singing by lamplight

About 20 miles west of here is the Old North Church, which was the cultural and religious center of a farming community from 1835 until about 1900. The community is long gone, having clustered into North Danville and Danville over the last century. The church building, however, has survived through it all and is now a state historical landmark.

Our efforts to find this place suffered due to lack of a good map! We spent over an hour trying to find it, never being more than 4 miles away, never closer than a mile, before finally our approach was successful. It turns out we had driven in circles, plus a couple of wrong turns, before the circle became a spiral that brought us to the destination.

I won't go into the details of the church architecture, partly because it is available on line - see

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM67JC_Old_North_Church_Danville_Vermont

and partly, lacking electricity, detail was somewhat obscured in the dim twilight of the kerosene lamps. It featured a pump organ nd pews that only a puritan might find too comfortable.

Just one interesting historical tidbit. The church was originally constructed by 4 denominations, who rotated Sunday Services. In 1868, the Methodists became the sole owner. Their first change was to remodel the front choir loft into a kitchen! (How could there be Methodist church without food!).

The Taize service was short, which seemed to make the roughly 100 folks there happy, for they were really there for the hymn singing. I'd never seen the hymnbook we used, It was similar to our Cokesbury book, and there were enough familiar hymns that I felt right at home, even without selections by Charles W. Except for one song that no one seemed to know either tune or words, the congregation was pretty enthusiastic about singing . Before it got too dark for those not by a window to see the words, we managed to sing about a dozen hymns. I suspect many would have stayed for longer singing first verses in the lamplight as long as the organist could read the music.

The Methodist Church I've been visiting in St. Johnsbury is big on modern praise music and has a good praise band as an integral part of its service. However, praise music just doesn't match the beauty, either in lyrics or music, of these old hymns. As much as the 175 year old building, these old hymns testify to the faith and values of our forefathers.

Plans v. life

This was to be our first ‘fun’ weekend, but it wasn’t. The weather turned warm, I was up at 6, and Pat slept till 10. By the time she got up, I was deep into the final stages of building shelves and organizing the garage/workspace. Like baseball players, we respect the streak. So when the psyche says organize, we do. Not exciting, but very satisfying to have it done, or mostly done. We have about a half dozen boxes to bring in for storage or to distribute stuff around the house. One more utility shelf in the basement will do it, I think.

We have been nursing an injured dog all week. Last weekend Lucy met the neighborhood dogs and during a active discussion over who was the A-dog, she twisted her rear leg and pulled a ligament. She has been hobbling all week. The vet says it may heal on its own, or may need surgery. Wait a couple of weeks and see. In the meantime, no running, jumping etc, so it is back on the long leash. The supreme unfairness is that she was just getting to the point of being trusted to be free. So far she is tolerating this confinement. Walking tires her quickly and the woods have been less inviting as a result. Lucy went through this with the other leg in 2008. I hope we can avoid the surgery this time.

We saw a doe and her fawn last week, but not at our house. They were wading in the Duck Pond about 1.5 miles down the road. Duck pond is a really beautiful natural pond, probably about 2.5 acres overall, but with several inlets that stick back between the hills. The inlet with the deer was only a few inches of water and very marshy. The other nearby lake is Styles pond. It is much bigger, probably 2 square miles. The highway runs right at the bank for almost 2 miles, and the view is fabulous. This one is the municipal water supply, so no activity allowed there. I haven't seen much activity at Duck Pond, either for that matter. A pair of canada geese were resident there when we first arrived but have long since departed. We did see some wild turkey in a field a couple of weeks ago. Other that and numerous reports of other people seeing a bear, the wild life here are staying hidden, at least in our neck of the woods.

Maintaining the estate

Our country 'estate' has about 3/4 acre of lawn. Despite the cool weather, grass here grows and grows rapidly. By the time I did the market research and talked to the neighbors about the relative merits of tractor sizes, engine sizes and manufacturers, and snow removal, it was nearly a month before I got a tractor and actually mowed. At that point the yard looked more like a pasture than a lawn. The first mowing yielded close to a bale of hay. (not a good yield, but still plenty enough to leave mini hay rows.) I mowed it the second time today and is beginning now to look like a lawn again.

The John Deere's 4 foot cutting deck makes short work of the job. But don't get the idea it is a boring ride. The yard has numerous trees with low limbs, and hills. Even on a mini-tractor, it is impossible to both look ahead and watch the mowing deck closely, and a tree limb in the face at 4 mph is not to be ignored (trust me on this). More than once I've lost a hat and nearly lost glasses when I looked up a second too late.

And then there are the hills. A couple are too steep to for the wheels to keep traction, so one choice is to mow down them only, (Don't ask me how you get up each time). The other choice is to mow across the slope, which gets bit scary when you start to slide out of the seat or the tractor begins to lose traction. To my credit, I didn't get stuck the second time ( yes, between the lines I'm admitting I did get stuck the on the first outing.)

Fortunately I don't have to drive between a rock and a hard place, but there is an opportujity to run off the cliff along the top of the slate stone retaining wall, (or cliff). The goal is to mow close, but not too close, to the edge, since the rocks are just stacked, not cemented into place. I always end up putting a few rocks back into place, and at this, too, I'm getting better. Only three stones to replace today, down from five last week.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I conceded the tractor arms race early on. Still, my little tractor is pretty sharp and I have to brag a little. As noted, it is a John Deere, which is the Cadillac of the tractor makers (and priced to reflect this). With 22 hp, it has plenty of power, and the hay cutting of the first week didn't phase it at all. It has electric start, headlights (hardly necessary when it is still light at 9 pm, but may be much appreciated this winter). and a cup holder (which is specifically listed in the specs - believe it or not!)

