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.
I am not fan of organic products, mostly because they are branding tactic slapped on by the government rather then a sustainable agricultural practice. Rarely is the label worth spending extra money on, it’s just something slapped on a package shortly to be thrown into the trash or burnt on up in the fire.
Unfortunately when you out there looking for healthier products, sometimes organic is only version sold at retailers. While I certainly wouldn’t pay extra for an organic label, which is literally trash, sometimes that’s the only option they stock. I ran into this issue when I was at Hannaford the other day, stocking up on groceries and the only option was organic tofu — it’s literally the same crap with a label.
Fortunately though it was inexpensive, price competitive with the non-organic tofu I buy at Walmart. Still I grumbled a bit when I put it in my cart, knowing the scam I was supporting. Now, I’ve been looking at getting some Quinoa to add to my diet next week, and I’m annoyed that the only choice stocked locally is organic. I get the retailers can only stock so many versions, and might not be cost-effective for them to stock less popular products.
Now, I don’t think buying organic is necessarily harmful to eat or even bad. It’s possible some of the techniques are more sustainable then conventional agriculture, but color me skeptical. But if it’s the only option, and it’s not absurdly expensive, I guess it’s worth paying the price, if its that or skipping new and nutritious options to add to my diet. I just had how popular culture dictates the branding in the market.
Bussing it downtown today because I don’t want to get soaked on the evening commute riding home. Instead, I figure I’ll catch the early bus in and walk from the Plaza to my office in Menands for some steps. Figure that way I can skip the shuttle while getting more exercise in.
Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Mostly cloudy and 38 degrees at the Elm Ave Park and Ride. ☁ There is a north breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. Temperatures will drop below freezing at Thursday around 5 am. ☃️
I was told it was an impressive sunrise 🌅 but I don’t have a good easterly view from my apartment. Pancakes with lots of ground carrots 🥕 and oatmeal in them topped with blueberries and real maple 🍁 syrup. I wish I could be riding in today but walk from the Plaza to the office in the suburbs 🏢 will be good. I catch the early bus in the morning so I have more time to walk. 🚶
Today will rain likely, mainly after 4pm. Cloudy 🌧, with a high of 48 degrees at 1pm. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 24th. North wind 5 to 7 mph becoming southeast in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 46 degrees. The record high of 77 was set in 2010. 8.0 inches of snow fell back in 1924.❄
So yes, it’s going to rain 👣 so best to get my steps in early. Yesterday I got my truck washed, 🛻and stocked up on groceries. 🛒 Spent more than I would want to but that’s the normal thing with inflation. Pulled out some salmon from the freezer that will be dinner with some veggies. 🐟️🥦
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:59 pm with sun having an altitude of 52.5° from the due south horizon (-18.3° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 4.6 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:46 pm with the sun in the west (272°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (278°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:23 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 55 seconds with dusk around 7:51 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:25 pm. At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and temperatures around 46 degrees. There will be a southeast breeze at 8 mph. Today will have 12 hours and 51 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 52 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will rain likely, mainly after 5am. Cloudy 🌧, with a low of 37 degrees at 6am. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 15th. Southeast wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. In 2023, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 24 degrees. The record low of 16 occurred back in 1954.
Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. 😕 Saturday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 46. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 52. Typical average high for the weekend is 55 degrees.
As previously noted, next Tuesday is 7:30 PM Sunset 🌇 when the sun will be setting at 7:32 pm with dusk at 7:59 pm. On that day in 2023, we had sunny and temperatures between 55 and 29 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 56 degrees. We hit a record high of 77 back in 1991.
In related news, I’ve decidedto buy a house in Clifton Park with vinyl siding, cathedral ceilings, marble counter tops, grid tied solar panels and a giant picture of Joe Biden in the living room. That sure sounds creepy. I am also buying an electric SUV to drive to work, and to Commissioner Grannis promise I’llwash out and recycle plastics andnot burn them any more.
Good morning on this first day of Trout Season! 🎣 Cloudy and 37 degrees at the Delmar, NY. ☁ Calm wind. Good conditions for getting snookered on the interwebs or hitting the trout hole, although creek levels might be a bit high. Not much sun for shadows at all this week but the river levels will be rising midweek. The skies will clear Saturday around 8 pm.
My pantry is quite bare 🥚 but I managed to cook some eggs with spinach and corn 🍳and bake some bread 🍞 and a big pot of rice and split peas for dinner. 🫘 Got milk 🐮 for my coffee and I should be good ☕ once I go shopping 🛒 tonight after dinner. I also plan to wash the salt off Big Red. 🛻
Today will have a slight chance of showers between 11am and noon. Cloudy 🌦, with a high of 55 degrees at 4pm. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 6th. South wind 3 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 74 degrees. The record high of 77 was set in 1986. 5.0 inches of snow fell back in 1924.❄
Probably today is the best weather day of the week for riding to work 🚲 but I’m hoping at least to ride in again on Friday and maybe work the afternoon downtown and catch the bus home Friday. It’s fine, Tuesday evening when it’s raining I’ll bring my laptop 💻 home as I need to work on a few things at home.
