I'm no longer going to report on our weather - it looks like we have at least another week of this bitterly cold weather ahead; but that isn't to say there won't be any snow.  The forecast has "snow showers" in it for nearly every day.  Not much sunshine at all. 

This makes our preparations for the Joe's Pond Ice-Out Contest seem premature, but those of us here at the pond know April 1st is not far off and the weather can turn on us very quickly.  It does seem unlikely all that ice is going to melt any time soon, especially when temperatures will range near or below zero nearly every night.  The contest is under way and no matter what, tickets must be in by April 1st to be considered.

Diane and I were pleased that Yankee Magazine published a very nice article on our Ice Out Contest in the March-April issue.  We have both read it and the only flaw I found was that Julia (Julia Shipley, the author) said Joe's is no "Golden Pond" because one is more likely to hear the quacking of geese rather than the calls of loons.  I guess she wasn't here much after the ice went out last year, so she had no way of knowing we do, indeed, have loons calling. True, we don't have a "Purgatory Cove,"  Kate Hepburn or Hank Fonda, but we have our own "characters" and the dreaded "Smith's Point" and "Sunken Island" that have been known to snag a few propellers or centerboards over the years.  She got everything else spot on, as far as I could tell, and I very much liked the article.  Her writing style was perfect for our light-hearted, fun-in-the-doldrums-of-winter contest, and she even captured the spirit of the Fourth of July Fireworks display the contest supports.  It's a good read.  The magazine (March-April edition) should be on the newsstands - we heard from Pam Hebert in Arizona that a friend in northern Maine let them know about it, so even though Diane didn't find a copy when she looked a couple days ago, it should be available soon. It's also available on line, if you are a subscriber. 

Yankee Magazine is filled with interesting articles, but I want to call your attention to another article in this same issue that we found very interesting.  It's "The Throwbacks," and is about young neighbors of ours, Jimmy and Sara Ackermann, who have a farm on Route 215N - just up the road from the turn for Cabot Plains Road.  The Ackermann family has farmed there for a long time, and now this young couple is working the farm together. The article was written by Ben Hewitt, who is also lives in Cabot.