively put themselves on their roosts in the coop for the night.  I threw on my coat and went outside.

It had snow lightly but constantly all day, and the ground was covered with about four inches of very light, fluffy snow.  I saw a set of chicken tracks come out from under the porch, pick up the path, and make the left turn between the trailer and woodsplitter to go down the path to their coop.  But these three birds somehow – maybe snowblindness, maybe the depth of the snow threw them off – missed the turn and continued straight just a few more feet, to the other side of the woodsplitter, and ended up in a dead end area by the woodpile.

Even they knew they were in the wrong spot.  They just couldn’t figure out how to get to the right spot.  

I was going to herd them around the corner and down the path.  But as I approached them, they didn’t move.  Two things had happened:  the magical chicken bewitching hour where it’s bed time and they stay wherever they happen to be for the night, and (I think) they had gotten very cold, up to their chicken thighs in the snow, as they all had one leg curled up underneath their bodies like little black and white flamingos.

So I had the opportunity to do something very rare.  I reached down and picked up Wheezy and tucked her under my arm.  She didn’t put up a fight.  I picked up Broody, who flapped for a second but then gave it up, and tucked her to my midsection, holding her against Wheezy and me with my arm.  Then I reached down and one-armed a No Name and brought her to nestle with the other two.  I officially had an armful of chickens.  For a second I thought they would do their usual chicken freak-out at being held, but then I realized they felt content.  They were warming up.  They relaxed.  They felt secure.

I carried my load of poultry to the coop and gently put them on the floor.  The other two chickens (who obviously had the smarts to find their way back earlier in the day) were on the roost and looked at them like “Where were you idiots?”  Wheezy fluffed up her feathers.  Broody got something to eat.  No Name gave me a blank, tilted-head look.

Lots of people laugh at chickens’ goofiness, and all animals have their amusing moments.  But when you have animals in your life, the moments that really have meaning are when you have those times of connection, of when you know they trust you.  I've had many with horses over the years.

Chickens aren’t particularly cuddly, at least mine aren’t.  But having that opportunity to “rescue” them (and there have been others) and hold them to me for a few minutes was a reminder of how the universe is a sum of its parts, and to appreciate those moments.

It's nice to help out when someone takes a wrong turn.

Let Go or Be Dragged

Hello 2014, you shiny faced little pixie you. You have no idea how happy I am to see you here. Your predecessor 2013 was a little harsh, and not just on me. Lots of folks had a rough year. On the 30 Acre Wood, she lulled me into a false sense of security for the first five months of the year, and then let loose with the big smackdown.

I’m won’t say it wasn’t necessary, but it was a little heavy handed. Yes, she got my attention. After the pain subsided and I was done being an angry bee and the pity party was over, I began to see the point she was trying to make.

Ignore your deepest feelings at your own peril.  I had been fighting the feeling that the horses weren't working out for us, but I refused to recognize it or acknowledge it. 

When you’re stuck on being identified with or as something, even if it’s just in your own mind, giving it up can be a mental impossibility, which turns into a physical impossibility. But the universe knows better.  And the universe always gets her way.  If you’re not paying attention, she drops the subtleties. And the next thing you know, you’re lying on the trail with a broken leg and your horse is gleefully galloping away from you.

Sometimes you need to let go, even if it’s wrenched from your hand. What once filled your soul may not be working for you anymore, for whatever reason. If you’re holding too tight to something, even if it’s no longer serving you, you can’t hold anything else. That can be self limiting at best and mentally crippling at worst.

Life After Horses has been a major adjustment, but it’s beginning to feel alright. Larry and I have had the opportunity to do more things and travel more freely, and that feels wonderful. The universe pried my hand open to make me let go, and now that my hand is beginning to uncramp, I’m able to hold other things.

This spring we may get some beef calves, to keep the pastures from going feral and to fill the freezer in the fall. A new batch of chicks may inhabit the coop. I’m looking forward to finally tackling some of the yard projects I’ve been trying to get to for several years now, without feeling guilty for taking that time away from the horses. And who knows – horses may very well indeed be in our future. Sometimes you need to take a breather to come back to something with renewed passion and joy.

