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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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I am in Florida this week. It is good to see my Brother and Sister since they both live in Florida. The traffic seems to be an issue here as the state experiences such high growth in development. I compare my role on the county planning board in NY to what planners have to do in Florida and there (believe it or not) some comparisons. There are great leasons to apply back in NY, anticipating growth (or not) and applying the values of what the community wants and does not want. The weather is nice in Tampa in March compared to back home. I often think that people up north mistakening think that it is "Summer" all year round. It gets hot down here, really hot. I don't mind the cold too much. Occasionally, it is a nuscience when you are scraping the car and you have a cold and you aren't dressed right, but overall it is ok. I will be canoeing sometime in the next couple of days.
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It appears to becoming spring on the farm. Yesterday it must have been in the 60s. Today (early) it is 40. I got a jeep load of wood yesterday. I disassembled and carried a fallen ash up the embankment in the woods. It was a good workout. What I like to do it cut the tree in about 6 foot sections (shorter or longer depending on diameter) and then tip it up on my shoulder and back. I can effectively carry quite a bit of wood that way. In a word; It was fantastic. There is nothing quite like the woods. I saw some nice sized turkey tracks. Dennis is coming down May 1st. We are going to bag some. Sound is important for the movies. The first pic is one of many springs on the property. It is not flowing a lot at the moment, but it will. It is sort of like a peat bog. I heard a story of someone getting trapped in a peat bog and they couldn't find him. But the next spring there was peculiar spot that looked like it was warmer than the rest of the bog. Click pic for video Click pic...
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The llamas haven't been on the blog for a while. It was about 10 degrees out at 7:00 AM when I took these pics. The air was perfectly still. Weather like that is nice. It is great llama weather. I fed them outside and took a pic of inside their private chambers when they weren't looking. They are happy anaimals this AM, no wind, no rain, no super cold temps. Click pic for video
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It is quite wintery out today. I decided to come upstairs and scan in this schematic that was inside the "G Stand" of my Astatic D-104 microphone. This is the mic I am using for shortwave. It is pretty old looking. I didn't have anything else to do (right) so I went out and got the bobcat stuck today in snow and mud. I had to yank it out sideways with the tractor. The drifts of snow are several feet deep. I have been mostly relaxing today, reading in bed even. The stove has been making the house nice and warm.
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My exercise regimen is paying dividends. I am somewhat surprised at the progress. I am running 3.1 miles (5k) in 24 minutes now. The amount of weight I use on almost all the machines has increased, except for the biceps. I have backed off a little bit on the overall routine just to take the edge off it. Further progress I am sure of, but I can take more time. Bonnie's sister is down this weekend and we celebrated Bonnies birthday. I made Baked Alaska. I did quite a bit of research before I started. My recipe was a combination of recipes I gleaned from the web. I made a 13 x 9 inch chocolate cake, cut into 6 pieces. I took a half gallon of french vanilla ice cream and cut that into 6 even slabs. I refroze the ice cream slabs in foil in the big cold freezer we have downstairs. Then it is time for the meringue. I used our own chicken eggs being careful to use the oldest eggs we had. I read that you should use eggs at least 4 days old. (That was difficult). I had about 9 or 10 eg...
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There must be a term surrounding the concept of analying but not understanding. I mean the alpha llama Professor can stare at me and a match, watch me strike it and light the heater so close, right next to my face with all his might and sadly will never figure out how to make his herd-friends warm when he wants. This is a fact of which I am certain. The same condition applies to watching something like the Nightly Business Report. You can talk about all sorts of stuff and show all sorts of graphs, how do you communicate what took you a lifetime to figure out to another individual? The llamas got their rabies shots the other day. In NY we have to have a licenced vet administer a rabies shot. Jim the vet said, you have to watch out, your llamas may give llamas a good name. It took about 15 minutes for Dr. Jim to get them all. He agreed, our llamas are well trained.
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It was cold this weekend; It got down to about 5 below on the farm. It was pretty windy and nasty until it got down to about zero. The cool air felt great. The wind was a pain. The llamas decided to hold up for most of it in their house until the temperature dropped and the wind calmed. They have the heater, their straw and each other. I decided to spend some concerted effort on CAD for the property. I am getting frustrated on my lack of progress on the plan. We have lots of concepts. I have the tools; let's get it on drawings with scales, numbers and realities. I am somewhat taken back that the GE low voltage switching system that seemed ubiquitous with remote switching is no longer made. I was relying on that stuff. I hope there is a replacement. I suspect there is. I have been getting a Debian (linux) machine going in the ham shack. My common sense and "off the cuff" realization continues to be that L inux is unix but since there is no real "paper trail...
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