Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Random Happenings in the State of NY

It's a beautiful day today. The first beautiful day we've had in a long time in fact.  I don't know about the weather in your area, but we have had rain every day for the past week or so.  Sunday there was a reprieve for a few hours. 
I honestly don't have any truly exciting news to tell, or any awesome pictures.  But we are still alive and well and I thought I would make a post.  Probably mostly writing, not so many pictures this time. 

About a month ago, Dan told me he wanted to go on a drive to see all the beautiful fall leaves.  Of course I was up for that, but the leaves were most beautiful when Dan and I were working nonstop on the house.  I didn't get any pictures, but we rented a bobcat and dump trailer and dug out 7 loads of dirt from what was supposed to be the driveway.  Then we got a load of gravel and Dan spread that and graded it.  Because we were renting the equipment, there was really no time to stop.  Anyway, we finished that, and then Dan installed the new garage door.  The outside of the house is now complete. 

By the time that week of non-stop work was finished, most of the leaves were brown and fallen.  But we still went on our drive.  Dan planned out to take me to Woodstock, Vermont.  The drive was nice.  It snowed in the mountains, and when we arrived, it was raining heavily.  Dan took us to a Rockefeller house there in Woodstock and we did the tour of it. 


It was a nice change from all the weeks of working on the house.

 
Even Gwennie enjoyed the tour!  She was the youngest person to ever take a tour apparently. All of the people in our tour group enjoyed her.

 
After we finished the tour, we drove around town a little bit just looking at the beautiful homes. Interestingly, I saw a sign that said "Justin Morgan" and we stopped to read it.  It jogged my memory of a book I read as a child called "Justin Morgan had a horse."  Come to find out that Justin Morgan lived in Woodstock with his famous horse, Figure.   
 
We drove back to Rutland for lunch because the prices in Woodstock are through the roof.   
 
In other news, Dan got two deer so far, exactly one week apart.  Our freezer is half-full.  We process them ourselves and last year, we were keeping every last piece of meat on the deer, even if it had sinew and grossness in it.  This year, we are only harvesting the good meat.  That way our freezer is full of good stuff, not junk like last year.  Our hope is that Dan will be able to get one more before the season is up beginning of December. 
 

 
We found a $4 meat grinder at an antique store and tried using it on some of the meat and it worked really well!  I just made lasagna Sunday with the ground venison and it tasted just like beef.  I'm very happy about that, since we ran out of the beef we had bought from my sister about two months ago.  I was having to force myself to eat the ground venison we had left from 2016 (the year we paid to have the deer processed) because it tasted truly awful. 
 
 
 
This picture brings me great joy.  We had to go to Albany last week.  Besides the history in that city, the only good thing about Albany is the Mexican restaurant, Salsa Latina.  We went there and ordered our normal, 3 tacos.  Turns out it was Taco Tuesday, a new deal they just started, so we only paid $6 for both of us!  Wow...you can't beat that.  And the tacos were amazing. 
 
 
Like I said, this post is just a compilation of a bunch of stuff that we've been doing, so bear with me.  On Sunday evening after church, it was so chilly that I thought we should watch a Christmas movie.  We watched 'The Grinch Stole Christmas" and it was Gwen's first time watching a movie.  As you can see, she was enthralled. 

 
 
Other news include the loss of a family member.  One of our 20 chickens died last night.  It's still an unsolved mystery, but I couldn't find any signs of foul play. 
 
I am very much looking forward to visiting my family at the end of this month for Thanksgiving.  Keep your eyes peeled for another post soon! 

2 comments:

The K. Family said...

Beautiful header photo of you two! We will often run our hamburger through the grinder twice to make it even better if you are using a hand grinder. Happy fall!

*~Virginia~* said...

Good idea! We'll have to try that with the grinder if we get another deer! Thanks for the advice.