Tag Archives: weather

The Long Hard Winter

Posted on March 7, 2015 by AnnieRie

Today, while making dinner I noticed the deer hanging at the edge of our yard, out by the field. Three of them in all.

These two, an older and younger doe, were trying to find something in the berry bushes and the trash trees along the property line.

This one, who came later,

hobbled off towards the evergreens.

Yes, this one was crippled, and limping. Eating the white pines. Not their favorite food, but just about all that is out there these days. They are coming right up to the house at night.

The bottom half of this tree is pretty much devastated by them. They have also eaten every piece of young growth on the azaleas.

With all the snow on the ground, they are desperate to find food. This has been a harsh cold winter.

I have found rabbit scat beneath the bird feeders. That eagle has been hovering around here, looking for something to eat. The hawks are having a hard time, as the fields covered in snow make it impossible to find animals on the ground.

I don’t know the solution to this situation. Only a prolonged period of warming, that will uncover the ground vegetation, can solve the deer and rabbit food source scarcity.

We need the weather to change. It isn’t just the people around here hating winter. I think the animals are fed up with it too.

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Posted in Foraging, Nature, Weather, West HoCo and tagged nature, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

The Pre-Storm Frenzy

Posted on March 1, 2015 by AnnieRie

Backyard bird version.

Reminds me of the local grocery stores around here at the start of any snow event. Last minute frantic behavior. The flakes had just begun when the birds (and a few squirrels) descended upon the feeders and the ground by the bird bath.

This was somewhat tame as it did get pretty intense up on the major feeder.

I could almost imagine the parallels to the competition to get that last loaf of bread or gallon of milk.

It’s not like I don’t have food out there constantly. They just get so intense when a storm comes.

And, this one.

Similar to the behavior of hovering for that choice parking spot in the store lot?

I have to admit, the birds that live here in our woods provide us with much entertainment. They know this is a source of food and water, year round. Today they were out there while I was rinsing dishes, and I had to go get the camera to record them.

I do hope this is the end of our winter storms. Enough is enough. And I’m glad we pruned the dead wood out of the tops of our shade trees. If we get a quarter inch of ice, like predicted, there will be branches breaking all around us. Crossing our fingers that Friday’s maintenance prevents any significant damage.

Stay warm and safe out there. We are almost into spring.

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Posted in Birds, Nature, Weather and tagged birds, nature, photography, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Preventive Maintenance

Posted on February 27, 2015 by AnnieRie

I have the greatest respect for those who work outdoors in weather like this. Who don’t seem to care if it’s cold, windy, or there’s a foot of snow on the ground. They just do their job. And, most of them love what they do.

Including climbing and pruning very large trees.

We have used Bartlett to do the really large jobs around here, for years. They have also climbed trees just to put antenna wire anchors into the very top of them. Like this one.

At the very top of our boundary tree, you can see the ropes where my husband attaches the extremely long wires to use for the lowest frequencies for his radio contacts. Thankfully, today, in the snow, we didn’t need that level of climbing, but we did want the trimming work done before the leaves start coming in. This work has been moved more than once due to weather, but today, they thought, we can do this.

Let’s just say one of the harder parts of this job was getting the truck in the driveway. Yesterday, my husband and Marty Adams, our local representative from Bartlett, cleared the driveway wide enough to make it navigable for the truck. Marty is a Howard County native who is great to work with.

For us, this work yearly by Bartlett is important to maintain the health of our largest and most valuable trees. They do the difficult stuff for us. Pruning out the dead portion of one of my prized Japanese maples.

Shaping and pruning the ornamentals. Climbing and pruning the 50-60 foot tall hardwoods. Like the maples and the pin oaks. So far, crossing our fingers, we haven’t lost any of our largest shade trees in the hurricanes, the derecho, and the ice storms. Because we do take the time and effort to do the preventive maintenance.

Our trees are part of the charm of our property. They can’t easily be replaced.

The maple in springtime. Here’s hoping it gets here soon.

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Posted in Local Businesses, Nature, Weather and tagged local businesses, nature, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Baby It’s Cold

Posted on February 26, 2015 by AnnieRie

Outside definitely. Inside, sometimes as well. Heat pumps can’t handle extended temps near zero degrees. We hit zero again on Tuesday morning. The heat pumps couldn’t hack that, so we had the resistive heat running continuously trying to keep it warm around here.

