a librul woodchuck

Mud Season Begins, 2012

Paul — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:59:27 +0000

This is the last 3 miles of our drive home.

Aw Poop!

Paul — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:30:03 +0000

Returned home from a family celebration on the West Coast to signs of a visitor to our yard and chicken coop. No real damage done at this point, but we’ll need to tidy up a bit and be careful when letting the dogs out into the yard, lest we scare a sow with a cub.

For those who doubt

Paul — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 00:01:27 +0000

We still are a long ways away from having a yard of green grass. There’s a solid 12-18 inches of snow, even in the wide open spaces up here in the hills. Great for those of us who love winter.

Proof…

Spring and Mud

Paul — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:12:27 +0000

It’s arrived. While I’m sure we’ll at least get a little more snow before it’s all said and done, mud season, sugar season, and spring have pretty much arrived. It’s amazing how it can all switch in 10 days time.

We went from this:

to this:

and this:

We didn’t quite get that warm up in the hills where we still have a fair amount of snow. Our road has taken a hit though and it’s too soft to drive the car down the hill at the moment. Our plan is to get it to the bottom first thing tomorrow morning since it’s supposed to drop into the teens tonight. That will at least mean the mud will be frozen and the car shouldn’t get mired in any mud pits. It will mean that we’ll have to gingerly weave on and around the big ruts which will have set up solid. With some of those 8 inches or so deep, the risk of bottoming out with the car is real. At least we’ll be going downhill…

You can see the two tracks vehicles have traveled through this stretch of the road right by our house. It becomes an adventure in route finding and adds a little excitement to our typical commute. It does also complicate our lives a little as we need to coordinate our schedules a bit more when we need to leave a car parked at the bottom of the hill.

Mud season’s pretty hard to predict and right now the bets are weighted towards it being a pretty gnarly one because of all the snow we got this winter. Time will tell and we’ll just take it as it comes.

Priorities

Paul — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:28:44 +0000

With everything going on in the world, or in our country alone related to the economy and jobs, it’s nice to see the new congress working hard to fix real problems. In an emergency session, the repub leaders pushed through a bill which actually didn’t cut any money from the budget, but just said none of it could go to support NPR. What a shame.

We just finished listening to this week’s CarTalk and the repubs are so right – what a waste of money that show is…

You can express your support for NPR, if you disagree, by visiting here:
http://170millionamericans.org/

Dogs

Paul — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:49:41 +0000

They’re running across Alaska right now with Mushers hanging on. The f5 key gets a good workout this time of year as I refresh often to see who arrives at checkpoints first. Yes, it’s the Iditarod.

Dog mushing is one of the things I miss most about living in AK and our time up there. There is indeed something magical about it. I can go on and on, but there’s a poll at USA Today asking about whether it’s cruel on the dogs. Feel free to share your thoughts. Currently there seems to be a rational response as the Alaska websites have picked it up. I’m guessing it’ll swing the other way as more folks from the states pickup on it or it’s promoted by some of the anti groups.

Here it is:

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/pets/pawprintpost/post/2011/03/sport-or-torture-are-the-dogs-having-fun/146856/1

One for the record books

Paul — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:29:23 +0000

It’s been an eventful week as we’ve enjoyed Northern New England’s weather in all it’s variability. It began around 4am or so on Saturday when we left the house to drive to the other side of the Grn Mtns to a snowshoe race which JJ had been training for most of the winter. She was originally planning to do the half marathon, but after losing some ground in her training due to a crazy time at work and then getting sick, she decided instead to do the “fun run” which was just over 6 miles. I guess fun is all a matter of perspective. The skies threatened to open up and rain, but it held off until after JJ finished in style. She placed 2nd for women in the fun run which was awesome. She’s determined to increase the challenge next year and take on the 1/2 marathon at least. Here she is finishing in style along with a sense of what the race was like “on the ground.”

The rain started Saturday afternoon and really let loose overnight and Sunday morning. By noon on Sunday when the first snow flake appeared we had gotten over an inch and with temperatures in the mid 40′s our snow pack took a big hit.

