2008 March Archive at Beside the Stream

Archive for March, 2008

“Generations”

Published on March 21, 2008 in Photography. 3 Comments

Thank you so much for all of your entries. I’ve never had a contest before, so I didn’t realize how difficult it was to choose the best caption.

My first thought was ”Ewe talkin to me?” in honor of Robert De Niro in his prime, because I had that speech down when I was 17 years old. But when I listened to De Niro’s version on YouTube I remembered the profundity of the profanity, and it seemed that Taxi Driver was in a different realm than these little lambs.

See what I mean?

So I’m going with “Generations” by Glenda. When I looked up pictures for “generations” I got these gentlemen:

which go seamlessly with Donny’s lambs.

Glenda, can you let me know your email so I send your prize? Thanks.

And thanks a lot for playing.

Three things that are unfathomable

Published on March 20, 2008 in Old-timers. 2 Comments

(This is an old saying from India)

There are three things in life that are unfathomable:

the banks of a river,

the mind of a saint,

and the heart of a woman.

A contest! Caption this photo

Published on March 19, 2008 in Photography. 15 Comments

Around Easter and Passover, my thoughts turn to lambs and chocolate. So in honor of both I am having a caption contest for this lamb picture,

and the prize is one pound of extremely delicious chocolates from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory which might arrive in time for Easter!

Please send in your best suggestions! This chocolate wants to be won.

Time: Three months

Published on March 18, 2008 in deer herd and time. 2 Comments

Here is part of the deer herd December 10. The snow came late, so these girls are in prime condition.

Here is nearly the entire herd March 15, at the end of the winter. See how moth-eaten this doe looks?

And doesn’t it seem like these are photos of the same doe, after and before three months of winter rations?

Things you don’t want to do on Sunday

Published on March 17, 2008 in Small town life. 5 Comments

Gelande jumping is one of those things that you really don’t want to do. Never heard of it? Good, because it makes as much sense as going over a waterfall in a barrel.

Gelande jumping is going off a huge ski jump with normal ski equipment. I dated a Norwegian ski jumper briefly in college, so I’ve never minded other people going off big jumps so long as they’re using the proper equipment: giant seven to eight foot skis with a free heel.

This is a normal ski jumper.

Gelande jumpers are out of their minds, because they can’t pose their jump.

The jump at the ski area is a natural jump, not a ramp. It’s 70 meters high, which is considered smallish.

The ski jump itself starts at the big rock and goes about 70 meters before the lip that propels those poor guys into the air. The chute is the landing zone.

The first line marks a 200 foot jump, the second line is 250 and the third line is 300 feet. The dark speckles on the slope are the scattering of pine needles that allows the jumpers to see the contours of the snow. Sprinkling the slope with pine needles is standard for many ski events, not just gelande.

You can’t really see how incredibly steep this is. I tried to climb up it, but had to give up half way because I had soft boots on. With ski boots, you can jam the toe into the snow and climb very steep terrain, but with soft boots it was hopeless.

Here the jumpers are climbing up to the top of the take-off,

and this is the person who had the longest jump on the first round.

He’s off

Looks OK right now

and he’s getting some altitude, but with a fixed heel his form can’t hold.

you can see from his shadow how vertical he is

and he lands it

barely.

That’s gelande jumping. My real question for these guys is: how do you fit those gigantic cojones into that skin-tight speed suit???

but I didn’t ask.

Rock Varnish: Far and Near

Published on March 15, 2008 in Photography. 3 Comments

I agree with everyone who said the telephoto shots were better than the wide angle landscapes. So I made a few pairs of photographs using each lens at the same site. Here’s where the river enters the valley,

and here’s a photo taken at exactly the same spot 2 1/2 weeks earlier.

I like the close-up better, as usual. Here’s an interesting pair, taken yesterday:

Same spot, same time, different lens. And then I realized: I took the top pictures because I was interested in the color of the water, and I took the bottom pictures because I wanted to show you the rock varnish. See those black streaks? They’re very mysterious. Rock varnish is mostly minerals–clay, manganese oxide and iron oxide–but it’s alive. It’s formed by a colony of bacteria that lives underneath it and glues the windblown particles into place. Streaks of rock varnish can be 10s of thousands of years old. Isn’t that the oldest living organism on earth? Is there anything alive that is older?

And can’t you see that rock varnish more clearly with two lenses than with one?

