It was a great visit in New Castle with Marina and Dave. The Piscataqua River, where we moor, has an ebb current in excess of 1.8 knots. That's really moving through the water at a mooring! Portsmouth, the "big" city, and New Castle, where the yacht club and its moorings are located are really great, clean, quaint towns. Luke and Dave visited the Stratham fair http://www.strathamfair.com/ - a local fair, it concentrated on livestock. Dave loved the calves.
Luke was impressed with the log toss (as simple and hard as it sounds). 37 feet was the winning toss.
and the ax toss (note the lack of bystanders near the target!) The large ax is in the middle of the blue tent. In the middle of the bull's eye is a soda can -- instant positive feedback!
And from Luke: The fair was very impressive in several respects. It was heavily 4H oriented, and the young teenagers with their animals were knowledgeable, enthusiastic, informed, and quite willing to discuss their areas of expertise. A few nuggets of knowledge:
Talking to a sheep farmer: Sheep get sheared twice per year. Raw wool sells for $0.25/lb. 30% of sheep farmers just throw it away. It's not worth getting it to a spinning mill. Getting their own wool spun at a mill is very expensive. The money is in the meat. $6.00/ lb is break even for what seemed like a small high quality operation.
Talking to a goat farmer: Goats are raised either for milk or for meat -- two different breeds. If sheep meat is mutton, goat meat is "chevon". (I sure didn't know that.) http://www.goatmeats.com/
A chicken farmer: Different types of chickens lay different color eggs, including pink and blue varieties. Egg purchasers do not differentiate among chicken types, as long as the eggs look right.
A biologist: Texas A&M has developed domesticated quail. If wild quail are released, they head for the brush. Domesticated quail follow their human around.
Marina and I did more ladylike stuff - like getting great pedicures. Just take a look at these blue sparkles~
We just downloaded this picture --- en route to Portsmouth, we had a hitch hiker...suddenly a young robin appeared on our lifeline, about 8 miles from shore. It rode with us for a long time, much to Smokey's delight. She was quite aquiver. Eventually the robin flew off but we can't imagine that it made it back to land.
It's a sad, sad day. My younger daughter Nikki had to make that one last trip to the vet with her 15 yr old cat. The vet said Mr. B probably had cancer and didn't suffer, but it was indeed time. We are all very sad - it's heartbreaking to lose your pet of many years.
We are at a mooring in Biddeford Pool, ME (made it to Maine!!!). An expensive little town with a grocery/restaurant, gift shop, and small local yacht club. And a gazillion rental cottages on the Atlantic shore. No high-rises, just homes for rent. It rained earlier and should rain tonight. With some luck that will be it and we can head further northeast.
1 comment:
y'all should look for Highland games in all your travels. If Luke enjoyed the log toss he'd love the caber toss. It's a man (in a kilt!!) hoisting up basically a telephone pole and flipping it. It's crazy. And great fun. And Men in Kilts! (I know, you'd enjoy it more than Luke...) but it's still great fun to watch.
The chickens that lay the pink and green and blue eggs are Americana's and they're not really daily layers like some chickens (are you impressed with my chicken knowledge?) And generally speaking meat sheep don't have good spinning wools. Some do but most are either/or.
and yes, my sweet Bartholamew boy is in a better place... sniff sniff.
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