Tag: winter

The Turkey

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[NOTE: Yucky photos of a turkey carcass, but no guts or anything. Just dirty meat.]

Somehow, last Thursday I forgot it was Thursday and I didn’t write anything.

I have been staying busy doing nothing, trying not to get the Omicron variant as the entirety of America seems to be working on getting it. No one outside of my paranoid household and any given hospital ICU seems bothered by this, though. Half of America still won’t get vaccinated. The other half of America might definitely sometimes wear a mask, mostly covering part of their face, at the doctor, when they go to the movies (ok, until it’s like dark anyway), and when they walk into restaurants (but obviously not when they’re eating). They’re uncomplainingly sending their kids to in-person school, taught by whatever random substitute is replacing their usual teacher (because she’s out with COVID), and they’re just so psyched for when this whole thing is like over and we can like just go back to like normal.

Last Friday I passed some garbage on the side of the road near my house, which is, in and of itself, a remarkable thing. I live in a community with both paved and unpaved roads, all lovingly maintained by our taxes to preserve the rural flavor. The local Department of Thoroughfares is quite responsive if alerted to a downed limb or illegal dumping, and typically the roads stay clear. Those of us who walk our dogs around here pick up errant trash when we see it and this corner of Bedhead Hills stays picture perfect.

So when I ran out again to mail a letter, and it was still there. I slowed and rolled down my window.

The turkey, out of its wrapper

It was a turkey.

Not like a wild kind of turkey that lives in a flock in the woods around here. It was a naked, plucked, legless, headless, ready-to-be-salted-and-peppered-and-roasted kind of bird. It was raw, and not frozen. It had slid out from its butcher paper wrapper, and bounced, out of whatever vehicle it was being delivered by. I imagine it was in the way of something else that had to be delivered, and it got moved, and then it slipped out. It was abandoned in the gravel at the side of the road, and easily a 20 pounder.

Now, whoever dropped this turkey obviously messed up. Big time. Maybe the turkey escaped without notice. Maybe the turkey exited the vehicle with a dramatic flourish. Either way, someone around here did not get their 20+ pound fresh turkey delivered Friday. It was a turkey they were waiting for, that they had special ordered, that they weren’t expecting to need to defrost; this wasn’t an easy to replace item. This was dinner for 12, plus a weekend’s worth of leftovers.

All I really wanted to see happen next was the sad turkey accident going to a good re-purpose. Sure, it wouldn’t be feeding the neighbor’s weekend houseguests, but maybe the crows would find it. Or the coyotes I sometimes hear yip-yipping in the woods. We’ve heard stories of the bears down the hill, and I’ve even seen their poo around here. Would a bear eat that? Might they come up this far? And when the deer died in our wetland, we had a great congregation of vultures gather. Would there be vultures?

Friday night we had a big wind storm, so I drove down to check the carcass late and didn’t get out of my car. Saturday morning it was very cold, so I put Eggi in her jacket and she and I walked down together first thing. She noticed the crow in the tree before she saw the turkey, and they exchanged insults. The crow was still shouting at us as we retreated homeward through our woods.

That day was very, very cold. I assumed that whatever was scraping away at the turkey wasn’t going to be able to move it, since everything was frozen solid.

Sunday afternoon, I took Eggi for another walk to see if it was still there.

It was.

By Monday afternoon, the snow was very soggy, and the turkey was turned over, but it was still there. The Bacon Provider ran out to mail something and said he saw buzzards in the road, but didn’t get a picture.

Tuesday, I took Eggi to obedience class, and the turkey was lying on its back again in the middle of the road.

Ew

A few hours later it was out of the middle of the road but not quite to the shoulder.

Had something attempted to carry it, and failed?

Yesterday afternoon, before we got more snow, the carcass was to be found over on the shoulder, and was looking pretty stringy and dirty.

At 11:45 this morning, Eggi and I saw that it was in similar condition, under fresh snow.

Today at about 5 pm, I drove down to try to see if I could find it before I lost the light.

All that is left are the two big thigh bones, the spine, and the pelvis. And, of course, the plastic hock lock, because plastic is forever.