I decided, OK, I need to find something to do to keep us warmer, so I decided to bake and cook. All day. It kept the kitchen warm and made it easier for us to have quick meals the rest of this week.

At one point, I had both ovens going, and the large burner on the stove. Oh, and the dishwasher and the clothes dryer out in the mud room. All together, productive, while making it more comfortable in the house.

I hate heat pumps. Our house, like thousands like it in this area, was built during the moratorium on building using natural gas. Oil burners were also not used, as the price made them prohibitive. Heat pumps cannot take prolonged temperatures below twenty degrees, and we are suffering through the coldest February I can ever remember.

Two more days of this month. Today, even more snow came down. At least we got above freezing yesterday.

As for the cooking, what did I make?

Apple cake. Adapted from the Not Without Salt recipe. I substituted my crock pot spiced apples for the two cups of apples.

I like this recipe so much that I made a recipe card in Pages on my iPad. Since I like the extra spice, I used a pint jar from the freezer since I didn’t have any baking apples around. I also did decrease the sugar from the published recipe, to 1/2 a cup.

I had one oven making this cake, while the other made three things. At the same time. Beets. Chicken. Roasted root vegetables.

I was cleaning out the produce drawer before the CSA came on Wednesday. There are parsnips, celeriac, sunchokes, carrots, sweet potato, turnips, white radish, scallions, yellow onion and a jalapeno in there.

Heavily spiced.

No measuring. More of what I like. Less of the stronger stuff. Olive oil. Mustard. White balsamic. All mixed up in a bowl and dumped on the foil. Roasted at 350 degrees for an hour.

Add to all of this, I was making chicken stock with the bones and skin from the whole chicken. I got a quart of stock, that simmered most of the afternoon.

After all was said and done, we had chicken and root vegetables for dinner Tuesday. The leftovers.

Enough for a few days as a side dish.

Chicken leftovers for me yesterday while my better half went to an amateur radio club dinner. The last piece of chicken breast. Lunch today. The beets will be tomorrow’s salad. The apple cake. Dessert when we are in the mood for dessert. The chicken stock is in the freezer.

Not a bad way to spend a frigid Tuesday.

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Posted in Food, Locavore, Real Food, Weather, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, Food, foodie, Locavore, real food, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Choosing Community Again

Posted on February 23, 2015 by AnnieRie

I really do dislike that slogan around here. The “Choose Civility” one. As if civility is all we need to show to those we encounter. Whether on the roads, in the stores, in our neighborhoods.

For us. A sense of community is what is important. A sense of neighbors helping neighbors. Of being there for each other when we need them. A civil nod, and “Have a Nice Day” doesn’t resonate.

Case in point. This past weekend, and that overachieving snow.

For us, it couldn’t have come in a worse time. Our snow thrower bit the dust.

Last week, during the minor snowfall (how many of these buggers are we going to get?), the cable that turns the augur, broke. On order. Slated to come in tomorrow. Enter Saturdays 10 inches of snow.

We called two neighbors. And, one of them, we called their son’s cell. Sunday morning, bright and early we get a response. The son, on the RTV helped us clear out. He had just come from the widow’s property up the road, where he plowed her driveway for her. After ours, he did another neighbor.

Later that day, his parents did get back to us. They checked their messages from their vacation in Hawaii and wanted to make sure we could get in touch with their son. Later, our other neighbor came over to tell us, in the future, when they are away, which they were, we should just go in the barn and take their snowthrower to use.

Now, that’s community. Not being civil. But caring about one another.

I do love it out here. The people make it special.

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Posted in Commentary, Community, Howard County, Nature, Weather, West HoCo and tagged commentary, community, hoco loco, Howard County, weather, West HoCo. Bookmark the permalink.

Menu Planning

Posted on February 18, 2015 by AnnieRie

Sunchokes. For the third time this winter.

It seems this seasonal vegetable is best after a hard frost. Heaven knows we have had enough of those around here. The sunchokes are a Northeastern US native plant. They are the tubers from a type of sunflower. A perennial and if not carefully corralled they can become invasive.

They are a great probiotic for most people. They contain inulin, are good at promoting the healthy “gut bacteria” we need, and keep your blood sugar under control. If you aren’t one of those people sensitive to them, and then they cause discomfort. We do OK with them, but this is the third week out of five that they are showing up in our food baskets.

