Turkey Tracks: Windjammer Angelique

Turkey Tracks: September 24, 2014

Windjammer Angelique

I almost forgot this little video of the ketch Angelique, who, on our last night, joined much of the windjammer fleet in Rockland, Maine’s, south harbor.

She came right across our bow, so we had a great look at her dropping her foresails and gliding into her chosen anchor spot.

One of the really joyful things about sailing on the windjammers is seeing the other windjammers out on the water. They are like large graceful birds in motion.

John took a gorgeous picture of the Angelique taken during the windjammer races many years ago. I reframed these pictures this past winter.

She dropped her sails just after I stopped recording. But I got this shot:

Turkey Tracks: MOFGA’s Common Ground Fair 2014

Turkey Tracks: September 24, 2014

MOFGA’S COMMON GROUND FAIR 2014

MOFGA stands for the Maine Organic Farmers’ and Growers’ Association, and each year, MOFGA puts on The Common Ground Fair.

This year marked the 38th Fair.

I’ve written about this fair many times, but each year is just so special.

This year I went with Giovanna McCarthy on Friday and with Penny Rogers Camm on Sunday– spending about 10 hours at the fair over the two days.

Here are some picture high lights. As always, I think of many pictures I should have taken, but didn’t–like a little video of the “horse whisperer” who trained a young, big working gelding to follow him around the ring in about 10 minutes.

I’ve always loved these “post” faces:

Look at this hoop house filled with flowers:

Outside this hoop house was the prettiest hot pepper plant with purple hot peppers:

We had a very cool summer, so the winter squash and pumpkins struggled. None of mine even made little squash. But, here’s squash bounty at MOFGA:

What’s amusing about this picture of a compost toilet displayed so one can see all the workings is that one of these boys is INSIDE the toilet, and the rest are very amused, as only boys can be. What looks like a reflection on the glass is actually a boy’s face.

On the way out of the fair, we passed this family of baby pigs asleep in the sun:

On the way home BOTH days, we stopped for some of John’s Ice Cream–all home made, all so delicious. John’s ice cream reminds one of what REAL ice cream tastes like when it isn’t full of fake ingredients. The marshmellow cream in the Rocky Road is the real thing, for instance.

I love MOFGA!

Turkey Tracks: Come Sailing With Me: Lobster Roast On An Uninhabited Island

Turkey Tracks: September 24, 2014

Come Sailing With Me

Lobster Roast On An Uninhabited Island

For many, the lobster roast is a windjammer sailing high point.

Passengers are ferried in the yawl boat to an uninhabited, beautiful island, and the crew cooks a gorgeous lobster roast.

Here’s the island we went to on this trip:

Here’s a little video that pans from the beach:

I love the way the succulents grow right down over the rocks on some of these islands.

The crew sets up a beautiful spread of snack food to eat while we wait for the lobsters to be cooked:

Here’s the lobster pot being organized:

And, eventually, there are lobsters! That’s Captain Jon Finger to the left with crew members Justin and “Mouse” with the straw hat.

Grateful passengers find natural seats and tables among the rocks on the beach:

And after cooking marshmellows or making “some mores,” everyone goes back to the ship full and happy.

Here’s the Riggin, waiting for us:

Turkey Tracks: Come Sailing With Me: Raising a Windjammer Foresail

Turkey Tracks: September 24, 2014

Come Sailing With Me:

Raising a Windjammer Foresail

Here’s a little video on raising the Riggin’s Foresail–the big one in the front.

If you are standing in the back of the boat, the left side of a sail is “the throat,” and the right side is “the peak.” The two sides do not get pulled at the same time after a certain point in the raising.

Listen, and you will hear Captain Jon say “HOLD PEAK” and you’ll see the right side crew stop pulling.

Note the fog on this day. It was the only foggy day we had.

I rather like a foggy day at sea, just as I like a foggy day here at home from time to time.

Fog is soft, comforting, and it just slows everything down.

Turkey Tracks: Come Sailing With Me: Raising the Anchor

Turkey Tracks: September 24, 2014

Come Sailing With Me:

Raising the Anchor

Hello Everyone,

I’ve been having way too much fun with visitors and have not posted to the blog as a result.

I still have some little videos I took on the J&E Riggin this past trip.

Here’s one on hauling the anchor.

Remember that the Riggin is an authentic windjammer schooner and has no motor to move it (they use a separate yawl boat to push it when needed) or a motor to raise the VERY HEAVY anchor that gets dropped every night.

It takes quite a few willing souls to get the anchor back on the boat.

And here’s another video for added information:

Turkey Tracks: Come Sailing With Me

Turkey Tracks: September 7, 2014

Come Sailing With Me

I’m just home after spending a magical, gorgeous, fun, inspiring six days sailing Penobscot Bay on the windjammer/schooner J&E Riggin with Captains Jon Finger and Anne Mahle.

Here’s the Riggin as seen from the island where we had a lobster roast:

There are many, many better pictures on the Riggin web site: http://www.mainewindjammer.com.

