Nelson County Rocks

Winter hasn’t yet officially begun, but we had our second snowstorm on December 16th: about five inches and COLD.  But we were cozy in our house, amidst holiday decorations and our wonderful wood stove.  A more complete set of views, inside and out,  may be accessed here.

In late fall we  visited various friends to learn about raising chickens (for eggs), a project Monika and I intend to undertake in the spring.  We continued to harvest turnips and chard  (see basket above) as well as collards, kale and lettuce until the second week of December, when a cold spell did most of the remaining garden in.  In mid-November Nic and Alison came over and made us  delicious roasted stuffed pumpkins!

For our Thanksgiving turkey, which we took up to family in Maryland, Monika found Open Gate Farm in neighboring Albermarle County, which raises heritage turkeys and sells them fresh (our turkey from Polyface Farm last year was frozen).  We went out to the farm on the Monday before Thanksgiving amd got a delightful guided tour from Tom Ward.  We also got a surprise: our Bronze Standard turkey had turned out to be much larger (38 pounds!!!) than expected.  This posed a series of challenges: locating a large enough roasing pan;  locating a container large enough to to brine it in;  fitting it into an oven just barely larger than the turkey; and figuring out how long to cook it.  Regarding the latter, we were many hours off in our estimation, but fortunately got the turkey out in time and it was the best turkey ever.  Pictures of our Maryland Thanksgiving may be accessed here.

Early morning view from our front deck

Fall colors here may not be as spectacular as in New England, but they’re still lovely and pleasantly longer-lasting.  The pictures above represent our views to the southwest, west, and northwest, with the massive Priest Range and Three Ridges Mountain in the bottom two.  Below are a few thumbnails of a larger set of Fall pictures which can be accessed by clicking here.

We’d been anticipating this trip for some time, and with the weather forecast looking propitious on October 5th, we loaded up the car and took off.  We drove down I-81 to Asheville, North Carolina the first day, getting more than our fill of superhighways and trucks. The next day we headed east to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and then worked our way down to its southern terminus at Cherokee, located at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where we walked around the interesting farm museum by the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. We spent the following day exploring the Park, traversing the park on Newfound Gap Road, viewing the excellent movie and nature museum at the Sugarlands Visitor Center, exploring early settler history at Cades Cove, and pausing on the way back to Cherokee to watch a sunset from Morton’s Overlook. The next morning we visited the  innovative Museum of the Cherokee Indian, and then headed back up the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Pisgah Inn, where we’d stopped and made a reservation on our way down. The Inn is beautifully situated on top of a ridge, with classic layered Blue Ridge views. Both the sunset and the sunrise the next morning were spectacular. Day 5 we headed back north up the Parkway, stopping at the Folk Arts Center and taking a side trip to the top of Mount Mitchell, the highest mountain in the East, and then on to southern Virginia, where we spent our final night. We took our time on our final stretch home, exploring the area west of I-81, and were delighted to stumble across Hungry Mother State Park, a lovely place.  The weather was consistently sunny and clear  (although in the chilly 30’s when we woke up in Asheville) and we had a wonderful time.

Click here for more pictures

Life in retirement is great!

It’s hard to believe that summer is officially over  (despite 90 degree temperatures).  We were pretty focused on Tim’s and Megan’s wedding for the first half of the summer, and the rest seems to have just gone poof.  But actually the second half of summer has been interesting and varied, and below is a kind of late summer photo potpourri.

We’ve stayed pretty close to home, but we’ve begun to explore the Shenandoah Valley, on the other side of the mountains, somewhat more.  One particularly interesting visit, with our friends Anke and Axel, was to the Frontier Culture Museum, a living history museum in the mode of Sturbridge, Shelburne, and others.  But rather than strictly focusing on recreating pioneer life in the 19th century here, it also attempts to showcase the rural culture that immigrants (including those enslaved) both left and brought with them: German, English, Scot-Irish, and West African (Igbo).  It’s very nicely done and we had a gorgeous day to walk and explore the different parts.  Click here for more pictures of the Frontier Culture Museum.

In early September, we celebrated Nic’s thirty-first birthday with his wife Alison, and local friends Virginia Page,  Axel and Anke.  Earlier, we hiked to the St. Mary’s Falls (see previous post), where Nic scared the bejeebies out of me by leaping off the cliff into the deep but narrow pool below.  A few less birthdays for me, I’m sure…  Alison took the picture below with their cell phone.

