Sat eve march 14th… A Good Time Was Enjoyed By All……………

And so goes the story of the four people that met and enjoyed dinner at Pegasus’ Restaurant, on route 9W between Coxsackie and Athens, NY this evening. Vicki and I swung around to Freehold and picked Joyce W. and Stanley Maltzman up and away we flew to the winged horse restaurant. It’s a quaint restaurant owned by a very nice Greek lady who has done an excellent job of keeping her prices reasonable without sacrificing quality. Every meal served is fit for a king and boasts of generous portions. This restaurant is where Vicki and I go for a quiet, relaxing dinner when we are ready to unwind for the evening. It’s Great.
We got all of our feed today and another big bunch of feed bags which we can turn into “Go GREEN for Hospice Shopping Bags”. We will be able to manufacture quite a few of these bags for the gift shop when it opens this summer, thanks to the generous efforts of many farmers and friends at the Hilltown Agway. Their customers are returning their empty woven polypropylene feed bags to the store and the Agway staff are kind enough to hold them there for us.
Tomorrow, I plan to get an early start on some more of the wiring and lighting in the barn. Gotta get this done before the Alpacas show up in a few weeks.

Sat. March 14th… Remember to blog…remember to blog…forgot…

Well, the critters are fed and watered, the feed we got yesterday from Agway, to hold us over for today, is in containers where it belongs, the truck battery is on the charger to get it running to go to Agway for the regular multi-million dollar feed pick-up and I got more accomplished too!!! I did the thirty page application, installed sticky arrows where I need additional paperwork and sold nine dozen eggs to two different folks too.
After breakfast, we will head over to Agway to get the feed, return and put it into the feed room in the barn and then work on the side lights where the Alpacas will pasture. We might even get some lights in the upstairs before having to quit and clean up for our dinner engagement with our good friends, Joyce W. and Stanley Maltzman. Well, breakfast is over and the battery charged, so we’ll be off to the farmers feed plot……… Hilltown Agway.
oh yeah……… yesterday while we were there, Vick ordered five turkeys (can’t count on Timmy…I think he’s gay) and 25 Bantam’s which will arrive sometime soon. WOW…… 25.…… might as well start incubating too. 21 days for chickens and another 16 weeks…
or four months on starter food……wow, that’s 4½ months… so hatch them now and we can turn them out of the brooding house in August to run with the adult birds and go to the new barn.
THAT’S A PLAN!!!!!!!!!!!!! See ya later!!!!

Friday, March 13th… missing this…missing that…sometimes lost!

Hi everyone… sorry for missing the morning blog, but I get all engrossed in this stupid, thirty page application for the 501C not for profit, funding corporation we are trying to acquire from the IRS to run the Nature’s Friend’s of Hospice, Inc. entity, for the generation of funds, to help support the Columbia-Greene County Hospice, a chapter of The Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York State. I cannot believe it is so difficult to achieve a not-for-profit tax exemption to help the people providing “end of life care” to people in their final stages of life. We are building the 20 x 28’ gift shop on the farm premises and stocking it with a lot of items to sell, increasing our insurance policies to cover it and visitors to the farm and gift shop, yet still working our butts off to make and acquire the merchandise to stock the gift shop. On top of all this time consuming, expense we are gladly providing, we must spend out time filling out paperwork promising how we will run it, handle the money, follow a written “Charitable Trust Declaration”, specific written Articles of Incorporation, developing an Organizing Document, develop a Conflict of Interest Policy, address any present or future compensation arrangements, vendor selection procedures, how we would handle a dissolution of organizational funding if we ever shut down the entity. After all that………… they still want us to fill out their thirty page application and send a photocopy of a document of acceptance of funding from the Hospice people and a few other document companies. And after all that…… I remember I didn’t do a blog entry this morning. Then I forgot again until Vicki reminded me that you all want to see a blog entry today.
Soooooooooooooo, here is a blog entry, my apologies for forgetting……… again……… and a line to say what else we did today. We went to Hilltown Agway and picked up three bags of layer pellets and two bags of scratch feed for the chickens and ducks, then went on up to Rensselaer to the B&D Glass Crafters, met a really nice lady by the name of Darlene, picked up some solder and saw some really nice stained glass. Sure beats running all the way down the thruway, to Newburg. We had to go somewhere because Vicki ordered five rolls of solder from Warner-Crivellaro Glass in Allentown, Pa, but that will not be here until after the weekend and she needed to finish the eight or nine wall hanging quilt squares for the display at Two Kids Bakery in Greenville. To accomplish that today or tomorrow, we needed to grab 60-40 solder NOW, so we went to Rensselaer and picked two rolls up to finish them. Since getting home at around 5:30, I have been up to my eyeballs in this paperwork. I’M DONE FOR FRIDAY THE 13TH, RIGHT NOW!!!!! ………………And that’s the rest of the story…………… ……………………… Gooooooood Day!