Sugaring

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I dreamed last night that Jimmy Fallon invited me to come on the Tonight Show to tell all of America how I’ve been spending the pandemic. I got all dressed up and had my hair done and sat in a chair for television makeup and they sent me to wait in the green room which turned out to be a lavish Hell-themed basement night club like the one in the TV show, Lucifer. The bartender was my friend J. W., and he was happy to see me and served me a fancy blue cocktail and spent a lot of energy cleaning up after me. I had no purse and therefore no way to tip him, but it was so awkward failing to tip a person I’ve known about twenty years that when it was my turn to walk out and talk to Jimmy in front of a live studio audience I was distracted and slightly agitated and therefore hilarious.

Absolutely no one on camera in the dream was wearing a mask, and absolutely everyone backstage and in the audience was. In my dreams, the pandemic is still raging, and I am participating in the making of “everything is okay” propaganda.

Anyway, so, ok, this one time, a couple of summers ago, when it was hot, I made everyone come with me to the feed store in Connecticut to buy a water trough for the dogs to splash around in. Some water dogs love a plastic kiddie pool, and, but, so, I decided to pop for a galvanized livestock trough, being less of a plastic eyesore. While we were at the feed store we oohed and ahhhhed over fancy chicks and buckets and our son’s girlfriend, the Actual Scientist, found the little metal things that you hammer into maple trees to get sap. It certainly wasn’t sugaring season then, but, yeah, sure, we have maple trees, and, wow, what a great idea, so we bought those, too. And when we got them home, we threw them into that particular drawer in the kitchen with the new batteries, the possibly-dead batteries, the random lengths of twine, zip-ties, the measuring tapes, the third worst pair of scissors in the house, and several kinds of tape (masking, packing, duct). Henceforward, the little bag of metal things for hammering into maple trees were forgotten for several years. 

I found them when we were looking for batteries. In fact, it was just in time to use them.

It was a maple.

Of course, we do have maples. Somewhere in our few acres of wooded wetland, definitely some maples. I mean, some of the trees are oaks (they have acorns), some of the trees are beeches (they are smooth and keep their dead leaves all winter) and, heck, also, I can identify the black birches (a different kind of smooth-ish bark), and, yes, when they have leaves, I know maples (just like the Canadian flag). During a brief but memorable outdoor ed program I did in elementary school (we went spelunking, and rappelling, and learned the major differences in the common trees of Missouri), I learned to tell a maple from an oak based on leaves. Of course, now we have apps for this, don’t we. 

But here we were in late winter and I noticed that someone else in the neighborhood had hung buckets on their maple trees so I realized we could, too. This is one of the recommended ways of knowing when to tap your maples: see if your neighbors are tapping theirs. Ok. So, but, how would we know which of the dozens of trees in our woods were maples?

The Bacon Provider went for tools. My oldest son and his girlfriend, the Actual Scientist, looked up pictures and descriptions of bark. I puttered around the kitchen hoping no one would expect me to be the judge. Some trees were identified. A drill was produced. We had an assortment of buckets, two enormous and three small, and one we borrowed.

Trees were tapped. Buckets hung. We awaited the dripping of sap.

One tree began producing sap immediately. The others did not. We wondered if we’d picked the wrong trees. Some of us had more anxiety about this than I did. I insisted that my oldest son and his girlfriend, the Actual Scientist, probably knew which trees were maples. Certainly they had a better idea which trees were maples than we did. And randomly choosing other trees was not going to improve our odds. Within another day the sap was running from all the trees. They were, in fact, all maples.

It takes many enormous buckets of maple tree sap to boil down to a few tiny bottles of maple syrup, but we had everything we needed. We have an outdoor burner and a huge brewing kettle. You have to boil the saps for hours and hours; we had to go get more propane. The Bacon Provider used various filtering techniques, including using the nylon brew bag we use for beer making as a filter.  You also need a large thermometer (another bit of home brewing equipment),  and an accurate barometer. 

Our beer brewing kettle, used here to boil down maple sap for syrup.

Sugaring weather happens when the nights are cold and the days are sunny. The sap ran for a number of days. Our syrup has a mild maple flavor, with a hint of vanilla. We had breakfast for dinner to celebrate. Maple syrup from your own trees is improbable. And weirdly easy.

Sourdough waffles with homemade maple syrup

The syrup we made from the first few days ended up boiling down to a light amber; in subsequent days it ended up darker. Yesterday, which was probably the last day of the run, the Bacon Provider was juggling a full day of work calls and supervising the boil. He could have waited, but he didn’t. When I got home from dog classes, the house smelled of burned maple syrup. The Bacon Provider was so sad and frustrated about the burned batch. He did manage to salvage the pot. 

