Keith | 5 January 09 |
I’m having some wood issues. As I continue to enjoy my pellet burner, I continue to think that I did not buy enough pellet fuel to last the winter. By a rough estimation, as long as Centre County is warm and full of Spring by the end of February, I’ll be fine. However, this is certainly not my first year living in this area…so I know better. Actually, it could be spring-like by late February, but that would only mean that mid March will be 20 below with a series of blizzards!
The problem is that pellets are nowhere to be found. Everyone has them on back order and cannot promise when they’ll get their shipment. I’m not that worried seeing as I have a solid month to find some wood pellets (I can always make a longer drive and find them further north upstate).
Here’s the fun irony: I was Googling around looking for pellets. I was looking in all corners of the state for compressed wood scrap and sawdust (the basic elements of wood pellet fuel). Once I gave up on searching for wood pellets, I checked in with my township website to find out when they were picking up Christmas trees for recycling. It turns out this year, if you put your tree out this second week of January, your tree is taken out to the state game lands for “wildlife habitat”. If you put your tree out next week, it is chipped up and recycled the old fashioned way.
So as I’m looking feverishly for somewhere to buy chipped wood pellets, I am also looking for when I can give away a “used” tree so it can be chipped and turned into cardboard….or perhaps turned into wood pellet fuel and resold back to me!
Paula | 29 December 08 |
I might be biased, but I think Centre County’s small businesses turn out some of the best products in the world — especially our local farmers, who bring foods of such quality as have not been readily available since our grandparents’ generation. Just as it was for them, local foods are limited to what can be grown seasonally, and in Pennsylvania this means winter emphasis on animal products such as eggs, dairy, and meat.
So what did the old-timers do with their winter foods? We thought it would be fun to see what they had to say about the matter, so we’ve compiled a few highlights from the nineteenth-century archives of Bellefonte’s long-defunct newspaper, the Democratic Watchman.
August 5, 1870 — “How to Pack Butter. The method of packing butter on the Pacific coast, as will be seen from the following description, is very unlike our own. They never use jars or kegs, but put it in muslin sacks, made in such form that the package, when complete, is a cylinder three or four inches in diameter, and from a half-foot to a foot in length. These sacks are made of bleached muslin, and the butter is put into them as soon as worked over. The packages are then put into large casks containing strong brine with a slight mixture of saltpetre, and by means of weights kept below the surface… These butter sacks are ranged upon the counters of the dealers as readily as bars of soap; and when any portion of one is wanted, the end of the sack is stripped down, and the necessary quantity detached, when the sack is replaced, leaving the remaining portion as secure as before any part was removed.”
February 27, 1856 — “To Fatten Fowls. Fowls may be fattened in four or five days by the following process: set some rice over the fire with skimmed milk, as much as will serve for one day. Let it boil till the rice is swelled out: add a tea-spoonful of sugar. Feed the fowls four or five times a day in pans, and give them as much each time as will fill them. Great care must be taken that they have nothing sour given them, as that prevents their fattening. Give them clean water or milk from rice to drink. By this method the flesh will have a clean whiteness.”
January 2, 1856 — “The Farmer’s Department: Making Hams. Pork Hams. — When the meat is perfectly cold, after being killed, it is ready to be salted. The salt should be of the best quality — solar evaporated, ground fine, is, perhaps, the best kind — and to every pound of it one ounce of fine white sugar should be added. The hams should be laid upon a table or a bench; and every part carefully rubbed with this salt; then they should be laid in a dry tub until the next day. The same operation should be repeated every day for four days, taking care to turn the hams in the tub every time they are laid down. After this, the operation may be repeated once every two days for a week, when it will be found that the meat has absorbed sufficient salt to preserve it for family use. After this they may be slightly smoked, or hung up to dry.”
June 25, 1856 — “Christmas Tea Cake. — Take three eggs, and beat them well; and add one pint of milk, and of butter the size of an egg. Then flower [sic] sufficiently to make it the thickness of cream. Take three good apples, and, after cutting them very fine, stir in and bake. When done, score the cake on the top, and pour over it melted butter and sugar, and it is ready to eat.”
Keith | 24 December 08 |
I just want to take this moment to wish anyone who takes the time to stop in and read this site a Happy Holiday.
Although the buildup to Christmas is one of commercialism and consumerism, the very day of Christmas still signifies family, friends and giving.
So whether you shopped at Wal M@#rt or a local candle maker for your holiday shopping, it all boils down to that fantastic feeling of giving something to someone else.
I truly wish happiness and most of all safety, to everyone within earshot. I wish for peace in your heart and peace in your speak.
Happy Holidays,
Here’s to wishing for a more LOCAL year upcoming.
Paula | 14 December 08 |
For those of us down here in southern Centre County it is sometimes easy to overlook the wonderful things over on the other side of Skytop Mountain, especially when it comes to holiday shopping. We head out early to the mall or to North Atherton Street, bemoaning traffic and crowds, returning home later with bags of secret loot and quite possibly a headache — and wondering if those eyeballs inside the snowman’s head really were checking out our partner or if we’re just being paranoid. For all the joy the season brings, the shopping part can be really aggravating. Fortunately for us bottom-of-the-county dwellers, Philipsburg offers a shopping getaway in as Rockwell-esque a setting as one can find in Centre County.
Philipsburg is home to a wide variety of gift-buying opportunities, from antiques and heirlooms to sporting goods to candy, with many shops housed in some of Centre County’s most remarkable Victorian buildings. Like other communities in this part of the country, the economic values of the 60s and 70s that brought demolition to countless historically significant sites bypassed Philipsburg, leaving its original beautiful architecture intact. But what was once hardship is turning out to be a blessing: Philipsburg is able to offer the experience of strolling through shops along narrow streets, a small-town setting that retains its charm and culture as few communities still do.
Philipsburg is located 24 miles, or 40 minutes, northwest of State College on 322. If you dislike that uncompleted stretch of 322/220 between Skytop and Port Matilda, there is a more leisurely route you can take: traveling from State College, turn left onto PA Route 550 as you’re heading up Skytop Mountain. 550 will take you through Halfmoon Township — beautiful countryside, a couple small towns, and past Way Fruit Farm. Follow the signs to Port Matilda; continue straight when you get to the intersection of 220, and follow the signs to Philipsburg.
For more information, please see:
Keith | 12 December 08 |
It’s been a Middle East state of mind lately. I watched the first half of the Saddam Hussein movie on HBO. It started a bit slow, but it started getting better along the way. Hussein has always been an interesting character. As much as our government wanted to paint him out to be this venomous dictator character, most people didn’t view him in quite that sort of light. This movie is doing a nice job showing him as the ignorant power hungry moron that he was, but he certainly was nobody that could have started WWIII.
I started getting a worldly idea in my head while watching this movie. As we’re looking into the lives of the Iraqis in 1979 all the way until today, I started seeing oil and the Middle Eastern conflicts as one big war.
Beginning in 1979, the world was watching the Iranian revolution, the Iraq-Iran war and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. I’m not an historian, so I don’t want to point to 1979 and mark that as the start of this war. However, as we’ve lived through these years, it’s easy to see all the conflicts in the Middle East AND Africa for that matter (Sudan and Libya for starters), as separate little problems here and there. But history will see this as one big war. A global conflict of modern vs. third world vs. oil that lasts some 30 or 40 years is a flash in the pan.
So we’ve had 30 years of conflicts between every major religion, the have and have-nots and throw in a dash of the worlds most sought after energy source. Wow, what a layman’s way to sum up the 21st century!
