| I really start wondering whether we are gonna have any real winter or not. I mean the calendar shows February the 3rd but hey the sun is shining most days and day temps are climbing to 10-11C (50F) which makes me producing more and more firewood. All previous snow was just gone until we got a little dusting of snow this afternoon. With this winter’s colder weather in the South-West of the States our choice of staying put at home wasn’t a bad one. Once we are halfways through February, we can start looking for crocusses. Yesterday’s earthquake became the “talk of the town” on Campobello as well as in Lubec, ME and Eastport, ME. While the boom was covered by most media in Maine, our very own CBC did not bother posting any news of it, in spite of several people tweeting it to the news station.  Blogger has again started to annoy me. In my settings I have 10 email addresses all them supposed to receive an email every time I put up a new posting. Most recently it appeared that no more emails have been sent out through blogger. Going to blogger help forum I found lots of postings regarding the same issue without any solution being posted. I just don’t understand why blogger/google always has to doctor around with already working stuff just to mess it up.  |
Showing posts with label Winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winter. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
WHERE IS WINTER? And A Blogger-Problem
Monday, January 30, 2012
A word from Germany
A bleak winter sun fights to make way through the white of clouds in the east. The frosty fields are covered by a thin layer of snow. A fierce wind is blowing off the Baltic sea, bringing the wind chill down to God-knows-how many degrees below freezing.
Northern Germany in late January was so far removed from my memory and now it feels like a shock. Yet I grew up in among this landscape, the wintry cold seems frightening now. I am standing here, shivering through the frosty days with the coldness penetrating into my body. Is it the cold weather alone alone which makes me shiver, or is the fact that mother is gone contributing to it? I catch myself longing to be back in the California desert. What a selfish thought! There are duties and plights to be fullfilled right here.
We have mother´s funeral coming up on Wednesday, and guests from various parts of the country will be arriving. There will be that afternoon after the funeral to go through with. A gathering at the local restaurant with scores of people. It´s gonna be a hard day for all of us. Dad has been holding up so far, but there are days after that. Lonely days for Dad. The big house out on the country always seems so cold, and the winter is far from being over. Classical music is waftring through the house. It was HER kind of music, but it was also music I grew up with. It never before sounded like today.
A bleak winter sun fights to make way through the white of clouds in the east. The frosty fields are covered by a thin layer of snow. A fierce wind is blowing off the Baltic sea, bringing the wind chill down to God-knows-how many degrees below freezing.
Northern Germany in late January was so far removed from my memory and now it feels like a shock. Yet I grew up in among this landscape, the wintry cold seems frightening now. I am standing here, shivering through the frosty days with the coldness penetrating into my body. Is it the cold weather alone alone which makes me shiver, or is the fact that mother is gone contributing to it? I catch myself longing to be back in the California desert. What a selfish thought! There are duties and plights to be fullfilled right here.
We have mother´s funeral coming up on Wednesday, and guests from various parts of the country will be arriving. There will be that afternoon after the funeral to go through with. A gathering at the local restaurant with scores of people. It´s gonna be a hard day for all of us. Dad has been holding up so far, but there are days after that. Lonely days for Dad. The big house out on the country always seems so cold, and the winter is far from being over. Classical music is waftring through the house. It was HER kind of music, but it was also music I grew up with. It never before sounded like today.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
With my life
Most people wouldn't assume that being a farmer would be all that dangerous. Yet a lot of things can happen on a farm.
I learned that the hard way, yet I was lucky every time. When another haying season was on, I was working the steep slope down below the farm buildings. By that time we had a tractor-driven hay rake. The only way I could negotiate the steep hill was by driving straight down and backing uphill again. So here I was on the top of the hill, preparing to go downhill again. I used to drive the tractor down by putting in the third gear LOW That way I could drive down without using the brakes. However, this time, when I started on my way down, the tractor shot out from under me in an unknown speed. Within a split-second I realized I had put in the 3. gear HIGH. I hit the brakes full force and the tractor careened to the left making a 90 degree turn. The force of the gravity was big enough to lift the left set of wheels off the ground. For a moment I was prepared to roll, but then the tractor plunged back onto all 4 wheels and --- stood!! I crawled up the hill on my knees.
