Bonfire Sunday

Attention mom: I am sorry I forgot to wear ear protection in the chipping video but you will please notice that I am wearing some very attractive safetly goggles to protect my eyes from any potential flying sparks at the bonfire. I was deprived of fire in Gainesville so now that the weather is cooling down we are going to make every effort to take advantage of our multiple fire pit/fireplace opportunities.

Chipping

I had an awesome birthday yesterday and one of my favorite parts was making a video! I haven't made one since I left Gainesville so yesterday I got out Dad and Julie's new video camera and spent most of the morning figuring out how to get the video off of the camera and onto my computer. There are clearly a ton of cool things to film up here so once the process of 'recording, transferring to computer and editing' is streamlined I am going to get them to start. This video will give you an idea of what we have been doing up here lately and it will give you a bit more appreciation for everything that went into making the path around the lake!

Sidelined

We live on about 80 acres but those 80 acres are surrounded by about 2,000 acres owned by the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) which means that we basically live in the middle of a huge national park, this is great because it means that no one can ever build around us and we will always feel like we are in the middle of nowhere. The only thing we need to legally cross onto DEP land is a permit for "recreational use" which they sell to the general public, it is like a fishing license but for hiking. Unfortunatley, the DEP also sells hunting licenses for their land and every now and then a stray hunter will wander onto our property while tracking something. Hunting season starts in October so I have spent the last couple days putting up these 'No Trespassing' signs along our property line. Yesterday I was doing a particularly heavily wooded area and as I was climbing uphill I managed to headbutt a sharp stick that was pointed downhill. It hurt but I didn't think much of it until I reached up and found a piece of the branch sticking out of my forehead. As soon as I pulled it out I realized that I had a bit more than a scratch, my first thought was to put my finger over the hole but all that got me was a bloody finger. I knew I had to cover the hole because 1) I was about a 15 minute walk from the house and I didn't want to be covered in blood by the time I got back 2) because I was still in the middle of the woods and I could just picture myself tripping and getting the cut/hole all dirty and 3) because head wounds bleed alot. I really didn't want to use my shirt because I didn't want blood all over my shirt so instead I pulled my visor down around my forehead and just pulled it really tight. I got back to the house and warned dad that I probably looked much worse than I was. He promised not to freak out, cleaned me up, determined I didn't need a stitch and took a picture so that I could put it on my blog ;) Thanks dad! Here is a picture of the visor - it is pretty gross, I think I'm gonna have to throw it out. I made it through the rest of the day with a bandaide but it got stuck in my hair and taking it off was more painful than headbutting the stick so after my shower I devised this lovely homemade one.

More Pie

Did you know that anything you make with an ingredient from the garden is healthy? Trust me, it doesn't matter what else you cook it with because it retains the 'good for you' label - how could it not be, it's fresh! This weekend I made some rhubarb pie. The rhubarb was a little bit smaller than the stuff you find in the grocery store but it still tasted wonderful.

Message from Hogwarts

Dad and Julie are part of a group that has monthly cocktail parties during the summer. They have roughly the same group of friends at each party, one couple will volunteer to host that month and then everyone shows up from 4pm to 6pm one Sunday afternoon. It is very easy, very low key and everyone really enjoys them. The host couple usually invites one or two new couples to join - people they know but that everyone else might not know - which is a great way to meet new people when you live in such a spread out community (our driveway is a half mile long... that doesn't exactly invite new neighbors to "drop by"). Earlier this summer (while I was still in Gainesville) Dad called me up after one of these cocktail parties and said that he had met someone I might be interested in meeting once I got up to NY. He couldn't remember the guy's name but said that they had got to talking and it came up that he records the audiobook versions of the Harry Potter books. In case you have forgotten, the final book in the Harry Potter series was released this summer so Harry Potter hype was at an all time high. I not only knew who this guy was (Jim Dale) but I had his audiobook versions of the first six books on my ipod as a refresher (and to tide me over until the seventh book came out)! Even if you aren't a huge Harry Potter fan, you've gotta be impressed with Jim Dale. He doesn't just read the stories, he has a unique voice for every single character! He actually holds two Guinness World Records: one for having created and recorded 134 different character voices for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (book 5), and one for occupying the first six places in the 'Top Ten Audio Books of America 2005". He is a big deal. After I relayed my excitement to Dad he must have mentioned it to Jim (embarrassing, but totally worth it) because a couple days later I received this voicemail on my cellphone... the video is a little over the top I know - but it is not everyday that you get a message from Hogwarts ;)

If you listen closely, as 'Dumbledore' is hanging up he says "I knew a dragon once called Redfield..." And if you were wondering, yes, the "cocktail party" on my calendar was one of these summer cocktail parties and yes, I got to meet Jim Dale - he really is awesome.

