Gilboa is a town in Schoharie County, New York, United States. The population was 1,215 at the 2000 census. The Town of Gilboa is in the south part of the county and is southwest of Albany.
ccording to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 59.3 square miles (154 km2), of which, 57.8 square miles (150 km2) of it is land and 1.6 square miles (4.1 km2) of it (2.63%) is water.
The south town line forms a border with Delaware County and Greene County. The Schoharie Creek flows northward through the town. New York State Route 30 is a north-south highway in Gilboa. New York State Route 23 cuts through the southwest corner of the town. New York State Route 990V is a highway running eastward from NY-30 in the southeast part of Gilboa.
I am a country boy at heart. I might live in the city, work downtown and take the bus every day but that’s not where my heart is.
Seeing those mountains in the distance, the forested hills and the little farms and homesteads carved out of the mountains just touches something inside me. The rundown trailers, the old tractors, the pigs, goats and cattle. The rusting away junk cars, the burn barrels and the brush / debris pile some day soon to be burned.
A lot of people call them ignorant hicks and hillbillies. But I don’t know, I think anybody who can scrape together a living either partially or entirety off the land is pretty damn smart and educated, even if it’s not through traditional channels.
They call it rural poverty. A lack of material stuff. Although I don’t think one can really call homesteading cheap when you look at the cost of machinery and feed. And many of rural people live a life much richer than city folk.
That probably seems like a lot to the city or village dweller, but it’s really not compared to many other parts of country. It means having neighbors nearby and having restrictions on your freedom as your neighbors are close enough to hear you shooting your guns, smell your livestock and burn barrel. Or smelling their hogs or poop-filled diapers in their trash fire. Or the pow-pow of their AR-15 or the roar of the pickup truck without a muffler.
When I own my own land, I want have more acreage, less house and material stuff and more freedom to do what I want on my land. Less of a chance to be a nuisance to them, or have to put up with their nuisances that come along with rural life and freedom to live one’s life as you should. Land is expensive, but the farther you are out in the country, the cheaper it is. And if you give up a nice house for a shed-to-cabin or a trailer, you can afford much more land that can provide a buffer from between you and the neighbors. Live and let live.
Things often these days are quite foggy. But boy did it feel mild without a breeze this morning when I stepped out a few minutes ago before the rain showers pushed through.
Once the rain stops, I should ride over to Walmart 🚲 and get some groceries and supplies though if it looks like it will hang around for a while, maybe that will be best done after I get back from visiting Mom and Dad. Honestly, now we have that extra hour in the evening which will be nice. Still a fair bit of snow around, including on the Rail Trail but with the warm weather today, and especially tomorrow ☀️ it should be tough on th remaining snow and by Tuesday I would imagine much of snow will be gone from the Rail Trail. I have a Pine Bush meeting on Wednesday. 🌲
I never did go out to Five Rivers yesterday, 🌬️ as it was pretty breeze, cool and gray most of yesterday, and I just wanted a day off to hang out, think and not do a lot. Also obviously did not go shopping. 🏪 I think I am starting to make piece in my mind about buying the truck, I want to talk to a few more people to get their opinion, but I think I want to put in no-nonsense bids on a few trucks I was looking at. I think I have a good gage on what a fair price, not too low that dealers will ignore my proposition but not too high that I am getting totally scammed. ⚖️ Its’ though though as configurations very a lot, though actually there are fairly standardized configurations if you dig through the pile of crap on Window Stickers. 💩 Truth is trying to decide really is tearing at me, as is watching the Middle East blow up. 💣 Am I buying myself the ultimate adventure rig? Or is the Godzilla Holstein a White Elephant? 🐘 It is a work truck. At some point, the check will cut, money gone, I’ll have the truck. It’s just a number on bank account, I need a truck if I want to get to wilderness, and even if I end up selling or scrapping it in a few years, there will be some residual value.
