New Eat Local Post

I've just written about some of my favorite locally produced foods that are available at this time of year, on the Eat Local Just Food blog. The folks at Just Food Co-op are gearing up for the Winter Eat Local Challenge, taking place the first week of March. Participants aim to eat about 50% locally produced foods during the week -- and even in Minnesota in March they'll learn that that's not hard to do these days, which is part of the point of the challenge. Full disclosure: Just Food Co-op has recently been a client of the firm where I work and I've been very involved in that account, but my history of writing about local food issues, my involvement in their Eat Local blog, and my commitment to what Just Food stands for all predate any client relationship. Read my blog post here.

More Frosty Mornings

The heavy fog we had Friday and Saturday morning painted a fresh coat of thick frost over every twig and branch. We drove to the Missippippi to look for eagles on Saturday, and the frost followed us almost to the midday river and lingered even then in the shaded areas. Below are views looking roughly south and north on Highway 61 near Read's Landing. More about eagle-watching to come...

View Through Icicles

Above is the view from my upstairs bathroom window this morning. It isn't usual for large icicles like these to develop on the north side of the house , but the warmer temperatures, rain and freezing rain that we've experienced at times over the past couple of weeks have created perfect conditions for icicles. Unfortunately, their presence also suggests the possibility of ice dams on the roof which can lead to water back-up and infiltration through the shingles. Hopefully the new roofs most of us got following the big hailstorm of 2006 will be able to stand up to it.

The photo below was taken through the frost crystals that developed on the lower part of the storm window last night in the sharply colder temperatures (my desktop weather icon reads -7 F. as I write). What looks like the sun is actually a lamp on a utility pole in the backyard; its color is refracted (if that's the right word) through the frost and adds to the actual sunrise pink in the sky to give the appearance that the whole sky is glowing from an oddly-placed northeasterly sun. The lamp is barely visible through the central icicle in the top photo.

Squirrel-proof Feeder? Hah.

This supposedly squirrel-proof set-up is far from that when there is more than a foot of snow on the ground. I missed getting a shot of this squirrel moments earlier, straddling the gap with one hind foot on the cone and one on the bottom of the tube feeder.