Laurabelle's Blog

Jeff's father takes a trip to Ohio every December, and this year Jeff and I went with him. We spent a couple of days in Cincinnati with Jeff's aunt, then drove down to rural Kentucky for a few days with his uncle's family, then back to the city for the last couple of days.

Jeff's aunt (not his father's sister but the one married to his uncle) is involved in a documentary of a small hydroelectric station, called the Mother Ann Lee because it is located on old Shaker land. It's an old station, very small and out-of-date, and to boot it can only be accessed by water or by a narrow trail. For all these reasons, the power company wanted to get rid of it; it just wasn't worth it for them. Enter a small band of crazy engineers who are restoring and modernizing the station in order to get it back on line and providing power again.

It's not a large station (I think I was told it could power 2,000 homes), but every little bit counts. Kentucky is a coal-heavy region; this plant is the only one in the area that can provide clean-energy credits. For these local-energy activists, the idea is to put small, distributed, green power stations all over, so that there is less dependence on huge monolithic plants.

(I put green in quotation marks because there are many arguments on all sides about what actually constitutes green energy and what is the most environmentally friendly ... but I don't want to get into that here.)

So Jeff's aunt asked us if we would be interested in seeing the Mother Ann Lee, and of course we were. She led us along the base of a cliff, above a steep hill that led directly into the river. We had to step carefully on the damp leaves, but we didn't fall.

The station itself was fascinating. The engineers were happy to give us a little tour and tell us what they were doing. I was a little mystified by all the dials and knobs on the control panel, but it was neat to see the turbine spinning. I doubt I'll ever have the opportunity to walk inside a working power plant again.

Back at the farm, we were put to work moving the chicken fence to fresh grass. Afterwards we played a couple of games of chase the chicken to round up the escapees. One wouldn't think a smallish (earthbound) bird would be so difficult, but they can be fast. I only caught them when they gave up the game and got stuck in the fence, trying to squeeze back through.

The younger dog, Bella, helped as much as she knew how.

One frosty morning Jeff and I walked out in the pasture to get some shots of the animals. The donkey, Nick, was a pest as usual and tried to eat our sleeves. I tried in vain to get the horses to pay any attention to me at all; they were fully concentrated on grazing. Cows and goats shared the hay-pile.

Not too much of photographic note happened back in Cincinnati, but Jeff's aunt took us to Jungle Jim's, where Jeff sat on the throne of King Henry VIII, and I bought a nice burly pastry cutter (which I then forgot when we went home).

The pastry cutter was for crust to line pumpkin pies. Jeff mixed up the filling; I made the crust. I flatter myself that it turned out nicely; the flutes looked and tasted crisp and flaky.

The main course was roast chicken, from the farm — not one of the chickens we'd moved around (those are layers) but a frozen meat hen from the summer. I did an okay job on the carving, and the chicken was delicious.

Flickr photo set for this trip: Ohio/Kentucky 2008.