There was one big temperature drop around 9:30am on Sunday which got us very close to freezing and I was optimistic that it’d change over to snow sooner then they thought. But it wasn’t till noon and the temperature dropped that one more degree that the change over happened. And then it came…

While we probably didn’t break any records in Starksboro, we had plenty of snow from this last storm. The early forecasts were saying 8-14 inches. By Sunday night we probably had 18. It was a little tough to tell exactly as we had some snow, but it was pretty amazing. It wasn’t the big flake, fluffy kind of snow either as the temperatures stayed in the mid twenties and there was an incredible amount of moisture getting pumped into our area.

Monday arrived and we probably added another 6 inches during the day as the mountains squeezed out any remaining moisture. We typically bring work home and it was a good thing as most of Northern VT was shut down trying to dig out from the storm. So we hunkered down and dug out the cars in anticipation of the plow truck coming by sometime that day. No luck.

Tuesday arrived bright, beautiful and cold again. I started to wonder if I should just get started on shoveling our way out to the road and if I was being somewhat whimpy by not doing so. I wandered out to the road and staggered over the 6 foot high and 8 foot wide berm left by the town plow and asked myself “why bother?”

Finally around 4pm our plow guy showed up, but not with his typical plow truck (which actually is a big dually dump truck with a v plow). He came bouncing up the road with his front end loader and started clearing our driveway. I didn’t feel too bad about not trying to shovel after seeing that.

Today’s started out blue sky and a bit warmer. We’re expecting another 4-6 inches tonight into tomorrow before it turns over to rain for Thursday night/Friday. It’s a good reminder that mud season is right around the corner. In fact, the roads are already starting to frost heave and get some good ruts in them. It could be another year when we’ll be walking home at some point this spring. It all depends on how fast the melting happens.

That’s it for now. Till next time. Enjoy. We sure are…

A lull

Paul — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:15:12 +0000

Enjoying a relatively calm, blue sky day with plenty of snow still hanging around and a good storm in the forecast for the end of the week. Right now they’re saying 6 or more inches of snow for us as we’re on the cold side of the storm. Just where we like to be.

As much as we like the winter, it’s been a little challenging for Logan as he’s gotten a bit older and more weak. Depending on the snow conditions, he’s had to basically stay on the shoveled driveway or road as he really can’t lift himself out of a hole if he slips off the well packed snow shoe trail into the powder. It’s been hard to watch him struggle because he really wants to play and romp in the snow, but he now doesn’t have the strength that he once did. He’s now 11+ and we are adjusting to his geriatric needs as his spunky personality is still young, but his body’s not able to keep up.

Daisy’s hanging in there at the mature age of 8 and she’s very much a winter dog – loving late night snowshoe hikes through the woods and rolling in the fresh snow whenever she can. I’ve been occasionally running with her in harness as well and it is amazing how much better she does when the temperatures are below freezing rather than 70-80 plus in the summer.

Other than the dogs, we’re making it through just fine. Fighting off a cold and healing from a turned ankle from running at night on the frozen rutted roads in our neighborhood.

It’s been a good winter…

Heart of Winter

Paul — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 17:21:30 +0000

It definitely feels like winter here in VT. A frosty Barred Owl visited our yard last week watching for the field mice which are scampering along the side of the house where the snow’s not too deep.

Last night we had quite the storm and the first serious thunder snow storm which I’ve experienced. It was absolutely amazing and our house sits in a bit of a cirque so the thunder and lightning and roar of the wind can get amplified. One thing I noticed was that the thunder seemed to roll much longer when compared to most summer storms – seemingly as long as 20-30 seconds for one lightning strike.

We woke up to another fresh foot of snow and are digging out today which includes clearing the roof of most of the new snow – at least what we can reach from the ground. Another storm or two are on the horizon, but they don’t look to be quite as strong as last night’s. However, the storm last night took a sharp turn northward just 18 hours before it hit, so you never can be sure.

I’ve quite enjoyed watching the weather and getting more details about it in our backyard with our own weather station. It can be found here on WeatherUnderground. A live view from our house looking west to the Adirondacks can be found here.

Enjoy! We certainly are.

Weather Cam

Paul — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:51:19 +0000

We’re just getting it set up, but here’s the view outside for today…