Grand Avenue by Mike Thompson for January 25, 2025

No churning butter will really warm you up, more so than wood chopping.

Many are all gathering road dust this year unless they have time/money to drive way north. But, ice fishing is good.

That’s no reason to rob your grandkids of that joy!

I’ve chopped a fair amount of wood, but haven’t churned butter. I have hand-cranked an ice cream maker.

Many years ago, my aunt and uncle had a cow. We would run the milk through the cream separator, making sure that we did not try to slow it down since it had a heavy flywheel to keep the motion going. Then we 4 cousins would turn the butter maker that had big wooden paddles while my aunt made fresh buns. Warm with fresh butter and homemade strawberry jam, better than ice-cream.

As well as hauling water from the Creek and heating it on the pot bellied wood stove for washing. That is a lot of hauling water

So what’s your point.

One of the happiest times of my life was playing in the snow with my little friend Bobby when I was three years old. We had sleds but not a snowmobile.