I forget how many trips John and I made before he got too sick to go, but we qualified as “Riggin Relics,” which meant we’d made 5 or 6…

On this trip, I sailed with a great couple who have made 27 trips over the years–often stringing three together in a summer. So, beware, being on the Riggin and around Jon and Anne gets into your blood. It has mine…

Here’s a little video of one of my favorite pastimes aboard:

This trip was centered around knitting and featured Margaret Radcliffe, who had just published a new, very useful “how to” book. Margaret is one of those people who is at the top of her craft. She has forgotten more about knitting than most of us will ever know. And she was generous with her time and skilled with her help on our projects. Because knitting was featured, most of the passengers were women–with two sturdy male passenger exceptions, both of whom are married to knitters.

I thoroughly enjoyed these women and will see some of them over the winter and will sail again with some of them next summer. Emails are already flying around between us.

Here’s Jessica knitting with her morning coffee/tea:

Jessica is making the hat pattern that Margaret Radcliffe designed for this cruise. I love her colors:

Here’s a completed sock on Jeanine’s foot:

And Pinky (of the 27 voyages) completed this great cowl early on in our trip:

Pinky is standing in the galley–which is always a warm retreat if one gets cold or needs a table on which to work. Here are two more pictures of the galley:

What you’re seeing is the “eating” end of the galley. On the other end is the “cooking” end. Anne and her crew (the amazing Cassie this year) feed up to 30 people (passengers and crew) three meals a day using a wood stove. There is limited water and no electricity for kitchen save-time tools. The kitchen “nook” that can’t be more than 6 feet long and with a walkway that is about 3 feet between the stove and cabinets and the sink side.

Anne’s food is…simply…amazing. Most of her food is FRESH, FRESH as it it locally sourced. She makes all her own breads–sometimes three different ones each day depending on what’s for breakfast–and there is a home made dessert at both lunch and dinner. Anne has two cookbooks now: AT HOME, AT SEA and SUGAR AND SPICE. Both are beautiful AND excellent.

Here’s a view of the boat from the back to the front–you can see the kitchen stove pipe to the left. This pic only shows about 1/3 of the width of the boat and does not show the long front end or the 10 or so feet behind the camera. I have never felt crowded on this boat. Nor had to wait longer than two minutes for a bathroom.

Here’s Terry swimming off the Brooklin harbor, called affectionately the Wood Boat Harbor as the Wooden Boat School is located there. This school is a place where you can go and learn how to build various wooden boats that you keep. I have often seen families working away in one of the buildings to make a boat.

And, yes, I did get to swim this trip–with Jessica, off North Haven island. The water was cold after the cool summer, but really refreshing as it was a hot day.

There was a lot of boat traffic this year–and it is so much fun to see sailboats cutting through the water and to hear the wind in their sails. September is really fine sailing weather.

Here’s the Riggin’s little sail boat with Justin at the helm at Wood Boat Harbor:

The Riggin always draws traffic when she anchors. Here are some small boats sailing around us:

Here’s a sailboat–one of many, many–out on the water either passing us or being passed by us:

The scenary is beyond spectacular out in this water world. And it’s impossible to capture it with just a camera.

But…

The sunlight sparkling on the water is breathtaking.

And there are endless islands and passages between them and beautiful and/or quaint houses on the islands.

At one point we traveled what is known as Eggemoggin Reach (the site of famous races and regattas) and we went under the Deer Island Bridge with about a foot to spare at the top of our mast–causing all of us to gasp and shut our eyes:

I have some other short videos (the lobster bake, the last night, raising the front sail, hauling the anchor), which I will post separately, but I will end with this picture of a sunset on the Bay:

Come sailing with me next year?

I’ll be going on another six-day sail on July 20-25 and an as yet undetermined four-day knitting cruise in mid June.

Turkey Tracks: A Visit to Hedgerow

Turkey Tracks: September 7, 2014

A Visit to Hedgerow

Just before I left home for a six-day windjammer trip out of Rockland, Maine, friend Kathleen Nixon and I took a spin down to Port Clyde, Maine–the tip of the St. George peninsula, where the St. George river pours into Penobscot Bay.

On the way, in Martinsville, we stopped at Hedgerow, “where the cultivated meets the wild.”

And what a treat that was.

The first thing that caught my eye was the fact that ARTICHOKES were being grown in Maine.

I know artichokes can be grown in Maine as friend Rose Thomas has grown them.

I’ve just never personally seen them growing–period–never mind seen them growing in Maine

Here’s another view of these dramatic plants:

Next, I saw a smiling woman sitting at the picnic table in the left of this picture, braiding shallots. Aren’t they beautiful?

The smiling woman turned out to be Anne Cox, who owns Hedgerow with her partner Julie Wortman.

Next, Anne gave us the most enchanting tour of their various hoop houses, their new chicken coop (built to prevent fox from eating her chickens again), and their elaborate and exciting vegetable beds.

Here’s a melon happily growing on the warm stones of a hoop house.

On our own, we toured the outbuildings where “rustic” furniture, clever/fun hand crafts, GORGEOUS hooked rugs (made by Anne), and produce and value-added food products are displayed.

I am sorry, Julie, that your face was obscured here by a plant… But one can get a feel for the outbuildings, which are so lovely.