Thurs March 12th… When it Left…… it Didn’t Come Back……

Last evening when the hazing sun drifted below the tree line and dipped down past the horizon, the 43° temperatures we enjoyed yesterday went with it, as we watched the mercury in the thermometer drop as fast as the setting sun. This morning, the sun returned as usual, but the mercury didn’t. It’s COLD!!!!! It’s only 27° right now, with a brisk 17 to 24 mph wind that drops the chill factor to 15° and they barely give us hope for a possible 33° by three o’clock this afternoon. Not much to look forward to…… unless you care to remember that we could have snow on the ground…sub freezing temperatures like last month and ice… freezing rain, which is a kind word for ICE.ENOUGH!

I’ll wait…… it won’t be long now…… As we’ve said before, spring is coming and that mercury in the thermometer, will slink and follow that raging tiger that ushered March in this year. We know that we will have a cold day, then a warm day or a run of either… but the bottom line is that spring is coming soon…… and that arctic wind can’t stop it now. It may push it back a little, but it will continue its trek toward summer, re-warming us like a cup of smooth, silky cocoa, enjoyed in front of a blazing fireplace.
I think today, we will concentrate on some more paperwork, since it is so cold and unfriendly outside. We can always use this time to get tax papers in order and set up all the accounting for Nature’s Friend’s of Hospice, Inc. We still have that stupid, thirty page application for the 501C to complete and get ready to send. We are still awaiting the building permit, so we can start to build the gift shop and in the mean time, I could take a few measurements on the rear deck and do the planning for the roofing we want to install over the picnic table and grill end of the deck. There is plenty for Vick and I to do during a little cold spell. Stay warm folks………

Wed. Eve March 11th… Watching airplanes today’s Highlight!!

Vicki and I went to Albany again today, which we expected to do anyhow, because we were expecting to pick up our business cards for Angelgirl Productions, which is Vicki’s new artwork business name and our regular Nature’s Friend’s of Hospice, Inc. business cards from Kinko‘s. Instead, they called this morning and told us that they didn’t come out very good and we had better come up and look at them before they printed them. DUH…. Do you think we really should????
After seeing them, you gotta wonder why they didn’t just fix the blurry angel on the one card and increase the font size on the hospice card so you could read it……… or at least ask if we wanted them to do that, while we were on the phone, but Noooooooooo, we had to run all the way up there, look at them and then tell them to do those two little things. In fact, I threw both documents into paint and corrected the problem, threw then on Vicki’s SD card here before we went up to Kinko’s. We left there planning to make the same trip tomorrow, to pick the finished cards up …… but while eating dinner at the Capital Buffet, we decided we should just go back and pay them and have them shipped to us tomorrow or Friday sometime, rather than run up there again…… After all, they are FedEx ya know…… Leaving from there, we started home and when we were nearing the Albany International Airport, I noticed a large commercial airliner ready to take off, so I swung into the observation parking lot and we sat there for a half hour, watching airplanes take off and land. I could sit there all day long with a picnic basket and a thermos of coffee and watch planes come and go, kind of like my Dad and his brother always did at the Lewistown train station…… just watching the trains come and go. After seeing several take off and land, we headed for home……… and that is how we spent this entire day…… such a waste…and such fun.. I spent it all with Vicki......

Wed. March 11th… A really dreary day…rainy but warm @ 42 deg…

WOW….all the snow is gone… except for the places I piled snow high, clearing walkways and the driveway and a few places where it drifted fairly deep. It’s actually nice to see the grass and woods without the snow, even though I enjoyed this winter more than any since my childhood. Once you’re retired and you and your wife resign to the fact and embrace that “God put it here… God will take it away“…… and you only plow or snow blow where you need to, you’ll enjoy winter more. When you can stay inside in the warm when it’s bitter and you don’t have to be out, or you can just roll over and sleep for another hour when it’s raining, sleeting or snowing…… you’ll find you like winter more. If you look past the mess and see all the natural beauty of winter, as it happen before your very eyes, you’ll learn to like winter…… and remember, enjoy it as it comes, because all too soon, the warm, sunny weather will return and it will be gone again.