Solar noon 🌞 is at 1:00 pm with sun having an altitude of 52.1° from the due south horizon (-18.7° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 4.7 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:45 pm with the sun in the west (271°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (277°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:22 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 55 seconds with dusk around 7:50 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:24 pm. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ and temperatures around 50 degrees. There will be a south-southwest breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 12 hours and 48 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 52 seconds over yesterday.
I got to say I’m glad these days I’m no longer involved in the state budget or the Capitol Hill life. 🏛️It’s nice having my evenings back and not sleeping under my desk or running reports at 2 am. It’s just another ordinary day ahead for me in the data services department. 💾 Run reports, supervise data entry people, talk to the programmers. Fun stuff.
Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 37 degrees at 5am. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 15th. Light and variable wind becoming north 5 to 9 mph in the evening. In 2023, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 30 degrees. The record low of 17 occurred back in 1964.
Besides shopping this evening 📚 I plan to do more reading of the e-books I got from the library. It was a bummer that you can’t read e-books more than two days after not having cell service but how often am I that far off the grid except camping at the East Branch Sacandaga River or Piseco-Powley. Most of the time, e-library books really are the way to go especially for the first two days. It’s so much easier to carry books on my phone 📱. Plus no worries about them getting wet or damaged.
Aftera rainy week some improvements ahead. ☀ Saturday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 47. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 53. Typical average high for the weekend is 55 degrees. Not terrible for early April but still a bit cool. The following week might really feel spring like. But this weekend I’ll probably stay in town.
Not sure when my next trip will be ⛺ but not this weekend. I might do Charles Baker in Madison County come later April or Burnt-Rossman in Schoharie. Lower elevations will see spring first. 🌸 All depends on how much it warms up next week. I wouldn’t mind taking off another Friday.
Looking ahead, there are 2 weeks until Tax Day 💰 when the sun will be setting at 7:39 pm with dusk at 8:07 pm. On that day in 2023, we had partly sunny skies and a nice warm day with a thunderstorm and temperatures between 84 and 52 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 59 degrees. We hit a record high of 86 back in 2003. I’d take weather like that for reading down at the park.
Back from the Adirondacks as March comes to it’s logical conclusion. It was a nice long weekend up north. Things are unpacked and I’m out visiting the folks for Sunday dinner. It wasn’t a bad weekend but it was cold with the wind.
Good evening! Partly clear and 47 degrees in Dormansville, NY. 🌃 There is a west-northwest breeze at 10 mph. 🍃. Going to try to leave at least some of the windows open tonight even if it’s cold. It will help with the moisture levels, especially if I have clothes hung out to dry downstairs. Between those nights in the wilderness, the big ol’ fire and having my windows open, I should sleep like a baby. 🛌 No waking me before five o’clock, maybe later.
I swear when I was driving through the State Office Complex 🏢 that the grass is starting to green up. 🌾 I guess that’s to be expected, it’s April and it’s been quite mild. I don’t see much freezing weather for Albany in the coming week but a lot of rain. Snow though maybe in the mountains ⛰ but it will probably be a while before I head back up to the woods again. That said, I’m really looking forward to the green-up.
Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 32 degrees at 6am. One degree above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 2nd. Northwest wind 5 to 10 mph becoming light west after midnight. In 2023, we had light rain in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 41 degrees. The record low of 9 occurred back in 1923.
It was nice to get away to camp ⛺ for a while on the East Branch Sacandaga River though a bit cold 🍃 and noisy like NY 8 always is. Saturday evening on the East Branch Sacandaga River No. 5. Still a lot of snow in parts, hit a snow drift on the driveway to the campsite had to dig it out a bit to get up the hill to camp. Great weekend but cold. While you can hear the rumble of trucks climbing Eleventh Mountain on NY 8, I didn’t see a single human up there all four days.
The nearest campsite is over a mile away, the nearest house is 6 miles to the east and 15 miles from the west. ⛰️Really remote country but also not far from year round maintained asphalt. I like coming up here during shoulder season when most Adirondack back country roads are impassable by my truck. Wild but a bit noisy.
Rode my bike to the road summit of NY 8 – Eleventh Mountain, spent a lot of time wandering around Fox Lair 🚲 and then Easter I hiked from Griffin to the backside of Forks Mountain which I followed an unmarked path, bushwhacked through swampy ground on the ridge near Forks Mountain 🥾 then down to the east side of the gorge below Auger Falls then up along the East side of Auger Falls.
The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:44 pm with the sun in the west (271°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (277°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:21 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 55 seconds with dusk around 7:49 pm, which is one minute and 9 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:23 pm. At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 45 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 9 mph. Today will have 12 hours and 45 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 53 seconds over yesterday.
