Melting!

Hey, This winter we had alot of snow (for RI anyway). This past week it got up to 50 for a couple days and melted most of the snow! Sweet. I can see the ground out in the yard, and all of Snoopy's sh*t that he left in the snow all winter is scattered around like little brown landmines. Guess I know what I'm cleaning up later today. Great.

Here is the cold frame I made last weekend:
Here are the carrots I tried to save through the winter.. Ihave no idea if they will recover but eh.. its worth a shot:
This weekend I'm going to start some seeds out there. Snap peas, chard, spinach, and mache. Some claim its never too early to start greens but eh... I don't believe them. In case you haven't looked at a calendar, we are now 12 weeks before the typical last frost (Mid-May). Time to get seedlings started inside for stuff that can't be direct seeded. Start with cold hardy things this week, and then in about 6 weeks start tomatoes, squash etc indoors. Don't forget to pick up some seed potatoes for planting early/mid april!!! This year we're just planting red potatoes I think.

Here is Kaptain Krunch about to eat one-day old venison tenderloins cooked in butter with home grown kennebec potatoes cooked over a wood fire. This is living.




Cya! -40.

Real Winter

Heh. I have to say, after a few years of weak winters, this is a real winter. Frozen ponds, snow that stays around for a couple weeks, icy everywhere, no bike riding, going through a mountain of firewood and a tanker truck of fuel oil, I'm very much looking forward to spring. Along those lines, I've been keeping a look out for the return of robins. Yeah, sounds g-hey, but I'm one of those people that look for signs. The past few years I've kept track. Usually, its the first or second week of february. Last year, they never flew south... stuck around all winter. I saw two robins on Monday, Feb 2nd. Whooo Hoo!



I can't wait to be able to ride my bike to and from work. Mostly what stops me is icy roads or darkness. Right now we have both icy dirt roads on the way to work, and darkness after. I think maybe by the end of Feb, I'll be riding again.

In other news, with this snow i've noticed when we get snow, it melts very quickly next to the south facing foundation wall. I took a pitchfork and checked the dirt in a garden bed. Holy Crap! It's thawed right next to the foundation, about 2" wide . A light bulb went off above my head... I took some storm windows, leaned them up against the foundation, and sealed up the ends with a snowbank. In a week, all the dirt in the bed was thawed down a foot or more... pretty surprising. So this weekend I built a simple wooden frame, some plywood ends, dug out some tired dirt and added some good soil, kick@ss compost and worm casting mix. I'm thinking once the soil is 50F constant, it's time to plant some mache, spinach, chard, and peas. I might be able to start some of those inside and move them out, but it seems 'direct seeded' plants are much hardier than transplants.

-40.

"...And it's a great way to stay in shape!"

So Crayons, Mrs. Crayons, and Sleepy came over for Inaguration Eve dinner, and we made a sledding run with the foot of fresh powder we got in the last 24 hours. Good Times. And it's a great way to stay in shape!

PreOccupied.

Hey, I'm thinking of going on a blog-hiatus. I've been pretty preoccupied these days with getting my sh*t together for ch-ch-changes around here. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think so.

Over the holidays I had about a dozen topics I wanted to post about, then sat down and nothing came out. I just have been having a hard time summarizing what I've been pondering, soooo I won't. Right now I'm been busy working on winter projects, and getting to planning the garden for the spring/summer/fall. If you call around to the more well known seed suppliers(No, not Burpee and Monsanto), they are in short supply this year and are already backlogged on some of the more popular varieties of veggies. Seems like there are quite alot of people freaking out about what is going on in the world and planning on planting a much bigger garden this year.

Here's a few pictures I took over the past couple weeks, but never got around to post them.

Carrots in a cold frame, trying to see if they can overwinter under some mulch and a cold frame:
These carrots are just outside under mulch. They might not make it but eh... its worth seeing how much it takes to keep these going all year.

This weekend I finished a couple long standing projects. One was cleaning the garage. Here's some SwampYankee champagne cooling in a bucket o snow. Now that is living.
See you in a couple weeks!

-40.

