New Truck / More Foliage

When we were still talking about moving East, we realized that, because of the snow, we would probably want to trade our 2 wheel drive pickup in for a 4x4 pickup. We considered making the change before the move but realized that our best move would be to wait.

Winter is rapidly approaching so we finally made the move this week. Here are a couple of pictures of our new 2016 Colorado.

The foliage continues to be amazing. In past years, we've made several attempt to see the foliage with varying degrees of success. We've never seen anything like what we've seen so far this year and, apparently, it's just getting started.

Here are a few pictures that we took this morning on our local stretch of the Rail Trail.

-JC-

Early Foliage

I said that I'd post some foliage pictures. It's still early so the foliage is just starting to change. I took these pictures with Kristen's phone on our walk this morning.

This is at the Coldbrrok Rd. / Barre Rd. corner of our property.

This is just across Barre Rd. from the first shot.

This beautiful tree is up above us on Maple St.

Also on Maple St.

Looking across the Town Square. Bandstand in the foreground with the old post office just behind it.

Looking uphill past the bandstand.

These trees are on the Coldbrook Rd. side of our property (that's our front lawn in the lower right.

-JC-

Oaktoberfest

Our new town of Oakham has an annual event called Oaktoberfest. It was on October 3rd this year and was supposed to feature a beer garden. Apparently, it was apparently so cold and damp that the brewery that was supposed to stage the beer garden cancelled out.

In the morning, Kristen and I walked up to the open house at the fire department. It's a volunteer fire department and we met several more of our immediate neighbors who volunteer at the department (one is the chief). The firemen were demonstrating how to put out dryer fires, gas bar-b-q fires, and stove top grease fires. They seemed to get great joy out of lighting the fires for a change.

Oaktoberfest also featured a 1 mile kids race and a 5k adult race, both of which passed the front of the house.

We invited Briar, Gus and the kids to join us and they showed up at about noon.

Our first stop was the hayride. Briar took this picture. My camera was in my coat pocket and, when the wagon started with a jerk, when flying out of my pocket and out onto the road. I recovered it but the display was dead. I've ordered a new display and hope to fix it myself.

The hayride passed the front of the house so I tested the broken camera with this shot.

Another of Briar's pictures. Maya was asked to inspect The Stupendous Mr. Magichead's hat.

Another broken camera shot. If it isn't obvious, the kids really enjoyed the magic act.

Another Briar picture. Niko and Maya petting The Stupendous Mr. Magichead's rabbit Lulu.

 With the magic show over, the kids played a dozen or so carnival type games. They were the usual impossible to win type games but $5 let them play and unlimited number of times and the kids running the games were very generous with consolation prize tokens. The kids really cleaned up at the prize counter.

After warming up at home for a while, we walked back up the street to watch the ball roll. This is a library fundraiser that occurs every couple of years. You buy a numbered ball for $5 (we had 4). When they raise the gate on the dump truck, the 2000 or so balls, roll down the chute. First one to the bottom wins $1000. There are 40 prizes in all. Our balls did not win.

Briar took these photos, looking uphill at the approaching balls on the left and looking downhill at the finish line funnel on the right.

 Niko and Maya still had their wristbands for the carnival games so Gus and I took them back down to the ball field for some more games. Unfortunately, the games had shut down for this year. We decided to get some cocoa and hot cider to warm up.

Walking back to the house, we found that they were announcing the ball roll results. Kristen and Briar were listening to the results but decided to let Gus and I relieve them and take the kids on home to warm up.

 

The kids were very comfortable with their hot chocolates and decided to let Kristen and Briar chill while they sat down and finished.

 We all had a great chili dinner and then Gus and Briar took off. The kids spent the night so they could go with us to the Oaktoberfest bonfire and the accompanying Otters concert.

Briar managed to get this shot of the bonfire on her way through town.

The fire was nice and warm but, with the cold damp weather, the turnout was low. Kristen and Maya danced up a storm in front of the Otters' stage. Maya would have probably danced all night but the lead singer decided to compliment her on her dancing and that was it. She immediately decided that it was time to go home.

All in all, it was a great day. We are really loving this little town.

I hope to get the camera fixed soon so I can share some images of the amazing fall colors.

-JC-

Our First Moose Sighting!

This morning, Kristen was fixing herself a cup of coffee and I was just behind her when a very large bull moose wandered by and decided to check us out through the kitchen window. Our phones were out in the living room where we'd been sitting and, by the time that I found he camera, he'd strolled to the back corner of the lawn and faded into the trees.

