Rolling On One

…we being the parents, that is, those to be met.

We went to Charley’s yesterday evening to meet his girlfriend Nicole. We walked through Teele Square to Sabur for dinner. If you click on that link, and until they change the web site, you can see a picture of the table we were sitting at right there in the middle image of the three at the very top of the page, one of the round copper tables.

Nicole had been teaching Latin in middle school and high school the last couple of years. She doesn’t much like doing that, and is going to be in a graduate program at Tufts on running museums next year. She knows lots of languages besides Latin, several varieties of classic Greek, French, German, Spanish, Italian, some Hebrew and Yiddish, and can read the alphabets of Arabic, Armenian, Russian, and Sanskrit besides. And I’ve probably left out a few. So far we’re favorably impressed, and we don’t think we scared her off.

Oh, Sabur. We had been there once before and I didn’t remember it as being great. Maybe I wasn’t feeling well that time. Last night the food was wonderful. All four of us were very enthusiastic. However, the service was puzzlingly slow. I don’t just mean that the main dishes took a long time to appear, but that there was a long long time between getting the dessert menus and having the dessert order taken, finishing eating and getting the check, and getting the check and having someone take the credit card away to run. It was OK because the main point was to have a chance to talk and get acquainted, but if we had been going somewhere afterwards it would have been a problem.

Hm, when I googled “framboise” to check my vocabulary I got several references to beers and wines made from raspberries. I was just thinking of raspberries.

We’ve got ’em, and they’re in season now. More or less in line with our driveway is an area that was a logging road when our property was logged several years ago, which now has grown up in wild raspberries and other scrubby growth. I didn’t get a huge amount, certainly nothing like enough for a batch of jam, but it did add up to more than half a pint. There were enough berries that I’m figuring I’ll encourage the raspberries and cut down some of the other plants in the area.

The point of going through Buckfield was to go to a talk about growing raspberries, blueberries, grapes, and other small fruit at Hedgehog Hill Farm in Sumner, the next town north. Arlene had checked out their web site (and directions to get there!) It turns out to be a small but influential organic farm, run by a Mark Silber, 75-year old guy who also is a professional photographer and anthropology professor.

We walked past some rows of flowers growing —

…and sat down on rough-hewn benches in the shade of the grape arbor — that’s the sort of rectangular bunch of foliage on a line to the right of Arlene’s hat brim — with maybe three other couples and Mr. Silber. He told us a lot about soil requirements for raspberries and blueberries (well-drained, acid soil suits both of them), pruning raspberries (the second-year canes produce berries, and third-year canes should be cut back) and grapes (start with three stems, cut back one the second year and one the third year to leave just one), and how he has tried to keep birds, raccoons, and deer from consuming his crop.

We’re optimistic about our grapes after that, and I’ll tell you about the raspberries shortly.

That was about a 100 mile round trip, between going to Narramissic and Sumner. We went through Norway, home of The Irish Ewe LYS, but (a) they’re not open Sundays and (b) I hadn’t realized at the time that we went right past them. It’s sort of a lot of miles unless you remember that it’s a very pretty drive in the country. Except for the stretch between Norway and South Paris going, and South Paris to Oxford coming home.

Our route from Narramissic to Hedgehog Hill Farm went through Buckfield, which we remembered from having gone to a juggling and variety show a couple of years ago. I was thinking of the road there as being narrow, windy, and long, through a forest to the middle of nowhere. Either I’ve gotten more accustomed to Maine roads or they’ve done some work on that highway, because it was lots smoother, straighter, and wider than I expected.

Buckfield is still a tiny town, but there was a place to get lunch, a tiny pizza place with two booths and a table, the smallest restroom you’ve ever seen (just big enough for a toilet, but the door kind of angled in, encroaching on the space you might want for your legs — I guess employees must wash hands after using it, but that would have to be in the sink outside. You could understand the origin of the term “water closet.”), a nice pressed tin roof, and little signs, the kind you see in souvenier shops, all over the walls. One was sort of a gardening “to do” spinner, a flower with eight petals, each petal listing a garden activity like “plant veggies,” “clean potting shed,” “iced tea!,” “take a break.” Another said, “I only have two speeds, and if this one isn’t fast enough to suit you, I’m sure you won’t like the other.” Sandwiches for both of us, and one 20-oz soda to share, cost a total of $5.52 including tax.

In South Bridgton there’s a place called Narramissic (that’s an Abenaki word that more or less means “hard to find”, and it is) Historic Farm. I’ve been under the impression that there’s something going on there most weekends, though Arlene thinks if that were the case we would have gone there before. There was something advertised as a woodworkers and artisans show on Sunday.

There’s a beautiful view from the field that we parked in, looking to the west all the way to the White Mountains, though it’s a little hazy.

The most interesting woodworker, to me, was a 70-something guy who makes wooden musical instruments, both woodwinds like krumhorns and recorders and wooden brass-family instruments like cornettos and serpents. I had a long talk with him about the cornettos and serpents. I sort of wanted to ask to try the serpent, but restrained myself.

