New Barn

This past summer was a whirlwind as they usually are. This year's big project was an 18 X 28' barn that will serve as our summer art studio. The project began with clearing some large trees and bringing in fill and crushed stone for our poured concrete slab foundation. We then opted for 2 X 6" stud walls 16" on center. The walls are 12' high with scissor trusses on top angled at a 12/12 pitch. Inside it is 24' 6" to the ridgeline. This open space feels much bigger than it actually measures in square feet because of the volume created with the open, tall ceiling or actually lack of ceiling. In other words it is open to the roof. The roof is sheeted with 1" rough sawn pine, covered in 30lbs. felt paper, 1 X 3" purlins, and then top of the line metal roofing. The snow ought to slide off this roof nicely. Next summer we will add more windows and sheetrock for a brighter space as it will serve primarily as a painting studio. We hope to add a ten foot, "bump out" addition on the back for a framing room. A solar array to power led lighting is also in the long term plans. Once the rest of the windows are in place we will finish siding the gable ends with cedar shakes.

Spring 2015

The Daffodils are up and the black flies are out, or so I am told. Friends of ours checked on the place this past weekend and took this photo. They reported that everything made it through the second extremely rough winter in a row. No damage as far as they could see. That is alway comforting. We will be arriving in June and look froward to the coming summer at Dragonwood!

Winter 2015

Friends snowshoed in and checked on the cabin.

"Salt Road" by Debe Abbott

This original pastel painting by Debe Abbott is right down the road from our Dragonwood.  SOLD