What do you need to let go of, that’s no longer serving you? Join the Bona Fide Butterflies at their "Letting Go" retreat on January 24-26, 2014 at the beautiful Glen Lodge in Warrensburg, to explore what you may need to release in your life and how to move forward.  Best of all, it will be in a playful, friendly and relaxing weekend with kindred spirits. Trust me, it’ll be easier and a lot more fun than breaking your leg.

 

 

Baking Bad

Larry often says that cooking is interpretive and experimental, but baking is like chemistry – you have to have the ingredients just right, or it doesn’t work out.

I’ve never been much of a cook. I have a few culinary tricks up my sleeve, but for the most part my food preparation is utilitarian in nature. If I were a single woman, I’d probably live on bologna sandwiches and Captain Crunch. Fortunately for me, Larry enjoys cooking and usually takes the helm in the kitchen.

Once in a while, though, I get an urge to bake, especially in the fall. I found a recipe for Impossible Pumpkin Cookies that, despite their name, seemed pretty easy. After starting to mix the ingredients, however, I realized I had purchased a can of sweetened milk and not condensed milk. There was no conversion or swapping mentioned in my standby Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. So I called my friend and baking guru, Dianne Johnstone.

 

Dianne said no, you really can’t use one in place of the other, and there wasn’t any real workaround. She asked what I was making and I said Impossible Pumpkin Cookies, the impossible part apparently being the cook’s ability to pick up the right ingredients from the store.

In the end, the cookies proved impossible for me, as they had a weird timeframe of cooking 10 minutes, then sitting out for 10 minutes, then going in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Behind the eight ball now because of having to run to the store again and having to be somewhere shortly, I fudged the time sitting to 5 minutes and time in the fridge to half a day. Let’s just say the chickens were the beneficiaries of that particular attempt.

 

This weekend I had a herd of bananas on my counter that were growing blacker by the day, slowly inching their way towards the compost pail. I decided to wash the dead bugs out of my bread pans and try some banana bread. I utilized the basics of a new recipe in my cookbook with some of my favorite components from a banana muffin recipe.
 

But when I started putting all the dry ingredients in the bowl I realized I was looking at the wrong recipe in the cookbook (I have GOT to get new glasses), so I pulled out a pinch of what looked like the baking powder here and some of what looked like the baking soda there. Instead of one monster loaf, I split it between two pans and hoped for the best. I warned Larry this was a compilation recipe, there were no guarantees.
 

To my surprise, they came out great – no small feat for me - cooked through perfectly, moist and delicious, as good banana bread should be. Welcome Fall! Sometimes mad science in the kitchen wields wonderfully tasty results.

It's Not Easy Being Green

The beginning of June usually marks the start of peak growth season. I had just put down an initial bed of mulch around my three front flower beds and the perennial bed I planted last year. And then I broke my leg and it rained and turned hot. Things grew. And grew.

Larry is the anti-lawnmower man. As in, he hates to mow. In the 10+ years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him use the lawnmower. It was part of his incentive to rototill the entire yard and plant wildflower seed when he first bought the house. It’s been successful in varying degrees. The front of the house has fared the best, with really beautiful growth, but last year the backyard bore more grasses and weeds than anything.

Regardless, I've always mowed my little paths through the jungle - across the front of the 

Front yard flowers - my perennial
bed is in there somewhere

house and around the gardens, which gave things some semblance of order and neatness. Last year I put paver stones around two of the front flower beds and erected little pioneer fences behind my perennial grasses and the new perennial flower bed.

But this year I've been stuck in a chair watching the grass grow. And the weeds grow. With no taming in sight. Larry had his hands full helping me out, taking care of everything house-wise and working. I didn’t have the heart to whine to him about the yard.  He enjoys his vegetable gardens; the rest of the yard, who cares?

This spring Larry bought a 4' brush hog attachment for the tractor for the back pastures. It sat next to the barn, waiting for its maiden voyage into the back 40.

As the yard grew exponentially with the rain and angst began to show on my face, Larry  

Stupid chicken! Get out
of my flower bed!

offered to mow around the house – with the brush hog.

