We got snow last night, as predicted. We were at Bill and Diane Rossi's for dinner and there was a light covering of snow on the grass when we came out to head home around 9:30. The car had an inch or more of snow on the windshield and it seemed pretty "normal" to be brushing it off and then shivering in a cold car all the way home. We completely forgot we have seat warmers, but for the short distance from their house to ours, it was no big problem. This morning, I measured 4 inches of snow on our deck - I'd forgotten to put out the "official" snow board, which is white and therefore stays cooler to get a more accurate measurement than on the wood of the deck or the ground, but there is a white metal table still on our deck, and that served perfectly.

I took this picture a few minutes ago. It's still snowing lightly although the sun also breaks through the clouds from time to time, and the thermometer is rising pretty steadily. Our overnight low was 29.0 and it's 36.7 (by the new min/max thermometer).

A pretty day with snow-covered trees - more like Christmas than Halloween, although snow for Halloween here at Joe's Pond is not that unusual. We are more fortunate than some of our neighbors in New Hampshire and southern Vermont who got really socked with anywhere from foot to 18 inches or more.

While we were enjoying a delicious meal of baked-in-a-bag chicken and some of Walter Ruf's beets and potatoes, Andre LaPrade called from Florida to find out how much snow was at Joe's Pond. At the time he called, we were unaware if it was snowing, so Diane may have given him wrong information when she told him we didn't have any yet.

I was at the Cabot Historical Society building yesterday afternoon to help close up the building and put away Apple Pie Festival stuff. Enough people showed up to get the work done quickly so Bonnie decided not to start a fire in the big old pot-bellied stove. We counted paper plates and plastic forks and spoons, getting the job done in record time and were out of there in less than an hour. It's always good to have everything put away for another year. Once cold weather comes, it's hard to get the door of the building open, and way too cold in there to work; even if we built a fire, it would take too long to warm the place to a comfortable level. We'll tackle other projects at home this winter and start fresh in the spring.

I can hardly ever drive by the Cabot Plain Cemetery without stopping to take a picture of the mountains. Yesterday was no exception. It was quiet there, nothing moving on the road or in the fields, and the wind was coming straight and chilled from Canada. This is looking north to Jay Peak and Canada beyond. That's the famous "Foster Covered Bridge" and the little white Walbridge School House. The cemetery is across the road, behind where I was standing. I should have taken a picture of the cemetery with the White Mountains beyond, but I was already cold from working at the historical society building and that wind was biting. No wonder the first settlers in Cabot who had built log cabins there in the 1790's gradually moved off the pinnacle after a few years. Later, there would be others who chose to farm on the highest hills in town - the Stone, Cate, Cross, Goodale, Barnett, Springer, Morse and Bolton families. But today, they are all gone except two. The Stone farm is now owned by Richard Spaulding who doesn't keep any animals, but he sugars and hays every year; the other is the Bolton farm where I grew up, which is sometimes in use with a few cattle or horses on the place, depending on who is renting it.

Even my parents moved off the hill to build this house when my dad was no longer working on the farm. They loved this spot, as we do. The view of the pond was grander forty years ago, and the trees around the house not quite as big as they are now, but there's a lot about the place that's the same - comfortable and tucked under the hill, out of the wind - most of the time.