Category: castle frostbite.

castle frostbite. friends. parenting.

taking a breather between storms.

I’m at the Fancy Bread Place, part of my weekly Dadcation ritual. (For those of you just tuning in, that’s when I get to leave the house for a morning once a week without kids in tow.) Two days ago, we attended a friend’s wedding over in the White Mountains, in a location that required us to do a lap of northern New Hampshire because you can’t get there from heah, at least not in a straight line. The wedding was lovely, though, and I’m glad we went.

Tomorrow, said friend and her husband are coming up to Castle Frostbite for a Halloween party. They’re bringing three little girls for a sleepover with our kids. We’ve done that before a few times, and it’s always fun, but LOUD. Five kids in the 3-8 age bracket can work up an amazing din. So right now I am enjoying a bit of quiet and calm before heading back to the Castle to get it ready for tomorrow’s festivities. There will be home-made “Bones of the Dead” cookies, mummy cupcakes, cocktail weenies, Halloween candy, and a bunch of, uh, special parenting sauce for the grown-ups. Tune in again on Sunday, when our intrepid correspondent live-blogs his hangover.

(I kid, of course. Our intrepid correspondent doesn’t get hangovers.)

 

castle frostbite. new hampshah. weather.

still here.

After-action report from Castle Frostbite: no big harm done here. We lost power for a few hours, and the winds were worryingly strong at times, but nothing got damaged. The chicken house remained in place.

The chickens have benefited from Sandy—when I let them out this morning, the run was a muddy mess, but all that moisture had drawn a lot of earthworms to the surface. It was like a breakfast buffet for the birds.

castle frostbite. new hampshah. weather.

snor’eastercane update.

The weather is still pretty sedate here in Upper Cryogenica. The wind gusts have picked up a bit, but it’s still nothing unusual for the season. The storm is predicted to pass well to our west, but we’re still in the cone of possible projected courses, so we’ll see how that goes.

New York is getting socked right now, and the storm isn’t even ashore yet. It’s making the windows here at Castle Frostbite rattle every now and then from seven hundred miles away. Boston is 100-ish miles to the southeast, and they’re shutting down the town and folding up the sidewalks from what I hear. I’m expecting to lose power as the storm gets closer, but we’re all stocked with firewood, batteries, and water. At least it’s not ten below with a foot of new snow on the ground outside. I just hope that the chickens don’t get blown into Quebec…

capitalism. castle frostbite.

megafridge.

This is our new fridge:

 

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I don’t usually go all nuts over new appliances in the house, but I love this fridge. Our old fridge came with the house, and like all the other appliances in the place, it was an early Nineties piece of junk from the “Better Than Nothing” section of the appliance department at Sears. We replaced all the junk piecemeal as money allowed, and the fridge, being the biggest expense, was saved for last.

I will say that I didn’t realize how much our old fridge sucked until we got this one. The old fridge was a classic old layout, freezer box at the top and one door below that. This one has the freezer at the bottom, so you don’t need to bend down or crouch anymore to see what’s in the fridge. The whole freezer section is a drawer, and it has a lot of internal drawers for organizing. The fridge section has French doors, and enough LED lights on the inside that I feel like I’m looking at the bridge of the new J.J.Abrams Enterprise whenever I get out some eggs for breakfast. The right-hand door has an outer panel that opens separately, which means you can get out that gallon of milk or soda bottle without having to open the whole fridge door. It has telescoping shelves for tall containers, lots of various drawers for veggies, fruit, and meat, and more extras than a new Toyota. For all I know, there’s a nuclear fuel cell and a Bluetooth iPod interface in there somewhere.

Best of all: we now have a dispenser for cold water and ice cubes on demand. Yeah, baby—shaved or cubed ice, whenever I want it, at the touch of a button! You have no idea how much easier that makes my cocktail preparations.

I will say that I had to draw the line at the almost identical model that had the additional touchscreen feature on the front door. It had apps for Twitter and Facebook on the screen. Who the hell posts Twitter updates from their fridge, and what kind of wisdom are you going to share? “Just made a sandwich LOL”?

There is, of course, the possibility that fridge design has advanced to the stage where the fridge shares to Twitter whatever you’re taking out.