There was a day during winter and I was working with the tractor and a forest winch to drive out strings of firewood, when the tractor got stuck in the deep snow. Neighbors had told me that I could work the tractor out of such a situation by cutting short pieces of firewood and tie them with a chain to the tire-chains. So, of course I went ahead and tied a few pieces 3ft. long to the tire-chains. With the cab doors open I put the tractor into first gear and it got lifted up on top of the chunks of firewood. The next thing I knew was a loud crack and something metallic flew through the cab from the left, exiting on the right side. When my mind cleared i noticed that my vision was blurred. In fact I could see very little at all. The reason was that my eyeglasses were gone! Instead, I had some snow in my face. I found my glasses by crawling on the right side of the tractor in the snow! With my eyeglasses back where they used to be, (they were not broken!!!) I investigated the reason for the incident, and found that a chain-link had broken and been catapulted through the tractor taking my glasses off my nose WITHOUT HITTING ME! Had I gotten the chain-link to my skull, I would have shot myself.
Related to the same line of forest work, one fall I was pulling out big pine trees. I had gotten a much heavier tractor with a very powerful winch. I had fastened 50 yards of wire to a big chopped-down pine and was pulling it in. All of a sudden the wire stopped. Sometimes the tree got hooked behind a little bush and it just needed a little more pull, so I kept pulling. I pulled and pulled and nothing happened, until I heard a swish and a big bang, and here came the end of the steel wire crashing through the rear window of the tractor. Boy, it almost chopped off my head.
These little incidents could have been avoided, but I guess humans make mistakes and sometimes mistakes can be fatal. Some other times one is just lucky to make it.
Read more tomorrow: Digging it
I learned that the hard way, yet I was lucky every time. When another haying season was on, I was working the steep slope down below the farm buildings. By that time we had a tractor-driven hay rake. The only way I could negotiate the steep hill was by driving straight down and backing uphill again. So here I was on the top of the hill, preparing to go downhill again. I used to drive the tractor down by putting in the third gear LOW That way I could drive down without using the brakes. However, this time, when I started on my way down, the tractor shot out from under me in an unknown speed. Within a split-second I realized I had put in the 3. gear HIGH. I hit the brakes full force and the tractor careened to the left making a 90 degree turn. The force of the gravity was big enough to lift the left set of wheels off the ground. For a moment I was prepared to roll, but then the tractor plunged back onto all 4 wheels and --- stood!! I crawled up the hill on my knees.
There was a day during winter and I was working with the tractor and a forest winch to drive out strings of firewood, when the tractor got stuck in the deep snow. Neighbors had told me that I could work the tractor out of such a situation by cutting short pieces of firewood and tie them with a chain to the tire-chains. So, of course I went ahead and tied a few pieces 3ft. long to the tire-chains. With the cab doors open I put the tractor into first gear and it got lifted up on top of the chunks of firewood. The next thing I knew was a loud crack and something metallic flew through the cab from the left, exiting on the right side. When my mind cleared i noticed that my vision was blurred. In fact I could see very little at all. The reason was that my eyeglasses were gone! Instead, I had some snow in my face. I found my glasses by crawling on the right side of the tractor in the snow! With my eyeglasses back where they used to be, (they were not broken!!!) I investigated the reason for the incident, and found that a chain-link had broken and been catapulted through the tractor taking my glasses off my nose WITHOUT HITTING ME! Had I gotten the chain-link to my skull, I would have shot myself.
Related to the same line of forest work, one fall I was pulling out big pine trees. I had gotten a much heavier tractor with a very powerful winch. I had fastened 50 yards of wire to a big chopped-down pine and was pulling it in. All of a sudden the wire stopped. Sometimes the tree got hooked behind a little bush and it just needed a little more pull, so I kept pulling. I pulled and pulled and nothing happened, until I heard a swish and a big bang, and here came the end of the steel wire crashing through the rear window of the tractor. Boy, it almost chopped off my head.
These little incidents could have been avoided, but I guess humans make mistakes and sometimes mistakes can be fatal. Some other times one is just lucky to make it.
Read more tomorrow: Digging it
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Winter in Norway
It was in the beginning of September 1977, when I got the first taste of winter approaching the land.