http://debeabbottsartblog.blogspot.com

Summer 2013

Another summer at Dragonwood is dawning near to the inevitable end. As Labor Day fast approaches it will soon be time to start packing things away and prepare this place for another long nine months that it will sit dormant awaiting our return late next spring. Dormant may not exactly be accurate though. The chipmunks, deer, dragonflies and all the non-human residents here will continue on, it is only Debe and and I and our little grey cat that will leave. Kevin II will be up to check on the place and work on his cabin when he is able. Kevin Ridgeway will visit to harvest "sticks" as he calls them for his rustic furniture business and friends Dick and Jeannie will check on the place from time to time. This summer has been wonderful here as it always is, however this year presented it's own challenges. Life off the grid requires a bit of a pioneer spirit and this year we had to reach back and grab onto that in a big way. The first three weeks brought an unusual amount of rain. I think it rained almost everyday. Not complete wash outs, but a good soaking rain shower or thunderstorm at the least. This was quite different from the previous year when we saw very little rain. Rain is good. It is good for our gardens. Our little stream flowed well into August and the pond remained full all summer. Our wild flowers flourished and the woods were full of mushrooms. That much rain however, makes it tough on the humans here though. Things remained damp and really didn't dry out thoroughly until the middle of July. Cooking outside is not as much fun in the rain. Getting up in the morning and making that first cup of coffee is much more pleasant on a nice morning and bathing becomes less pleasurable when it's cold and rainy. You haven't lived until you have had to dodge rain drops on your way to the outhouse in the middle of the night. No life is not intolerable during a rainy season, but definitely a bit more rugged. The rest of the summer has been really quite nice, with only occasional rain and mostly sunny pleasant days. Last year was exceptionally warm with over twenty days topping 90. That is not at all common in this part of the country. This year we may have eclipsed 90 two or three times, much more typical of a northern New York summer. Actually August has been quite cool and we are hoping for a few more hot days before summer comes to an end. The rain we had early wasn't just inconvenient, but also made earning a living tougher for us as we work outside. We did manage to do some framing for a few long standing clients and Deb did a series of small oil paintings. I managed to do some welding and produced a couple of new sculptures, but not the amount I had looked forward to. Finger Lakes Gallery in Canadaigua made a couple of nice sales for us which helped and we just received word of several nice sales at Gallery on First in Sanford. We also helped our son with his chainsaw carving venture and attended a couple of shows with him, helping lug carvings and gear in our truck as well as doing some finishing which amounts to burning with a propane torch, then brushing, sanding, painting and sealing. My biggest project for the summer was a ninety foot, dry stacked stone retaining wall and and two smaller stone walls for a house about five miles down the road. This project consumed most of my time and energy for better than a month. It was physically demanding, but also very rewarding. I had to tackle it in small sections. The stones were natural field stones, which around here is mostly sand stone. They are irregular and make for a real challenge fitting them together. Picking up and moving the same fifty pound stone a dozen times trying to find the right fit for it. An altogether different sort of deal than working with cut, quarried or manufactured stone. My goal was to complete ten feet at a time. Some days that happened and all too often I fell short. Once the main wall was layed up then I had to begin leveling the top with cap stones and making adjustments, and of course backfilling as I went. There is something very satisfying about working with stone. Knowing the customer is happy is a good feeling, but just being able to stand back and see the results of ones labor is a satisfaction that is a reward all it's own. I do not claim to be a stone mason and never set out tho be one, however it seems to be a natural extension of my work as a sculptor. Drawing on inspiration from Helen and Scott Nearing and the artistic influence of Andy Goldsworthy I have found a new way to create a long lasting functional art form. This is two summers now that I have landed large stone scaping projects and of course my ongoing stone work here at Dragonwood. Our friend Terrie suggested that it must be a "Vermont thing", that men from Vermont have something in our DNA for stone wall building. Maybe there is something to that or maybe it's just having grown up with them everywhere you develop a reverence for that sort of thing. Our gardening has been a bit of a mixed bag this year. We arrived too late to plant a lot of vegetables. I did set in a half dozen cucumber plants that are producing very nicely and four tomato plants that are loaded with green tomatoes. I may have to cut some trees or move them in the future as I don't think they are getting enough sun. The forrest has encroached on my raised beds. Trees that were very little years ago have now grown quite large and shade my beds too much. This does not seem to bother our garlic crop as we did have another bumper crop this year, albeit the bulbs seem generally a bit smaller than some years. We had our best blue berry harvest to date this year, however we arrived too late for our asparagus. The horse radish plants look healthy I will be harvesting some to bring back to Florida. The perennial and wild flower gardens were magnificent this year, but the local deer herd decimated our prized hosta collection. We have well over 100 hundred hosta plants and over 50 varieties and the white tail deer figure they have quite the salad bar here at Dragonwood. I begin to get a bit melancholy knowing that it soon will time to pack this place up and head back south. Then again we can look forward to our wonderful life and our friends and family in Florida and know that Dragonwood will brave another New York winter, resting under a blanket of snow awaiting our return next summer.

Spring 2013

I thought I'd share these photos sent to me by some very dear friends who recently visited Dragonwood. They live nearby and check in on the place from time to time when we are away. They tell me that Dragonwood came through another Tug Hill winter in fine shape. Looking forward to summer in the woods!

Chainsaw Carvings

Ok, so this is basically a shameless plug for our son, Kevin II also known as KII. He has a carving studio on Mud Mill Rd. in Brewerton, NY just north of Syracuse. He does a variety of subject matter, although the bears are the most popular. He also does signs and mailbox posts, as well as benches, tables and totems. I will be helping him this summer and in return he will be helping me with a couple of large stone projects. Anyone interested in a carving may contact me at kabbott765@gmailcom or if you are in Central New York his studio is open most days during the summer.

Almost Utopia

Many readers of this blog share my interest in the lives of Helen and Scott Nearing. This book will be of interest to those same folks. Here is a review I found on the book "Almost Utopia".

Reprinted from Amazon.com

By Elaine Beckwith
Elaine Beckwith Fine Art, Jamaica, Vermont

This review is from: Almost Utopia: The Residents and Radicals of Pikes Falls, Vermont 1950 (Paperback)
The photographs contained in this volume capture a remarkable slice of time in an isolated community on the cusp of change. The pure artistry of these candid shots and the skillful ability of Rebecca Lepkoff, an outsider, to place herself and her camera so unobtrusively before her subjects were remarkable. Rebecca is not present in her photographs: only her subjects, clear, rough-hewn, and strong. These images celebrate the commonplace with freshness and authenticity, frozen in time yet profoundly alive in their moment and, through Rebecca's skill, uncannily alive in our time as well.

