Brewster Meadows

The latest installment from Brewster Meadows.

Spring came and went in a hurry and now it’s garden season. Last fall we tilled, dug up and rearranged the garden to a raised bed system. Lots of work. We covered the bed with heavy duty landscape fabric, tacked down all four sides in case there were winds (yea, right!!!) and planted grass between the beds wide enough to use the hand mower.

Well, the covers are off, the grass has grown and the garden is planted – corn (two varieties), pumpkin, hubbard squash, butternut squash, acorn squash, carrots, beets, tomatoes (two sauce – one slicing), zucchini, peas, beans, cabbage, broccoli, cucumber, peppers, and eggplant. Now we’ll see what happens. We have decided to put up a fence to keep the wildlife and Misty out!

Ruthanne’s new woodworking  project is a trellis gate (hence the footings). To dress it up, our plan is to have a variety of flowers all around the outside of the fence. 

Speaking of our little “golden child”, she is in summer mode with a short hair cut. Who knew that inside all that curl and fur, was a lean, lanky, long legged dog. With the temperature in the high 80’s/low90’s this weekend, I’m sure she will be a happier puppy! AND, we found out that Misty is helping the folks in the Gulf. All her fur and other fur collected by the grooming salons at Pet Smart are going fill booms to collect and absorb oil from the disaster. We have a socially conscience puppy.

Deborah continues to work with the grant in Philly, only going down once a month for meetings while Ruthanne continues to volunteer at the Food Shelf, and do odd jobs around the meadow. Ruthanne spent half of May and the first week in June doing her BugWorks program in several schools in the area.

We’ve already started the summer visitor program. Pom (Deborah’s sister) and Jim were here for several days. While Pom did genealogy, Jim helped get the big summer project, barbed wire removal, started. Carla (a dear friend from Fairbanks) and her Mom stopped by for several days for a wonderful visit. Due up next week are dear friends from Arcadia University, and immediately following, after a surprise postcard, a visit from Ruthanne’s Godson, whom we haven’t seen in years. That brings us to the end of June.

July is open – after the 9^th!! August is pretty well booked since the big news of the month is Ruthanne is getting a new left hip on the 9^th of August.She is really is going bionic! Jeanine will be here to help out and then Ruthanne’s cousin will be here to assist when Deborah makes her monthly trip to Philly.

As usual, there is always something going on, either here at Brewster Meadows or in the area!!! The guest room is open…

Here's the latest from Brewster Meadows!

TA DAA!!!Deborah and Dana, a friend we hired, started deconstructing the wood shed. Surprisingly, the shed was intact and the only thing preventing them from just tipping it back was the weight. We reset the levels of the blocks. Dana removed trim and siding until he was able to push upright the post and beam construction and then put everything back together.We only needed to replace 5 pieces of wood that split when it tipped over. Then Deborah and I began filling it to increase the ballast. Now it will take more than a mere 90-100mph winds to topple it!

Last week, we had company and a great time! Ben, Laura, Hadrian, Myah and Lupin (their doggie) came for a visit.

Ben, the girls, and Deborah enjoyed two days of skiing.

Laura skied and mostly enjoyed the quiet of the house while the gang was on the slope.

And, having just graduated to being off leash outdoors during daylight, Misty had fun, playing outside with Lupin and just having canine company.

We topped the visit off with 3 inches of snow the evening before they left, so before clearing the drive with the tractor we took some runs down the drive on the sled!

And the last bit of news from the meadow is that after a steroid injection directly into Ruthanne's arthritic hip, she is moving better and for the first time this season, put on some X-Country skis and circumnavigated the meadow 4 times. Of course, Misty was her escort most of the way!YIPEE!!!!!!

We had some strong winds last week...

The lid was ripped off the hot tub...

Shingles were blown off the roof...

Power was out for about 4 hours...

Big tree was blown down across the driveway...

Goldendoodle named Misty was attached to my leg...

And...