This week, they were in my CSA basket.

Our winter vegetable share. Week Five. Cabbage, sunchokes, portabellas, onions and garnet sweet potatoes. You will notice two cabbages, as I traded the black radishes. I am currently radished out, and we are in one of those food ruts, where we enjoy steamed cabbage as a side dish. Well, and making lots of cole slaw since we are drowning in carrots this winter. All this cold weather is good for certain vegetables. We seem to be getting quite a few of the hardy varieties that do well when the weather gets cold enough.

The omnivore share gave us these for a pantry item, a cheese and meat.

Daisy flour. Linden Dale raw goat milk cheese. Ground beef. I love, love, love Linden Dale cheeses. We used to buy them all the time up at the Lancaster Market. I am so glad they became a supplier to the cooperative, and that we get these lovely goat cheeses brought to us. Daisy flour is also a treat. I first bought their flour at the Catonsville Atwaters Bakery, and they really are different than what you may be used to baking with.

Friends and Farms this week.

This is the small basket, suitable for two people who eat at home four or five nights a week. The carrots, and those two turnips came to Friends and Farms via the same truck that delivers our Lancaster Farm Fresh CSA. More and more, they are using the cooperative to supply fresh organic seasonal vegetables. Cremini mushrooms (there will be mushroom soup this weekend). Hydroponic lettuce. Eggs. Apples. Kale, another hardy vegetable that gets sweeter after a hard frost. I love to sauté kale with garlic and bacon to serve as a side dish.

There is also a quart of Atwaters chicken stock this week. A new supplier. From one of our favorite lunch places in Catonsville. We got short ribs this week. And ground beef for me, as the substitute for dairy. Oh, and shrimp. Which only survived two hours in the house, as it was dinner tonight.

Shrimp over polenta. The last of the polenta from a very long time ago. Found it in the back of the little fridge, where I store flours and nuts, to keep them fresh. One cup left. Enough for two meals. Did you know polenta easily melts again when reheated. Tonight, I added some corn from an earlier basket. I store it in a container in the freezer, and pour out what I need.

What else will I do with this week’s stuff? Crock pot short ribs. Crab stuffed portabellas. Egg salad. Mushroom soup. Cole slaw. Spicy sunchoke dip. I will let you know if this dip is worth making. I wanted to try something new with the sunchokes.

Fresh vegetables all winter. Comfort foods. Who cares if we get negative temperatures the next few nights. We can be warm and have satisfying meals here at home.

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Posted in CSA, Food, Friends and Farms, LFFC, Locavore, Weather and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, Locavore, real food, value of CSA, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Notify Me Howard

Posted on February 16, 2015 by AnnieRie

OK, we have to do something about Howard. He keeps emailing me. SEVEN times in the last 24 hours. And, he keeps changing his mind. 6-10 inches. Followed by 4-8 inches (just a few minutes after the previous prediction). Now, he’s back to the 6-10 inch thing.

So, will he be right or wrong? Will we wake up to this?

Notify Me Howard sends us emails. Mostly about weather and cancellations and notices. When the weather is about to go ugly, they can overdo it.

I am so tired of winter. Tired of the cold. The wind. The snow. I keep hearing Jimmy Buffett in my mind. You know, BOAT DRINKS!

I haven’t shot any holes in our freezer. Well, because we haven’t got any guns in the house, and the freezer is safely in the basement.

Time to go make something good to sip while waiting for the snow to really arrive. Can you tell it’s frustrating around here?

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Posted in Commentary, Community, Nature, Weather and tagged commentary, community, hoco loco, Howard County, nature, weather, West HoCo. Bookmark the permalink.

One Wild Weekend

Posted on February 15, 2015 by AnnieRie

Never a dull moment around here. Even when we do stay home.

Valentine’s Day is a day I cook a special dinner paired with an old wine. We don’t fight the crowds in restaurants. And, since the weather was awful, we had our romantic feast without the worry of trying to drive home in the snow and ice.

All that running around Wednesday for the CSA and Friends and Farms, and Thursday for the lamb and shrimp in Mt. Airy meant I could cook at leisure, and savor our dinner.

Who knew things would get real exciting a few hours later. Looking out the window of the dining room from the kitchen I see a line of flashing red lights at the end of our driveway. What is going on? I call down to my husband who is on the radio looking for a rare contact, and head out into the wind.

