DAY 35 - VEGGIES .... AT LAST

It’s Saturday and we have the day off.  Normally we work Saturday and have Sunday off, but are switching with Lucy and Mark.    That means …. We can head up to Norwich, VT to the Farmers Market we have heard so much about.

It is just down the road from King Arthur Flour and was packed.  It isn’t terribly large – I’d say about the size of the NSB Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, however all of the vegetables sold at this Farmers Market are from local organic farms.  

And….the vegetables were beautiful.  Finally they are coming in and we’re seeing something other than squash.  Heirloom tomatoes by the baskets.  Fresh green and purple beans; patty pans and zucchini, wonderful purple eggplants, lettuces of all sorts.  Vegetables everywhere!

With all this bounty ... I feel like I'm returning to a "third world country" when I get back to Florida!

HEIRLOOMS!!!   I can never find these in Florida!

Where they weren’t selling vegetables you could find an entire booth full of gluten-free breads and pastries; 

 whole wheat pastries made with organic ingredients; range free eggs (we get ours from Ed), several different cheese booths made from their own cows, goats, sheep; Cob Hill was there as well as smaller vendors; meat of all kinds and beautiful, beautiful flowers!

In the middle of the market under a tent were fiddle players.  I was mesmerized by their sounds.  Thought I had left all that behind in WNC where we immerse ourselves in the mountain music; but here it was, beautifully played, at the Norwich Farmers Market in Vermont.   Then I reminded myself …. I am still in the Appalachian Range!  It was great to hear the music again!

I could have gone nuts with vegetables but only have so much room in the refrig so picked up an Heirloom tomato, purple beans, a couple patty-pans and some wonderful cheese that we can replenish at a local cheese shop in Windsor.

Headed back to the car sweating bullets!  It was 92 degrees!  Man, the heat is back.

I am doing a little survey of temperatures around the nation…..potential places to visit in the summer….potential places to avoid!  Interestingly enough, WNC higher elevations are comparable to Vermont.  We may have cooler nights by about 5-7 degrees, and the days vary …sometimes it’s hotter on Cedar Mtn than Ascutney but sometimes it’s cooler … like today!  Brevard/Cedar Mountain is 81 and we are 92!  But…..we’re going to be in the high 70’s by the end of the week. 

But apparently it’s elevation rather than latitude that affects the temperatures!

Places I will avoid in the summer …. Arches National Park, Grand Junction CO, Billings MT , Sedona, AZ are all consistently 90 and above.  Even Michigan has its days of 90’s.  

I’m liking Bryce, Yellowstone and Gunnison CO, Flagstaff, AZ as they seem to consistently be below 90.  They are also higher than 5,000’ so I’d have to adjust my breathing! 

Oh….the pursuit of cool weather twelve months of the year ….. is it possible????  Think I’ll rename my blog, “The Pursuit of Cool”!

This afternoon we listened to Judy Edwards talk about the Civilian Conservation Corp. She has written several books on the subject geared to the middle and elementary school student and visited many of the parks, including those out west, that the CCC developed.   

She is a wonderful speaker; an actress, writer, passionate about history.  She weaves the story of the CCC through her fictional characters in the book.  She is passionate about making history fun and enjoyable having written many textbooks for children about various historical subjects.  Her display included actual photographs from the CCC camps in Vermont.  There were twenty CCC camps in the state, Mt Ascutney being the home of one of them.




If it wasn’t for the CCC, we probably wouldn’t even have these wonderful parks to recreate in.

How the threads come together......

Going back even further in history  ….. George Vanderbilt and his Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC hired Gifford Pinchot, in the 1890's,  to manage his vast forests.  Biltmore became the first professionally managed forest in the nation.  Pinchot went on to  become the first Chief of the Forest Service, a new position under Teddy Roosevelt.  Pinchot was a conservationist and coined the term 'conservation ethic' as applied to natural resources.  He called it “the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man”.

Following Pinchot at the Biltmore Estate was Carl Schenck who ultimately started the first School of Forestry professionally training foresters with hands-on training.  This school is known as "The Cradle of Forestry"...one of my favorite places to visit in WNC.

During FDR’s New Deal in the 1930’s came the CCC  with 50% of its projects under the direction of  the Department of Forestry (started by Teddy in 1905).   Thinking back to Pinchot's philosophy when starting the Department of Forestry, the CCC embodied the "art" while providing jobs during a very difficult era.

One hundred twenty acres of Vanderbilt’s estate was donated to the National Park Service in the early 1900's when he died making up the 500,000+ acres of the Pisgah National Forest in Western NC.  A lot of what is today came from the vision of a man at the last of the 19^th Century.


Vanderbilt brings in Pinchot to manage his forests......Pinchot becomes the first Chief of a new department of Forestry under a Progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt ... thirty years later Democrat FDR forms the New Deal out of which the CCC is born and managed, in part, by the Department of Forestry providing 3M young men, over the period of time, with paying jobs and creating a beautiful park system we enjoy.  


The Vermont State Parks were all created through the efforts of the CCC with the beautiful stonework evident everywhere.


The threads of that tapestry came together to form a beautiful picture!

PISGAH VS SMOKIES

I find it so interesting that people who are not familiar with NC assume the mountains there are the Smokies and have never heard of the Pisgah.  The Pisgah is approximately the same size as the Smokies and is wholly contained within the State of NC.  The Smokies are primarily in Tennessee with a small portion over in Cherokee, NC.   

It must have been Smokie the Bear!  The Pisgah needs…..”PISGAH THE WHITE SQUIRREL” or  something like that.  (My Brevard friends will know what I mean!)

It was another great day in Vermont.  We love being here!!!!!