Finally Saturday, Cutting trees, and Excalibur...

Lots to do today,   We need to put the van in the shop for inspection as it needs a new exhaust installed, lots of VAN related chores to do today, so we're off to the town dump. We picked up our hay and grain, and walkway sand at the grain store on the way home.

Rose got me a new Husqvarna 240e chainsaw for Christmas, today was the first time using the machine.  "What a real nice machine, quiet, zero vibration, cuts through wood like warmed butter!"  Made short work of all the downed tree branches I needed to cut up today.  Took out some downed Poplar, Pines and some more downed apple.  Cut up and piled the small stuff for burning and left the logs piled to cut up later.

Excalibur (the dehydrator) was put into action tonight, our first time using this particular model, it has a huge following.  This year we finally decided to purchase one.  All of our other dehydrators (3 or so) are heat on the bottom convection only models definitely serviceable, but relatively slow, and because there's no fan occasionally blackens (especially Basil) what we put into it.  The Excalibur though comes in a multitude of models, has a fan in the rear that blows across the trays and 600 watts or heat to make quick work of anything we put into it.

Here's the first load of vegetables loaded up.

If the weather holds tomorrow I am going down to the pond to cut some nice Ironwood walking stick blanks for Rose, and the boys.  I have one I made years ago back when I was living in Townsend Mass. that I still use. We're planning some hikes this spring, Uncanoonuc Mt. trails, maybe New Boston Swamp trails too. (Maybe even this winter if the weather holds like it is today, 53 degrees, nice...)

What a difference a day makes!

Just the other day I was talking about it feeling like spring, look what that got us into...  

It's not fit out for man nor' beast!  

It's 14 Degrees with a brutal 5-10 mph breeze blowing on top of that.  

I was just out with the dogs and you can hear the trees creaking and cracking from the cold.  Your pants freeze stiff in seconds, dogs won't stay out more that a few minutes at a time.  

I took some extra time to button up the barn tonight making sure the doors were all shut well.  A little extra hay and a handful of grain go a long way in this cold.  Water for the chickens (heated during winter as is the horse bucket) collected the eggs before the overnight freeze gets them.

The Quadrantid meteor shower http://earthsky.org/tonight should be good, ~2AM eastern time I hear, don't know if I'll make it up till 2am again, (couldn't sleep last night.)

You waiting up for it?

New Years 2012 looks more like spring

The Poplar trees are budding out, I think this winter is going to be brutal on the plants. Lots of the shrubs in the yard are already budding out due to temps in the 40s. We were in Hookset the other day and it looked like the Maples had budded too.

Mud season has arrived early this year as well, the dogs are already making a mess of the yard. Harley is having a blast sliding through the mud skidding around corners.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  

Foggy start to this new year, it's just starting to clear now as I post this pic.

Merry Christmas

Very quiet this morning on this Christmas day. The snow flakes floating down so slowly it's surreal.

Merry Christmas to All!

Positive Changes, Happy New Year!

Follow the instructions on the page at the link below.
Elion

Tell 'em Mike - Mike Rowe on Work in America

Joe Satriani - Surfing With The Alien ( live 2006 )

Pure talent!  Amazing.

It's Rainin' it's Pourin'`

It's 8:30 pm here and we already have two inches of rain and counting.  It's supposed to turn over to snow and give us 2 to 6" inches of the white stuff and while this is a Nor'easter technically it doesn't appear it's going to be  that bad.  Let's hope!

UPS dropped a couple of boxes today, hmm wonder what's in 'em?

Barn was fry tonight when I went down so the patch I put on seems to have worked.  We bought our roofing from a Home improvement store last time, appears it wasn't shall we say the best quality, it failed after 4 years...  This new stuff I purchased is a much heavier grade roofing.  We shall see.

Socialism experiment!

Disclaimer - this email was forwarded to me and I have no clue where it originated from. All I know is I did not write it, but thought it was awesome and wanted to share it with you...


An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on)


Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.


These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this? Neither could I.

Potato shortage next year...

Seed Potato shortage in New England.

Seed Potatoes, you know the little ones...certified disease free seed.  Rose just got back from getting hay today and brought an order form for seed potato back with her.  The form says that "Due to an extreme shortage of seed potatoes in Maine and Canada" because of the wet weather that all orders must be placed before January 6th to be guaranteed seed for your 2012 garden.

That's a little scary, ok, scary to me.  ;-)