Let it Snow!

We have been having very mild weather for November recently, but today that is changing - rapidly. Last week the temperatures were pretty mild and yesterday was in the 50s - very comfortable outside with just a light sweater. My pond was entirely frozen over on Saturday morning, but it thawed quickly and the weekend turned out to be pretty pleasant. Today started off at about 33 degrees and quickly dropped to below freezing. It's about 31 degrees now at mid-morning.

 This morning I awoke with snowflakes whipping by my window in clouds as a snow squall passed through. It didn't last long and the snow melted as it hit the ground, but throughout the morning there have been alternating rain, sleet, and snow showers. When I went outside a little before 9 to measure the precipitation in my rain gauge, the wind nearly took the door out of my grasp. The deck was slippery with half-frozen slush, and the outside of my measuring tube was covered with pebbles of frozen rain drops all over it. I didn't linger out there - the wind was ferocious. We've had a number of power outages in the past few days caused by high wind.

 I took a walk around the property Sunday afternoon and discovered a poplar tree had blown down on my lower lawn. It looks like it was mostly dead - at least it broke off about 5 ft off the ground and limbs are shattered so I'm assuming it was not very healthy. It makes a mess on the lawn and will need to be cleaned up before the lawn can be mowed again in the spring.

Yesterday I had to go to Cabot Village and was surprised that Burtt's Apples have closed for the season. I was hoping to pick up some apples and maybe more cider, but I'll have to get those things at the local stores from now on. Burtt's will be open a few selected dates before the holidays, according to their website. I got cider from them a couple weeks ago and after the first glass, didn't get back to it for a few days. Of course, being unpasteurized, it doesn't keep forever, and when I opened it again it puffed air at me and I knew it would have that wonderful "zing" that tickles your pallet as it turns from "sweet" to "hard" cider. I enjoy it at that stage. I finished off the bottle within the next couple of nights, enjoying hot, very tangy cider with popcorn one night, and paired it with Cabot cheese and crackers another night. So good! I remember having really "hard" cider with friends, Esther and Lawrence Bona in Concord many years ago. Both are deceased now, but I remember that cider was just about the smoothest alcoholic drink I've ever had - and the most powerful. 

Thinking about fermented cider reminds me of one of my father's stories. Dad never drank alcohol as far as I know, but he said one time when he was very young and doing road work with Ned Barnett, former road commissioner in Cabot, they stopped at some farmer's place and the man offered them some cider. Dad said they were standing on a porch and as he drank the cider he began to feel the porch post he was leaning against moving. That was apparently his first experience with hard cider -- and probably his last! I expect Ned got a big kick out of having initiated his young helper to the cockeyed world of inebriation. Cider was a staple in most homes years ago and often served as payment for services in place of cash. Cabot was well known for growing lots of apples and potatoes in those early years, the resulting liquor products providing a cash crop for hardscrabble farmers. This is a photo of my father, taken at our sugar house in about 1935 when he would have been about 28 years old.

Back to the present - today I'm hunkering down to catch up on emails and other stuff I didn't get to yesterday. It's a good day to stay inside. I will need to go out for the mail later, and also I dropped my  scoop this morning when I was filling the window bird feeder, so I'll need to scoot out the basement door and pick that up. It was a bad fumble on my part, so I'm thinking I may drill a little hole int he handle and tie a string on that I can loop around my wrist so I won't have to go out there when there's shovel-able snow on the ground. The birds were reluctant to get going this morning - the wind seemed to be buffeting them around a bit. I've changed my feeder to a more sheltered window this year, which I hope will be better for them.

The big news is that we did get a little rain overnight, and actually everything is pretty well soaked so our risk of wildfires is not very high locally, I'd say. The ground is still dry and we do need more rain (or snow) to replenish the water table and give everything a good soaking before winter sets in. With fires in New York state and New Jersey, we need to be really careful here in Vermont - our turn to experience  a wildfire disaster could come any time, I expect.

Stay warm and out of the wind.