The accompanying essay by Nearing scholar Greg Joly places the people, the community and the photographs in historical context. Joly ties the people to place; the rugged character of the land is reflected in the character of the folks who settled in this isolated environment.

This book is interesting on many levels: the artistry of the photographs; the historic association of the "intentional communities" of radicals and others who migrated to the isolation of this Vermont valley; and recognition of the hardscrabble locals who had lived subsistence lifestyles in this rocky landscape for generations.

Someone asked "If we End the Fed, what would you replace it with and I replied, When you remove a cancer, what do you replace it with?" -Thomas Sowell

Could GMO's be killing the honey Bees?

I don't buy into every conspiracy theory that comes along, but this is interesting and should make us all stop and think.

A must read

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25950

I apologize. My hyperlink functionality is still not working. You'll have to copy and paste.

January 2012

Thought I'd put up a recent photo. As I stated in an earlier post we are out the net for a while so posts will be few and far between.

The US Debt and Deficit Problem in Simple Terms

The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms. Let's put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:


* U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000
* Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)


It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Therefore, let's remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Smith family:

* Total annual income for the Smith family: $21,700
* Amount of money the Smith family spent: $38,200
* Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Amount cut from the budget: $385

Does the US have a spending problem? It appears we do!

Garden Photos - Summer 2011

Thought I post a few photos of this summers gardens. It's been a hectic summer with selling the business and getting ready for our move to Florida (winters) so the garden has been put on the back burner. Despite the neglect it's doing quite well. We have perhaps the best tomato crop in recent years. We tried a new variety of pole beans that are excellent. Our garlic harvest was good as it always seems to be.

The weeding has gotten away from me a bit more than is typical.

In these photos you see my grand daughter Kaitlyn (4) looking for "Jack in the Bean Stock", also our outstanding horse radish, and my cucumbers that I grew on a trellis for the first time. So far so good.

Field Testing Bobbex Deer Repellent

Like most rural locations across the northeastern part of North America we have a huge white tail deer population. Seems deer love to eat Hosta. We now have hundreds of Hostas and well over forty different varieties.

In past years the deer didn't bother with our Hosta collection until fall when they were about to go dormant anyway, so we didn't care much when they browsed off the foliage. Last year they decided about the end of June to devour our collection. Luckily Hosta are very resilient and come back with out any problem the next spring. We set out to try a host of different tricks to try to keep the deer from feasting on Deb's babies. Nothing really seemed to work and this year by the middle of July half of our collection has been wiped out by these hungry critters.

On the reccomendation of a local nursery we have purchased and applied Bobbex Deer Repellent to the ones that remain untouched. The nursery claims this is a good product and I hope it is.

We will let you all know how this works and what we think of it.

We would also like to hear about any other ideas you may have. Please feel free to share your experiences good and bad with deer repellent, tricks or products.

One Democrat's Advice: Raising Taxes Doesn't Add Revenue

“In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now”: President John F. Kennedy

The Baby Boomer Retirement Train Wreck is Upon Us

Do you hear that rumble in the distance? That is the Baby Boomers - they are getting ready to retire. On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turn 65. Millions upon millions of them are rushing towards retirement age and they have been promised that the rest of us are going to take care of them. Only there is a huge problem. We don't have the money. It simply isn't there. But the millions of Baby Boomers getting ready to retire are counting on that money to be there. This all comes at a really bad time for a federal government that is already flat broke and for a national economy that is already teetering on the brink of disaster.

So just who are the Baby Boomers? Well, they are the most famous generation in American history. The U.S. Census Bureau defines the Baby Boomers as those born between January 1st, 1946 and December 31st, 1964. You see, after U.S. troops returned from World War II, they quickly settled down and everyone started having lots and lots of babies. This gigantic generation has transformed America as they have passed through every stage of life. Now they are getting ready to retire.

If you add 65 years to January 1st, 1946 you get January 1st, 2011.

The moment when the first Baby Boomers reach retirement age has arrived.

