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The American Independence Museum, in Exeter, New Hampshire, is worth the small admission fee.

The exhibits focus on one family, the one who lived in the house where the museum is located, and their roles in the Revolution and New Hampshire’s history. But the displays included a lot of other history relating to the Revolution as well. We learned a lot of details about a lot of topics including the origins of Dave’s Purple Heart.

They don’t allow pictures inside the museum but the outside is another example of a sprawling house.

They were even kind enough to show us which parts were built when.

And to provide a “picture window” to show that the original part of the house was built of brick with the siding added with the first addition.

A fascinating place. Don’t bring your RV, though, as parking is at a premium.

TTYL,

Linda

Many of us are familiar with the term “urban sprawl”–where cities just keep spreading out more and more. In New England I have seen lots of what I call “rural sprawl”–where houses just keep spreading out more and more.

It often starts with a small house built back in the 1700s. As the family grew and prospered so did the house. A big barn was built near by. A carriage shed was built nearby. As the house continues to sprawl it often reached those other nearby structures making for some odd looking connecting parts.

I became fascinated by them.  Here’s some of my favorites that I could get into my camera’s viewfinder. The really great ones were too big to photograph.

Don’t they look like jigsaw puzzles assembled not quite correctly?

TTYL,

Linda

Our daughter believes in being as self sufficient as possible. So through the years she has learned many skills including blacksmithing, sheep tending, wool spinning, carpentering, gardening, soap making, candle making, sewing, vehicle repairing, solar and wind power harvesting, etc. The current focus in on animal raising and butchering.

Here’s Alexa feeding the pigs:

The free range chickens try to get a good share before the pigs, well, make pigs of themselves.

The pigs need to be watered, too. This one actually drank from the hose but I wasn’t quick enough with my camera to get a picture of that.

Alexa says when the weather is hot and she’s filling the big bowl behind the pig they stand in the stream of water and use it to scratch their itches. It wasn’t hot when we were there so we didn’t get to see that.

Here’s some large scale container gardening.

Try that right outside your front door and you might get some complaints from the neighbors. That’s one of the advantages of living on a BIG piece of land in Maine with friends. You can do this large scale living while still being a minimalist. And we got really FRESH eggs.

TTYL,

Linda

Intriguing concept, isn’t it? How can one waterfall go one way then the other? When I first heard there was one of these in Maine, I quickly put it on my list of things I had to see for myself. Once we were actually in the right neighborhood I learned there are lots of reversing waterfalls. They are also called tidal falls. Here’s how it works.

At low tide a river runs under the bridge from right to left towards towards the ocean and down a set of rocks which makes a waterfall.

At high tide the ocean runs the other way, up river, under the same bridge, over the same set of rocks, making a waterfall that goes the other way.

So which way does the water fall?

Down, of course.

TTYL,

Linda