Gas Prices

I know everyone is all excited about gas prices going down. I like money in my pocket instead of the oil companies, just like everyone else. But it's not a good thing all the way around. With higher gas prices, not everyone was driving as much and looking at alternative energy, which can be good for the environment. Or bad if they just look for cheap energy which may not always be the cleanest. With gas prices going back down, people will soon forget and go back to their gas guzzling SUVs. But what about alternatives to this.....

Here's one that is simply financial. Put a tax on gas now when gas prices are low. This will raise prices making people drive less. Save that tax money so when gas prices rise, you can lower the tax to less than it is now and use the saved money to fill that financial void. This will even out the gas prices and reduce spikes.

The second is tax the gas now, since the price is low. Again, this will keep people from driving so much. Take that money and put it into research to get us off oil, create the 21st century Manhattan Project. Personally, I like this second idea better. In the long run, it would help out the country and the world.

I know I'm a financial genius, but I don't know how bad this would hurt the economy, so it may not be the best idea, but we need to start somewhere.

The last harvest

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We had a long weekend up north with our family.

This year I've been trying to grow vegs as late into the fall as possible. I made it all the way to december 1st with carrots, lettuce, beets, and peas. Today at lunch I ate the last of the homegrown lettuce, and I've been waiting for the ground to thaw to dig up the last of the potatoes. BTW, don't be a slacker and dig up your root vegetables before the ground freezes solid. Today it was warm enough so I dug these all up. Sweet.


-40.

Go Vote Tomorrow!

Happy Halloween

I just want to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. And I want to assure everyone that I did not do anything to any pumpkin!

Changing seasons, Ramhadab V etc.

Ah...Fall is finally here... though it seems late to me. I thought it used to be alot colder by halloween, but I could be wrong. The maples have gone through their thing, peaking about a week ago, then dropping this past week.


Along with colder temperatures and the foliage, one clear sign of Fall around here is the emergence of douche-baggy dumping. I'm not talking about a Bud bottle or dunkin donuts cup here or there... This is the time when the real Dickheads come out in force. The dump stickers expire in October, and they give you a week or two at the transfer station for a grace period before you have to buy a new $ticker. This year I guess quite a few folks couldn't, or wouldn't, afford the sticker. Around mid month there was a brand new slew of illegal dumping around here. The used tires were too many to count, and up at the pond where dozens of people walk their dog every day, someone decided to dump a week's worth of trash for 2 weeks. here are four bags of trashbags strewn about in the woods. Makes you want to find out who dumped it, and dump it on their front porch or the hood of their mercedes. But I didn't.

Next up if one of my favorites, Oil Filters. Yup, this is about a dozen used filters dumped up the road at the next pond. About, Oh, six feet from the pond. I found these about a week of moderate rain. Ah.. the oily sheen on the surface of the pond was beautiful

The potatoes are all done for the year. Here is BBW and snoopy digging up some gems from the ground. I got to say, its almost as much fun after a few beers as clamming. Almost. If you have some room (like, 4 square feet will do), plant a potato or two.. its fantastic.


RAMHADAB Vol 5 was last weekend. Unfortunately my camera battery went dead on friday night so I missed taking any good pix, tho I think CTLP did. This is the only pic I took, of the pre-weekend shopping trip. Good times, You get the point:
Hopefully CTLP can post a few of the better pix.

$700 billion

If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a house.....
Ok, this isn't going to be a praise to Bare Naked Ladies. I know you all want to just have a discussion on how great they are.

But if I had 700 billion dollars, I'd buy everyone a house....
Ok, this isn't going to be how good or bad the bailout is, even though the exec of AIG took a $400K spa trip after they got money from the feds. Hey, I would celebrate too. Or how NASCAR got a $120 million tax break.

But it looks like something good may have came out of the bailout. I'm not sure how good it is. I've never been good at interpreting these things. Or how easy or what to do to collect this. So anyway, here's a couple links. #1 and #2. It sounds like to me that you can get $20 a month for bike maintenance, tax free, for commuting to work from your employer. It sounds to me that it's only if the employer wants to give it to you. So it's a fringe benefit from work, if they want to give it to you, but it would be tax free. So I guess that's the big bonus, you can get $240 tax free a year. That's how I interpret it.

If I only drove a car in circles for hours, instead of riding a bike to work, then I would get millions of dollars. It is a good thing though, it's a step to maybe getting more people riding their bikes more.