“@markosfridge: Marko just had a snack of half a tub of cream cheese and eight slices of hard salami.”

Now that would be a highly effective dieting tool. Maybe we should have gone for that model instead…

aminals. castle frostbite. food and drink.

eggs!

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Araucanas are sometimes called “Easter eggers” because they lay pastel blue-green eggs. (Notice the size differences in this batch. They’re still adjusting their dispensing units.)

The eggs from our hens taste better than the store-bought ones. The yolks are darker and more flavorful. It’s been a fair amount of work and effort, but it’s nice to have locally-sourced eggs. And by “locally”, I mean “from the chicken coop across our driveway.”

aminals. castle frostbite.

the first return on our avian investment.

Behold! The first egg from our little flock of laying hens.

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When I factor in the cost for the flock, the feed, the labor, and that deluxe chicken house and run, that egg is worth about three grand.

aminals. castle frostbite. new hampshah. this monkey house.

cluckheim calls for aid.

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The new patio, pieced together from leftover granite and marble countertop pieces.

A little while ago I was out on the new patio area, putting together some planters and trinkets the wife had ordered for the new outdoor space. As I was screwing together the driftwood planter, I heard the characteristic “red alert” bawk-bawk-bawking of panicked chickens. I dropped my tools and sprinted through the covered porch and into the front yard, thinking that a weasel or fox had gotten into Cluckheim Keep despite our iron-clad security setup.

As I ran into the front yard with the shotgun, I saw the cause for the chicken distress swoop out of the sky and hit the chicken run a second time: a buzzard, almost as big as one of our Barred Rock hens (and they are large birds.) He flew off and settled on a tree branch at the edge of the yard.

I brought up the Remington and put the front sight bead on him. It would have been an easy shot, maybe twenty-five yards, a no-brainer with a full choke on a sitting bird.

He just looked at me and the chicken coop as if to say Screw you and your boomstick, hairless ape.

I turned the gun over to the hillside for a safe backstop and let off a shell to scare him off. He looked, spread his wings, and flew off in no particular hurry, as if he knew that he’s a protected species. (Not that I would have shot him even if he wasn’t—they eat rodents and other pests and are way too beautiful to kill, and the chickens are safe from him in the run in any case.)

In summary: birds of prey are beautiful, everything out here in the woods eats chickens, and a solid run enclosed in half-inch hardware cloth is a chicken’s best friend in these parts.

castle frostbite. friends. writing.

a shack of one’s own.

Neil Gaiman has one.

Roald Dahl had one.

So did Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, and a bunch of other famous inkslingers.

I am, of course, talking about a writing shed. The idea for one (or the obsession with it, however you want to look at it) has been firmly planted in my brain for a while now, and my desire for one of my own grows stronger as the distractions in the house get more frequent.

I have the main computer set up at the standing desk in the living room, but I can’t really do any work there that requires focus. Not only am I in the middle of all the house ruckus generated by two kids and four dogs, but I’m also accessible to everyone. So a little writing shed on the property away from the house a bit sounds more wonderful with each passing year. I mean, I put up an 8×10’ chicken house, and we had the handyman attach a 10×12’ run with a proper roof. If the chickens can have such a spacious condo, why shouldn’t I be able to mark off a flat 8×8’ patch of ground somewhere on our ten acres and then put a little private hut up in that spot? No plumbing, no Internet, no electricity—well, maybe an extension cord for a space heater for the winter—but otherwise nothing but a desk, a bookshelf, and a spot for ink bottles and such.

Two weeks ago we went over to some friends for dinner. They have a little 8×8 playhouse on their property which our friend built for his daughter. It has a properly high ceiling suitable for adult use, it has a proper door and windows, and it’s just big enough for a couch and a play rug—the perfect size for a little writing den free of distractions and cat-waxing opportunities.

I asked him how long it took to build that little playhouse.

“Oh, that just took me two days,” he said.

*blink*

I told him about my desire for a writing hut of my own, and lamented my lack of carpentry skills. He said he’d be glad to help me with it. So I offered him all the beer and pizza he cares to consume in exchange for his assistance. Now I just need to stake out a suitable spot on the grounds of Castle Frostbite, and then sell an extra freelance article or short story to get together the play money for the lumber, but then Project Writing Hut is a go.