mud season
Mar. 16th, 2019 05:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7We left later than I wanted yesterday, and in my car. Too much to do, too much fuss. I will feel guilty about it, though.
It's 5am and I'm awake so I'm going to write a long meditative entry to wake up the rest of the way.
Drove unhurriedly, with a rest stop lunch. Dude was mostly a silent passenger; he has almost no voice, and tried valiantly to converse but gave up, and slept for a while. It's been a bit since I did that drive. I haven't missed it. Three hundred miles of New York State in a mostly flat mostly straight line. It's lovely, and nice to watch the different regions pass by, but. Not a lot of spring greening-up, but in the Mohawk Valley section I was interested to note the frozen north-facing rock faces with gouts of ice and occasional cataracts breaking free, vs. the south-facing rock on the other side that was all frothy brown mud-waterfalls.
No leaves anywhere, no buds, no grass, everything is very clearly freshly thawed out from under snowpack and very subdued by it, still.
Arrived at the farm and found my sister just walking out of the granary building, where she'd been arranging dried flowers. She helped us carry things across the muddy driveway and into the house, and then we got a beer apiece (it was 4pm) and went for a walk. The dog delightedly joined us; she had showed up shortly after our arrival panting and muddy and clearly immediately after having been taken for a walk by BIL, who'd been up doing "chores". The route we walked was muddy, in places streaming an inch or more of water across it as the ice pack on the road melted, but there were footprints everywhere; obviously there have been a lot of walks taken in recent days.
(Veg Manager did not come to greet us; he was clearly finished with his on-the-clock workday and so was working on his day-off project, where he spends his scant weekend hours-- the orchard just up the hill from the house. He was hauling tarps off the berries, it looked like.)
Sister told us of a plot that's afoot to try to save the neighboring land, which they lease from the family it was originally granted to in 1789, from developers; the last family member who cares is elderly and looking to liquidate his assets for his heirs. The farm is conserved by a state-funded easement (i.e., a charitable trust in conjunction with the State of NY scraped together the money to buy off the difference in value between the land as farmland, and the land sold as parcels to developers, on the basis that land under the plough is more valuable to society, and once developed for housing it can never be farmed again; the farm is absolutely surrounded by vacant, foreclosed-upon McMansions, and the developers are hungry to make more, because people will pay far more for new construction on freshly-destroyed farmland than five-year-old houses on tree-free lots.) It'll take a lot of money they don't have; really they need to lure in a business partner, but those are not exactly thick upon the ground. I wish very much that I had any kind of business acumen, but I entertain no delusions that I do.
We went over to Mom and Dad's, after that, where Farmbaby already was. As we left we got a call to bring her a change of clothes, as she'd accidentally sat in a puddle while playing outdoors. Yes, she'd spent the whole day outdoors. "It was like summer," she told me breathlessly as I arrived and she immediately towed me upstairs to play Barbies. To her delight, as they'd been my childhood Barbie dolls, I could remember some of their names.
We went for a brief walk down the road, and it was gorgeously sunny, about to be sunset, our shadows soooo long in front of us as we turned back. It was a bit marred, in its idyll, by the neighbor directly across the street conducting a pistol-shooting rapid-fire target practice in his front yard, about a hundred feet from the road. We attempted to make this seem not scary to Farmkid, who was scared of the loud noise; she's used to guns, but nobody likes gunshots. She was pretending to be her cousin, and asked sweetly, "is Cousin afraid of gunshots?" and we reassured her that everyone was, just a little, but Cousin being a very fierce and slightly older little girl, she probably wasn't very afraid of them.
("He's attempting to qualify as a Vermont state trooper," Mom said, of the neighbor. "He's a complete idiot, though, so I hope he doesn't make it." How reassuring, I thought, gazing thoughtfully at the man standing right fucking next to the road blasting away at a man-shaped target set into the embankment directly in front of his own house. A complete idiot. Great.)
It was only when we arrived home that I noticed that all the women had gone for the walk and all the men were sitting in the kitchen talking. I was glad, though; Dude was clearly feeling well enough to have a beer, but he was moving slowly. We sat on the patio for a few moments and BIL made a hilarious jokey show of helping Dude up and holding him by the arm to get him inside. "I'll remember you in my will," Dude said.
