Today has been a challenging day for the folks at Typepad where my blogs are hosted. For most of the day, a week's worth of content has been missing. Late this evening the last week's worth of posts have come on line without the uploaded images. I respect the challenges that TypePad has faced. However, there has been some serious rough sledding with their infrastructure for a few months now. It appeared to be improving, but today was by far the worst we have seen.
Here on the mountain since I couldn't do any posts, I was plenty busy clearing the driveway. I'm getting a little tired of moving around chunks of ice. That said, I am pleased to report the driveway is completely clear and the road is passable. Lots of warm sunshine worked some miracles on the remaining islands of ice. I even shoveled out the back of the truck so we are as snow and ice free as we are going to get.
Our cat, Malarky, seemed to be pleased with the morning sunshine, warmer temperatures, and the absence falling sleet.
I also got a chance to go have lunch with a business colleague and his teenage son in Blacksburg. We got to sample a very tasty buffet of Indian foods. I not enough of an Indian food expert to remember what I ate, but it was very good.
I have to congratulate my friend on encouraging his son to try new foods. I'm not sure it was completely successful, but as is the case with most teenagers when it comes to food, I don't think he went away hungry. I know that I didn't.
In addition to the free lunch, I was making a "sausage run." A friend at Virginia Tech had let me in on a holiday country sausage buy. We had some of the sausage with pancakes tonight. It was very good. In fact it was too good, but tomorrow we'll freeze some of it so that our kids can enjoy it when they come home for Christmas. Now if I could just find some more dark Grade B maple syrup, I'll be all set for one of the family breakfasts during the holidays. Maple syrup and country sausage bring back memories of time on the farm and Canada.
With that train of thought, later this evening I also chatted with a friend near Centreville in northern New Brunswick in Canada. We talk about once a year. George is a friend from my farming days. He also had Angus cattle. I'm always interested in the weather up in what is traditionally a real snow belt. I was surprised to find out they have no snow on the ground. It's hard to believe that we have more snow and ice on the ground here in Southwest Virginia.
These days George is mostly retired. The cattle are gone and all the pulp wood on his farm has been cut. He still helps with the fall potato harvest. Apparently this fall's harvest was a real challenge. Their area of New Brunswick had thirty inches of rain from October through November. Now that's a wet fall. He also said that grain prices were so low that one farmer he knew just left 250 acres of barley in the field. Apparently his grain bins were still full with the unsold crop from the previous year. George also said that many farmers were only able to get twelve cents a pound for their older cows. That's a little over $100 American money for a lot of protein.
Farming is a challenging business, I worry a lot about who will replace all of our older farmers. With returns that absolutely demand exceptional business skills on a huge scale along with the willingness to work long hours and the vagaries of weather, farming is not exactly an easy path, but that's a story for another post.
Today I'm just glad to done shoveling slabs of ice and to have Typepad back up and running.
The absolute best turkey sausage you can buy is produced by Stonewood Farm in Vermont http://www.stonewoodfarm.com and I'm not just saying that because the farm is owned by my wifes' parents ;) They produce several flavors - mild, sweet italian, medium and cajun. All are very very good. When we're close to running out we give Paul a jingle and he ships an insulated box to replenish our supply. We are also big fans of ground turkey meat, particularly the all dark ground turkey meat - it makes a surprisingly good burger, meatloaf and so on.
Your post just inspired me to contact Roanoke Natural Foods and put a bug in their ear about ordering Stonewood Farm products. Hopefully they receive product from Albert's / UNFI and can add it to their ordering.
If you want the best turkey in the world for thanksgiving or christmas, you can order one from them and have it shipped via UPS. They don't sell that service publicly but they have about 75 families that have theirs shipped, because they were desperate when we were forced to switch distributors and they lost their local source. It's a fresh turkey, in an insulated box. You can also have them stuff 1 pound turkey sausage packages inside the box also ;)
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | December 17, 2005 at 06:51 AM
We're big fans of fresh turkey and it would be really nice to see the RNFC have that option. We'll mention it when we go by this afternoon.
Now you just have to find me a good source of dark Grade B maple syrup. I like it better than the lighter colored and less flavorful Grade A.
Of course being from Vermont, you might have overdosed on maple syrup.
Posted by: ocracokewaves | December 17, 2005 at 09:16 AM