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Fairpoint Communications telephone pole ID
On our property there is a right of way (ROW) up to the ridegeline of Barton Mountain for electricity and cables to the cell towers up top. This past September, Fairpoint put in fiber optic cables on those poles. I wrote about this invasion in an earlier post. Because of our concern about the Fairpoint activity we saw from the house, we decided to climb up the ROW to see what damage had been done to the land. We saw plenty. Unfortunately, I didn't take photographs of the damage, but it is still visible and will be visible for years. I will return after mud season to document the damage better. The photos here in this multipart photographic essay are of our activity on the hike — of John, me and the cats Buddy and Oscar. Despite our anger at the invasion, we had a wonderful afternoon. I took only my 70-250mm lens, which was inadequate for most of the macro photos here. Next time I'll take the whole kit and caboodle.
Looking down the ROW.
Our home is through the woods to the left.
Looking up the ROW.
All trails end at the bottom of those cliffs, which is where bear and bobcat live.
Buddy wanted to rest here.
He actually wanted to turn back and go home, but continued on with us.
A couple of chickadees kept a close eye on us the entire hike.
We found even more apple trees from the orchard a century ago!
White Worm Coral Fungus (Clavaria fragilis)
Bear scat full of chokecherry pits.
To be continued . . . .
To view the other photos:
Introduction: Strangers on the mountain
Hiking the ROW: Part 1
Hiking the ROW: Part 2
Hiking the ROW: Part 3
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Spaghetti Sauce
Our first garden in Vermont was successful. Before the blight hit in September, we got enough tomatoes to can quarts of spaghetti sauce and tomatoes. We had over a couple of hundred pounds of cucumbers and made sweet relish, bread and butter pickles and dill pickles.
Making pickles.
With all of the apples and chokecherries, John made apple, cherry, and apple-cherry jelly.
John had planted a lot of squash seeds that he brought from New Hampshire. The trouble was, he had no idea what they were. They turned out to be Red Kuri squash, which I now like better than butternut. It is sweeter and more solid than butternut. It makes terrific pies. John processed and froze so much squash that we had to get another huge chest freezer!
Red Kuri squash on the vine.
A Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax) on a squash leaf.
Bumblebees would often pile up six deep in a squash blossom.
I never did take photos of the apple sauce, apples, pies and cider that John preserved. But I do know that he made over 20 gallons of cider! It was a very fruitful harvest!
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Two of the new apple trees
So far, the ten new apple trees are doing beautifully. They have developed many leaves and even some buds! We may not be getting apples from them this year, but they are growing big and strong.
The apple blossom in the photograph above is from the small tree below. This tree was growing on its side for years after it "fell" off a cliff. Using he tractor, John dug it up and planted it in the side yard near the brook. We didn't know if it would survive this transplant, but it leafed out and blossomed on May 26.
Transplanted apple tree
The older trees in the orchard are doing great. Let's hope conditions remain good for apples this year!
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Tent caterpillars in apple tree
One of the apple trees has tent caterpillars. Probably more by now since we haven't done a thing to this nest. At least the birds will enjoy the tasty caterpillars. A friend in the village has or had a nest in one of her apple trees, too. She was going to cut the branch off and smush them all with her feet. I have to check with her about that, but this branch of ours is way, way high up — too high to cut.
Electricity to artesian well only 6" underground
Because of flash floods and flooding brooks, John re-graded the back yard this spring. Now last year, while re-doing all of the electrical in the house, he found all the circuits and wires except the one for the artesian well. He found it this spring with the backhoe. He dug very carefully because he knew the wire had to be somewhere back there. But he never figured it was only six inches underground! We could have dug into it at any time over the past few years! It wasn't in any pipe or anything. It was just lying under there. The wires don't go straight from the house to the well. They go way out to the small hill, as if they were going to go out to the spring well (which, of course, doesn't need electricity) and then snaked back to the well. For the past couple of weeks, these wires have been draped over the roof of the garage while the grading is going on. They will be properly buried when this digging is over.
Other than these problems, we have that mink from the winter sneaking into the garage to steal garbage. The weeds have almost taken over the day lily garden. The black flies have been the worst I have ever seen in my entire life. But worst of all is that two of my cats have illnesses.
Zorro
On their vet visit this year for rabies and distemper shots, I complained about Zorro's vomiting and weight loss. I had had him wormed and changed his food but it just gets worse. After a blood test we found that Zorro, who will be 16 years old in August, has hyperthyroid problems and is now on a little daily pill. I hope it works because he is still losing weight.
Possum
Sadly, Possum has EGC (Feline eosinophilic granuloma complex). It is manageable but is inevitably fatal and I have lost several cats to this. Right now she only has lesions in her mouth and they are so small they don't require treatment. But they will. I hope that researchers finally find a cure for this disease. She and Zorro are such sweeties. We have gone so many years without cat health problems that I probably was thinking these kitties were immortal.
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Apple bud eaten by deer
Spring in northern Vermont begins after the last snowstorm and before the first black flies. It is when you walk your land to see what was damaged or has died and what is growing. There may be something new growing on your land or you may notice that it will be a good year for one species of plant. Early in May we saw how every apple bud up to five feet up on the trees has been eaten by the deer this winter. Apple picking will be a bit difficult this fall!
