emerging from winter hibernation

that's my story and I'm sticking to it. No other reason I hanve't posted since November. Here are a couple shots from our trip up in January. Herbs in the sunroom doing well, even with no regular watering and no heat in there. Enough sun during the day gets them through the night. Basil died of course, but the rosemary, sage and thyme were ok .

The photos didn't do it justice of course, but the hoarfrost was very heavy and very beautiful.

the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind

Driving back from Indianapolis to Chicago, we went past this brand spinning new wind farm right next to I65. It was still under construction just a couple months ago. This is the closest I've seen wind turbines next to a freeway. I have a closer photo I'll post later. Anyway, once they figure out the storage issue to make it more dispatchable, and work out the mechanical kinks with gear failure, we will see wind grow. Any new technology goes through learning curve. Back when, people were getting killed by steam boilers blowing up all the time on steamships till they set up design codes and improved their understanding of the design limitations.

Hard to beat free fuel, so wind will be part of the mix for a while.

Biomass burial

So we raked the leaves this weekend. Small yard, several big trees, lots of raking. Because of the artificial construct of the suburban yard, we need to move the leaves so they don't choke out the grass. I doubt if the "normal" vegetation balance between tress and grass would look anything like this if we left them alone. I don't want to use chemicals on the yard, but I wonder what is happening to the soil since we ship out hundreds of pounds of leaves each year, and they must be taking minerals with them.

harvest time

OK. we tried several experiments this season, and I planted a strip of sunflowers out in the barley field where the planter had missed. These guys did very well. Huge heads, lots of seeds, now I just need to figure out how to hull them quickly. We did some oil seed sunflowers and some confection sunflowers. I think I will plant more next year if we are able to put these to use. Any suggestions for hulling easily?

one more for the road

On our last hike out from trail work, we decided to get one more down tree out of the trail. Barry took this shot of me wielding the Pulaski with great effect.

yooper sports

Unless you are a competitive cross country skier, or live in the upper peninsula, this photo might seem odd.

These guys are getting ready for the upcoming winter by skiing with wheels on thier skis. In the rain. This is in Houghton, and I've seen the same thing in Marquette. So what was I doing out in the rain? Our gang was heading to a cozy brewpub downtown, thats what. I recommend the http://www.keweenawbrewing.com/

The place is nice, the beer is good, and I took this photo from the liftbridge featured on thier liftbridge brown ale.

big equipment

Our trip to Isle Royale got delayed a day because of severe weather on the Lake. So we did sight seeing in the U.P. We did a mine tour of an old copper mine. Turned out to have a unique mine hoist in very good condition.

Not a great photo to capture the size of this thing, but it is quite impressive.

Google quincy mine and read the wikipedia article. Pretty interesting stuff.