Balsam Swamp is a sprawling state forest that stretches almost 5.5 miles east-west across 4 towns. The area is very rural, and the landscape surrounding the State Forest is predominantly forested. Balsam Swamp State Forest is comprised of a mix of native hardwood forests, hemlock swamps, and conifer plantations. There are no designated recreational trails on the forest, but there is ample opportunity for self-guided day hikes to explore the diversity of habitats represented on this State Forest. Additionally, the western section of Balsam Swamp State Forest is adjacent to Five Streams State Forest to the south.
The main attraction of this forest is Balsam Pond. The impoundment is approximately 152 acres and is a popular destination for fishing and paddle boat sports. Balsam Pond is a warm water fishery that contains a mix of largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, chain pickerel, yellow perch, brown bullhead and sunfish. Tiger muskellunge have been stocked in the past with the last stocking occurring in 1995. However, there have been very few reports of anglers catching any of the adult tiger muskies. A shallow gravel boat launch is suitable for launching small fishing boats.
A small rustic camp ground is also located at Balsam Pond. Camping spaces are available at no cost on a first-come, first-serve basis and there is no running water or electricity. A fire ring, outhouse, and picnic table are provided for each camping space. A sign on Balsam-Tyler Road in Pharsalia designates the entrance to the boat launch and camping facility. This is a carry-in carry-out facility. Please do not litter.
Driving out to the Green Mountain National Forest via Sand Lake, there was a sign advertising 6 to 10 acre house sites. My parents have 8 acres where they live in Westerlo, and I think the town requires a least 3 acres for new home sites, to protect the rural character of the land, even if it ultimately is just promoting sprawl and McMansions with abandoned, farm fields reverting back to woods.
When I eventually move out to the country, I want to own enough land to be back from the road, have privacy, be able to shoot guns, have bonfires, heat wood, burn trash and debris, and listen to music as loud as I want to. I’m not into burning junk tires or super amplified music, but I do like have my freedom to do what I want with my land, and nobody knowing or caring. If I want to butcher a deer or hog in my backyard, so be it. I guess you could figure out far you have to be from the road to be screened, how far smoke travels, how loud your guns are. Obviously, you have to respect local laws on when you burn and how far you have to be from other people’s homes and barns to be shooting. But we all knows that sometimes smoke and noise travels farther then you would like, and that’s why it’s important to have the right kind of neighbors.
No matter how remote you live, there are always neighbors down the way. Many country folk don’t give a fuck about how other people live their life, to them it’s live and let live. Which is good. But it only takes one person to call the cops when they smell the wrong kind of smoke, or are bothered by noise of shooting or music. Rednecks are usually good neighbors while the nosy, moved out of the city in the fancy McMansion is the worse. But you never know, so having distance is important. And sometimes a reasonable person can get annoyed or change. Good people sometimes move out and bad people move in.
Livestock and wood are another consideration. Livestock can require quite a bit of land for forage and you often don’t want them penned up right next to your house, because especially cows can be quite noisy at night and hogs smell like hogs. Wood heat can require a good supply of firewood, especially with those outdoor wood boilers – but even fireplaces can burn through a lot in a cold winter. All considerations on how much land I would need to save up to buy. But those are easy to calculate – in contrast having decent neighbors who don’t make a fuss about nothing is far more important then having a lot of land.
Deciding who I want to be when I grow up and how that will impact my housing choices well into the 2030s.
The condrum is simple…
Living in Upstate New York sucks. The taxes are high, the government regulations are stupid, everybody who lives in Upstate NY is terribly corrupt due to all the work arounds they have to build into their lives to appease the power brokers who speak of high moral causes but are primarily interested in lining their own pockets.
I make really good money with my patronage job that I love doing, one that finally taps into my talents with data and programming. I do good work and have a record of securing results for my clients and working inefficiencies out of processes. I find NY state politics to be endlessly fascinating drama, watching as the people’s business gets done, maybe with a cringe worthiness like gawking a fatal automobile crash.