This was my first ever encounter with a moose. Kristen had had one encounter with a cow in Montana when she was a kid. This was pretty special for both of us.

Our camera has a new home on the kitchen window sill.

-JC-

PS: Talked with a neighbor who has lived here since 1986. She's seen a lot of bears but has never seen a moose here.

PPS: Got an email today from the woman that we bought the house from (Maya and Nikos' principal and Briar's boss). The neighbor had told her about our moose sighting. Sounds like she's never seen a moose either. Keeping the camera at the ready but the chances may be slim.

An Update (finally)

It's been over a month since my last post and life has continued to move on.

In my last post in mid-August I was talking about Tax Free Weekend. Something that we didn't consider back then was that tax free weekend generated so much business that the items ordered then have taken weeks to be delivered.

• Our washer and freezer were in stock and ready for delivery but the dryer took about 3 weeks to come in. In the meantime, we'd ordered a new refrigerator that was supposed to come in about a week after the washer/dryer/freezer delivery date. Apparently, the refrigerator came in just as the delivery truck was getting ready to leave so they put it on the truck and delivered it unannounced.
• Our window coverings would have normally been here in 2 weeks. They finally shipped this last Saturday and were hoping for delivery this Thursday, 9/24.
• Our pellet stove fireplace insert will get installed this Wednesday, 9/23. Delivery of the 3 tons of pellets that we ordered a couple of weeks later wasn't supposed to happen until some time in October. We got a call the other day that they will also be delivered on Wednesday.

One of the things about packing up for a cross-country move prior to finding a new house is that you end up taking some things that just aren't going to fit. We ended up with a large sectional sleeper couch that we just didn't have a home for. We put it on Craigs List and it now has a new home in Connecticut.

Everything else was just small stuff. Oakham had a Town wide Yard Sale in late August. We paid our $15 and were put on the map. We had a very successful sale and met many of our neighbors. What we didn't sell, went to the Salvation Army the next day.

The Senior Center up the street was selling food. I wandered up there in the morning and came back with some donuts. Later, we sent Briar and Gus up to get lunch for us all. While I was up there, I got to talking with one of the town librarians and she mentioned that there was a history of our house at the library.

We've walked up to the library a couple of times but, until yesterday, were very successful at finding the times when it was closed. The volunteers who were staffing the library yesterday had to look long and hard but they finally came up with The History of Our House (page 3 doesn't quite track from page 2 so there must be a missing page - sounds like the newspaper woman was the wife of the blacksmith).

We had been told that the house had been built in the 1850's but had come across 1 or 2 references that suggested that it might be the 1830's. We now have a date! The house wasn't there when the land changed hands in 1837. An 1838 document mentioned that there was a new house on the land.

We were also interested in the original acreage. We currently are on 2.61 acres. The house was originally on a 1 acre "houselot" with an additional 193 acres of farmland.

It was also interesting to us that one of the long ago owners was the town's blacksmith when he wasn't farming. That might explain the large number of old rusty horse shoes, etc. that we've been finding in nooks and crannies around the house (understand that the prior owner found a lot of these during the renovation).

Our Blacksmith artifacts. I think that the item on the top was probably a spokeshave.

The document mentions that the blacksmith shop was behind the Methodist Church. It's not there any more but, when we visited the Oakham Historical Society a while back, we chatted with an 89 year resident of Oakham who grew up in the building. The Methodist Church was originally in the village of Coldbrook Springs but was moved to Oakham Center when Coldbrook Springs was razed in the name of progress (Boston needed water). It's location was just across the street from our neighbor 2 doors up. It continued to be a church for a while and then became a cheese factory (they called their product "Methodist Cheese"). It's last incarnation was as this 89 year old man's childhood home.

Way back on Fathers Day, Briar, Gus and the kids gave me a pair of tickets to the September 8 Redsox vs. Expos game at Fenway Park. When the time came, we decided to spend a couple of days visiting Boston while we were at it. The Green Line that connects downtown to Fenway continues on to Newton so we stayed in Newton and rode the train into Boston both days. Unfortunately, Boston was setting heat records (high 90's and extremely humid) both days so the visit could have been a little bit more pleasant. We did enjoy the ball game.