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With almost no rain all summer, our vegetable garden has been less productive than last year, but surprisingly good overall, with the exception of cucumbers and squash, which were done in by insects that seemed to thrive and multiply in the dry weather.  In addition we bought lots of fruit from local orchards, and Monika made all sorts of wonderful jams, sauces, and deserts for canning or freezing.  Currently we’re getting lots of string beans and peppers, some tomatoes, lettuce, chard, herbs (there’s been tons of basil for making pesto), with fall vegetables–collards, spinach, kale, and kohlrabi coming along.  And we still have lots of garlic and potatoes that we harvested in mid-summer.

One summer project has been to complete a little trail system in the woods that surround three sides of our property.  That and enjoying nature and the beauty of our immediate surroundings.  For a late summer photo potpourri of these things, click here.

This past Friday I joined a local hiking club for a hike in the (10,000+ acre) Saint Mary’s Wilderness, which I’d never visited before.  My hiking companions were a congenial lot, but there were around thirty of them, which did make the wilderness seem rather populated.  Still, it was a beautiful hike through terrain quite different than I’d been familiar with elsewhere along the Blue Ridge.  For more pictures, click here.

Our route started at milepost 23 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and followed the Mine Bank Trail through down to the St. Mary’s Trail, where we turned right to visit the main St. Mary’s falls; we then backtracked and hiked out along the St. Mary’s Trail to the forest service road parking lot at FSR 41.  The rock formations and deep pools along the St. Mary’s River, along with the mountain laurel and rhododendron forests and the prolific variety of mushrooms along the Mine Bank Trail, were spectacular.

Nic and Alison spent the father’s day weekend with us, and on Saturday we all went to Lynchburg, about 45 minutes to the south.  While Monika checked out Antique Row, Nic, Alison and I took the tour at an old federal-style mansion above the James River named Point of Honor.  We managed to get lost on our way out of Lynchburg, ending up on the Blue Ridge Parkway at the amazing water gap where the James River cuts through the Blue Ridge.  It was worth the detour!  On Sunday the three of us returned to the Parkway father north and took the short hike to Humpback Rocks, with marvelous views and a beautiful day.

Our new home has provided us with a ringside seat for spring mating rituals and performances.  In the past week alone, we’ve watched two rat snakes go through a Kama-Sutra-like set of convoluted mating positions high in the oak tree in front of our house; the two resident green frogs in our pond engage in a ménage à trois with a visiting female that lasted most of the day; two five-lined skinks demonstrating what we assume to be courtship behavior; and, more conventionally, chickadees and bluebirds taking care of their broods in birdhouses we’d put up in our back yard.  Click here for a fuller set of pictures.

Yesterday Nic, Alison and I hiked a lovely 5 1/2 mile loop around and over Cold Mountain, in the nearby George Washington National Forest.  Temperatures and flora were those of several weeks ago in the valleys, with the first flowering trees of spring, Serviceberries, in abundance at higher elevations.  The online trip description compared the hike to being in Switzerland, which seemed a bit over the top.  But once we reached the long summit meadow, and Alison reminded me of the movie, The Song of Music began ringing in my ears, despite the absence of snow-covered peaks.  More pictures here.

When we moved to Virginia, I was under the impression that when it (infrequently) snowed here, the snow generally melted off within a day.  The two feet of snow we received in mid-December, which stayed on the ground for weeks, disabused me of that notion!  That lesson has been reinforced by three (!) additional snowstorms since then.  The latest one, described by the weather service as one of  “epic proportions” was actually less serious here than it was to the north in Washington DC and Maryland, but it still added a good foot of snow to what we already had.  As of the time of this post, over half a million households in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are without power, but our home happily is both lit and warm.  But since it’s only early February, who knows lays ahead?  Click here for more snowscape pictures from these past several weeks.

Family note: Tim has posted pictures from his and Megan’s Xmas visit at his Popcorn Farmer blog: http://www.popcornfarmer.com/2010/01/christmas-2009-part-1/.  And Monika has pictures from our visit to Dave and Sue and our latest grandchild, Paityn Marie at her Oma’s World blog at http://oma711.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-beginnings.html

We seem to have moved south to Virginia just in time for the biggest snowstorm since 1993 (and the biggest before Christmas since 1936).   With over two feet of snow, we’re effectively snowbound…and loving it.  Our freezer continues to yield garden produce from last summer (today for lunch: ginger zucchini soup and yellow squash pancakes) and the snow-covered vistas are beautiful.  We expect it to be a number of days before we get our car out.  The snow began early afternoon on Friday and continued through Saturday.  Today (Sunday) is a beautiful sunny day, but temperatures remain in the 30s, making it likely that the snow will be around for a while yet.  Click here for more pictures.