I really see three options forward…
Try to hold on to my relatively inexpensive dumpy apartment in the suburbs, trying to cut costs anywhere possible in my budget so I can save as much as possible towards moving out of New York State at age 55 the earliest I can collect retirement. If I have to move find a similarly dumpy apartment. Continue to build my resume and work skills, deliver results for clients and earn more pay and invest it. Seek lower income work at age 55 outside of New York State. Continue to do trips so I can have some joy in life but the primary focus should be on taking care of my health and finances so I am in good shape come age 55 in 14 years. Obviously such an approach has risks of health declines and potential death especially in a less than healthy living environment that my apartment represents.
Build that solar powered and wood heated cabin on the outskirts of Albany on the edge of deep rural Upstate NY. Have a fair amount of acerage, good neighbors and be careful what and when I’m burning things in bonfires. Make sure to carefully build and engineer that property to comply with all state codes, set it up to be well screened from the roads and neighbors. Familiarize myself with all the necessary work arounds for living in Upstate New York like traveling to buy ammunition out of state. The thing is this option while the appealing middle option blocks the first option as once I build a unique property it’s likely difficult to sell and will tie up a lot of money even if it’s a more enjoyable option then the first.
Leave New York State and completely reboot my life from scratch, in many ways writing off a lot of the experience and salary bumps I’ve given up over the past decade and a half. There are plenty of much more wild places in America that suit my values, are far cheaper to build in and don’t require so many work arounds for every day living. Places where they respect the second amendment, where they have few restrictions on fires, taxes are low and life is affordable. Much of the Midwest and the West come to mind. Pennsylvania and West Virginia are decent options too though such states have their own problems.
I do maintain that as I eat my ever so delicious pancakes. Just like with bread and cakes nothing beats the sweetness and softness that carrots bring to cooking. And that sugar high is great for the ride to work this morning.
Good morning! Tuesday, Tuesday. Second gear of the week. Mostly sunny and 37 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind. ☀ When there is no hope, there is spring. 🌸
Carrot pancakes again for breakfast. 🥞 Johnnycakes last night for dinner. You know, loaded with onions, spinach and spices. They’re easy and taste so good. 🚲 Riding in early this morning so I can take the long way in on this beautiful spring morning. Feeling good after a good night’s sleep. No smoke alarm ⏰ issues this night plus I sleep so much better with the windows open. 🛏 Smelled smoke when I awoke but it was wood smoke and not the least bit acrid so I figured it didn’t matter just a fire place somewhere.
Today will have increasing clouds ☀ 👉 ☁, with a high of 72 degrees at 4pm. 16 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around May 17th. Calm wind becoming north around 6 mph in the morning. I’d say this is yesterday’s forecast for the eclipse but it’s slightly warmer. A year ago, we had sunny skies. The high last year was 55 degrees. The record high of 77 was set in 1991. 13.3 inches of snow fell back in 2000.❄
New landlord emailed me said he was having somebody come by to inspect and measure the windows. 🪟 Seems a little sketchy but I’ll make sure to have my curtains drawn when I’m walking around nakid, lol! 👁️ I’m glad at least it seems like they’re renovating the unit next door, but I do wonder what they’re doing measuring and checking the windows. Well, if I have to move I’ll have to move.
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:57 pm with sun having an altitude of 55.2° from the due south horizon (-15.6° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 4.2 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:53 pm with the sun in the west (275°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-northwest (282°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:31 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 57 seconds with dusk around 7:59 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the west-northwest (281°) at an altitude of 11° from the horizon, 229,725 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:35 pm. At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 65 degrees. There will be a southeast breeze at 6 mph. Tomorrow will have 13 hours and 14 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 49 seconds over today.
It was nice enough last night to go down to the park 🏞 after dinner and riding home 🚲 the long way. Finished through Chapter 36 of the Robert Caro’s Power Broker audio book – 45 hours but played at 2x speed so more like 22 ½ hours listened to so far. Only maybe 15 hours left, as the 1940s fade into the fifties, and Moses’ final big works with the Power Authority and the Cross Bronx Expressway and ultimately his downfall under Governor Rockefeller.