Today he got his first COVID vaccine, so he’s forgotten about the disappointment of burning the last pot of syrup. We will wait a whole year for the next sugaring season. Meanwhile, he can go back to another of his hobbies: making perfectly clear ice.

You might be surprised at how hard it is to make clear ice.

Winter Weather

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In the car on the way to dog agility class late Monday afternoon, Fellow was snuffling and chuffing, pressing his nose onto the car window in the way-back. I asked him what he was doing. He didn’t answer. I guess he wishes he could smell things as we pass by. I had heard some news about another storm rolling in, but it hadn’t started by the time we left for class and I didn’t give it much thought. What I did think about was windshield wipers on the inside of the car windows, for dog slobber and nose prints.

The light came on my dashboard saying I needed wiper fluid.

After class, we left as we always do, one owner at a time, minimizing the dangerous chaos of leashed dogs on the stairs, and each of us took turns finding out that the flight of stairs which had been dry when we arrived was now perfectly coated in a very fine layer of almost invisible ice. We dropped our leashes and let the dogs figure it out on their own. The heedless dogs innocently continued down a few steps, slipped, stumbled and fell down the rest of the way, landing surprised but unhurt.  Then we owners made our way down, sideways, clinging to the rail and trying to keep our footing. Of the people, only the instructor actually fell, slipping on the last step before the landing.

Freezing rain is a betrayal. It flies in the face of reason. Here we are, the supposed big-brained, ass-kicking hominid, with a solid grasp of the freezing temperature of water. Freezing rain is a slap in the face of my understanding of when it should snow and when it shouldn’t. It was more than cold enough to snow, and it was raining. I don’t mind driving in snow. I object strongly to driving in freeing rain.

It was 29F and the raindrops were fine, like drizzle, but not gentle like mist. Sprayed. Or blasted. It wasn’t so much as falling as enclosing the early evening in a thick cloak of trouble. Everywhere the pavement  was a slippery beyond slick.

Out on the freeway, everyone was keeping to themselves, going slower than usual, resisting the urge to take the empty left lane. My windshield wipers smeared the rain in two neat, persistent arcs. Keeping the roads salted and plowed is a responsibility local and state government takes seriously in New York, and the drive was reassuringly quiet and straightforward all the way home. Once there, I rolled the garbage cans out for pickup the next morning, and found in a single step that my own driveway was too slick to walk on.

The next day the sun came out and the temperature climbed steadily, hitting 48F in the afternoon. I went to town to try to get some windshield wiper fluid, but went home empty-handed because everyone had beaten me to it.

Captain enjoying a nap on a winter afternoon

We have so much snow on the ground from that big storm a few weeks ago, and two additional significant snowfalls since, that a weirdly warm day clears the pavement and changes the texture of the packed snow without melting it away. I went out in the back yard with the dogs after dark as everything commenced re-freezing. My snowshoeing path along the fence line was hard and uneven and difficult to walk on; the untrodden snow was passable, though soft and wet and noisy to traverse in boots.

Tuesday night

Overnight, the temperatures dropped and the snow froze again. Another storm was expected Thursday. Meanwhile, on Twitter, some of my Texas friends complained of their abnormally cold, snowy disaster. Others, without power or heat or water simply disappeared from the timeline.

Thursday morning the sky was gray but bright–a sky that warned of snow. Snow began to fall in Bedhead Hills about 10 am.

When you live someplace that regularly gets snow, you make arrangements in the fall for someone to come plow the snow off your driveway or acquire the tools for doing it yourself. You chat with friends about the dangers of icicles, the best kind of dog-safe snow-melt and snow shovels. You develop habits like keeping pasta and bacon and eggs and frozen peas on hand so you can make spaghetti carbonara the way you like it and without any notice. You know that your town salted the roads before the storm, and will have the roads cleared of snow as soon as they can. You try to have your furnace serviced once a year. You make plans but you don’t apologize when you have to cancel appointments because of the weather.

Multitasking Fellow watching the bird feeder and having a bone at the same time

I changed from my pajamas into long underwear and snowpants and put on my insulated boots. I wrestled both of the younger dogs into their parkas and tossed my snowshoes out onto the back steps. Fellow barked at me while I monkeyed with the straps.