The Pupskill Creek has opened and the water is running briskly toward the culvert pipes under the roadway, which at this point, appear to still be able handle the snow melt runoff right now. We still have solid ice on the Pupskill Lake Pond, and it appears that it will take a pretty lengthy time to melt it away, without the sun and warm temperatures we had last week, for a couple of days. We would need a week of really sunny, fifty degree days for the ice to clear, so we can see our fish and the lovely ripples of the lake water when we look out the kitchen window again. Much as I’ve loved and enjoyed this winter, I truly am looking forward to the beauty of spring too…… and it’s gonna happen...... in just nine more days. We’re READY for the warm, fragrant breezes, carrying the smells of spring flowers to us and feeling the sun’s warmth, as the grass and trees start to spring forth with their leave and flowers. The critters will look forward to being out all day in the yard, foraging for anything they can find and we will get the two incubators running with chicks hatching almost everyday, after about 21 days of starting them. We plan on hatching out chickens, guinea hens, Bantams, ducks and having some more turkey’s too. The Alpacas are coming in less than a month and we’re ready for them too. Yes, I loved winter, but I’m so excited and ready for spring and summer this year.
And the best part is…… Everything I enjoy, I experience and enjoy with Vicki right beside me. How great it is to be excited about something and have someone there, to jump and be excited with you…… especially when they love you…and you love them.
Life is GOOD.

Tues. March 10th… The rain has arrived and it’s a comin’ down…

Well, they said it would come and it did. It rained all the way home and hasn’t stopped since!!! We just returned from Albany where we had dinner, stopped at Kinko’s and had the new Angelgirl Productions business cards made for Vicki’s artwork. Her business name will be Angelgirl Productions and from hence forth, all her work will be signed as such with her name under that and a little brass angel affixed to the work. We also had business cards made up for Nature’s Friend’s of Hospice, Inc. made up so we can pass them when we speak of our entity for the raising of funds for the Columbia - Greene County Hospice and Palliative Care organization. We have been energetically working on fundraising merchandise to sell and recently, Vicki sold some stained glass artwork and several other remember me hospice hearts. We can’t wait to draft the first check to the hospice people in Catskill as soon as we reach a $200.00 benchmark. We are doing pretty good considering we haven’t gotten the Hospice Gift Shop off the planning table as yet, or received the official 501-C determination from the government for our not for profit, tax free status, even though we have the federal EIN number and the official Incorporation certificate in the name of Nature’s Friend’s of Hospice, Inc., from the state of New York. Once we receive the not for profit, tax free status (501-C) and the permit comes and we build the gift shop, we will schedule an open house and invite the radio and papers be present to cover it. We’ll invite several prominent people and have the hospice folks from Columbia - Greene here that day too.
Sooooooo, we continue to chip away at all the little road blocks, keeping us from diving in up to our necks, as we usually do, until we remove these road blocks…… then we’ll put the pedal to the metal and go like greased lightning as usual.

Tues March 10th… Rain and floods predicted by the river………

They are calling for severe flooding tonight into tomorrow because it is to be really warm and raining here until Wednesday evening. All the rain and mild temperatures will surely be a problem with small streams and flooding. The ice obviously has broken up on the Hudson, because they tell of flooding from ice jams at several points along the river and parts of southern Albany in the last ten days, reported ground floors in some homes being flooded, sending residents to their upstairs rooms seeking safety. They finally cleared those ice jams with barges to release the backed up ice and water. This said…… be prepared for today and tomorrow.
Yesterday, we didn’t do much more outside then feed and water the critters, went to the Chinese restaurant and the Just-A-Buck store, then home again until it was time for the art group to meet in the library for our monthly group painting session. In the afternoon, between feeding and the paint session…… Vick worked on her stained glass work and I with my new graphics program.
Today……… well, this is soup day at Two Kids Bakery. And after that… who knows………………………………..........................

Mon March 9th… A day at the flower show in Kingston……

We had a beautiful day at Adams Fairacre Farms, in Kingston, with Vicki’s Mom, Dad and nephew Kenny. They had a beautiful display of spring and summer garden flowers which really made you yearn for spring to arrive. Look below at some of the beautiful arrangements and garden settings the local landscapers made for all to see.
After leaving Adams Fairacre Farms market, we all went to the Ninety Nine Restaurant & Pub, where we all shared a great early evening dinner. While we all talked about anything and everything, the subject turned to my book and the need for a program to perform my graphic design work, so Kenny volunteered to accompany us to Best Buy, where we would go over the software programs available to do what I need. I found Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 to be the best suited program for my needs and bought it, so now I can read and study that program to get the most out of it and start designing book covers and illustrations with much less effort than before. Since we are now designing business cards for the farm and hospice, it will also come in handy there.
Since it’s raining cats and dogs here and melting the snow, I can’t imagine any better thing to do today than sit in front of the pellet stove and read about graphic design……… unless it would be taking a nap… there on the couch… in front of the stove… with some soft music playing… and Vicki leaning against me… uhhhhhhh, now I’ll never get to sleep!


On the dining room table at home.... Smells of spring..

These are our very close friends, the famous artist extraordinaire... Stanley Maltzman and his friend Joyce. To see Stan's fine art everywhere, just Google him.

Vicki and Her Dad, Legendary entertainer of the Catskills, Joe Drao

Vicki, her Mom Anita and her Dad.

This is a beautiful scene! To see it full size, just click here....

HERE

Vicki and Anita picking flowers.

Joe scrutinizing prices and quality.