There was an old buggy standing in the field, just for looking at —

Moat Mountain Farm, with handmade brooms and brushes as well as yarns, was there. Linda Whiting of Pinestar Yarns was there spinning. She was talking to another visitor explaining something of the difference between woolen and worsted yarns and showing how the crimp of wool varies between breeds of sheep, making yarn spun from Romney wool more elastic than the Blue-Faced Leicester she was spinning.

This woodworker was demonstrating making a dovetail joint, I guess. While we were there he was mostly talking about sharpening tools and the differences between natural sharpening stones and the synthetic carborundum stones. His workbench comes from a trade school. The top of the supports folds down to accomodate younger kids.

Sharon Deerfield, Black Swan Handwovens & Handspuns, was spinning in an outdoor booth with her knitting-machine handmade socks, homemade soap, and handwoven placemats. We had met her in Bridgton at the winter carnival and were glad to say hello.

And that’s not even talking about the tour of the farmhouse, built before 1800. The original owner had fought in the American Revolution and painted his mantelpiece black in mourning for George Washington when Washington died.

The annual meeting of the Thompson Lake Shore Association was on Saturday afternoon. The main business of the association is maintaining the road. Since we’re right at the end of the road, we’re interested in the entire length. The meeting is held at the association beach, so you can sit outdoors and look out across the lake, watching jet skis, water skiers, and sailboats if the proceedings aren’t interesting enough. We spoke to some of the people on the board after the meeting about leaving our canoe and kayak on the association common property opposite our driveway. They said, sure, go ahead. So it’s going to be easier than I really expected to get the kayak into and out of the water.

Saturday night was an event we had read about last weekend and were looking forward to, a nighttime walk at the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray. When we first read about it we were picturing a hike with a leader. Nope, it’s just that the Wildlife Park was open in the evening, from 8 to 10 PM. There was a full moon, so it wasn’t awfully dark.

The wildlife park has mostly rescued animals, all native to the state. It’s definitely a place to keep in mind if you’ve got some kids with you. If you want to get a good close look at moose, after coming to terms with the fact that you probably won’t see any in the wild in just a couple of days, it’s a great place. At least, Saturday night the moose were up and about and close to the front of their enclosure. The park has lots of bobcats, which I’m not at all sure I’ve ever seen before, lynx, porcupines, deer, bear, birds of prey, wild turkeys, chukar (that’s a small bird in the quail department), and at least one fisher (that’s an arboreal animal in the weasel family — imagine if otters lived in trees). There are lots of signs telling about where in the state the various animals are found, what they eat (pine martens, a larger relative of the fisher, are about the only animal that preys on porcupines), and so on. The animals seem to have plenty of room to move around, except that the fisher was hyperkinetic, jumping from one side of the enclosure to the other and bouncing off the fence on the side away from us.
It was a little like Halloween. When else do you find lots of people walking around outdoors with flashlights?

We were there for the full two hours. At the end it was too dark to see the animals except for the reflection of my flashlight in the deers’ eyes.

Just because I haven’t posted a picture in a while, here’s the house in Casco, on July 4 2006. It was close to a year ago that we saw it for the first time.

See the lilac bush on the left, just above the near end of the retaining wall? There was a garter snake slithering into it when I walked back to the house after taking this picture. I completely forgot that I had a camera and didn’t try to take its picture.

So, the latest started knitting project, which I’ve been wanting to start working on, but hadn’t until this weekend, but now that the mittens are done and the socks are past the gussets I feel OK about:

It’s pretty much flying along. After two days (and about 20 rounds, not really to brag about) it’s more than 1/3 done. At least, it had better be, because the yarn is more than 1/3 gone. As I neared the end of the first ball of yarn (I wound the skein into two balls) I measured it, 16 feet, then two rounds of knitting, then a little over one foot of yarn left — so, close to 8 feet per round, one foot of yarn to ten stitches. This is extra-bulky yarn, very easy to knit with because it’s not at all splitty, contrasted with the gray alpaca-merino that the mistake rib scarf is. It feels as though it’s going to be warm, too.

Of course I’m keeping a close eye on the apple trees. The thing that surprised me, as soon as there were apples starting to form behind the blossoms, was that the different varieties of apples already looked different. It’s like looking at a baby picture of someone you know as an adult and being able to see the beginnings of their individual features. It’s really the Delicious that looks like itself, with those little bumps around the blossom end. By now the larger apples are bigger than ping-pong balls, so the distinctive shape isn’t so surprising; but still.

MacIntosh…

Delicious…

Baldwin, I think. I know I didn’t get down to the Cortland.

And here’s a grapevine that’s doing great. We got an 8-pak of grape plants at Costco. We’re a little surprised that 8 for 8 are still alive.

Some time after I took this picture I built a sort of trellis, or at least a sort of fence, of big sticks, for the grapes. Only this one plant is so big that it really needs support, and even it doesn’t really need support because it’s not going to bear fruit this year.