I opened the gate and the dogs rushed out and down the hill into our woods. They followed the trail for a bit and then plunged into the brush, taking great leaps through the snow. When they disappeared, I called them back, and they came eagerly. I gave them each a small dog treat from my pocket, and sent them off again.

About a month ago, Eggi found a dead snake in the woods. Back then, winter was predicted to be wet but relatively warm, and therefore snowless. She showed me today that she found the snake again, under the snow. Dogs are not wrong: the woods are better than the highway; you can smell more.

Then, Eggi alerted me to the presence of a man, walking alone on the road at the edge of our property. I yelled at her to come, but it was hard to convince her to return to me, and harder still when Fellow chose to back her up and join in the barking. The man stopped walking, probably alarmed by the dogs or the volume and tone of my yelling, and then Fellow turned towards me. My shouts of praise and encouragement brought him all the way in. I gave him more of the dog treats in my pocket and made a big fuss over him. Then I called Eggi again and she gave up her scolding of the stranger.

Eggi and her nose

As the afternoon unfolds, the snow continues to fall. The dogs begin lobbying for an early dinner.

Shortcut

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On the way home, we were retracing our route down the Taconic, in that No-Man’s-Land of Dutchess County almost all the way up into Columbia County, where the roads are little gray squiggles on a map and the lakes are real. Further south, it’s all reservoirs, enslaved to the water demands of The City. My car’s navigation system had assigned us the route where we’d be doubling back at the end, with a sharp, pointed “v.” I was thinking there had to be a shortcut. I’ve never trusted the navigation system in the BMW anyway.
I had had only one beer at the bar right around 8 o’clock. I’d had a Coke around 10. When we left it was probably 11:15, although that’s a guess.
Traffic was sparse. It was a Saturday night. I came to what I thought was just the road we needed and cut across the other lane. My husband was on a bit of a nod himself, having had plenty of beer and cultivated a regular disinterest in issues of navigation. It was a narrow, snowy, one-lane road, with a small, green, rectangular sign: Seasonal Access, Road Maintained Apr.1 – Oct. 1. Something like that. It looked like it has been plowed at some point and had about six inches of fresher snow on top of that. There were tire tracks through it, and, down the middle of the road, a set of dog footprints, made by a huge, trotting woodland beast.
It was perfectly beautiful. Snow lit the floor of the woods. Trees surrounded us. The path was narrow and straight.
Woods in Winter, Dutchess County, NY
I cracked wise about how this might turn out to be a terrible idea.
He said, “You’re fine.”
I have snow tires. It’s an all-wheel drive car. He was probably right. There had been confusion over our bar tab. He had had three beers, maybe four. When we paid the check they charged us for four, but they missed the Coke, so we over-paid, assuming they missed a beer, too.
I said, “I just got that full adrenaline rush, the one when you’re like, scared shitless.”
“You’re fine.”
The road descended into a valley, so I slowed the car even more. We hadn’t yet lost traction, though the way was very noisy with the snow under our tires. My car is no SUV so it doesn’t have high clearance.
“I’m starting to worry about the way out of this,” I said. “What if they’ve plowed over and left a lot of snow?”
“You’re fine.”
“What if we have to back all the way out?” I asked. “I don’t want to have to back all the way back through this.”
“You’re fine.”
When we saw that the road rises to meet Route 199, and the depth of the snow at the top, deposited by plows just as I had feared, but made much worse by the dip in terrain, he said, calmly, “Punch it.”
I punched it, hard.
We made it most of the way up before we began to slip sideways and to the left, and sort of backwards. With some encouragement I backed up as far as I could without getting even more stuck. I tried again: more slipping, spinning, and sliding.
“I can’t do this.”
He hopped out and walked around the car. The road was black in both directions, but I knew it was199. A single car went by. If they saw our headlights shining from below the grade of the road, they didn’t care and they didn’t slow.  He examined all four tires, the snow, and the whole situation. I took off my seatbelt and climbed over to the passenger’s side.
He got behind the wheel. “I think we’re fucked,” he said simply, gunning the engine.
The car lurched forward, the tires spinning, and we slid sideways some more. He got out and looked at the situation again. He got back in, backed it up, and made another go of it, this time wedging us on the other side of the road, setting off all the automatic seat-belt warning tones. He got out and reassessed.
“We’re fucked,” he said, kicking the snow off his shoes and getting back in.
“Should I call AAA?” I asked, digging out my mobile phone.
“Yes,” he said, putting the car in gear.
“Put on your seatbelt this time,” I said.
I couldn’t find AAA in the contacts on my phone, so I pulled out my wallet to get the number off my membership card. I didn’t have that, either.
Ok, I thought. I can just look it up.
But of course I couldn’t look it up because I had no service. I looked at the clock. It was11:45 p.m., on a Saturday night. We were on an unmaintained service road, who-knows-where, stuck in the snow. Only one other car had gone by since we got stuck, and they didn’t see us or slow. We were going to have to get out and walk or wait and flag someone down.
I was now intensely upset with myself. We were not getting out of this easily. Before this moment, I might have shrugged off the error. Oh, whoops! Right? No. I am supposed to be a responsible adult. Really, I’m just a jackass, thinking I can just drive anywhere I want in my fancy car with my fancy snow tires.
He put the car into low gear, and was gunning the engine. There was acrid tire smoke and dark exhaust swirling up from us. The car was moving, a bit, here and there. Another car went by, in the opposite direction. Again, they did not slow. Suddenly with a lurch we were almost at the crest of the rise. He braked and got out.
Sometimes when I’m upset or angry or frustrated I just cry. I was always a cry-baby as a kid and was teased mercilessly for it. I always thought I had deserved it, the teasing. But now, here in the woods, I don’t cry. Mostly, I just felt really stupid. Why did I think it was a good idea to take an unmaintained service road as a shortcut in the middle of the night in winter when there’s a foot of snow on the ground?
He was out there stomping around, kicking snow and sizing up the situation, stomping and kicking. I opened the door and offered to help, “I have boots on.”
“No, I got it.”
He jumped back in. I insisted on the seatbelt again. Shifting to low, he really gunned it. The engine roared, the tires spun, the snow groaning and crunching and fighting us as hard as it could.
And then we were up on the pavement, tires squealing and spinning, snow and ice flying, and we were absolutely free.
“I gotta pull over. I might be over the limit.”
“Ok, but not here in the middle of the road.”
He gestured to a bit of shoulder.
“No shoulders,” I said. “We need to find like a road. Or a driveway.”
Up around the next bend we found a dead end road and traded places.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I said.
“I though we were fucked,” he said.
We went another quarter mile and I realized we were going the wrong way. We turned around again and made it home in about ten or fifteen more minutes.
It was, actually, a shortcut.