I don’ t know, it’s just so crazy these days. 🤪 It could be an amazing rig, many good adventures ahead, and ultimately what gas costs week to week doesn’t matter, as much as what it does over the next 15 years. ⛽ You’re going to have times when prices go up, other times when it’s cheap. A Taco 🌮 might be more fuel efficent but it’s not right option for me. I have started to move on a bit more, looked at truck caps, solar panels, and even battery boxes, chewing what I can and should move over form the old rig. Cellphone booster for work and streaming from camp. Diesel heater too but that can wait until next autumn, though I want one before mid-October if it’s going to be chilly at times and I’m doing a lot of remote work from either the National Forest or the Adirondacks. 🏕️ I definately want more then 100 watt in solar, but I haven’t decided if I will get a second 100 watt panel or look at a larger commercial panel to mount on the roof. Need to spec out the cost and what would work with my existing equipment. Probably get a flat roof cap over the long bed. While I liked the extra height of the MX cap on old truck, the one tons have deeper beds, and higher roof lines, so I think I’m good with the flat roof, and that will help with the gas economy and easier getting the kayak on and off the roof. 🛶
Other then that, I don’t know. 🫘 Finished off the last of the chickpeas I cooked up earlier in the week and now I have pinto beans cooking down on the stove. Listening to Steven Stills and his gang sing Helplessly Hoping, noting some day I’ll have a house with a porch like the one on the album cover. Maybe I should put more of time into finding a house, building a homestead, but I still want to travel and have some fun while I am still young. In 15 years, when I retire, I can buy land and a cabin, and move forward from there.
Helplessly hoping her harlequin hovers nearby Awaiting a word Gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit he runs Wishing he could fly Only to trip at the sound of goodbye
Wordlessly watching he waits by the window and wonders At the empty place inside Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams he worries Did he hear a good-bye? Or even hello?
This winter I’ve developed a problem I often have by the second half of the winter – trouble sleeping. I can get to bed at a reasonable hour but I still have problems getting to sleep and and then waking up early in morning and then not being able to get back to sleep.
Spending time out in the wilderness is the best treatment I know of for sleeping troubles. I need to plan at least a night or two hot tenting before the month is done. March it might be mild enough to truck cap camp or maybe some time in a lean to. Real darkness, the light next to the fire helps enormously.
I’ve tried keeping the lights dimmed in my bedroom in the evening, using more red light to counteract the impact of blue and UV light from screwing with sleep. That helps as does having the lights dim automatically as the night progresses and it’s the time I should be getting to sleep. That feature is still being rebuilt on the new microcontroller.
But it’s still not as good as good natural air that you get with windows open or camping in the wilderness. I’m sure though it won’t be that long until those days return.
I often hear from liberals that climate change is an immediately solvable problem, that with modest changes to our live-styles and much higher taxes on the rich, we can address the problem and have a better society for all. It’s a very hopeful message, but also a very unscientific and frankly quite naive message to boot.
If addressing climate change in the serious fashion needed to address the worse impacts on it was an easy, inexpensive to thing to do, it would have been done a long time ago. If we could just immediately switch over to cheaper, more reliable battery electric cars, and meet all our needs by a few solar panels, we’d do it now.
But the truth is switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is much more technically challenging, and will require changes to our own lifestyles, and maybe a reduction to the human population through an expanded death penalty. It’s going to be amazingly expensive, and difficult on economy. But ignoring the problem is likely to be more expensive.
Most of that technology is getting better, thanks in a big part about government research and incentives that are pushing the market that way. But solutions aren’t cheap, nor easy, or without requiring often significant lifestyle changes. There needs to be an adult conversation, not memes and blaming the other political party for all our woes.
This is why I’ve really had little interest in Green New Deal, because I don’t think it’s serious or workable deal. Maybe it’s a message bill that will eventually get more flush on it’s bones and enacted, but as it is it won’t do much for serious problems we face today.