The day of reckoning that so many have talked about for so many years is here.

Today, America's elderly are living longer and the cost of health care is rising dramatically. Those two factors are going to make it incredibly expensive to take care of all of these retiring Baby Boomers.

Meanwhile, the sad truth is that the vast majority of Baby Boomers have not adequately saved for retirement. For many of them, their home equity was destroyed by the recent financial crisis. For others, their 401ks were devastated when the stock market tanked.

Meanwhile, company pension plans across America are woefully underfunded. Many state and local government pension programs are absolute disasters. The federal government has already begun to pay out more in Social Security benefits than they are taking in, and the years ahead look downright apocalyptic for the Social Security program.

If we are not careful all of these Baby Boomers are going to push us into national bankruptcy. We simply cannot afford all of the promises that we have made to them. The following are 16 statistics about the coming retirement crisis that will drop your jaw.....

#1 Beginning January 1st, 2011 every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65. That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.

#2 According to one recent survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything at all to retirement savings.

#3 Most Baby Boomers do not have a traditional pension plan because they have been going out of style over the past 30 years. Just consider the following quote from Time Magazine: The traditional pension plan is disappearing. In 1980, some 39 percent of private-sector workers had a pension that guaranteed a steady payout during retirement. Today that number stands closer to 15 percent, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C.

#4 Over 30 percent of U.S. investors currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k invested in equities. So what happens if the stock market crashes again?

#5 35% of Americans already over the age of 65 rely almost entirely on Social Security payments alone.

#6 According to another recent survey, 24% of U.S. workers admit that they have postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the past year.

#7 Approximately 3 out of 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62. Most are doing this out of necessity. However, by claiming Social Security early they get locked in at a much lower amount than if they would have waited.

#8 Pension consultant Girard Miller recently told California's Little Hoover Commission that state and local government bodies in the state of California have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities. When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in California.

#9 According to a recent report from Stanford University, California's three biggest pension funds are as much as $500 billion short of meeting future retiree benefit obligations.

#10 It has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.

#11 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars. So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from? Most of the states are already completely broke and on the verge of bankruptcy.

#12 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. Sadly, in the years ahead these "Social Security deficits" are scheduled to become absolutely horrific as hordes of Baby Boomers start to retire.

#13 In 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. In 2010, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 U.S. workers. By 2025, it is projected that there will be approximately two U.S. workers for each retiree. How in the world can the system possibly continue to function properly with numbers like that?

#14 According to a recent U.S. government report, soaring interest costs on the U.S. national debt plus rapidly escalating spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every single dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019. That is before a single dollar is spent on anything else.

#15 After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government is facing a "fiscal gap" of $202 trillion dollars. A big chunk of that is made up of future obligations to Social Security and Medicare recipients.

#16 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work "until they drop".

Companies all over America have been dropping their pension plans in anticipation of the time when the Baby Boomers would retire. 401k programs were supposed to be part of the answer, but if the stock market crashes again, it is absolutely going to devastate the Baby Boomers.

State and local governments are scrambling to find ways to pay out all the benefits that they have been promising. Many state and local governments will be forced into some very hard choices by the hordes of Baby Boomers that will now be retiring.

Of course whenever a big financial crisis comes along these days everyone looks to the federal government to fix the problem. But the truth is that after fixing crisis after crisis the federal government is flat broke.

At our current pace, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government public debt will hit 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.

But our politicians just keep spending money. In order to pay the Baby Boomers what they are owed the federal government may indeed go into even more debt and have the Federal Reserve print up a bunch more money.

So in the end, Baby Boomers may get most of what they are owed. Of course it may be with radically devalued dollars. Already we are watching those on fixed incomes being devastated by the rising cost of food, gas, heat and health care.

What is going to happen one day when prices have risen so much that the checks that our seniors are getting are not enough to heat their homes?

What are we going to do when those on fixed incomes are buying dog food because it is all that they can afford?

We are rapidly reaching a tipping point. As the first Baby Boomers retire the system is going to do okay. But as millions start pouring into the system it is going to start breaking down.