Tonight will have a slight chance of showers after 11pm. Increasing clouds 🌧, with a low of 47 degrees at 5am. 12 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 11th. South wind 6 to 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2023, we had clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 30 degrees. The record low of 21 occurred back in 1974.
Might do the park again 🏞 though I need to find some more e-books to read next. 📚 That Libby app is so great. The rest of the week with rain coming looks like crap unfortunately for going to the park but I have conventional books I can read then. 🍞 Going to bake bread and spaghetti squash tomorrow and soak beans for cooking in the morning. Thinking about making chicken noodle soup 🍜 for Wednesday, likely a cold and wet day. Though not too cold.
Weekendlooks kind of cool and shitty like usual. 💩 And I’m not talking about the cow crap they spread before the rain to soak it good into the ground. Saturday, a chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 52. Breezy. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 59. Typical average high for the weekend is 58 degrees. Maybe the following weekend I’ll take a long weekend to head out of town, depends on the weather.
But wait there’s more with, next Tuesday having an Average High is 60 🌷 when the sun will be setting at 7:40 pm with dusk at 8:08 pm. On that day in 2023, we had partly cloudy, warm weather and temperatures between 78 and 57 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 60 degrees. We hit a record high of 91 back in 2012.
I don’t get why people hate the COBOL programming language so much. It might be old but so is the C language and SQL queries but neither of them is called obsolete. COBOL has some advantages in the office environment – it’s very easy to read and understand and all of data storage routines are up front. Plus usually each part of a COBOL program is quite simple – far less complicated than the casts, pointers and direct memory access functions in C – and much less prone to programming mistakes.
In many ways, I wish I could have gone to see the total eclipse today, but it wasn’t going to happen. I thought about it for a long time as April 2024 approached to head to the area of total eclipse, but I knew it wouldn’t happen. It was originally scheduled to be a session day, and while many of the divisions are working from home, mine is more difficult as most of Data Services requires access to various internal-intranet services, the server, and specialized software. While some people have access to the VPN including myself, it’s not really fair to those who do not. I also haven’t been in the Menands office in a while, except for a brief period early Friday morning, so it’s important to be back and catching up on ordinary office business.
Plus, the eclipse unfortunately falls in early April which means there is still a lot of snow around in the higher elevation locations like the Adirondacks and even Central New York. Places like Charles Baker State Forest or the East Branch of the Scanadaga River while usually great places to camp, aren’t actually in the path of the total eclipse. I did originally consider them as options, but it would have still required me to drive either farther north — to a minimum of Indian Lake village in Adirondacks or Cortland County to the east. And I would have hit traffic.
It would have been great if the eclipse was just a bit farther east, the weather a bit nicer, especially if it had occurred during the summer month when there was no session and I could have spent the whole weekend away from town. But that wasn’t to be.
So instead, I’m going to watch the partial eclipse — 97 percent eclipse — from the office parking lot or second floor lobby, looking out at the eclipse over Interstate 90 through my eclipse glasses. Not that it makes that much of a difference where you are when looking through eclipse glasses, as everything but the sun will look completely black. But so it is.
It still is a much bigger eclipse then I’ve seen before — the one I saw in Erie Penna at the beaches of Lake Erie at Presque Isle in 2017 was only about 78 percent. The other one one I witnessed at 5:30 in the morning after working until 3 AM on a late-night legislative session in June 2021 at Five Rivers Environmental Education Center was only like 30 or 40 percent. So this will still be a far larger eclipse then some of the other ones I’ve seen.
I got to work today and it’s only a partial eclipse in Albany, but I have several pairs of eclipse glasses that I’ll be giving out to staff and will make sure to get a good view of it from work — be it the second story windows overlooking Interstate 90 or the the acres of parking lot. Going to be a great day to be outside, that is once it warms up a bit.
