Often a lot of internet videos of homesteaders and farmers, have their properties all prettied up for the cameras. The manure piles well hidden, the mud and muck washed away, the pungent smells of life and death not lost in the transmission of the camera’s photos.
When I was out canvassing in Plattsburgh and surrounding towns like Beekmantown and Peru, I was pretty much in the standard rural/suburbanite neighborhoods with the endless chipboard houses covered with off-white vinyl and colored sand asphalt roofs. Plastic that shows the mud and muck, UV destruction. Same old grid-tied houses, with weekly garbage hauling, flush toilets going to sewage or septic tank with the poop and paper stored for landfill disposal. Some considered by those to be modern suburban houses, others rundown old trailers. But not really homesteads with goats, hogs, sheep or cattle even if at times the tangy smell of manure hung over the air from nearby dairies which are out spreading this time of year with the corn chopped.
To be fair, the neighborhoods I was walking were walkable and suburban or rural villages. Or trailer parks. They were the places where Democrats live who have priorities besides keeping their guns and being left alone with their livestock and trash fires. Many did have wood stoves, and there was the occasional “modern” log house, and I saw actually quite a nice one out on Cumberland Head with a steel roof, still hardly the backwoods off-grid cabin I toured back in college many years ago, when people were still using lead acid batteries, compact florescents and those big old Outback Inverters with separate charger controllers, and solar was still expensive and boutique technology. I know such places exist in the Greater Plattsburgh, but I wasn’t going to visit such places in search of Democrats. Most of those places are really in the backwoods, up in hills in the remote parts of Altona, Blackbrook, Dannemora, and other towns well hidden from the road.
I get it’s New York State with the burn ban, and I was never in a real rural area. And I do know those places exist, even if they aren’t as common as the places that fill your Zillow feed, at least until you disable that program on your phone. No everything is that typical vinyl commercial crap, sold as beautiful, colorful and sometimes sustainable plastic even when it’s not. But most of what I saw was a mixature of wealthy houses along the lake, very suburban neighborhoods, and trailer parks – which very much had the big televisions, high-speed internet, weekly trash pickup and just as much junk as the wealthy residents.
I do romanticize a lot about the nobel savage, as if most of the poor lived on homesteads without overflowing weekly trash baskets full of plastics, where houses weren’t wrapped in plastic, where processed food wrapped loaded with saturated fat and sugar in colorful packaging wasn’t the dominant form of sustenance. Places that might smell of manure or burnt plastic occasionally, but are vastly more sustainable than those with weekly trash service and unlimited coal and gas fired electricity. Where the poor eat real food, because they had no other option, as they couldn’t afford the cheap crap constantly being forced down our throats by the advertisers. Where toxic vinyl wasn’t the norm, where wood and logs weren’t seen as too quaint even for the rural home. Where people have land, where whatever nuisance they create by everyday living has basically no impact on anyone else. There is some of that town in the of Plattsburgh but not really.
Cloudy to start out yesterday, but it got clearer as the sun rose though soon I was back out canvassing. But first I took some time to ride along the shoreline of the lake, which was very low because of the dry weather of recent, revealing well packed sand which was great for riding on. Rode down along the suspension bridge, took some more photos 
and caught some of the last glimmers of autumn. Yesterday, I spent the balance of day canvassing in the Village of Peru and then Lapham Mills, getting out the vote, then driving down through the Adirondack Northway in stillness of the moonlight of the full moon over the Adirondacks. 
Peru had the wonderful smell of apples 
though Lapham Mills was more tangy from Remillards Holsteins spreading shit. 
Their mountains of silage along the Adirondacks is always impressive. It’s November, the time when dairymen count the loads of shit spread before the frozen ground! 
Depending on the agricultural use, based on book I just read – Managing Manure – there is a time period often running 100 days between spreading and crop harvest. Depends on what your growing, and how much and when you need the spike of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous. Made me wish I had taken today off to and could have done an overnight in the Adirondacks like I don’t know, maybe outside of Newcomb or Minerva on Boreas River. 
But alas it’s back to work today. Maybe next weekend? Red seems to be running good.
It was good to get away though even if just for a weekend to some place I haven’t been in a years. The last time I was up through Plattsburgh was November 2015, when I did that road trip up to Brasher Falls State Forest. 
Some great ag country, then it opens up into the mountains in almost al directions. I just wish there were more options to camp in the wilderness nearby in developed roadside campsites, and then I could head back down into the valley to explore. In college I used to camp at Terry Mountain State Forest, 
but that was either back country or parking just at a random spot off the road.
so that’s reasonable. I’m not fully adjusted to the time change, but I actually like the early hour as it gives me time to cook and think. 
Some of my clearest thinking and best time to read is in the stillness of the morning. It’s cold and dark when I get home most nights, especially with the time change and winter getting underway, so I figure it’s best to retire to bed early 
and maximize the time in the morning. 
Plus it’s more of an excuse to drink excessive amounts of coffee which keeps me pissing and pooping. 
People always say they have no time to cook, but it’s funny how much extra time I have not owning one of those boob tubes or having the interwebs at home beyond my phone. 
as I have an event in the evening but whatever. I’ll walk down to the shuttle 
from Madison Avenue for some steps though I got plenty in yesterday but that french onion soup 
and chicken pasta primavera 
was pretty heavy but I did burn a lot of calories riding and canvassing and tonight after the open bar 
I’ll be back on the healthy eating thing. I mean there is a reason I’m busing it in as I’ll be too drunk to load a bike on the bus. Indeed the french toast from my own homemade bread 
with blueberries and sugar free maple 
syrup was a start. And fried onions, black beans 
and some of the left over pasta primavera was a good start. And Sunday and Monday I pretty much eat the rice, beans, plain yogurt and oranges and bananas 
was good though not enough vegetables. Changing that for the balance of the week, lots of vegetables in meals planned for tomorrow and Friday. Plus I’ll bike in tomorrow and maybe Friday, 
though it will be dark at 5 PM an I’ll have to put my bike on the bus home, that is after riding back downtown. The schedule sucks with the transfer from the bike to the bus, but whats the alternative? Drive my big jacked up truck in.
but I’m seeing conflicting forecasts for the weekend. I am thinking if I take Monday off and then with Veterans Day it can be a four-day weekend, and leave for camp on Saturday morning. But not if it’s going to be too cold and wet and generally miserable on Sunday. 
I mean I really want to get back up to the woods and have a fire 
and ride trail before rifle season but not if it’s too nasty out. The next time I think I’ll have a chance to get out of town is Black Friday after Thanksgiving and maybe take that Monday off after the long weekend. That would likely be the East Branch but it depending on how snowy it is I’ve also been thinking the area along the Boreas River and NY 28N. Kind of want to get back to the High Peaks, I was rather inspired by that drive up to Plattsburgh for this past long weekend. 
