That’s what the Morning Ag Clips said, it could be rather spendy right now as is diesel if you didn’t buy it months ago at this point. And while you can say cow poop is fertilizer, there is a lot of other nutrients that are needed to replace those taken off the farm when crops and products are sold with wastes rarely returned. Sounds shitty and pungent in spring time, dragging the line of poo and water.
Partly cloudy this morning, 🌥️ but my bike is in the office, so I will be busing it in. 🚍 Went to a Colonie Planning Board Meeting last night, where another development was approved in Pine Bush. 🌲 🏗️ 🦋 It’s fine, I should be able to ride home this evening. Rear tire – with that other tube – wasn’t holding air all that great yesterday and had to pump the tube up mid-commute to work, though in the afternoon when I put the bike in my office, the pressure seemed fine.
Stopped by the Albany Public Library yesterday, to see if they could move the balance 💳 of my CDTA Navigator Card to a new card, but while very polite and helpful said only CDTA World Headquarters 📞 via the phone can do that. I ended up using the Navigator App on my phone 📱 which worked fine, but I was nervous about the app either crashing or not working or battery dead on my phone, though I did have a few singles in my wallet if necessary. I do want to get another Navigator Card but I also don’t want to lose the $13.15 balance on the expired card. I don’t ride every day, but when the weather is bad or the bike is down, the convience of the tap and go is good compared to having to open up the app and navigate through the menus. I put $27.65 on app, so I can do it either way.
Between work 🏢 and Pine Bush stuff yesterday, 🦋 I never got a chance to reach out about the spray in bed liner. I still think that’s going to be a $1,000 in unallocated cost, but I really should do it for a decade of good camping adventures. They uncoated bed sucks, and it can’t be done once the cap is installed. Maybe it will be less, depends on how the estimates come back but inflation and taxes. The bedliner and cap really are the last two big expenses left on building my rig. 🔥 I was watching SunnySlope Homesteads video on his burn barrels yesterday, and was thinking how much I miss having fires and burning shit. Amazing how with most modern trash, you toss the big white sack in the fire and it disappears down to nothing, and isn’t even that stinky or smokey. ♻️ Recycling is such a fucking scam to make city people feel less guilty about their overflowing trash can each week. Sucks being in New York. Andy Ruth when buying the cap was definately right on that point.
Well I got to shower and grab the bus. 🚿 Being it’s a session day, I want to get downtown early and catch the early shuttle over to the office lest I get caught in the protests and craziness of a session day. ✊ 📢 I really don’t miss not working downtown. I keep my suit and tie in the office, 🏢 lest some day I get summoned downtown but for the most part I just hide in my office overlooking the old city garbage dump, avoiding most of the mess except on days when I can’t ride in. I could take the SuperDuty but you know how much I love driving, especially in traffic.
The first 80-degree day of the year arrived today like a long-awaited exhale. The air, thick with a newfound humidity, carries the heavy, sweet scent of a season in transition. In the heart of the city, the winter-worn landscape is finally yielding to life, with vibrant patches of green beginning to reclaim the sidewalk cracks and park lawns.
While the morning sun feels like a gift, the thickening atmosphere hints at the volatility of spring; dark clouds are already gathering, and the distant rumble of predicted thunderstorms lingers on the horizon. Yet, there is a quiet comfort in this shifts. As the rain prepares to wash away the last of the cold, it’s a vivid reminder that the vibrant renewal of spring is no longer a distant hope, but right around the corner.
That’s the size of the Pine Bush parcel that developers want to turn into sixteen or so large suburban houses in the Pine Bush as shown on the mapper that I wrote for Save the Pine Bush.
That number sticks in my mind because that’s around the acreage of land I eventually want to own for my off-grid cabin and homestead. You know enough land to buffer from neighbors so not to smell their burn barrel or hear their noise, be raise livestock and other food, be able to have big fires without bothering others, and have an ample wood supply for heating.
Like any planning board meeting, the Guilderland Planning Board went through the initial proposed site plan, and took an initial hard look, a skeptical one in preparation of most likely approving it, as Save the Pine Bush fights back. Yet, it all seems so erily similar to the books I’ve been reading about building a house, developing a homestead, transforming raw land. Because essentially that’s my vision, assuming that when I do eventually own land, there are no structures and infrastructure on it.
Yet at the same time, it seems to pull my cogonative dissodence, thinking that I’m dreaming of developing a similar parcel, transforming a piece of so-called raw land aka woods or maybe farm field into a homestead. I know it’s different to build a small off-grid cabin, compared to a million dollar plus suburban road to 15 plastic-covered McMansions and lawns, but it’s still consuming land, domesticating and controlling it with livestock and farm equipment. It’s no longer open woods once you put a house and barn on it, no matter if it’s a few hundred square feet compared to dozens of large suburban houses as disconnected from the surrounding land as can be.
This interactive map shows the Utility Service Territories in New York State, including that of National Grid, Rochester Gas and Electric, NYS Electric and Gas, Central Hudson Gas and Electric, Orange and Rockland Utilities, Long Island Power Authority, Consolidated Edison and municipal utilities.
Ah, the rural freedom to just burn shit. No washing out plastic bottles or seperating out paper from the other burnables. Just a big ol' fire turning it into smoke and very little ash!
![Untitled [Expires July 16 2025]](https://andyarthur.org//data/photo_018786_large.jpg)
