first snow of the year!

and what a doozey it was.. seemed to catch everyone by surprise, leaving downed trees, super slippery conditions and tens-of-thousands without power, some for days.. aside from my drive home on sunday, we were more fortunate, not losing electricity at all, and having a pretty good snow day on monday, to boot!

sunday morning..

afternoon..

and evening.

monday morning. all done, except for the shoveling. and collecting our van from the bottom of the road where i had to leave it and walk the last bit home. that was at 5:15pm sunday night, and already the snow had drifted to over knee deep in some parts.

good times!

Delaware Broilers..

in our quest for self reliance, jessica and i are in the real-world experimentation phase of our forward progression. moving to maine has opened up a world of possibilities for our agricultural exploits, both with more access to land and like-minded friends and neighbors, most of whom are busy with their own projects of varying natures. all that, and unlike philadelphia, no property-use legalities constantly harshing our mellows. so nice. anyway..

here is a short log of our current project, broiler chickens, which is coming to a close. an overall success, despite a start rife with shaken self-confidence, due to a few deaths with these animals and the collapse, and for-the-time-being abandonment, of a rabbit breeding program. so sad. anyway, we opted to use delaware chickens for their natural foraging tendencies, as they would be in a moveable tractor, as well as their cold-hardiness, and the nice feature that they aren't the traditional commercial breed, the cornish cross, which comes to you complete with birth defects, problems walking correctly, and, to me, a general disposition as close to a soulless unit of food commodity as possible in a living thing. i may be a bit harsh on the breed, having never raised them, but i wasn't raising these birds for a profit at this point, so i could choose a slower growing breed that i had a better feeling about, so i did.

Frigid Rigid!

a fine gentleman and scholar by the name of Stephen Wagner and i decided to take a break from the new-fangled, easily stopped, big-wheeled, front-suspended, and all around fine and good world of modern mountain biking, to slum it for a while on a couple of relics from yesteryear.. steel frames and forks? yup. rigid?! you bet. 26" wheels? hey, they still work! turns out. not satisfied to just go out and enjoy ourselves in the twilight of the normal riding season here in midcoast maine, we decided to add rules to the mix, for all of the other riders out there who are surely going to be tripping over their own feet to join this retro ride. they are as follows:
1. no modern wheel sizes. 26" is it. and before you heave your fatbike up with that 'gotcha' grin on yer face:
2. rim brakes only. sorry. and:
3. fully rigid, as mentioned.
if you can't bring yourself to ride under these conditions but still wanna ride this necessarily chill ride with a couple of cool dudes, you can! you just may have to suffer a penalty of sorts for each transgression. silly things like riding shirtless, or seatless.. fun stuff like that.

Frigid rigid, comin' atcha!

sometimes, it's good to get back to yer roots. radical.