Summer Starting to End on the Farm

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It has been good spending time on the farm. I really had forgotten how quiet and dark it is here. It can actually be a bit unnerving. The leaf doodle bug was put to work in the forest. However, it looks like the car will be going back on the road. We can say it failed field trials,but that would only be partially true. The better utility value at this point is more suited to getting a teenager back and forth from high school. The mycological aspects of the farm did not disappoint. The pics of these shrooms are not photoshopped. The coal stove (very heavy) is loaded on the truck. It will be rebuilt in Georgia if I can save it. Coal stoves are increasingly out of production. When they are gone they are gone. The small wood stove is now in its place. The pic of the red sky in morning was indeed a warning of weather. We had strong storms and tornados in Upstate NY. Although I was travelling much that day in the area, I missed the worst of it.
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We are back from a complex trip in Western and Eastern Europe. In ten days it included the following countries: Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Finland, and The Netherlands. Angie was in Moscow and we met in Poland.

On the weekend, we drove across the Lithuania/Russia border. We weren't sure about the realities of crossing the border and we had several different contingency plans. We ended up executing a form of our plan C. We had to spend extra time getting processed since the guards had likely never seen a US passport and Visa. Actually it took two tries. We were refused exit at a backwoods Poland-Russia border. Needless to say it was quite interesting. All the guards at all sites were pleasant and helpful. Only one guard of the 6 sites spoke any English.

It was all a trip through part of the Prussian empire in my thinking. Looking at the very nice architecture from the Prussians in disrepair was very evident. We saw a number of structures that were destroyed in WWII, never torn down, never repaired. Eastern Europe is a fascinating place. We visited the site of the first shots of WWII in Gdansk. We also visited the Immanuel Kant Museum in Kaliningrad (Konigsberg). I found my Grandfather's book on display and signed the guestbook as such. He is the only one to have translated one of Kant's books into English.


Auto diesel in Poland was 4.79 złoty per cubic decimeter and in Russia 36 rubles per liter. So, in Poland diesel was $5.00 USD per gallon and in Russia it was $2.62 USD per gallon.

As normal, it was too fast and I got lots of work done in Germany and Finland. Fun, satisfying, expanding and tiring.





"Never Again War"



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