And just like that, the unofficial end of summer is here. We crammed a lot into August including a long work trip with four locations took us to Hudson Mills NY, Chicopee, MA, Royalton, VT, and Bow, NH for a total of 750 miles. I, Wine, did all of the driving so that Whiskey could do reports, paperwork, and emails.
As our usual protocol to make a work trip a "vacation" trip as well, we visit friends in Schenectady NY and moochdock in their driveway. We appreciate being able to park in friend and family's driveway, so I show my appreciation in some way. For these friends, I made a sourdough and presented it with butter on one of my barn board creation. I also brought two beautiful Delmonico steaks from the farm store and cooked for them.
We enjoyed a relaxed evening filled with cocktails, tasty snacks, followed by a delicious dinner and good conversation, a perfect visit. Our hosts, he's Gin, she's Juice hang out with us in the mobile condo as I cook up the steaks in the cast iron skillet.
Here are my tips for driveway camping etiquette. Click here.
Let's get to work...we need to make two work stops before we get to our overnight parking place in Brattleboro, VT.
Our first stop is in Highland Mills, NY in the Hudson Valley. They have pitbull that is dog aggressive, so we keep Bell in the condo. Bell and the other dog do have a stare down and Willy takes a look too. After this we head to Chicopee MA.
After finishing up a long travel day we have a lovely dinner at Brattleboro Vermont Golf Club's restaurant Bella Notte. A beautiful setting overlooking the course was a nice way to end the day before our short drive to our Harvest Hosts location for the night.
Once again, we choose to stay at a church. Churches are perfect places when we will be arriving late and simply need a place to park overnight. On this evening we arrive around 8pm and settle in for the night.
Two more work assignments on day two of our trip, one in Royalton Vermont, the second in Bow, NH. The onboard kitchen gets puts to use to make lunch. This is best for time, quick and easy.
Here is video of our visit with friends, four work stops, dinner at the golf course, and overnight parking at the church.
Once home after this work excursion we settle in and get in boating, socializing, and continue work around the yard.
Come along for a ride to Ragged Island and watch Bell play in the lake. She's so good.
Bell's first trip to Ragged Island was fun. Our last time there we took Homer for his last time. I still miss my Homie every day; I can still just cry when I start to think about him.
I continue to work on boards. I have had a stash of hardware for years and started pulling them out to use on my boards. I love glass doorknobs, but I had to think of way to attach them to the wood without anything fussy (or glue). I found a bolt in a bin in Whiskey's tool room, and it worked perfectly(ish). Here are a few of the latest.
Since we have gotten a break from rain and I have to purge the freezer of large pork roasts before new pork comes, we have a few friends over for dinner in the Barn Lounge.
The work around the grounds is on going. We discovered our two pear trees have fire blight. What a bummer, but maybe a good thing as they need to go. Like all of our other trees they grew so fast and next thing you know you have no grass and just moss growing.
This development did give Whiskey the nudge to finally get the chainsaw on a stick, technically a pole pruner. Well, this tool is the greatest!
Once we start clearing the pear trees, we take look over the fence toward the front and realize we need to deal with the overgrowth there.
The abandoned rock garden came into focus, so I went in to clear it out. Top photo of the condition after years of neglect. The second shot after literally eight hours of work. Not too bad. Thankful for that pole pruner because Whiskey went to town on the large branches and saplings.
I am thankful for our community Facebook page because there is a young man (teenager) posting he is willing to haul brush away. I texted him and he came with a buddy, and they hauled away my huge pile of brush within a couple of hours from the text request. What a delight!!
So onward we go as fall is literally around the corner and the leaves are falling. We must make the most of September and October as we will then be stacking firewood and getting ready spend lots more time inside. But let's not rush that.
We will be starting September off with a test run of the toad. Stay tuned!
Here are photos from August. Bell is getting to be a bit pushy in the RV bed. 😁
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I'm coveting that pole pruner! Need!