It was great to be away from it for a few days. ☺️ It was annoying that my e-books expired on Saturday but I still got in lots of reading before that point came to be. Plus a lot of time to listen to podcasts and videos I had downloaded, without the distraction of social media.
Tomorrow will have a slight chance of showers before 3pm. Cloudy 🌦, with a high of 49 degrees at 4pm. Three degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 26th. South wind 5 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, which became light rain by afternoon. The high last year was 74 degrees. The record high of 77 was set in 1986. 5.0 inches of snow fell back in 1924.❄
As we head into April, next Sunday is 7:30 PM Sunset 🌇 with dusk at 7:57 pm. On that day in 2023, we had mostly sunny and temperatures between 48 and 34 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 55 degrees. We hit a record high of 87 back in 2010.
South Hamilton is a small little hamlet in Brookfield near the Moscow Hill Assembly hill at the Brookfield Horse Trail system. It’s fairly hilly country, but still has good enough dirt for some homesteading and dairying.
Honestly, it’s probably no different than a million small hamlets but I still really like it with the rundown, often very old farm houses, the ram shackle barns, the feeder caves and goats in people’s yards, gutted deer hung in backyards, the wood smoke, the piles of junk and old cars and the big jacked up trucks.
It’s real, it’s not plastic and so fake like so much of suburbia…
Renewable energy consumes natural resources. It uses things that are renewable only to the extent its consumption limits the impact on the environment to sustainable levels. It can be much more polluting than fossil fuels due to the larger footprint if not properly sited.
I support strong and skeptical reviews of all renewable energy projects as they tend to be of a higher impact to local ecology and environment than fossil plants, especially per unit of energy generated. That doesn’t mean don’t build renewables but build them properly in a sustainable fashion that protects the environment and isn’t just about greenwashing.
With my job I travel quite a bit and get to see a lot of soulless upper-class suburban areas.🏡 The suburban areas are typically have supposedly nice chemically treated lawns, hardwood floors and enormous high ceilings made out of Chinese drywall and with the finest vinyl decorations you can find at local big box stores. They usually have the best selection of cookie cutter shrubbery and large open kitchen with marble countertops and massive color televisions and smart devices in every room. Everything is made out of cheap nasty industrial materials from China but is celebrated as being modern and stylish.🚽
Organic food fills the pantry and don’t worry, they even have an enormous recycling bin to compliment their even larger trash can. 🎠Advanced electronic controls keep the house a perfect 72 degrees even on the coldest winter day or the warmest summer evening. Because they want to make a green statement they may have grid connected solar panels on their roof, an plug in hybrid in their driveway and a plastic compost bin out bin back.🚗 And a frilly dog inside. That’s the suburbanites life.
They work their high stress job in the big office tower downtown,🏢 drive their plug in hybrid back and forth to work every day through the grid lock of rush hour.🚙 They always send in their yearly check to the Sierra Club and get the latest magazines from the suburbanite house wife magazine. Despite living in tranquil suburbanites neighborhood they live in fear that a criminal, 👹somebody of a dark skin color will break their picture window to steal their color television and rape their wife.
It’s a tacky, awful and expensive life if you ask me. It’s an incredibly consumptive life as they burn through millions of watts to keep the lights burning on the temperature perfect.:idea: They are left with big tax bills and utility utility costs every month. 💰Their lives are completely isolated from the real world, insulated by remote industrial forces outside of their bubble.
I have nothing but disdain for the suburbanites way of living, especially how it emphasizes consumption and debt over all things in life. 💳Rather than saving and investing, it encourages borrowing and television watching promoting even more extravagant suburbanite living.💵
I do enough camping and spending time in the wilderness and I know how to pay my future first and save and invest in a variety of products to allow my money to grow avoid the trap of suburbia.💸 I know that eventually I will be able have a more primitive and responsible life on my land if I plan and continue to invest both in the markets and myself through expanding my knowledge. 📚I don’t have to have a plastic suburbanite life if I don’t want it. If you don’t have those expensive cable and utility bills, don’t own a television or have internet at home you can afford more. 💻If you a primitive water supply, and outhouse and a simple instant on hot water supply for showers you can afford a lot more land and other toys that can bring you closer to the natural world then isolate you further in a plastic world🔌 made up of Chinese drywall, marble countertops, big screen color televisions.
It’s actually remarkable how expensive the modern suburbanite life☎ is based on my estimates, although I guess I wouldn’t really know because despite living in the suburbs I choose not to participate in it. 📲I like my small run down two floor apartments without air conditioning and only minimal heat in the winter. I like taking the bus to work every day and walking around town to the park and library. 📗I like taking my own trash to the transfer station and doing whatever I can to conserve energy at home. And I do enjoy my many nights in the wilderness, camping alone out of eye shot and ear shot of anyone else. 🐄🐂But I do miss the small town living.
Regardless my weekend adventures in the wilderness keep happy as I work for a better tomorrow.