In the cold months the mowing deck comes off and will be replaced with a snow blower to keep the driveway and parking area clear. The snow blower requires weights on the rear of the tractor, plus chains. One of the true Vermonter innovations is to fill the rear tires with liquid (either a calcium chloride solution or freeze-proof windshield washer fluid) for extra weight. The neighbors all say the additional weight is essential in winter and can be useful in the summer (I agree). So one day soon, I'll be taking the wheels off and to a specialist in injecting the wheels with about 10 gallons of windshield washer fluid.
The most satisfying aspect of this weight addition is that it demonstrates that my personal 220 pounds is clearly not excessive given the job at hand, regardless of the guilt the government weight/height charts lay on us.

Country living large

The stack of boxes in the garage keeps getting smaller, as do the piles of stuff on the floor in the house, so I know that we are making progress. As yet, about 50% of what I look for, be it a plate, as tool or a shirt, requires a multi-location search , so there is still work to be done before I can truly say I'm at home.

Another neighbor came by this morning to warn me that there is a big moose visiting in our neighbor hood. He says, they can be quite dangerous when provoked. He also told me not to put out bird seed as this is the bear's favorite treat. Can't wait to see what happens when the moose and the bear meet,

There is no trash service in Waterford. This morning I went two miles down the road to the town "dump", or transfer station, to use its proper name, with the week's recycling and trash. We pay for dumping trash ($3 for a large bag). Recycling is free and covers everything but foam-based products. Recycling is a sort/dump it yourself affair, but even with the extra time required, the per bag fee is a strong incentive to recycle. Vermont also charges a 5-cent deposit on glass, aluminum and plastic soft-drink/beer containers, so those get saved up and carried to the "redemption" center, for a refund. I thought most states did away with these deposits in the 80's, but not here. Fortunately, the center is on the way into town.

We did take time out from unpacking on Saturday to go into town for the farmer's market and a quick walk around in the commercial part of town. The farmer's market was similar to the Red Stick Market, but very few craft items. Lots of flowers, most of which are new to us really caught our eye, but the most surprising item was fresh rainbow trout! Getting some of those will require some planning to transport and cook at home the same day. We ended up with fresh bread, spinach and some Vermont cheese.

All the local products have been really good so far, with several old standards having 'Vermont style'. The most unusual are the Vermont hot dog buns. These are basically a 2-inch high loaf of bread, cut alternately all the way through and half through from the top. Pat claims to like these better, but I'll stick with the old standard, which is also available. The best find of the weekend was a real meat market, complete with meats cut-to-order and home-made sausage in several varieties.

The summer cultural/social season is getting into swing this weekend. A community supper with fireworks will kick things off at the school here on Saturday, and the St. Johnsbury band will begin is 100th something consecutive season on Sunday night. The band concert should be fun, even though I have no idea how big/good the band may be. They play every week or so in the town "square" which is a green space by the courthouse. There are several other activities in outlying areas, much like the spring festival season in south Louisiana. Doubt if many ofter, much less feature crawfish or boudin or jambalaya.

Settling In

After just over three weeks in our new home, we are beginning to see some signs of settling in, although there is still a long way to go. Most of the furniture has found a permanent home. However, despite large garage sales, ‘pre-estate’ sales, and giving things away, we still arrived with what seemed like far more ‘stuff’ than we remember packing. That is the curse of packing for four months and unloading in three weeks, I suppose. Eventually, it will all fit, but a place for everything will not happen immediately.

Despite one hot spell (high of 91), most days the weather has been delightful. The heat wave did get us to install our window AC units, but we’ve used them very little other than that one time. Most days have been in the low 70’s, with night temps down into the 50’s and occasionally in the 40’s. The fronts come through more frequently here than in BR. I suppose it is because we are further north. We are getting rain, or at least clouds, every second or third day.

Other than hardware and home improvement stores, we have done little exploring of the local area. We have discovered nearly ALL the casual dining places in St. Johnsbury (about six). Fortunately, most of them are reasonably good, but there is not a lot of variety. We have a McDonalds, but have to drive about 15 miles to find chain restaurants that are common in BR. Fortunately, they are across the street from Home Depot, so we have lots of opportunities.

Our dogs made the trip fine and survived a week in the kennel with about 10 hunting dogs. They are adjusting to being unfenced and having deep woods at their back door. Lucy went adventuring yesterday for about four or five hours, giving us fears of a worst case scenario. (Fortunately it was the next day when our next-door neighbor related how her boxer had chased a BEAR away that morning) But when we returned from an errand, she was waiting no the back porch as if it was a perfectly normal event. I don’t worry about Shadow getting lost. He is too old to wander far. His biggest issue is getting up and down stairs. It is a struggle for his arthritic legs, and he fell down the steps several times before getting adept. He is much better since we put some carpet pads on the steps.

I finally bought a lawn tractor to keep up with mowing the acre of yard we have. The neighbors are probably happier about it than me, as our yard has begun to resemble a pasture rather than a well kept estate. Weather permitting, it will be lawn-like by the end of the weekend. This winter the tractor will be a snow thrower, so it really is a year round machine. There is apparently a competition as to has the biggest most macho tractor in the neighborhood (I lost!), but I do wear my John Deere hat with pride…ta da!!!