The fiddlehead of the interrupted fern (Osmunda claytonia)
The grove of interrupted ferns on the bank of the brook near the spring well is not as lush as it used to be. That may be because we have walked in the area too much. But the many ferns that are there are strong and healthy (below).
Spring azure butterfly
The first butterfly photographed this season was the spring azure. They are very small and startlingly blue on the top. This is the underside of the wings. The first butterfly spotted this year was the mourning cloak in April.
And of course, the purple trillium. They were abundant this year, as were the trout lilies.
Black flies are out now, so I'm not getting out as much as before. But I've got some marvelous photographs coming up soon! Spring is a miracle.
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Two experimental apples — A and B.
Do you remember Coxeter's Pippin? If not, please click that link and go read it. A geometry professor claimed that coring an apple his way was the most efficient way to core apples. His claim has been nagging me for days now, so yesterday, while making applesauce, I decided to test his theory.
I had 8 apples for the applesauce and selected two that were most identical in size. I weighed each on my digital food scale after I peeled them. Then I cut both of them equatorially (see the photo in the link of the original post above). For Apple A, I used Coxeter's method for coring. For Apple B, I used my husband's coring method (which, if you remember, he had taught me before I learned Coxeter's method). Suddenly, I wanted to see how much waste was produced with my own method, so I selected another apple, Apple C. I didn't care what size Apple C was. By this time. I just wanted to get this damn experiment over with and have supper. My method for coring apples is traditional: I cut the apple in half longitudinally and then, using a sharp knife, I cut the core out along with my own skin, nail and sometimes bone, creating a lot of blood. I weighed the stuff that I cut out of each apple and created a chart (below). Then I calculated the percent loss of each apple. If you would check my math I would appreciate it. I was grouchy when I did the numbers this morning, so I probably made a mistake.
The debris from the Coxeter Pippin Method.
| Apple Method | Apple A Coxeter Pippin | Apple B John's Method | Apple C traditional |
| Peeled Weight | 3.625 oz. | 3.5 oz. | 3.625 oz. |
| Cored Weight | 3.25 oz. | 2.50 oz. | 2.125 oz. |
| Percent Loss | 10.3% | 28.5% | 41.3% |
Discussion
The Coxeter Pippin Method resulted in the least waste, therefore it was most efficient. But I didn't like it. It was tedious and time consuming. I had to dig those little skin-like things out of the apple because they did not "fall out" as Coxeter said they would. My back was killing me as I huddled over the pieces of apple. My method was most familiar so I was able to think of other things besides apples and even hum my cooking song. John’s method was comfortable and somewhat enjoyable because I knew I could become expert at it if I tried it enough. It went fairly quickly, too, but not as quickly as my method.
Conclusion
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Peeled & equatorially cut apples ready to be cored for making apple slab.
January 24, 2011
John and I peel dozens of apples for pie, sauce, and slab. Depending on the size and quality of the apples, we will either peel and core by hand (with or without a corer) or by crank. John recently taught me that cutting apples equatorially and then coring them takes less time then the traditional cutting and coring. I have often wondered if there was an even easier or better way than all of the methods we have tried. I found a way tonight! But this is a puzzle. Your clue is the photo I took (above) of equatorially cut apples from January when I made two huge slabs for the weekend. By the way, I no longer use the King Arthur slab recipe. I double a pie crust recipe for a double 9” pie, use a 13x9 Pyrex pan, and just make an apple pie (butter, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves are all measured by feel and sight) in the rectangular Pyrex.
There are many ways of eating an apple. At one extreme is the child who met the request, "Can I have the core of your apple?" with a flat, "There ain't going to be no core!". Various procedures with various implements are designed to remove the core, but probably not one apple in a million is cored in the most efficient fashion possible. How in fact should an apple be cored, to remove all the core with the least possible waste?
Spoiler Alert! The answer is the first comment to this post.
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Prunus virginiana
We have dozens of chokecherry trees in the woods and fields; even by the road. They ripen at the end of July and during August. That is, I found, the best birding time. As I learned to photograph birds outdoors, I would loiter at the chokecherry trees as the birds ate breakfast.
Above and below: a song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) hidden in the chokecherry tree.
Abovce and below: a Nashville warbler (Vermivora ruficapilla) hidden in a tree.
Below is a photograph of the chokecherry blossoms from the spring.
When the cherries were ripe enough to pick, Nate, the kids and I picked five gallons of them for jelly. It is easy to pick them — you just start at the top of the bunch and pull them down with your hand. The problem is the high branches. I used a metal garden rake to gently bring the branches down so that we could reach them. Another problem was bears.
Bears love chokecherries and there was evidence of them everywhere under the trees. They had broken branches and flattened the grasses. And pooped. Everywhere we went there was bear poop (see above)!
Above, you can see the granny smith apples from the apple orchard. They were almost ripe in August. We made plans to pick them, also, as soon as they were ready.
And the chokecherry jelly? John and I forgot to follow the directions for our altitude. The jelly jelled in the pot but did not jell in the jars. We are going to re-cook it as soon as we can. I found a great article on chokecherries that you should read if you want to harvest them (click here). There are lots of other things you can do with chokecherries besides jelly.
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