Food for thought...

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? 

-Thomas Jefferson

Education, education, education....

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. 
-Thomas Jefferson

Slow as a Turtle am I...

Its a drizzly day here in Stedman.  I am not feeling like doing too much so I am doing laundry and things like that.   I had fun with Dani last night digging through quotes by Jefferson.  Here is a great one. -"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. "

-Thomas Jefferson

I guess that one didn't come true and now look at the mess we are in!

Have a Seat in the Front Row, Please?

Pull up a chair and visit for awhile its a rainy Sabbath in Chautauqua County!

The Harvest Moon

Painting by Ernest Albert Waterlow

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,

  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Black Sheep in the Family!

A Second Civil War in America????

Blue Christian on a Red Background is a very interesting Blog I enjoy reading. I do not agree with all of Jon's views but he comes across as a man who walks in love. Its right here on Blogspot so you can slide right over there and read it. http://bluechristian.blogspot.com/
There is a culture war going on in this nation that is as potentially destructive as the Civil War was. In many ways this is a second civil war we are living. It is a war on truth and the constitution as well as a war on the middle class. This election coming up is probably the most important one of my life time. There is too much hate and bigotry in this nation. I read this Blue Christian blog regularly. This blog is not a bad thing to read each day and meditate on it.  The election is nearly upon us. I know few minds will change this late in the game. I will pull that lever with joy and not fear when I vote and I will be voting for something positive not negative. FDR said the only thing to fear is fear itself and that is very true! Obama is looking forward and McCain is looking backward. Its an easy choice for me.   
“Be patient and you will finally win, for a soft tongue can break hard bones. (Proverbs 28:13)”

Three Sides Now Painted

Maggie after Shearing

Here is Maggie munching on corn shucks after being shorn.  She is a pet.  Maggie was raised in our house after being rejected by her mother.  She is no longer living in the house but would like to be!

Another Evening Shearing

Steve our friend and shearer came over again this evening after closing his shop and sheared the last three sheep. We had a wonderful evening talking about the coming elections and the crazy events in the news concerning the Banking baleouts. Here is another shearing photo of Steve hard at work.

Sheep Shearing Day

Ike's Tail lashed us here in NY.

The front is now all painted and stained.

Today I worked on the paving stones that line the dog pen.  The spruce tree has made them all hump up. I only worked awhile as I over did it yesterday painting.  It was cool today and the sun only was out part of the time.  The house is coming along nicely with the new paint and stain.  I bet she hasn't looked this good since 1889!  I took this photo today.

Apples by Laurie Lee

Apples
  
 Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole. 

Laurie Lee, (1914-1997)

"September" by Helen Hunt Jackson.

September

The goldenrod is yellow,
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curing in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges haunt their harvest,
In every meadow's nook;
And asters by the brookside
Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odore rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all those lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.

Helen Hunt Jackson

(October 18, 1830 - August 12, 1885)

The Apple Orchard by Rainer Maria Rilke

Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories? To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
serve another season's hundred days of toil,
straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
but succeeding, even though the burden
should at times seem almost past endurance.
Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!

Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
committed to one goal: to give yourself!

And silently to grow and to bear fruit.

Rainer Maria Rilke 
(1875 - 1926 / Germany)

The Cow in Apple Time by Robert Frost

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry. 


Robert Frost

Village Mystery by Elinor Wylie

The woman in the pointed hood 
And cloak blue-gray like a pigeon's wing, 
Whose orchard climbs to the balsam-wood, 
Has done a cruel thing.

To her back door-step came a ghost, 
A girl who had been ten years dead, 
She stood by the granite hitching-post 
And begged for a piece of bread.

Now why should I, who walk alone, 
Who am ironical and proud, 
Turn, when a woman casts a stone 
At a beggar in a shroud?

I saw the dead girl cringe and whine, 
And cower in the weeping air-- 
But, oh, she was no kin of mine, 

And so I did not care!

Elinor Wylie  September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928

Russet Apples in Early September.

After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost

After Apple-Picking

 
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing dear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep. 

-Robert Frost

 

Fresh Paint on the old Homestead!

Another photo of the new paint on the house.

Our newly painted homestead!

Old woman from Wexford

Well, there was an old woman from Wexford and in Wexford she did well
She loved her old man dearly but another one twice as well

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta

Ah one day she went to a doctor, some medicine for to find
She said: Will ye give me something that'll make me old man blind?

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta

Says he: Give him eggs and marrow bones and make him sup 'em all
And it won't be so very long after that he won't see you at all

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta

Well the doctor wrote a letter and he signed it with his hand
He sent it to the old man just to let him understand

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta

So she fed him the eggs and marrow bones and she made him sup 'em all
And it wasn't so very long after that he couldn't see the wall

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta

Says th'ol man: I think I'll drown meself, but that might be a sin
Says she: I'll come along with you and I'll help to shove you in

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta

Well the ould woman she stood back a bit for to rush an' push him in
But the old man gently stepped aside and she went tumblin' in

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta

Oh, how loudly she did yell and how loudly she did bawl
'Arra, hold yer whist, y'ould woman, sure I can't see you at all

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta

Ah, sure eggs and eggs and marrow bones will make yer old man blind
But if you want to drown him, you must creep up close behind

With me tiggery tiggery toram and me toram toram ta
With me tiggery tiggery toram and the blind man he could see

Labor Day Weekend!

My Mother and our good friends Tom and Colleen came out for a little cook out for Labor Day with us and the day was just perfect. It was sunny and clear and there were no pesky flies!   We had Mexican style food cooked over opened fires.  What we prepared was fresh-picked, sweet corn grown nearby, our own home grown lamb and black bean tacos and chicken fajitas.  For desert we had apple cobbler Jim made from our own apples. They were baked in a Dutch oven on hot coals.  What a wonderful end to summer it was.  Just a perfect way to celebrate Labor Day! I have a large collection of cast iron cookware and we boiled the corn in a huge kettle hung from a large tripod. It felt like the 19th Century and we even had some peach wine from a nearby western, PA winery that Tom and Colleen brought!