Buy Some Jack Daniels

I'm going to go buy a large bottle of Jack for the holidays because of this...

Jack Daniel's Funds Travel Expenses for Soldiers

NASHVILLE, Tenn.-- Tennessee whiskey maker Jack Daniel's is donating more than $100,000 to pay for plane tickets and travel funds for soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., to spend the December holiday season with their families all over the country.

The distiller is also asking the public to make additional contributions that could help hundreds of cash-strapped soldiers who otherwise would be stuck at the post on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. Donations can be made to the Operation Ride Home campaign online at www.jdoperationridehome.com.

I'll pick up a bottle to say "thanks" to Jack Daniels for doing this. The holidays can be tough for those away from their families; that JD would do something like this, even with the poor economy, is nothing short of amazing.

Go buy a bottle of Jack for the holidays - help a soldier get home to his or her family.

Awesome! Lets all create a shortage of JD this Holiday season!

Dads 77th Birthday

Great time at Mom and Dads this afternoon, quite the crew showed up for Dads 77th birthday bash. Happy Birthday Dad! Tacos were the order of the day, Mom had all the fixin's, I cooked the meat, and with Rose and Lisa's help somehow managed to not burn anything. ;-)  Good food, good fun.

I somehow got skipped in the Pitchnut games, next time Dad! 
You kids all remember right? "Pitchnut is a variation of the French-Canadian game pichenotte which comes from the game carom". The game is sometimes referred to as "piche" or "pish".  The game board was a treasured heirloom item for Canadians.  There's more history of the game here. Pichenotte.com

Back to the Party...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!   Wow 77 huh? 

Spring already? The Catalogs arrive!

WOW, SPRING Has sprung in NH early this year. And I thought the stray seed catalog or two I would normally receive in January was early.


STOKES SEEDS
Stokes is on the ball this year and is officially the first seed catalog to hit my coffe table this year.

Nice glossy catalog, I find it's easier to wipe the drool off (the Dogs not mine...) of the glossy pages.

They are sporting some interesting Stuff this year as well and we'll look hard at the following for inclusion in the Sanborn 2012 gardens.
295H Mini Orange Hubbard should be easier to find than the blue.
306J Sunshine looks good too. High Vitamin, great flavor, Stores well. I'm in!
They have a Cat in the Hat book called "Oh say can you Seed?" that the twins will like I think.
267Z Archimedes a blocky Green to red pepper that looks promising.
Rose will like the flower selection in this catalog.







High Mowing Organic Seeds
I also received a catalog from High Mowing Organic Seeds as well.
Nice catalog, non-glossy, their heirloom tomato selection intrigued me, they also have a lot (Yes a LOT) of specialty green I'd like to try.


3058 Indigo Rose a fine looking jet black skinned tomato.
3040 Gilbertie also looks like a tomato to try this year. Looks a lot like the polish sausage I tried this year that a late summer storm took out. (We'll be staking the tomatoes with two or three steel stakes this year).
2925 Baby Blue Hubbard is similar to the Mini Blue we grew this year did well we'll try them again they seem to store well too.
2520 Lacinato (Dinosaur) Kale is one we'll try.

Two great catalogs already, let the 2012 garden planning begin!

Trans Siberian Orchestra - TSO

What an incredible show!

Jarrod & Crystal gave us a pair of tickets to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra at the Verizon Center in Manchester. We had great seats, about 1/2 way back.

Start to finish perfection. Sound quality was fantastic, show was so over the top at times we'll probably have to go again just to see what we missed.

This show had it all. Great Story, drama, incredible solo's vocal and instrumental, solos by all members of the cast, lets see... at one point in the show we counted an 23 amazing musicians on stage at once.

Light show like I've never seen, Fire, colored fire columns, fire breathing dragons, fireworks, sparks, cannons, fog, and oh yeah, they made it snow in the stadium! Did I mention the lasers "oh there were lasers..."

They did a salute to the troops and asked all servicemen to stand and be acknowledged so all in attendance could thank them for their service.

This band, no "this Orchestra", donated through "Greg and the Morning Buzz" a dollar from every ticket sold for the local food pantries in NH, $10,000 was donated in one evening. Thanks for restoring a little bit of hope!

The videos are from my cell as are the pics...

Thank You Jarrod and Crystal for a great time!
.

Trans Siberian Orchestra at the Verizon

Off to the show!  

Jarrod and Crystal got us some tickets for the Trans Siberian Orchestra for the upcoming performance at Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, NH. 

They are playing arena's around the country almost nightly right up until New Years.

We can't wait to see them, should be a great show. 

Fall Rituals

Nana and Papa took the boys out to choose their 2011 Christmas ornaments for the year, we go out and let the boys pick one each year. The boys picked a couple nice ones this year.

Raking Leaves with James & Jason! Who said raking wasn't fun? James and Jason helped to rake a sizable pile in the yard and after I got a couple quick pics started diving into the pile.

We took a nature walk earlier this afternoon. We walked around the barn and down to the pond, we found the pond was high for this time of year.

The Big Pine lost a huge branch and left a 8" diameter 10 foot long widow maker in the branches, we'll have to watch for that one to fall this winter. We noticed the Oaks are still carrying their leaves, the oaks here are to young to drop acorns yet.

We saw lots of deer sign, and raccoon too. The boys played with the milkweeds and we admired the Xmas trees Nana and Papa planted years ago, maybe we will chop one down for Christmas at Nana's house this year.

The Snow is gone but the cleanup work remains

As you can see SnoTober was not kind to the trees on our farm. Almost everything we've planted is the past 14 years is broken, cracked or crushed, the weight of 18 inches of heavy snow was just to much for the leaf laden trees and shrubs, this was an odd snow not the heavy/wet as we've seen in the past this snow was sticky/wet snow. At one point Saturday night I went out to look around and looked up at the telephone wire, it was six inches in diameter with snow the entire three hundred foot length, this stuff stuck to everything.

The orchards are crushed, we lost 5 complete trees, and numerous branches out of the small orchard, we'll probably end up with four maybe five survivors. Eight brush piles now line the side yard waiting spring, we cut up quite a bit of the apple trunks for firewood, so it wasn't a complete loss.

The Santa Rosa plums seem to have come through OK, the Blueberries are now upright since the snow melted.


While we do occasionally get a good crop of apples mostly they're there for the wildlife because we don't spray them anymore. The apples tend to have a few bugs and are generally pretty gnarly looking. We've had turkeys, come through, the Robins seem to like them as well in the fall and lots of deer that scavenge the grounds for the drops.









Then today we're taking down tree after tree and I see this huge almost perfect apple sitting there on the ground. It's mine!








 

The Bittersweet is spectacular this year this is growing up the back side of the small orchard.