Family Photo Friday

Something a little different this week, since we're off our regular posting schedule.

 

 

 

Enjoying a dinner of some broccoli soup, good bread, garden asparagus, and foraged morels.

Monday's Musings - Back Home

Just returned from vacation.
Wonderful to spend time with family and friends in FL.
Warm, so warm, and when it wasn't, it was still sunny.
One night it was as cold as it is here now, around 40 degrees, but here it is grey and windy.
Better, I hear, than the minus fifteen that happened here while we were gone.
Very nice to get a break from winter weather.



Alan and I met up with Rebecca and Dan (who were on a separate FL trip) and accompanied them to the Dali Museum (see the post below written by Rebecca). I, too, was fascinated by Dali's body of work -- from his initial student paintings through his well-known surrealistic phase and optical illusions and later a post-war period with Christian images.
And always by his side and in his paintings his wife, his muse, Gala.

Lovely images and short bio of Gala at:

http://www.salvador-dali.org/dali/en_biografia-gala.html

Inspired by... Dali

We recently visited the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL. I thought I was familiar with his work before, but I was amazed and inspired to see the tremendous depth and breadth of his work and creativity. He worked in many different media, styles, and sizes, collaborated with other artists, writers, and creative thinkers, and refused to be boxed in to one category.

The museum itself was newly opened and specifically designed to house his work.

Instead of continuing with my own interpretation, I want to share with you with some of Dali's words and images and let you interpret them in your own way.

"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."

Telephone in a Dish with Three Grilled Sardines at the End of September, 1939

"It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning."

 Average Atmospherocephalic Bureaucrat in the Act Milking a Cranial Harp, 1933

"What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust."

Sugar Sphinx, 1933

"I don't do drugs. I am drugs.

Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am hallucinogenic."

 Hallucinogenic Toreador, 1968-1970

 

Dali Fishing, 1954 (Philippe Halsman)

"Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali."

Local Cheese Showdown!

At Thanksgiving, we had a local cheese showdown - three NY cheeses vs. three Wisconsin cheeses (local to a visiting relative) plus homemade crackers and local apple slices.

 And the winner of the showdown is...

 All of us! (Because we all got to eat a bunch of really delicious cheese.) The crowd favorite was the 15-year-old cheddar (WI). I was a big fan of the aged raw milk cheddar which tasted more like parmigiano (WI) and the baby rand (NY). They were all super tasty though.

We all had a great time!

It's A Bird, It's A Plane,..It's My Man in a Plane!

Alan got to take a short plane ride with a friend out of the local airport. So cool is that he called me on his cell -- while in the air over the next town away -- and said, "We'll be circling the house in 5 minutes." And so they were...
Photos of him as co-pilot (actually,just a passenger), and over our valley and our street. And can you see the dot in the sky on the last photo -- I was so excited that I could see their plane -- that's them in the sky above and beyond our barn.

 

 

 

 

Garden Intentions

It has only just started to get warm here in the last week, but garden plans have been in the works for a couple of months now!  My parents have a big garden at their house which I will be helping with, and I also plan to have a small "salad garden" at my apartment. Here's what is on our list to grow:

"Salad garden"
cabbage
kale
chard
salad greens - lettuce, arugula, mizuna, sorrel
cucumbers
zucchini
broccoli
scallions
hot peppers
herbs - chives, garlic chives, thyme, oregano
johnny jump ups

My Parents' Garden
potatoes
onions
winter squash
tomatoes
red cabbage
Brussels sprouts
celeriac
beets
carrots
salad greens
Belgian endive
parsnip
peas
beans
belgian endive
sorrel
kale
spinach
broccoli
turnips

My dad does much of the planting, and I do much of the planning (we play to our strengths). I typed up a planting schedule for everything we plan to grow, which includes dates of planting, whether it's being planted from seed or a seedling, and where it will be planted (started indoors, direct sown in the hoophouse, or direct sown outdoors). My dad has already started several flats of seeds inside, and I will be going over to help plant and transfer some things in the hoophouse very soon! More garden news and photos to come (these photos are from a previous season).

What are you planning and planting?

Mmmmm...Maple Syrup is Ready

 

 

 

 

From the sugar shack...and Rebecca on night shift. She was up every two hours or so during the night to check the fires.
Next day...almost done. We bring it indoors and finish it off on the stove.
Alan checks the temperature, filters it and then it is bottled.
Pancakes anyone??

More Maple Magic (Part 2)

 

 

 

 

After gathering the sap, get a fire going in the pans in the sugar shack, and pour and strain that elixir (which looks like water at this point)into the pans to simmer all night. Next step -- alchemy!

This Country Life - Maple Syrup Magic - Part 1

 

This country life.... who's that tapping at my... tree?

Perfect country days... the snow is melting, the sap is running, the cusp of spring. We have tapped six maple trees and I solo collected about 40 gallons of sap yesterday on our first day. Have to start the sugar shack fires later today. That should yield one gallon of maple syrup. (Yep, it's a ratio of about 40 to 1, sap into syrup.)

On Saturday, Alan instructed Rebecca and Dan and a group of their wonderful friends up from NYC in the art and fun of preparing to make maple syrup.


 

How to, first three steps:

1. Drill holes in your trees,
insert spiles (the little faucets),
hang old fashioned metal buckets with spring-loaded roofs (to keep out debris and deter critters).

2. The sap starts flowing when nights are freezing and days are warm.
Listen to the dripping, faster than your heartbeat, on a sunny day.
Wait. Patiently. Check those buckets.

3. Pour the sap, overflowing from the bucket, into larger plastic containers -- and carry them over to the sugar shack.

More to come....

Lost an Old Friend - A Tree Falls Down

A big old maple tree came down Monday morning in a windy rainstorm -- it was really damaged a decade ago, during a storm with tornado strength winds. That's when the treehouse that Alan built for Rebecca landed intact about 200 feet from the tree (Alan builds solid!) and the tree started its slow demise. The wind did the rest of the task this week.
Alan has been out with a chain saw, cutting it up for firewood.
Although we have a number of smaller young trees, I always feel sad when we lose one of these elders.