Greetings! It has been a while since I shared any of the activities here at Brewster Meadows. We are winding up January with the days getting longer. We’ve been busy keeping everything going. The chickens are laying 10 – 11 eggs/day and we have an “outlet” for them and we enjoy a fresh egg omelet or frittata.

We had some wonderful snow fall a few weeks ago, topping out at about 24 – 26 inches. Skiing was fabulous both XCountry here and downhill up at Smuggs. Alas, the Jan thaw hit and the snow depth are back down to 6 – 8 inches. Maybe a nice storm will do a big dump of snow in the next couple of days… The tractor is ready and raring to go. In the interest of spoiling our “little” puppy, I have taken to plowing and snow-blowing a path around the meadow behind the house.She is a wonderful curly long haired long legged wiggling fur ball who loves the snow and dives in head first chasing mice she hears or thinks she hears. She is up to 52 pounds and hopefully is about full grown.

After the growing season this past fall, we decided to redo the garden beds. We now have officially raised beds with wood sides and rows wide enough to plant grass and mow the paths. Hopefully, it will make things easier.

Before Christmas, we decided to maintain our Scuba skills and went diving in the Turks and Caicos. It was consistently the best series of dive sites ever. It had been a few years but we quickly got into our rhythm and had a wonderful time. The crew and the guests all worked together to make the week exceptionally enjoyable.

This trip cut into the cookie making for Christmas, but we still managed 9 or 10 different varieties to be enjoyed for the season.

We continue to enjoy our winter wonderland. Remember, we are only 5 minutes from Smugglers Notch Resort and the skiing is great. There is snow shoeing and XCountry skiing on our property as well as up at the resort. Or you can relax with a “hot toddy” and read by the fire with the “critters” to keep you company. The hot tub is a wonderful place to unwind and it doesn’t stay snow covered very long. It’s a great place to relax, even it the air temperature is on the chilly side. 

Well, tonight it’s supposed to get into the low 40’s, so the seasons are doing their usual dance.High summer with its wildflowers has passed.

The garden has gone from its mid-July order to its late August bounty. Once again planting and pulling weeds pales in comparison to the task of harvesting and preparing for storage.

The garlic is all harvested, the corn is almost ready (guarded from raccoons by pumpkins), tomatoes are turning red, peppers, onions, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers and beets are ready for harvest, and the winter squash is getting big. And, we are still bringing in batches of zucchini for stews and soups for the freezer.

The chickens are all doing well, happy in their coop and yard. One of the chicks has turned out to be a rooster, not a layer! We’ll keep him around for his proud strut and crow – at least for now.

And Deborah did finally manage to find keets (baby guineas), so we have four that are almost ready to be released from their nursery in the coop. She is hoping that they have fixed on the coop as home since they will easily be flying over the fence. That’s the idea – to get them into the garden for bug patrol. We only hope that they’ve read that chapter in the book!

The coop is all trimmed and finished now, and nestles in by the garden shed.

Jeannine visited this summer and for the first time we decided to buy firewood, so we were able to play a bit while she was here instead of our usual crazed felling, cutting and splitting. We decided to bring Misty to the reservoir for her first swim and for a nice afternoon of kayaking.

Deborah is scaling back work even more as of September and will actually switch her residency to Vermont as she will be up here all except for a few days each month – yippee on all accounts! She has been busy writing papers and presentations as her grant work slowly winds down.

Misty continues to grow! We swear that we can see her bones growing as she sleeps.We took her to puppy school, and she passed her test and graduated with flying colors!

And last week Ruthanne volunteered to do several moon rock presentations at the local library as part of a summer-long feature they have in honor of the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing.

We are so pleased that our guest room calendar for the fall is nearly full!  We are looking forward to wonderful times with friends and family.

Added comment: There is/was a blight going through New England and for the longest time we thought that we would come through unscathed. Unfortunately, one after noon we went out the the garden to find that most of the tomato plants were affected. We tried cutting off and back, to allow the fruit to ripen. Unfortunately, we lost the whole crop - about 100 pounds of tomatoes!!! Ahhhhh the joys and perils of gardening!!!!