In the deep freeze

Published on March 14, 2008 in Appearances and Small town life. 8 Comments

When my twenty pounds of chocolate from the Bloomers Sale disappeared in a corner of my coffin freezer, it occurred to me that you might like to see what else is in there. Heck, I’d like to see what else is in there.

Some of it is recent. In addition to the chocolate, there is

2 gallons of cider left over from cider pressing last fall,
2 organic turkeys (80% off the day after Thanksgiving), and
25 pounds of buffalo that was just recently added. There’s
15 pounds of fish and
7 pounds of butter from 1/2 price sales. From last summer, we still have about
10 pounds of lamb and sadly, about
7 pounds of lamb ribs that are getting old. We get a few lambs for the freezer every spring, which includes many packets of lamb ribs. Do you know what to do with lamb ribs? I don’t. There’s not a shred of pork, which makes me wonder about getting piglets this spring.

The fruits and vegetables are less manageable. There are are at least

30 pounds of tomatoes (a few pounds dehydrated, 10 pounds peeled, and 20 pounds frozen whole like little baseballs). I was glad to find
a bag of raspberries, of blueberries and some applesauce. I was less excited by the
15 pounds of peeled and pitted peaches from 2 years ago. And the freezer item that absolutely has to go is
20 pounds of apricots.

There are a lot of roadside apricot trees around here, and apricots are easier to freeze than they are to use up. So in honor of the weekend, I’m processing apricots Sunday: one batch with raspberries, one with habaneros, and maybe another with ginger juice. If anyone has a good apricot recipe, please, pass it along.

I didn’t realize I had so much food downstairs (and I’m not the only one; most of my neighbors have coffin freezers too). I pretend that it’s rational, but I think that deep freeze satisfies some ancient imperative. I’m talking primal satisfaction. I mean, this Anasazi granary and my deep freeze would qualify as things that don’t look alike, but are.

The Bloomers Sale

Published on March 14, 2008 in Small town life. 3 Comments

One of the perks of living in a small town is access to factory seconds. In Vermont, we lived near the Ben and Jerry’s factory and a sock mill. The socks were handy, but ice cream seconds were often disappointing: chocolate almond ice cream where they forgot the almonds… what’s the point? Nearly a decade ago, we moved to the home of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I think every woman in La Plata County would agree that the Chocolate Factory’s semi-annual sale of chocolates with a bloom of cocoa butter on the surface–the so-called Bloomers Sale–is a great local event.

It’s sort of a public service, and takes place at the County Fairgrounds. Small children can afford to buy substantial amounts of chocolate.

As for the adults, well, these days chocolate is practically health food.

Local wisdom is that if you have a deep freeze in the cellar, there’s no such thing as buying too many truffles. I bought 20 lbs. I do love that big deep freeze.

Living with Wildlife

Published on March 13, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey and deer herd. 8 Comments

In contrast with the little horse who won’t let me near her, the wild deer and turkeys are happy to have me around. When I took this picture, I was standing ten feet away in plain sight with a 95 pound dog next to me. These animals are willing to coexist with us.

When a flock of wild turkeys moved onto our land, I learned that (wait for it) turkey hunting is not a sport. Radical statement, I know, but this is why: turkeys don’t migrate, they flock together, they don’t fly much and they have a home territory. This means that groups of big birds are out walking on their rounds every day, and roosting in the same place each night. If I wanted to kill five male turkeys, I can do this any day in the backyard at 10AM, or in the neighbor’s backyard at 11AM/ camo is optional. A turkey is too big to hide, can’t fly away, and walks around. You can harvest an animal that behaves like that, but the only reason it is remotely sporting is that nearly all turkeys are already killed so hunters have to travel to remote spots to find the last ones…which doesn’t seem sporting.

Biologists say that wild turkeys are generalists that exploit many different food sources, and their populations can become large if they’re tolerated. Their range includes most of the US.

If wild turkey hunters took a break for a bit, there could be more turkeys next year and less empty habitat the year after that. Wild turkeys are living in New York’s Central Park, I hear, and they could be living throughout suburbia. Then there would be enough to harvest. Until that time, I wish those turkey hunters would just simmer down.

And so does he.

Photography 2 - Dang this is complicated

Published on March 12, 2008 in Photography. 4 Comments

One take-home assignment from my photography lesson was to get another lens. It took a while, but I found a wide angle lens second-hand and am now completely befuddled. Here’s the original version with the telephoto lens:

Here’s the new lens, a wide angle.

or perhaps this.

Bizarro.

Beside the Stream