How to Make French Toast

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Here in New York, we have had a winter completely unlike last year’s long, lingering, snowy and cold winter.  Despite a freak heavy snowstorm at the end of October, we have had no snow, and only a handful of actually cold days. Many days, like today, it’s in the 20s when we get up, but sunny and into the 40s by early afternoon. 
My husband, in addition to being a Relentless Troubleshooter, is the household’s designated Bacon Provider, and he takes his job very seriously. Whenever I have occasion to be away and he is in charge of feeding himself and the offspring, he makes breakfast-for-dinner or spaghetti carbonara, both of which include bacon.  I have been known to call home and ask if they’ve gotten tired of eating bacon yet, and they always say, “No.”
When you live with a Bacon Provider in a season such as winter, you are often called upon to create things that are eaten with bacon. The house we are renting has a wood-fired cooking stove (in addition to two other woodstoves), and when it is brisk and cold in the morning, an early-rising Bacon Provider can fire up the Waterford and get the bacon cooking. 
There is probably a rule which says Cook Things You Like To Eat. After eggs and grits or pancakes there is of course French Toast, a breakfast staple and bacon side-kick enjoyed by many, but not by me. I do not know if I ever liked French Toast, but I doubt it. I like things like Bread Pudding that are similar in texture and ingredients to French Toast, but I do not like French Toast.  So I do not eat French Toast. But I do make French Toast, because other people like it, including the Bacon Provider and the Offspring.  Not only do I make it, but I like to make it. I don’t know how good it is. They eat it with bacon.

French Toast
Beat 4 eggs and add 1 c. milk. Stir in a dash of vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a couple of shakes of cinnamon. Cut a loaf of quality stale bread into 1 ½” thick slices. Immerse the bread in the egg mixture about three at a time.
Fry in a hot, oiled skillet. Serve with butter, maple syrup and, of course, bacon.
Feeds two adults and two teenaged boys.