It was early in the morning and I had just brushed my teeth. Looking out of the little bathroom window I saw that a white sugary layer of snow had covered the 87 peaks across the fjord. I had to look twice to believe it, then checking the date on the calendar. It showed the 5th of September. No doubt at all. However, the snow did not reach down into the valleys, it just covered the upper half of the mountains. But the clouds had passed and a clear blue sky with a deep blue fjord underneath was throwing a stunning contrast to the rusty red forests along the mountain slopes.
That day I did a ride with my Camper VW up to Varden, a famous viewpoint above the city. Varden is about 400m (1300ft) over sea level and there was snow on the road when I reached the top.
Winter was near, no doubt and when we returned from our fall tour in late November, I bought a snow shovel. I shoveled snow like never before. Within the night the van was covered in 50cm (20inch) of heavy white snow.
I don't remember how often I got stuck in the snow with that vehicle, but it was quite frequently, until I bought studded tires.
Shortly after I started in my job I had made some new friends. One sunny Sunday in the middle of the winter, these folks invited me for a cross-country ski tour. I had received skis from other friends a year earlier, but had never used them.
We took the road I had been driving in September up the mountain, from there we walked cross-country to a mountain cabin where we had tea. After the break we started on our return.
Instead of upwards we now had to get ourselves down to the city again. With my friends way ahead I tried to keep up with them, but I struggled in some deep snow. Somehow my skis seemed too heavy, and I had trouble lifting them out of the snow.
Then we came to the point where the road starts its descend to town. There were tracks from earlier skis. Two nice tracks beside each other. I stepped into the tracks and all of a sudden I was moving downhill. In the beginning it wasn't too fast, but with an increasing downgrade my speed increased disproportionately and I had no idea where the brakes where on this equipment. With the ever increasing speed I kind of hunkered down to milden the fall which seemed unavoidable. When i swished around a bend I saw my friends beside of the track, waiting for me. I was still exceeding the speed limit and I realized I had to stop here. So as I was passing them I simply made me fall backwards into the snow thereby destroying the fine ski tracks I had been following down hill. Needless to say my friends were dissolved in cramps of laughter.
With that experience I decided that I would seek out solitude for my next attempt of cross-country skiing.
Read more tomorrow: Kayaking a mountain lake
It was early in the morning and I had just brushed my teeth. Looking out of the little bathroom window I saw that a white sugary layer of snow had covered the 87 peaks across the fjord. I had to look twice to believe it, then checking the date on the calendar. It showed the 5th of September. No doubt at all. However, the snow did not reach down into the valleys, it just covered the upper half of the mountains. But the clouds had passed and a clear blue sky with a deep blue fjord underneath was throwing a stunning contrast to the rusty red forests along the mountain slopes.
That day I did a ride with my Camper VW up to Varden, a famous viewpoint above the city. Varden is about 400m (1300ft) over sea level and there was snow on the road when I reached the top.
Winter was near, no doubt and when we returned from our fall tour in late November, I bought a snow shovel. I shoveled snow like never before. Within the night the van was covered in 50cm (20inch) of heavy white snow.
I don't remember how often I got stuck in the snow with that vehicle, but it was quite frequently, until I bought studded tires.
Shortly after I started in my job I had made some new friends. One sunny Sunday in the middle of the winter, these folks invited me for a cross-country ski tour. I had received skis from other friends a year earlier, but had never used them.
We took the road I had been driving in September up the mountain, from there we walked cross-country to a mountain cabin where we had tea. After the break we started on our return.
Instead of upwards we now had to get ourselves down to the city again. With my friends way ahead I tried to keep up with them, but I struggled in some deep snow. Somehow my skis seemed too heavy, and I had trouble lifting them out of the snow.
Then we came to the point where the road starts its descend to town. There were tracks from earlier skis. Two nice tracks beside each other. I stepped into the tracks and all of a sudden I was moving downhill. In the beginning it wasn't too fast, but with an increasing downgrade my speed increased disproportionately and I had no idea where the brakes where on this equipment. With the ever increasing speed I kind of hunkered down to milden the fall which seemed unavoidable. When i swished around a bend I saw my friends beside of the track, waiting for me. I was still exceeding the speed limit and I realized I had to stop here. So as I was passing them I simply made me fall backwards into the snow thereby destroying the fine ski tracks I had been following down hill. Needless to say my friends were dissolved in cramps of laughter.
With that experience I decided that I would seek out solitude for my next attempt of cross-country skiing.
Read more tomorrow: Kayaking a mountain lake
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