The Green Monster

The red seat is where the longest home run ever hit at Fenway landed. Ted Williams hit the 502 foot homer on June 9, 1946. It bounced off the top of a man's straw hat and ended up another 12 rows up.

As we've been settling into this house, we've come to realize that we'll need some sort of mud room area where we can don and doff our winter clothing.

We found this bench and pair of crates (under bench) at an antique fair. The small table was at an antique mall. The 4 iron dragonfly hooks were on Ebay.

For the wetter and muddier stuff, we'll want to change in the garage. I built this 6' bench and put some hooks on the wall above it.

-JC-

Tax Free Weekend, etc.

Most years, Massachusetts has a sales tax free weekend. It's most years because, although the date is set, it doesn't happen unless the state legislature approves it (and they don't always). They did approve it this year and this was the weekend. We had some larger purchases that we hadn't gotten around to yet so it came in very handy.

One draw back, of course, is that the stores tend to be jammed. What we didn't realize, and what most people don't realize, is that the stores are more than happy to take the orders in advance and then process them on the weekend.

Last Tuesday, we had an appointment with a lady at Lowes to pick out window treatments and get a quote. She told us about this whole thing about doing it early (of course, since a contract was involved we did have to come in on Saturday morning).

While Kristen was dealing with window treatments, I wandered across to the appliance department and picked out a washer and dryer (the ones in the house are incredibly noisy) and a chest freezer (for the basement). Once Kristen had a chance to approve, we got those ordered. Once we'll got home, we realized that the dryer wouldn't fit through the laundry room door so I headed back to Lowes with a tape measure and changed our pre-order.

We had been shopping for a pellet stove insert and had made our selection but not ordered. We stopped by the pellet stove store to see if we could pre-order and, of course, we could. We hadn't realized it until then but Tax free weekend excludes car purchases and has a cap of $2500 per invoice. The pellet stove place did some artful repricing of the components so that we had 2 invoices under the limit.

I mentioned earlier that we had to return to Lowes yesterday morning to sigh the contract for the window treatments. We had realized that we also needed a new gas grill so we picked out a nice Weber while we were there.

I'd say that we took pretty good advantage of Tax Free Weekend.

Moving on, I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but, the one piece of furniture that we moved East that wouldn't fit into our house was our L-shaped sectional sofa (queen bed on one side and recliner on the other end). We put it on Craig's List this weekend and, after many responses, sold it to someone who drove up from Connecticut.

Kristen would be unhappy if I didn't mention her new berry garden. She already had one raspberry plant that the farmer gave her when we went raspberry picking. She had received a gift certificate to a local nursery for Mother's Day and spent it (and then some) on another raspberry, a blackberry and 3 different types of blueberry (they say that you need 3 types to cross-pollinate and do well - I could understand 2, but 3?).

This morning, we got out early to create our berry garden. The prior owner had a junk pile off the end of the garage that we insisted be removed. That being the site of the new garden, we got in there and removed the weeds (and junk remnants) and filled the soil. The soil here is amazing. It was wet all the way down and I was able to easily turn it with a pitchfork. I used a pitchfork because of the rocks. There are rock walls everywhere you go around here (including all around our property). Back in the farming days, those rocks had to go someplace. It would be a bit grand to say that our berry garden has a rock wall but it certainly has a rock border.

We still need to stretch some wires across over the raspberries and blackberries. The farmer told us how to train them so that they won't become a thicket and so that we'll actually be able to get to the berries.

While I'm on a roll, I'll mention a couple of other accomplishments that we had this week. We now have Massachusetts drivers licenses, we are now registered to vote in Massachusetts and we now have Oakham library cards.

Also, we had some pretty incredible thunder storms this past week and even spent some time in the basement during a tornedo warning.

-JC-

Concert at Oakham Town Square

I've mentioned before that we're just down the street from Oakham Town Center and that there are 3 houses between us and the Town Square. There's a bandstand/gazebo in the Square and they host a number of concerts there over the summer months. We didn't attend any while we were waiting to move in. There was one a couple of weeks ago that got postponed because of rain. It was then cancelled when the makeup date was also a rain out.

Last night was the last scheduled concert of the season. The Otters are Grateful Dead wannabes that we have seen at a couple of events on our visits back here. They only performed a couple of Dead songs but their covers of other songs we kind of Grateful Dead-esque. The founding members are from Oakham and they have been doing Town Square concerts since 1969.

The Otters play Oakham Town Square

-JC-