We had homemade pizza, though we were scandalized to find out that Mom had PURCHASED! the CRUST! (unbaked, of course, at least, but. Still! Scandalized!) We waited a while, Farmkid very impatiently, and then had apple pie for dessert, and that precipitated, by murphy's law, the arrival of my older sister and her children.
"Rte 40 is closed at Grant's Hollow," she said, "and we had to go by detour over Mineral Springs Road. There must be an accident?"
Mineral Springs Road is unpaved, one of few remaining in the township, and we had considered taking that route on the way over and had dismissed it as likely being largely impassible without 4 wheel drive. But now they were routing all of the traffic from the county highway over it. There's no other way through, from the city of Troy to the northern towns; it's a major artery, 55mph speed limit. And Mineral Springs Road is one lane, though it's two-way traffic.
"I figure it's a matter of time until someone slides off it and it gets blocked too," Older Sister said. "I hadn't been down that way in a couple of decades, probably, but I didn't get lost because I just followed the solid line of cars!"
So, consulting our phones, the farm contingent collected the pie-filled, be-pajama'd Farmkid and took our leave. Farmsister set up the route on her phone and then sat in the backseat and told BIL "no ignore that, turn left here", which was hilarious. She also gave us a tour of the landscape, a bit. We went up around the Tomhannock Reservoir, to avoid Rte 40 entirely, and it's an area I don't know well at all, but she had a lot of friends who lived out that way. "Autumn's house was here," she said, pointing, "and up on the other side is Middle-Little's best friend's mom's house", and to Farmkid she said "here's where your Aunt J [not a real aunt, one of her best friends] grew up, up there on the left," and meanwhile the phone navigation is showing us the windy, twisty path and she's saying "oh but just stay on this road, it goes through". I'm not sure why we had the phone at all, except to keep from getting turned around in the dark. BIL knows that area better than I do, likely, but he isn't from around here and sometimes his knowledge has inconvenient gaps.
I was in bed by 9:30 and fell asleep, for once, without trouble, but woke at 4 am and have been soundly awake ever since. Alas!
I should try to get a Mammoths Novel bit up, but I think I'm going to put the kettle on, first; the truck has to leave for the farmer's market at 7 so I expect the house to awaken soon.
It's 5am and I'm awake so I'm going to write a long meditative entry to wake up the rest of the way.
Drove unhurriedly, with a rest stop lunch. Dude was mostly a silent passenger; he has almost no voice, and tried valiantly to converse but gave up, and slept for a while. It's been a bit since I did that drive. I haven't missed it. Three hundred miles of New York State in a mostly flat mostly straight line. It's lovely, and nice to watch the different regions pass by, but. Not a lot of spring greening-up, but in the Mohawk Valley section I was interested to note the frozen north-facing rock faces with gouts of ice and occasional cataracts breaking free, vs. the south-facing rock on the other side that was all frothy brown mud-waterfalls.
No leaves anywhere, no buds, no grass, everything is very clearly freshly thawed out from under snowpack and very subdued by it, still.
Arrived at the farm and found my sister just walking out of the granary building, where she'd been arranging dried flowers. She helped us carry things across the muddy driveway and into the house, and then we got a beer apiece (it was 4pm) and went for a walk. The dog delightedly joined us; she had showed up shortly after our arrival panting and muddy and clearly immediately after having been taken for a walk by BIL, who'd been up doing "chores". The route we walked was muddy, in places streaming an inch or more of water across it as the ice pack on the road melted, but there were footprints everywhere; obviously there have been a lot of walks taken in recent days.
(Veg Manager did not come to greet us; he was clearly finished with his on-the-clock workday and so was working on his day-off project, where he spends his scant weekend hours-- the orchard just up the hill from the house. He was hauling tarps off the berries, it looked like.)
Sister told us of a plot that's afoot to try to save the neighboring land, which they lease from the family it was originally granted to in 1789, from developers; the last family member who cares is elderly and looking to liquidate his assets for his heirs. The farm is conserved by a state-funded easement (i.e., a charitable trust in conjunction with the State of NY scraped together the money to buy off the difference in value between the land as farmland, and the land sold as parcels to developers, on the basis that land under the plough is more valuable to society, and once developed for housing it can never be farmed again; the farm is absolutely surrounded by vacant, foreclosed-upon McMansions, and the developers are hungry to make more, because people will pay far more for new construction on freshly-destroyed farmland than five-year-old houses on tree-free lots.) It'll take a lot of money they don't have; really they need to lure in a business partner, but those are not exactly thick upon the ground. I wish very much that I had any kind of business acumen, but I entertain no delusions that I do.