No, there is not much that we can do about it now. We should have been planning for all of this all along. Americans should have been saving for retirement and governments should have been setting money aside.

But it didn't happen.

Now we pay the price.

Orange Marmalade Hosta

This is one of our favorite Hosta plants. Orange Marmalade. It seems to be doing well in it's second summer at Dragonwood.

Orange Marmalade is a mutation of Paul's Glory and is a medium size Hosta. The golden yellow/orange center turns to white later in the season. These Hosta produce a lavender flower in mid summer.

End The War On Drugs

Libertarian Party: 40 years is enough - end the Drug War

WASHINGTON - June 17, 2011 is the 40th anniversary of America's War on Drugs. Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle issued the following statement today:

"On June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a 'War on Drugs,' which has become a relentless violation of the lives and property of Americans, including many who have never taken illegal drugs. These violations continue under President Barack Obama, an admitted former cocaine user who has shown no hesitation in throwing people into prison -- a punishment he might have suffered had he been caught. Moreover, although promising to respect medical marijuana use in states where voters have approved it, the Obama administration has already conducted close to 100 raids on patients, growers, and compassion centers in those states.

"America's first experiment in prohibition involved alcohol, and is widely recognized as a failure. Approved in 1919, Prohibition I led to a steady rise in both alcohol usage and violent crime. The murder rate rose 50% between 1919 and 1933, peaking at 9.7 murders per 100,000 population in 1933, when the country finally decided enough was enough. Immediately after the repeal of Prohibition I, gangsterism went into a swift decline, with all of the major gangs disappearing within 18 months, and the murder rate dropping every single year for more than a decade.

"Prohibition II -- the War on Drugs -- has been another tragedy. We applaud the efforts of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization of current and former police, prosecutors, judges, DEA agents, and others, which issued a 20-page report this month detailing the tragic results of this misguided crusade, entitled 'Ending the Drug War: a Dream Deferred.'

"In their report, LEAP documented some of the measurable costs: over a million people arrested each year, a trillion dollars spent, and drug gangsterism at a level that dwarfs its alcohol equivalent and which has led to a bloodbath in Mexico that is spilling over into the United States. Not because of drugs, but because of drug laws. And over 120 million Americans have used illicit drugs: only the most deluded observer believes the laws have curbed drug abuse, and only the cruelest believes that 40% of the American population belongs in prison. No wonder 67% of police chiefs say the War on Drugs is a failure.

"Ultimately, of course, this tragedy is the result of our government's refusal to allow people to engage in peaceful choices as to what they consume. Even if drug use were to rise upon a return to the American tradition of tolerance that existed before the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act, our streets would be safer, innocent people would not have their homes raided and pets killed by narcotics agents entering the wrong house, victims of asset forfeiture laws wouldn't have their houses and other assets seized without due process, and resources would be freed to spend on improving peoples' lives instead of destroying them.

"Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drug use, including substances classified as hard drugs. As a Cato Report entitled 'Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies' showed, drug use dropped over the next several years and the Portuguese now use marijuana at lower levels than Americans use cocaine.

"It only took Americans 14 years to realize the insanity of Prohibition I. Both practical considerations and simple human decency demand that our government end Prohibition II now."

The Libertarian Party platform includes the following:

1.0 Personal Liberty
Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government. Our support of an individual's right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices.

1.2 Personal Privacy
Libertarians support the rights recognized by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in our persons, homes, and property. Protection from unreasonable search and seizure should include records held by third parties, such as email, medical, and library records. Only actions that infringe on the rights of others can properly be termed crimes. We favor the repeal of all laws creating "crimes" without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes.
For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.

The LP is America's third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets, civil liberties, and peace. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party at our website. www.lp.org

Tara Nevins - Wood and Stone

Ok music fans trust me on this one. This is a must have.

Review of 'Wood and Stone' in Driftwood Music Magazine: “Those who are familiar with Nevins’s work with Donna the Buffalo will be immediately struck by how at home she sounds, her voice sits astride these arrangements with all the comfort, grace and confidence of a veteran rider on well-trained mount.”