I didn’t want to seem unappreciative. I didn’t want to discourage him. But I could not quite visualize how this would work. A 4’ brush hog really isn’t destined for footpaths around the house. It's not a finesse tool. I had visions of everything within a 50’ radius of the house being mascerated, with flower heads flying everywhere.

Larry hooked the brush hog up to the tractor and started it up. I heard him drive behind the house, put the brush hog in gear, and lumber along with the occasional hair-raising sounds of rocks being chiseled. The man was undaunted.

He came around the side of the house, by the garden. He got close to the fence, mowed the high vegetation there. But he never came around to the front of the house.

An hour later, the tractor went quiet and Larry appeared, sweaty and with little green bits of vegetation sticking to him. "Well," he said, "That was kinda like using a 20 pound sledge to hammer in a finishing nail."

 

Back garden

Minutes later, to my shock, I heard the lawnmower rev up, and he made a very quick pass across the front of the house. This weekend, he weed-whacked along the back garden fence, which was all but invisible behind tall grass. He spent hours weeding in his gardens, making the wonderful vegetables he grows suddenly stand out and shine.  I managed to get on my hands and knees Saturday and weeded three of the flower beds, which was very satisfying.

 

Front garden

Things are still a little rough and shaggy looking, but as Larry says, "Hey, it's the Adirondacks."

The View from the Porch

I’ve done a lot of porch sitting this year. Our house in Schroon Lake has a small but cozy screened-in porch, with barely enough room for four chairs and a mismatched table. Three of the chairs are original rattan pieces from our summer house in Lake George - long bleached like desert bones and slowly unraveling, but loved just the same. When you sit and are still, you learn a lot about your immediate surroundings.

Being in a forced sedentary position for most of June, I learned about my cats’ daily routine. When they aren’t sleeping or shedding or simultaneously sleeping and shedding, they are bringing small mammals, birds and amphibians into the house. One morning Augie came trotting into the driveway not once, not twice, but three times with two long legs dangling from her mouth - frogs snatched from the wetlands next door. No matter how loud you yell "NO!!!," if a cat knows you’re not getting up and coming after them, you will be ignored.

I access our second floor by going up and down on my butt, step by step. The stairs are steep and narrow - normal by 1890's building standards - and I don’t have the patience or skill to use the crutches on them. The other day as I was making my way up, I was suddenly face to face with a frog on a step. It looked at me with an expression of "pleasejustgetmeouttahere..."

But back to the porch. A pile of books on the floor has slowly sprouted next to my chair. An assortment of magazines, notebooks, writing implements and Nalgene bottles clutter the table. I’ve never been much for retail therapy, but I gleefully bought new cushions for the chairs to perk things up and cope with the impression left by my butt.

From my vantage point, I saw a large shadow cross the yard, and a blue heron landed on the top of the telephone pole in front of the house. It stood there for probably a full five minutes, checking out the landscape, a beautiful, graceful and tall bird. What a treat to see. We’ve also had a flush of woodpeckers this year. I’ve heard babies in nests and watched parents fuss and fluster with other birds who have gotten too close.

A species specific to Charley Hill Road are the annual Seagle Colony Joggers. Every year, a group of enthusiastic young folks attending the operatic summer stock down our road start off the season jogging past our house, usually just up to the top of the (quite steep) hill and then back down, waving frantically at the bugs swarming their heads. As the summer wears on, their numbers wear out to the last colonist standing. The best was the young man a few years ago who sang falsetto as he ran by - not an easy feat given the hill he was heading up.

I’ve also learned to identify the neighbors by the sound of their vehicles, before they come into view. It’s become a game between Larry and me as to who exactly is coming down the hill. I’ve definitely got an advantage.

Slowing down, watching and listening has been a lesson unto itself. I’ve enjoyed the meditative quality of it; I’ve used it to quiet my busy mind and let my body come to terms with being still for stretches of time. I used to think I stopped and smelled the roses a fair amount, but when you are plunked unceremoniously in the middle of the garden, things take on a whole new scent.