I'll Pencil You In

Katie called this weekend to harass me for not updating in a week. I have been bad about it because I really haven't been inside long enough to upload pictures! Fall is coming and the weather is awesome so I have been entertaining myself with various outdoor projects (which will all be blogged about soon). Kacy and I were talking a few weeks ago and we had a conversation along the same lines, she was telling me all about grad school and her new job and we were trying to coordinate a possible visit with a weekend she doesn't have to work. I jokingly pulled out my calendar to see what weekends I had free (they are all free, I have no obligations and it is awesome) and found that I had only one thing written down:

If you look closely at September 16th you will see "cocktail party". Life is hard.

Master Tree Finder

Thanks to the local Putnam County library I am now an official Master Tree Finder. Why is this important? Well after the success of the garden Dad voted that the next enterprise should be a distillery or a winery, Julie voted for raising chickens or some cattle (for eggs and milk, not to eat) and I voted for the much more attainable goal of maple syrup. Conveniently, since I am the only one without a job, mine is the only vote that counts! So I became a member of the local library to get access to their books on maple sugaring and I learned all about the whole process. It is actually pretty simple (in theory) but the tree sap doesn't get sweet until late winter so all I can do now is prepare. The most important part of the process is making sure that you are tapping the correct trees (hence the 'Master Tree Finder') so I went around and spray painted little white dots on 6 big Maples while all the trees still have leaves (because the easiest way to identify a tree is by its leaves - trust me, I am a master). I also ordered a tapping kit with all the other random odds and ends the process requires. So now we are ready!

Pumpkin Products

The bounty continues... the newest garden export is pumpkins! I was a bit surprised to see them this early in the season but it turns out that this is the time of the year for growing cooking pumpkins (as opposed to the jack-o-lantern types you carve at Halloween) the difference being that these are smaller and sweeter than the bigger version we are used to. We had two ripe ones so far, yesterday I used them to make a batch of pumpkin cookies, roasted pumpkin seeds, two loaves of pumpkin bread and a pumpkin pie! We had people over for dinner last night and I forgot to take a picture of everything beforehand so it will have to be a testament to their tastiness that this is all that is left!

Berries are Made of Awesome

If you think you love strawberries the most, you are wrong. Kacy Taylor loves strawberries the most - yet another reason for her to come up and visit.

Raspberries and Strawberries!

I am definitely a fan of the garden. The berries are just starting to ripen, you can see some green ones in the pictures. My next goal is to look up how canning works...

Kayaking in the Lake

This was more of an exercise in relaxation than a true workout... Dad has been trying to convince Julie that if they got another kayak they could have some cool day paddles on all the lakes around here. Julie has never really kayaked before so she wasn't too excited about the whole thing until Dad brought the kayak out to the lake a couple nights ago for a practice run. We took turns paddling around and scaring frogs while listening to Enya on the iPod, Julie (who had probably been picturing something along the lines of white-water rafting) agreed that this was an activity worth pursuing.

Thirsty?

We did a day hike on the Appalachian Trail yesterday (Labor Day), this involved dropping a car at the end point and driving a separate car to our starting point. We decided to bring along sandwiches for lunch from a local deli that regularly serves AT hikers, and while we were waiting for our order I started reading a 'guest log' that the owners let hikers sign when they stop for a meal. I would have signed but this is the time of year when thru-hikers are passing through upstate New York (the hikers who are doing the entire trial from Georgia to Maine this summer) and I would have felt kinda wimpy signing next to all of them ;) We brought Tapper and Guinness along but they weren't exactly built for hot summer weather...

Potatoes

Today we picked potatoes. You will notice that some of them are pretty beat up, this is because digging up potatoes isn't quite as straightforward as it sounds. The problem is that we were digging them up with little trowels and we knew what general vicinity they were in but we weren't exactly sure where or how deep they were so every now and then one would get stabbed. Even with a few casualties we still found enough to have them as a side dish tonight.