Good morning! The eclipse has come back around again. Sunny and 30 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌞 Calm wind. Things will start to thaw out at around 7 am. 🌡️ Totally inappropriate to have all my windows open in my apartment, but I slept like a baby 👶 with my windows open. I think it was cold enough that the heat actually kicked in. I knew it would be a cold morning, but that’s okay, it’s going to warm up quickly and all that fresh air is good. Not so cold that I have to worry about anything freezing this morning besides my fingers and my ass.
Breakfast was a big pan of eggs and veggies 🍳 and fairly tasty good start to the morning. Drunk much too much coffee this morning, as I was cold ☕️ with the windows open. Still I enjoyed the fresh air this morning.
Today will have increasing clouds 🌞 👉️☁, with a high of 64 degrees at 5pm. Eight degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 25th. Calm wind becoming northwest around 6 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with a few breaks of sun the afternoon. The high last year was 52 degrees. The record high of 88 was set in 1929. 4.5 inches of snow fell back in 1907.❄
Should be a great day to ride to work 🚴♂️ enjoying the fresh air as it warms up quickly under bright sunshine. 🌞 Unfortunately it looks like things might cloud up mid to later in the day which might hurt viewing of the eclipse, but I guess there will still be enough sunlight available to enjoy it through the glasses 🕶️. Sucks that I have to work, 🏢 but I gotta make the money. 💸 After all the tax men need to get paid on Monday, and do I have a big tax bill to send them. I’m heading in a bit early as I don’t feel like rushing, plus I want to get set up fairly early in the office as I’ve been out so much lately.
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:58 pm with sun having an altitude of 54.8° from the due south horizon (-16° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 4.2 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:52 pm with the sun in the west (275°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (281°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:30 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 57 seconds with dusk around 7:58 pm, which is one minute and 9 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:33 pm. At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 58 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Tomorrow will have 13 hours and 11 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 49 seconds over today.
Yesterday I went out to see the folks, 👨👩👦 and most of the afternoon I was terribly tired. Not sure why, maybe it just because I had the windows closed most of the day. Then did an evening hike up Bennett Hill and came home, got unpacked and went to bed. 🛏️ Damn smoke alarm randomly went off shortly after I went to bed, 🚬 not sure why as I had the windows open and there was no smoke or even moisture in the air. It’s not done that in a while. 🔕
Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 44 degrees at 5am. 10 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 3rd. Light and variable wind becoming west around 5 mph. In 2023, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 29 degrees. The record low of 16 occurred back in 1977.
Been doing a ton of reading this past weekend. 🏗️ Lots of learning about buying and building a house, plus some more of the Power Broker and the story of Robert Moses. Trying to finish up the e-books 📚️ in particular as they have to be returned shortly.
The weekend looks like shit again. 💩 Saturday, a chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 52. Breezy. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 62. Maximum dew point of 44 at 7pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 58 degrees. I was sort of hoping to get out of town this weekend, though I’d rather save more and wait another weekend and maybe take Earth Day Weekend to get out of town.
Looking ahead and thinking of my poverty once I pay the various tax departments, next Monday is 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, warm, 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.
The post office isn’t going anywhere. The constitution guarantees the post office and federal law requires them to set postal rates equal to their cost. The agency is off budget and doesn’t receive taxpayer money nor should it. If the post office needs money, then it should raise rates. Mail is a lot more expensive than years ago but people are still mailing letters and advertisers are still stuffing my mailbox full constantly.
Honestly, with the amount of mail I send these days, I wouldn’t mind spending a buck or two to mail a letter.Usually letters are at least that valuable to me to mail. Charge advertisers a buck or two too, they clearly can afford it. I rarely send mail, maybe one or two letters a year. But I sure get a lot of junk mail that I’m not interested in reading and it goes straight to the recycling bin. Based on the amount of junk mail I get, I feel like advertisers could pay a heck of a lot more for the amount of trash that is delivered to my mail box daily. I think many weeks the mail delivery is one of my biggest sources of trash.
