The Bobcats are Coming Back to Warner

by George Packard on February 14, 2010 · 3 comments

Wildlife experts think there may be more or less one bobcat per town in NH. This Warner cat stood for her portrait in 2008.

In early February two years ago Chuck, our big black tough tomcat, developed, overnight, a sudden and complete disinterest in going outside. We’d had a few inches of fresh, wet snow, but I’d never known him to be a wimp about the cold. It wasn’t long before I discovered the cause of his concern: fresh bobcat tracks criss-crossing our yard. Chuck was (may he mouse in peace) a cat who never met a dog he thought he couldn’t take. But you don’t get to be 18 years old if you are a cat by making a whole lot of bad decisions. There was no doubt in Chuck’s mind. The only good bobcat is the one that’s on the other side of the door.

Our bobcat's calling card: just like a house cat, but much bigger.

A bobcat in Faith's drive staring down her dogs in early February.

Chuck’s nemesis prowled our place for about a week, which meant we had to change Chuck’s catbox a lot more than usual. We saw a lot more of Chuck that week, but never saw the big wild kitty. That’s why I was thrilled when Faith Minton, who lives on a hill just north of the center of Warner, sent around an email with a long shot, slightly blurry, of a bobcat sitting in her drive. [read more…]

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It’s February. Do you know where your veggies are?

February 8, 2010

Local link: Kearsarge Mountain CSA
Last year about this time we talked with Warner, NH farmer Larry Pletcher about his new greenhouse and his ambition to sell winter greens to the greens-starved masses of the Kearsarge area (view earlier blog). And in fact, he’s gone and done just that. Imagine! Buying and eating greens in the [...]

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Unclogging the blog pipeline…

February 2, 2010

Thanks to our readers and viewers who’ve emailed to find out just which edge of the earth I dropped off. Truth is I’ve been putting any shreds of extra time into getting the new Curiously Local Corner Stores site up and running. And I think that’s a worthwhile endeavor: the goal is to provide access [...]

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Flyman’s Texas Mesquite Honey Mead

January 5, 2010

Jane Packard sent us a note from Texas:
On the way home from visiting family for the holidays, we stopped off to visit Flyman, outside Terrell, Texas. His tagline on the bee blog is “all men are equal before fish”.
After a picante lunch at the Gira del Sol,in a renovated Dairy Queen, he sent us on [...]

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Heidi Douglas & the Kentucky Mountain Trio

January 1, 2010

In November Joan and I drove her father, Denver, down to McCreary County in southern Kentucky, not far from Bimble, the closest town to the little hill country farm where Denver was born and raised. We spent a few days in the Eagle Falls Resort and RV Park, just a quarter mile from Cumberland Falls, [...]

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Time’s Up for another 100 Acre Family Farm

December 12, 2009

On November 30 the little Super 8 Motel in Brookfield Pennsylvania was nearly full. Most of the guests were deer hunters out of the woods from their first day of the season. Men in orange camoflauge stalked the halls, and gathered in the motel parking lot around SUVs with deer strapped to their roofs and [...]

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Dreaming Ohio: Photos from Rte. 224

December 3, 2009

I know, I know. People are asking me, “So where’s Week #4 and Week #5 of the garden blog? Where are the CuriouslyLocal online stores? Where’s George?”
OK, so we’re in Indiana, having roadtripped through Pennsylvania and Ohio. And on the plane tomorrow for Calif. It’s been a week of webcode geeking. Do the letters [...]

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Time Banking in Warner: Give some, take some

November 28, 2009

As an old dog I don’t learn new tricks easily or without growsing. And so it was with the Time Bank trick. If I give you an hour of my video production time in exchange for an hour of your window washing time, since when is THAT an equal exchange? It took me a while [...]

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Oops! Timelapse at curiouslylocal

November 27, 2009

It happens sometimes. You think it’s Friday, and then things go awry, and you are set back a week. Curiouslylocal stuttered a little bit today, so I had to go back to backups from Sunday. I’ll get the posts from this week back up tomorrow, including one on the Warner Time Bank project. In the [...]

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Week #3: The Compost is Cooking

November 22, 2009

It’s the end of Week #3 in the life my brand new food garden. November 21 by the calendar. The compost pile I built two weeks ago on one end of this 5′x20′ garden patch is looking…well…settled. To the casual observer, it is a pile of old leaves and garden trash. To me, its builder, [...]

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