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up - No, Seriously!!

In the epilogue of Stephen King’s On Writing, he tells about when he was hit by a van while walking along a Maine road in 1999. He describes how when he came to in the ditch, the first thing he noticed was the unnatural angle of his leg, and how he thought that just didn’t seem right.

When I bailed off my bucking horse two weeks ago, hoping for a landing in the bushes, I heard a distinct crack upon impact with the earth. I rocked up on my butt, legs in the air, and the first thing I noticed was the very unnatural angle of my left foot.

My first thought was, "I’m not going to be able to go to &^$#@# Colorado!!" as I was scheduled to leave in two days to visit my daughters. My second thought was, "I don’t think I’ve ever felt this much pain before in my life!"

They say your life can change in an instant, and I’ve certainly experienced that numerous times along the way; haven’t we all. But this accident was a serious game changer. I’m still processing the various lifestyle modifications that are on my horizon.

First off, let me say that I’m glad it wasn’t worse. Yes, a broken leg is a serious bummer, but I didn’t have a head injury (I was wearing my helmet) and Larry more or less knew where I was (he knew I had ridden out back and came looking for me with Nifty returned to the barn without me). Unfortunately, I had a horrible experience with Glens Falls Hospital which resulted in my not having surgery until a full three days after I broke the leg. Those were three days of hell which I have no desire to relive here.

The accident was on Monday; I had surgery Thursday and came home Saturday. One plate has already been inserted in my leg, and a fixator was put on at that time. This was necessary due to the lapse of time between accident and surgery. I will go in for a second 

Fixator post-surgery

surgery (hopefully next week) that will see the removal of the fixator and the insertion of a second plate.

I’m currently hobbling around with a walker. I also tore up my shoulder a bit so crutches are unstable. I get around pretty well, but it’s exhausting, and this fixator is a major pain in the butt. A cast will be welcome.

In a split second, I went from being able to take care of 80% of what needed to be done around the homestead to next to nothing. This is a very bitter pill to swallow, especially for someone as independent as I consider myself to be. Even the mundane tasks such as laundry, housecleaning (such as it is) and going to the dump are now next to impossible. But the bigger issue is taking care of animals twice a day. It’s put a huge burden on Larry, who already has his hands full with a day job that is more demanding than it has a right to be. Larry made the excellent point that he may make the money, but I put the majority of the time in around here.

We’ve had several heart-to-hearts about the horses and the options right now. I’m working at the law office a few hours each morning, which gets me out and keeps a handle on things. I’ve been blessed with friends and neighbors who continually help out with transportation, food and the lifting of spirits. I can’t even begin to express my gratitude for everything people have done to help.

Larry and I each have our good days and our bad days as we navigate these temporarily tricky waters. He’s shouldering a lot and it can get heavy. I’m frustrated and trying hard not to be depressed. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t have a good cry now and then. I think it’s healthy to get it out, otherwise it could back up and manifest in ways like throwing things across the room or eating my weight in ice cream.

Meanwhile, I continue the only way I know how – by forging ahead, revamping plans, laughing when I can and getting up yet again. At least my foot is now at the correct angle.

Memories Are Made of This

If you want to experience a true slice of Americana, there are numerous things you can do. Among my personal favorites are go to a drive-in on a warm summer night, work in a truck stop (I think everyone should have to do this at some point in their lives) and go to a county fair. You can also go to a Memorial Day gathering.

Yesterday Larry and I attended the Memorial Day service here in Schroon Lake. Our town erected a lovely memorial wall a few years ago. It serves as a somber reminder and respectful dedication to those residents who have served their country.

It was a scene played out this weekend across the country, in towns large and small. The color guard, the gun salute, the playing of taps. But being in a small town, where you know so many people, gives it a special kind of intimacy.

