Life on the High Plains

I went in search of lard the other day.  A pound of lard to be exact.  I had to visit two grocery stores to find any. Why, you might ask?  Why in the world would someone in the 21st century need to purchase lard? Here's a hint...anise seeds.  The combination of lard and anise seeds might not mean anything unless you lived in or visited New Mexico. Biscochitos are a New Mexican folk cookie.  They are a form of shortbread...shortbread made with lard and as the recipe states "no substitutions". Recently we attended a wedding in New Mexico and they had bowls of biscochitos on the table.  They brought back memories.  When I was growing up in Albuquerque my mother and I used to make biscochitos.  One time in particular that I remember was when I had a school project that required everyone to bring a local dish.  My mom suggested biscochitos and we went in search of lard and anise seeds.  They are a simple cookie...flour, sugar, eggs, baking po...

 It's that time again...time to get a new load of wood in for the winter.  We buy a half a cord every two or three years just so that we can have a fire in our fireplace on those really cold winter days.  Is there anything that smells better than a wood fire? This year we decided to go pick up our own load rather than finding someone to deliver it.  Irv found a guy where we could go pick up a truck load for $80 which is really cheap.  The guy lives in the Black Forest.  A massive fire roared through the Black Forest back in 2013.  509 houses were destroyed by the fire including this guy's house.  He's been clearing his land of all the burnt trees and is slowing chopping them up and selling them for firewood.  Quite a monumental task in my opinion. We ended up talking with him for over an hour.  He's a very industrious retired guy and has some businesses on the side.  This piece of equipment above is used for clearing snow from parki...

The hills are alive!  The mountains are calling and I must go! Here's a shot I took of the ski areas in Breckenridge a couple weeks ago.  Looks lovely, right?  The only problem is that Breck is a ski town so where's the snow?  I just pulled up the ski area live webcams and it still looks like this.  I also looked up the lift and terrain status to see what's happening there since it opened for the season on November 12th.   3 of 36 lifts are open 1% of the terrain is open 2 of 187 trails are open Yikes!  Pray for snow. Our travels to Breckenridge took us over Hoosier Pass between Alma and Breckenridge.  The pass sits on the Continental Divide at 11,542 feet.  I love the sign the Forest Service has installed there.  The rivers on one side flow to the Atlantic and rivers on the other side flow to the Pacific.  It's apparently also where two national forests collide. So why is it called Hoosier Pass?  I had to look it up....

I'm so thankful to live in a state that has a governor who cares about public safety.  A little over a week ago he signed an Executive Order that declared the entire state a high risk area which opened up the Covid booster shot for anyone over the age of 18.  At that time only Colorado and California were allowing that.  Since then a few other states have joined us. I got online and made us an appointment for the booster.  I'm so thankful we were able to do this because we're traveling out of state a couple times in the next few weeks.  It just makes me feel a little safer since you can't usually trust the anti-vaxers to do the right thing. We arrived for our 11:15 appointment and there was a very long line meandering through the parking lot.  A very nice young guy was letting everyone know the wait was going to be about two hours even if you have an appointment.  I could tell he was preparing to become defensive about the wait, but we told him that wa...

This summer I visited Big Springs in Island Park, Idaho.  I had passed the sign for this place numerous times, but had never stopped.  A friend had come to visit me so we decided to check it out. The spring is the headwaters of the North Fork or Henry's Fork of the Snake River. 120 million gallons of water bubble out of the ground every single day.  It is in the top 40 largest springs in the world. It maintains an average temperature of 52 degrees year round  My photos do not do justice to the colors of the springs. The water is crystal clear.  So much water bubbles out of this springs that it widens to a 150 foot wide river just short distance away. Johnny Sack built a cabin by the spring back in 1929 which for some reason I do not have a picture of.  The above photo is the water wheel that Johnny also built.  It is open to the public to tour, but we arrived too late to go inside.  This site is a National Historical Site and is located in the Tar...

 In 2019 my sweet hubby put up a raptor roost on our property in hopes of attracting our own birds of prey.  (Here's a link to my original raptor roost post if you'd like to see what we went through to get the thing erected.) We have a hawk or two who hang out on the roost, but none of them have ever built a nest there.  Recently we decided to help them out by getting a few sticks up there.  It's too tall to use our ladder to reach it, and it's too high for us to throw sticks up there so guess what we used... ...yep, Irv's drone got outfitted for some actual work.  One stick at a time was flown up there.  My job was to attach string to each stick with a loop on the other end.  The loop went over something Irv attached to the bottom of the drone.  He would fly it up there and when it was in position he'd dip one side and the loop would fall off and the stick would land in the box. It was slow going, but it was working.  Then the wind picked ...

 Irv always encourages me to get out and go for a walk when the weather is nice. I'll admit it usually takes a little (or a lot) of prodding.  I don't like the wind and when you live on the high plains of Colorado, there is always wind. Little Maisy (in the background) is about four pounds overweight  (I know it's rude to talk about a girl's weight).  We've changed her food to a weight loss diet, we try to get out and walk her regularly, but nothing is working.  If anyone out there has any suggestions for what we can do to help this little chunk lose weight, please let me know. Two miniature donkeys live along our walking route.  I've tried for years to be their friend, but they're very skittish.  I don't think they have much human interaction. Irv brought me a bag of horse treats today and guess what...it worked.  I think they're going to be my best friends now.  They even let me pet their faces, but really didn't like having their ears touc...

We're having a beautiful autumn here in Colorado so over the weekend we decided to head up to the high country in search of the Breckenridge Troll. The troll had recently been moved to a new location and it was a little tricky figuring out where that was since many websites still had information about it's former location.  With a little digging I was able to determine where we needed to go. This must be the right place! We parked in the free lot at the skating rink and followed the troll prints to the trail head. Online it did warn that the trail is not maintained in the winter so use it at your own risk in icy conditions.  They weren't kidding.  In some areas the trail was snow packed, but in most areas it was a skating rink! After about a tenth of a mile we saw a long line of people so we knew we were there.  Everyone was politely waiting in line for a photo.  Most people were climbing in front of him to get a photo, but I wanted a photo of just the troll by ...

 So I started a new project while I was in Yellowstone this summer.  I hauled my sewing machine along and started my first ever large quilt, queen size to be exact. I searched for an easy beginner pattern and settled on "tumbling blocks".  It's a 3-D looking pattern and I chose solid fabrics in black, gray, and medium gray.  I really dislike the grandma style quilts with multiple flowered fabrics.  I do try to keep my house in the modern era rather than looking like it's stuck in the previous century. Each block consists of three squares and there are 111 blocks--333 squares.  Add to that the 34 white pieces that go around the edges to make them straight and the 12 pieces used for the borders and that means this quilt contains 379 individual pieces. Once all of that was assembled the quilt top was finished.  Sophie has been soooo helpful with the assembly of this quilt. Next step was to go to the fabric store and pick out the backing.  Did you kno...