What do I find? A car in the driveway. That, I see, is OK, as they are assisting a friend in emptying their car before a tow truck arrives. The paramedics are putting people in the ambulance, from the other car, the one we couldn’t see, as it was dangling over the embankment held up by trees and our mailboxes. Well, what used to be our mailboxes. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt but my other neighbors spent this morning trying to find mail all over the fields across from us. We, being home all day, had retrieved our mail before our mailbox went bye bye.

Sheared off at the base. In freezing weather. Now, we are searching for someone who can put a new one into the frozen hillside. Until then, mail will be forwarded to our PO box, which my husband uses for radio contact cards.

Adding to all the other excitement, we were awakened at 3 am by what sounded like banshees howling. 60+ knot wind gusts. For a very very long time. Sleep? Who could sleep through this? At least the hexbeam held up on the tower. Another milestone for the tower. Surviving winds of that speed.

This morning. I was lucky. The bird feeders survived. But, the bird bath was empty. All the water blew out. I had to go out, fill it up and spread seed for the very cold birds out there. This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count, and today, I counted a gazillion juncos out there. Really. I couldn’t count them all. The ground was covered in them.

Along with the cardinals, sparrows, blue jays, starlings, woodpeckers, robins, finches and crows, I think I got a good count as everyone hit the seed and the water.

I am so tired of winter. Spring needs to get here soon.

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Posted in Adventures, Commentary, Food, Howard County, Weather, West HoCo and tagged amateur radio, commentary, community, cooking, Food, Howard County, weather, West HoCo. Bookmark the permalink.

Be Prepared

Posted on January 30, 2015 by AnnieRie

That Boy Scout Motto. It resonates around here. We try to stay on top of the weather. The news. The calendar. Those food deliveries. And more.

But, in the winter. It is mostly about having things that are necessary and convenient within our reach. You know, in case it really does snow.

Like Super Bowl Sunday 2010.

When you really don’t want to shovel your way out there. Or, when that pizza delivery guy is NOT going to get here.

We recently watched as the Buffalo area was hit with a blizzard. And now, New England. We hear people lamenting that their roads aren’t open. That they can’t get out. They are running low on food (seriously? Not a problem around here).

We keep the pantry and freezer stocked with things we can easily make. In case we lose power. In case we are snowed in for a couple of days. It’s simple to have a ready stock of staples to tide you over until you can resume your routine outside of your home.

Like my Tuscan salad.

Thanks to that Williams Sonoma book for giving me this often used recipe.

Instead of milk and bread at the grocery store, pick up a few cans and a couple of onions.

I use Costco to provide me with tuna. Harris Teeter for all my beans. Besides the tuna dish, I can easily make couscous with chickpeas and salsa. Or, slow cook a chili dinner.

Having a well stocked freezer also helps.

Bacon and eggs for frittata. Ground beef for meat loaf or meatballs and spaghetti.

Do me a favor. Stock up on beans. You can do so much with them. Even if you get that blizzard like we did Super Bowl Sunday five years ago. You can still make some awesome food. Just remember to have one manual can opener in the drawer. In case the power goes out. That tuna recipe doesn’t need cooking.

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Posted in Food, Real Food, Weather and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, Food, foodie, real food, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

Posted on January 27, 2015 by AnnieRie

On a Tuesday afternoon. About that snow?

We did get the 3+ inches predicted for our area. Even though I know the southeastern portion of the county didn’t get much at all. Maybe we need to divide the county in half in order to have two school districts. Then, those unhappy about the schools being closed because of us could not miss another day. I have to wonder though. What do they do at the end of a school year if one half the county doesn’t meet the minimum number of days? Interesting.

We got enough snow for our neighbor’s little ones to build a snowman. We even used the snowblower on the driveway today. So, the storm wasn’t a bust out here. That extra couple of hundred feet in elevation from here compared to the southeastern county makes a difference in temperature and snowfall.

In other news. They postponed the volunteer fair at the Howard County Conservancy until February 3rd. Same time. Same players. If you have the time, and want to hear more about volunteering, come join us. They need office support, event support, field trip leaders, animal feeders and more.

Finally, one more picture from this morning. I have learned how to keep the birds happy without having to go too far into the yard. I also learned to use mess free bird feed on the patio. No hulls or shells.