A local bed and breakfast owner, who also hosts open mic nights at Witherbees, provided the sound system and stood at attention in his Ray Bans. A handsome young man in his uniform, who was part of the color guard, cringed and muttered to himself when he made a slight wrong turn with his flag during the ceremony. I heard a splash down by the waterfront and saw a dog swimming after a stick tossed in the lake. I looked at the backs of the Boy and Cub Scouts standing at attention, some of them sons of friends of ours. I watched my elderly veteran neighbor (who once told me, in all innocence, that her cat was named Obama because "he’s black and white, you know") shuffle assisted to the edge of the memorial to lay the wreath at its base. A young boy with a fishing pole walked down the sidewalk towards the docks. I recognized most of the people who spoke at the podium and enjoyed those who, as Larry observed, "weren’t afraid to not be P.C." I saw lots of folks I recognized from the law office - people who I’ve assisted with wills and deed transfers and various matters, all items entrusted to me by the office’s ethics of confidentiality. 

Communities like these are the backbone of this country. They care enough to support each other. They take part in ceremony for the things that are important to them.

After the conclusion and thank-yous for attending, the slightly somber mood was immediately lifted by the noise and bustle of kids cut loose and running in the grass, smiling faces and handshakes among friends, ice cream cravers heading over to Stewarts.

This is all part of what Memorial Day means. Time passes. In addition to those no longer with us, remember this simple, good stuff. It’s what lives are made up of.

Reality Smackdown (Or Leaping Before You Look)

The day after my excited post about hawking my cheese at the Schroon Lake Opening Weekend, the walls of reality came crashing down.

I discovered that I can’t sell my product to the public unless it comes from a licensed and inspected facility, i.e. a kitchen that passes NYS Dept. of Health and NYS Ag & Markets criteria. I’m sure NYS would be less than impressed with the officialness of my kitchen.

This is what happens when I let my enthusiasm race me down the road without taking the time to adjust my mirrors.

I suppose the fact that two folks who were kind enough to give me a gallon of raw milk to play with said, several times, "I can’t sell it to you, but I can give it to you," should have been a tip off. I was dipping my toes in NYS’s shark infested waters.

Yesterday I read up on the regulations and requirements online for a bit. When my head felt ready to explode, I reached out to Essex Co. Cornell Cooperative Extension for some information in laymans terms. When I asked if I was taking a chance of being arrested at Opening Weekend, I was jokingly told I was at risk of being put in handcuffs and chains and put in the stocks in town square. I told her I wouldn’t tell Larry about that, because he might actually volunteer for it.

In the end, a helpful representative from Adirondack Harvest confirmed what I was interpreting - I can make cheese for home use and personal consumption, but to sell anywhere, I need to be licensed. I’d have to have or use a commercial kitchen for my production. Ultimately, I withdrew my application for the weekend.

I do have options. I could produce it at someone’s licensed kitchen, but that somewhat defeats the purpose of my doing it at home, when I have time. I’m not really into having to go somewhere and losing more time from home. Depending on what type of cheese you’re making, this could involve a lot of back and forth. Quite frankly, I’m not really into that.

And that’s okay. My friends and family will continue to be the beneficiaries of my home kitchen-based experiments. We’ll keep cheese production as part of The 30 Acre Wood’s business plan, and make it an aspiration for down the road. Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying different types of cheese and perfect my craft, as it were. I’m keeping it fun, which is what it’s all about!

Taking the Plunge

I filled out the application. I scanned it to my email. I wrote the email to Shelby Davis of Mr. P’s Mountain Smokehouse. I thought about it one more time, looked over the edge, and hit send. That was it. The point of no return.

The 30 Acre Wood has officially become a vendor for Schroon Lake’s 2013 Opening Weekend festivities, where I will be selling my homestead soft cheeses. I’m scared to death.

They say if you wait to be ready for something, you’ll never do it. I’d been debating whether to do a booth for the weekend after Shelby tossed me the idea.

My guest post on The Social Silo garnered more attention that I had planned on. People started talking about it. The post directed people to my blog, and the next thing I knew I received email from Shelby asking to profile my cheesiness on the Schroon Laker blog. The small town network is alive and well around here.

My knee-jerk response was "I’m really not newsworthy." Now, let’s think about this a minute. I want people to be interested in and buy my product, yet I’m afraid to let people know about it.  That makes a whole lot of sense.