Anyway, do take a look at the web site–and ESPECIALLY at Anne’s hooked rugs: www.hedgerowdesign.com.

Hedgerow is one of those special places where creativity sparkles and smiles and beckons you all at once.

I can’t wait to go back.

Turkey Tracks: They Came and They Went

Turkey Tracks: August 21, 2014

They Came and They Went

This blog has been fairly silent since I’ve had my oldest son and my two oldest grandchildren here “summering.”

I picked up Mike and the grandsons in Portland, and the fun began.

One of the first things we did was to go mushrooming for black trumpets and golden chanterelles:

I love this picture of the boys. You can see in their faces the men they will become.

We dried the bounty, and Mike took them home when he left–leaving me the two grandsons for two weeks.

The big draw was the Camden Yacht Club Sailing Camp–their second year and their third year of sailing lessons.

Here’s a gorgeous photo Mike took of the harbor one morning, looking back to the mountains, which are covered with clouds.

The boys swam most days in the morning during the camp–which involves VERY cold water. So we lowered the temps in the hot tub (children under 12 don’t have the body temperature alarms that adults have) and let them use it to warm up daily. They soon discovered the pleasures of skinny dipping in the hot tub and thought themselves very naughty.

L&H Burger in Rockland, Maine, was also a great spot to warm up–or so the kiddos claimed. The milkshakes here are just the right size for kiddos to have with their burgers and fries. One of my own memories is my dad taking us swimming on Saturday morning at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, and buying us cheeseburgers (with dill pickles inside), fries, and chocolate milk shakes. I can taste that meal to this day.

We had one artist excursion downtown–here they are looking back into the amphitheater.

And here’s at least one thing among many they could sketch:

Low tide in the harbor and skipping rocks proved to be a much bigger draw for them however:

They could almost cross the river on the exposed rocks, if I had let them. The seaweed, though, is very slippery and there are barnacles…

Archery was of huge interest this year. I bought them 22-pound recurve bows and good arrows, which was just about right for them. We had to do You Tube research to figure out how to string them, how to knock the arrows, etc.

These bows are not play toys and can shoot really far and really powerfully, as you can see from this little video:

Here’s what happens when you misuse a bow by stretching and releasing without knocking an arrow in an effort to tease your brother:

Lesson learned.

We also kayaked, swam, explored, and read aloud the whole of a nearly 500-page book that Kelly needed to have read by the start of school on Monday, August 18th.

I will go on record to say that I am appalled that schools are getting out in mid June and starting back in mid August. Kids need time to be kids, and they learn important lessons–or can–if immersed in nature. This move is NOT about kids, or lost learning over the summer–it’s about working adults who need child care. And it’s about creating a whole nation of disciplined subjects whose sole purpose in life is to WORK, not to live their lives outside of work. Rant ended.

I don’t have pics of kayaking or swimming–I just got too busy and wrangling the kayaks with two boys underfoot isn’t easy. There isn’t so much they can do to help, and they are like puppies when they have free time and are kept in one area–wrestling, etc.

Here’s a pic of Pirate Bo on the last day of sailing camp. (They dug up a treasure chest in the sand and found “treasure.”)

After a pizza lunch, they headed for the airport and home.

It was a good, good trip to Maine.

Interesting Information: Homemade Laundry Soap Update

Interesting Information: August 21, 2014

Homemade Laundry Soap Update

In a nutshell, it’s really good.

I like it a lot.

See the recipe elsewhere on the blog.

I’m not so crazy about the smell of it, but it CLEANS!

And its CHEAP!

Turkey Tracks: Budget101.com: Make your own Laundry Detergent

Turkey Tracks: July 29, 2014

Make Your Own Laundry Detergent

Friend Bonnie Sinatro posted this “recipe” on Facebook the other day.

Hmmmm, I thought. That’s really interesting.

And note that Bonnie used THE UNCOOKED version of the recipe–which I will also do.

Here’s a picture from the Budget101 web site listed below.

Budget101.com – – Moms Super Laundry Sauce | Whipped Laundry Soap | Make your own Laundry Detergent.

Basically, this laundry soap uses 3 ingredients and makes 1/2 gallon, for under $2 for each batch, and washes 128 loads with 1 Tablelspoon a load:

The Fels-Naptha soap gave me some pause, so I did a little research–especially after I bought it. It does contain petroleum products, and there is one that is toxic. But that’s the ingredient that helps dissolve grease. And there are dyes and a really strong fragrance chemical smell.

I’d still say it’s worth a try. Various users write that this mixture is good about removing stains. And it’s really cheap.

If you want an environmental laundry option, try soap nuts. I use them all the time. they are the dried fruit of the Soapberry tree and are a natural cleaner (Sapindus mukorossi). I find they work really well. I use more of the nuts for dirtier clothes. I do treat stains, especially grease stains, before washing.

Each batch of about six does about six loads of laundry. And the little baggies come with the packet. I’ve had this package for about 18 months now.

Here’s another non-toxic laundry product I keep on hand for dirtier loads:

It does about 100 loads for about $11.

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