We went over to Mom and Dad's, after that, where Farmbaby already was. As we left we got a call to bring her a change of clothes, as she'd accidentally sat in a puddle while playing outdoors. Yes, she'd spent the whole day outdoors. "It was like summer," she told me breathlessly as I arrived and she immediately towed me upstairs to play Barbies. To her delight, as they'd been my childhood Barbie dolls, I could remember some of their names.
We went for a brief walk down the road, and it was gorgeously sunny, about to be sunset, our shadows soooo long in front of us as we turned back. It was a bit marred, in its idyll, by the neighbor directly across the street conducting a pistol-shooting rapid-fire target practice in his front yard, about a hundred feet from the road. We attempted to make this seem not scary to Farmkid, who was scared of the loud noise; she's used to guns, but nobody likes gunshots. She was pretending to be her cousin, and asked sweetly, "is Cousin afraid of gunshots?" and we reassured her that everyone was, just a little, but Cousin being a very fierce and slightly older little girl, she probably wasn't very afraid of them.
("He's attempting to qualify as a Vermont state trooper," Mom said, of the neighbor. "He's a complete idiot, though, so I hope he doesn't make it." How reassuring, I thought, gazing thoughtfully at the man standing right fucking next to the road blasting away at a man-shaped target set into the embankment directly in front of his own house. A complete idiot. Great.)
It was only when we arrived home that I noticed that all the women had gone for the walk and all the men were sitting in the kitchen talking. I was glad, though; Dude was clearly feeling well enough to have a beer, but he was moving slowly. We sat on the patio for a few moments and BIL made a hilarious jokey show of helping Dude up and holding him by the arm to get him inside. "I'll remember you in my will," Dude said.
We had homemade pizza, though we were scandalized to find out that Mom had PURCHASED! the CRUST! (unbaked, of course, at least, but. Still! Scandalized!) We waited a while, Farmkid very impatiently, and then had apple pie for dessert, and that precipitated, by murphy's law, the arrival of my older sister and her children.
"Rte 40 is closed at Grant's Hollow," she said, "and we had to go by detour over Mineral Springs Road. There must be an accident?"
Mineral Springs Road is unpaved, one of few remaining in the township, and we had considered taking that route on the way over and had dismissed it as likely being largely impassible without 4 wheel drive. But now they were routing all of the traffic from the county highway over it. There's no other way through, from the city of Troy to the northern towns; it's a major artery, 55mph speed limit. And Mineral Springs Road is one lane, though it's two-way traffic.
"I figure it's a matter of time until someone slides off it and it gets blocked too," Older Sister said. "I hadn't been down that way in a couple of decades, probably, but I didn't get lost because I just followed the solid line of cars!"
So, consulting our phones, the farm contingent collected the pie-filled, be-pajama'd Farmkid and took our leave. Farmsister set up the route on her phone and then sat in the backseat and told BIL "no ignore that, turn left here", which was hilarious. She also gave us a tour of the landscape, a bit. We went up around the Tomhannock Reservoir, to avoid Rte 40 entirely, and it's an area I don't know well at all, but she had a lot of friends who lived out that way. "Autumn's house was here," she said, pointing, "and up on the other side is Middle-Little's best friend's mom's house", and to Farmkid she said "here's where your Aunt J [not a real aunt, one of her best friends] grew up, up there on the left," and meanwhile the phone navigation is showing us the windy, twisty path and she's saying "oh but just stay on this road, it goes through". I'm not sure why we had the phone at all, except to keep from getting turned around in the dark. BIL knows that area better than I do, likely, but he isn't from around here and sometimes his knowledge has inconvenient gaps.
I was in bed by 9:30 and fell asleep, for once, without trouble, but woke at 4 am and have been soundly awake ever since. Alas!
I should try to get a Mammoths Novel bit up, but I think I'm going to put the kettle on, first; the truck has to leave for the farmer's market at 7 so I expect the house to awaken soon.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-16 04:34 pm (UTC)