The Rattlesnake Hill Wildlife Management Area is a 5,100 acre upland tract, situated approximately eight miles west of Dansville, New York. Roughly two-thirds of the area lies in southern Livingston County, while the remaining third lies in northern Allegany County. The tract was purchased in the 1930’s under the Federal Resettlement Administration and is one of several such areas turned over to DEC for development as a wildlife management area.
The area is appropriately named after the Timber Rattlesnake, which may be occasionally found in the more remote sections of the “Hill”.
The area offers an interesting blend of upland habitats such as mature woodland, overgrown fields, conifer plantations, old growth apple orchards and open meadows.
The area is inhabited by a variety of game species and is open to public hunting. The white-tailed deer, wild turkey, ruffed grouse, grey squirrel, cottontail rabbit and woodcock are found on the area. An occasional snowshoe hare may be observed adjacent to thick creek bottom brush or conifer plantation habitats.
A number of small marsh units have been developed and provide limited hunting for waterfowl. Some of the area’s furbearing species such as mink, beaver and raccoon may be occasionally viewed at these marsh units.
Valcour Island is a 968-acre island in Lake Champlain in Clinton County, NY. The island is mostly in the Town of Peru and partly in the Town of Plattsburgh, southeast of the City of Plattsburgh. It is within the boundaries of the Adirondack Park. On October 11, 1776, a naval engagement known as the Battle of Valcour Island between British and United States naval forces under Benedict Arnold was fought in the strait adjacent to the island. Valcour was the site of several farms and summer homes (and one short-lived utopian community, the Dawn Valcour Society) from the nineteenth century until the 1970s, when New York State completed its purchase of the island. The island is now within the Adirondack Park, and is managed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as the “Valcour Island Primitive Area“.
I often think of rednecks as noble savages. They work hard, don’t have a lot of money so they repair, reuse and maximize life out of whatever they can get second hand. Junk roofing, parts from old cars and motors, they use to repair what they have rather than throwing away.
The farm animals they raise produce food for their families and others. It is a life based on reality one where the piglet comes onto the farm, fed grain, fertilizes the land, has a 22 bullet put through its brain, scalded, quartered, frozen or cooked. Where food scraps are recycled into pig feed where the manure makes the farm field and garden grow.
The redneck homestead with the trash burning barrel goes to the dump like once a year, because most of their trash goes up into smoke and is disposed on site – if the ash and unburnt debris isn’t buried in the farm trash pit. Valuable recyclables – namely metals – get saved for scrap and are sold for money and actually used as industrial feedstock.
Many more remote, rural redneck homesteads are now off grid in part because the high cost of running electric lines up in the mountains. It turns out that solar technology is pretty damn good at supplementing generator power and that solar panels are fairly cheap especially when somebody does their own wiring and builds their own stands.
It’s a life so much more sustainable then the eco conscious suburbanite living in the city. Grid tied solar and your Prisus might reduce your carbon footprint or cleaning and recycling plastic bottles might keep them out of the landfill but it’s nothing like the homestead that keeps old machinery running rather than discarding, that produces and slaughters meat on site compared to buying on styrofoam.
It looks like there is a wye to the high leg delta transformer near Delaware Avenue and Orchard Avenue. There is three transformers with smaller than the other one, suggesting a high leg delta. From there, the step down transformers to houses which appear hooked phase to phase as there is no ground line to reference like you would have with a wye, as with along Delaware Avenue. The Environmental Education Center is hooked to all three phases with step down transformers wired as with a delta, so I’m pretty sure its a high leg delta.
I’ve never gotten the War on Marijuana. I think that the old adage that pot smokers are loosers is kind of silly. Most people I know who smoke pot are actually quite successful. They use the drug in moderation, it chills them out and if anything makes them better at dealing with every day stresses in the a calm and collected way. Sure I know stoners who are loosers but also folks who make a ton more money then I do at my job.
To be clear, smoking marijuana is pungent and it lingers. While odor is closely associated with people’s views on the topic, there is no doubt that it’s pungent. It lingers in the air and on your clothes like mucking a hog or dairy barn. Unlike farmers though, pot smokers don’t usually shower and change out of their barn clothes before heading back to town. I guess you can grow to like the smell and associate it with good things – just like farmers like to joke that manure smells like money.
I don’t worry that much about people driving intoxicated because I think people will find ways to be foolish with motoring however they want to be, and while there may be more deadly crashes, that’s more of an issue of motoring then the drug itself. Marijuana also adjusts perception different that alcohol and its impacts are different. So there’s that.
I do think it would be an excellent agricultural crop especially once it becomes federally legal, which is only a matter of time. If the democrats win the White House that could happen in two years. It’s apparently quite easy to grow and process, it could not only help the agriculture industry but also inspire the younger generation to learn more about agriculture and do some gardening and home cultivation.
“Tell me how long you plan to stay here Joe, some people say that this town don’t look good in snow. You don’t care, I know.“
It is a life goal of mine to eventually get out of New York State in search of greener pastures, where the winters aren’t as cold, the taxes are lower, the regulations are less zealous. Certainly it would be nice to have winters that are less harsh, but honestly having a place with a good woodstove and snowmobiles make it a little less harsh, although I still hate driving on icy roads in the winter.
But it’s not going to happen next week. I plan to stay in New York at least as long as I have family around, which is probably another 10-20 years. I can’t leave my elderly parents alone, especially as my sister has my niece to take care of and she lives over an hour away. They sometimes fall or need to be driven to doctor. And in New York, at least in the Capital Region, there are a lot of good jobs that just aren’t available in Rural America, were wages are lower and the work is generally harder. Albany is able to siphon quite a bit of wealth off America’s biggest city and if you can live frugally, you can put it away for a better tomorrow.
The wind is cold and harsh. Your dress shoes and pants gets covered with road salt, the days are short and gray. Road salt covers your car or truck, burns holes in the sheet metal and corrodes everything up. The best roads to backcountry are blocked off by the snow, although you have question whether or not you would want to camp in the cold and dark nights of winter. But it’s good, I stay home, I save and invest for a better tomorrow. Heating bills may be high, but their offset by lower fuel and supply bills from road trips.
Today looking at at blog’s suggested photos, I noticed how brown and gray so many of the photos have gotten.
It happens every year, autumn comes and goes, the leaves fall and the woods becomes that clear, brown color of winter. Snow seems like it’s going to hold off for a while, but the changes of the season won’t last.