Our new logo, courtesy of ubertalented daughter Jessica Jones
 

I approached my coworker, Donna Moses, about sharing a tent with me. She makes amazing crafts and figured if we split a tent, then neither one of us has to make a huge amount of product to have a nice display. It was a good way of taking some of the pressure off myself. Then Donna decided not to participate due to numerous family obligations. Totally understandable, but I did tell her that if I have a total cheese-related freak-out going into this, I’m holding her responsible.

So that leaves me and my half-dozen or so variations of soft cheeses all alone in the spotlight. Or at least in the tent.

Fromage draining
this morning

I’m still experimenting and trying to perfect (to the degree that you can) my cheeses. My first mozzarella/pesto log turned into a watery, gooey mess on the first try, but that’s where troubleshooting comes in. I’m trying different flavors for fromage blanc, which has winners and losers. Larry loves them all, so he’s a poor tester, although he’s good for my ego. Friends have been getting samples with "Tell me what you honestly think" attached to them.

If you don’t leap at some point, you never get anywhere. You stand on the end of the diving board forever, with your toes gripping the edge until they cramp. I dove off my board. I emailed Shelby my application. Needless to say, I receive a very enthusiastic response from her.

Had I not pushed myself to do this, I don’t know what I would have waited for before I went "public." A bona fide production kitchen? A cheese cave? Kudos and atta-girls from those nearest and dearest? That’s stupid. Time’s a wastin’, as June and Johnny would say. If I’m not going to have fun with it, what’s the point? And fun is getting out there with my coolers and containers and samples and chatting it up with folks on a beautiful spring weekend.

Now I have to get cooking!  See you in the park on May 25!

Somtimes it takes a village... and a tractor... and a trailer... and a big truck...

Few things are as satisfying as a win/win. This weekend Larry and I were able to help out some neighbors, improve our sugarbush stand, and get some good exercise. I suppose that makes it a win/win/win.

A couple of weeks ago, John and Jennifer Otruba of Sugarbush Farm here in Schroon Lake suffered a devastating barn fire. They lost a number of their animals in the blaze. The Otrubas are a local success story in how they have turned their little valley farm into a successful CSA, growing beyond their expectations. They are also the parents of a herd of four little girls. Their homestead is one of happy chaos. In short, they are crazy people.

Their fire has brought the community together, which is culminating in what is turning into a huge potluck for their benefit next week. In the meantime, people are helping out with animal feed and other items. Larry decided we could best help by providing them with dimensional lumber for their rebuilding effort.

The Man at work

We have a sugarbush stand (or at least, that’s what Larry’s calling it) that has many struggling maple saplings trying to reach the sun. Larry envisions this as his future maple syrup production stand. In this plot are a number of very tall, very large pine trees. We have thinned the area out a little over the years, but the Otrubas gave us the perfect excuse to drop the biggest of the pines to have milled into lumber. The plan was to drop the pines, cut them into 12 foot lengths, then bring the lengths to Joe Delczeg’s sawmill in Riparius to be cut.

Down it goes!

It was one of those projects where the gods smile on you a little. The weather was great. The equipment all worked (for the most part). Larry dropped four pines which we limbed and cut into lengths. These were not small trees. They shook the ground and spooked all the animals when they fell. Then there was the challenge of skidding them out (around other trees) and staging them to load on the trailer.

The tractor did well serving as a skidder, and those logs that were too much for its little John Deere heart fell to the truck. As Larry and I like to say at times like these, "That what we got it for." Four wheel drive low it went, and eventually we got the biggest of the bad boys out. While the warm weather was nice, it made for increasingly slippery conditions. Traction was sometimes a problem, but ultimately we got the job done.

That's a whole lotta tree

Then came loading these monsters on the trailer. Larry did an awesome job maneuvering the logs via chains attached to the bucket. He would lift an end of a log onto the edge of the trailer, then get behind it and push it with the bucket up onto the trailer. We learned with the biggest logs that I had to stay in the truck with my foot on the brake so he didn’t push the whole show out into the road! Doing all of this took time, finesse, and patience. Rolling logs with peavies is hard, but sometimes that was what we had to do to get them into position to pull out. At one point Larry said to me, "This part will be easy," to which I replied, "Don’t use the "E" word with me."



