Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - Pittsfield MA
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First Mowing, home farm orchard, Red Rock, East Chatham NY, May 24, 2009
The season's first mowing is finished
One of the urgencies bringing me back to Red Rock by mid May each spring is the need to mow the fields before the growth gets beyond the capacity of Power-Trac PT-1845 Articulated Tractor's roughcut mower to handle the tall grass. Now that the mowing is done I can move on to other things - like finding the sources of those two pesky leaks in LD that are still eluding me - and are driving me crazy!
Great Horned Owl
Have a look at the neat picture I got of one of a pair of Great Horned Owls? I spotted a few minutes after I took the picture above. They were hanging out in the woods off to the left of the field pictured (for those who know what the following means, if you walk up to the evergreens in the picture and turn to the left you are standing in what was known as the "orchard" looking off the bluff and overlooking my grandparents now abandoned farmhouse).
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Pittsfield MA
Wal-Mart Store #2228, 555 Hubbard Ave./Suite 12, Pittsfield, MA 01201 - (413) 442-1971
- Good level parking lot
- Verizon cell phone service is good
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service is good
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Rice Toss
After the dinner our hosts conducted us to the beach. Among the presents was a large supply rice for the fleet. It was put up in straw sacks or bales containing about 125 pounds each. By the pile stood a company of athletes or gymnasts chosen from the peasantry for their strength and size and trained for the service and entertainment of the court. At a signal from their leader, who was himself a giant of muscle and fat, a sort of human Jumbo, they began transporting the rice to the boats. It was more frolic than work. Some of thembore a bale on each hand above their heads, some would carry two laid crosswise on the shoulders and head, while others performed dextrous feats of tossing, catching, balancing them, or turning somersaults with them. I saw one nimble Titan fasten his talons in a sack, throw it down on the sand still keeping his hold, turn a somersault over it, throw it over him as he revolved, and come down sitting on the beach with the sack in his lap. Beat that who can. If you imagine it "as easy as preaching," try it the next time in a gymnasium. But let me advise you, first make your will.
The Logbook of the Captains Clerk, John J. Sewell, Lakeside Press, 1995 pg 256