Larry doing his tractor magic

Joe makes quick work of our load job

We took one load to Riparius Saturday, where Joe unloaded them to cut. Going down the road, I watched the trailer tires from my side view mirror, as they flattened out a little from the weight of the logs and every bump on the road seemed to squish them down a little more. It was a lot of weight! The last thing we needed was a flat.

Sunday, with all of the cutting done, it was easier getting the logs on the trailer by Larry lifting a log and me backing the trailer under it. I had an awesome day backing that trailer up! I had to get it into some tight areas but managed to pull it off. Sunday around noon we brought a second load to Riparius, and to our amazement Joe had already cut up the first load. He said he could have the second load done in a few hours if we wanted to pick it up later that day!

The finished product

That was perfect. We went back in the afternoon and voila! From all those trees came ninety-two twelve foot 2 x 6 boards. They are green but will season fairly quickly, and since they are for framing, they should serve their purpose just fine.

We brought the boards directly to Otrubas, where we unhitched the trailer to leave for them to handle the wood at their convenience. As we were unhitching the trailer, I heard "sssssssssssssss" and sure enough, a tire on the trailer was going down before my eyes. At that point we didn’t even care - we were just grateful it didn’t blow out going down Route 8 with thousands of pounds of trees on it!

The perfect weekend was topped by my friend Judy making us dinner Sunday night, which we ate covered in pine sap, sawdust and grime. We appreciated it more than we could say.

They say people volunteer not just to help out other people or organizations, but also because it makes them feel good. To be honest, I’d have to say that applies to this weekend. It was a help to us to get the pine down, and we were delighted to be able to help the Otrubas by doing so. But it also felt good to put the work and time into the project, to have received help in the way of a quick turnaround from the sawmill and a dinner we didn’t have to worry about cooking, and for Larry and I to remind ourselves of how well we work together as a team. It was a lot of physical exertion, but we also laughed a lot and appreciated how hard each other worked. That may be the biggest feel-good of all.

The Waiting Game

This past weekend Schroon Lake hosted its annual Ice Fishing Derby. The lake surface becomes a shanty town of optimistic fishermen in little huts dangling a hook in a hole in the ice. It’s also Party Central, as lots of alcohol is consumed, on and off the ice. Witherbees Restaurant holds its Annual Bayou Bob Crawfish Boil, in honor of Bobby Machutas, formerly of Louisiana and Charley Hill Road fame.

March is a month of patience. Great, strained, threadbare patience. It’s overtly illustrated by ice fishermen bundled against the elements (that’s where alcohol antifreeze comes into play), hoping to land that prize winning fish. But it’s also in the faces of animals. Our cat lies on the back of the chair, staring dully out the window, yearning for warm weather and active rodents. The horses are starting to shed a little and are teased by the occasional day in the 40's, only to be smacked back into temps in the teens, weary of frost on their whiskers and icy water buckets. My old man Cass used to get such a puss on his face come March, when the temperatures would take a dip. The chickens, who stopped laying altogether in November, started sporadically laying in mid-January. Getting 1-3 eggs a day out of 5 almost 4-year old hens isn’t bad.

I personally have been struggling with the winter blues this year, much worse than years past. I don’t know if it was the mid-January trip to balmy New Orleans, that made coming back to -20 such a kick in the head. This time of year, though, I start to worry if we’ll have enough firewood to get us through. I tire of my hands always being cold. By the end of March, I’ll be sick to death of putting wood in the woodstove. I’m ready to go play in the dirt and plant things and watch things grow.

I know that, in good time, I’ll be outside and I’ll feel that first warmish breeze on my face, and it will stop me in my tracks as I recognize and savor it. The snow pack will slowly go down; rivulets of water will begin to run down the driveway. The sun will pack a little more punch, putting some warm weight on my shoulders. It’s coming. It always does. I can almost feel it today. It’s a patience game. The trick is to make it through to the other side. Wait for it... wait for it...