This is neat

Something fun for your Sunday: The recent warm temperatures in Northern Town have also warmed the snow, reducing its density and letting it streeeettttttch. I'd intended to post a photo (yet to be taken) showing the accumulated layers in the snow pack that I've left undisturbed on one half of the balcony (to the left of the centre post) all winter. I won't get to show you that photo however, because overnight the warming pile slowly bent over and has slid almost entirely off the balcony rail. It reminds me somehow of a snail or slug, twisting and drooping but yet still stickily hanging on.

Northern News flash

This just in:

Over 3,000 reindeer are missing from an island about 150 km from Northern Town.

Herders who are responsible for maintaining the herd arrived at the island to check in on them and to ensure that the herd hadn't crossed the ice to the mainland.

They arrived too late, the herd having left the island to go gossip with the mainland caribou. If tongue wagging is all they're up to, the herders and wildlife biologists will get over it because caribou never believe what reindeer have to say but if they get up to any carousing or passing of disease from the domestic reindeer herd to the caribou they'll be suspended from school and made to attend lectures on abstinence and safe se...

Er. It will be bad.

Herders searching by snow mobile have so far found only a few hundred animals. If I see any strolling down the river to warmer climes or in cahoots with the local caribou, I'll be sure to let you all know and to have them ask where Santa hid the rest of the holiday gifts I'd wished for.

In the meantime, perhaps their wagging tongues might be a hint as to where to find them...

Or was that wagging tails?

Addendum

My apologies everyone: I got the numbers wrong in my last post and my town isn't swimming in nearly as much buttermilk as I'd thought. Phooey.
Like the childhood game of telephone, the size of the accidental order grew as the story was passed along to me such that I was off by a factor of ten. There were only 1,200 litres accidentally ordered, which was still a big enough amount that the story made the national news (which is sort of amusing in its own right).
To spin the story another more personal way, we're now the proud owners of 6.8% of that order! Including a few litres that TheManNorth consumed and a bit that was added to our pancakes this morning, we have 81 litres (about 21 gallons) of milk stored out on our balcony.
I think that's still deserving of this blog, no?

And, no, it's not just sitting out in the snow, as the ravens would be sure to shred the containers open and we'd end up with buttermilk icicles. It's secured in a very large plastic container and a cooler. If we get more, it will be in the snow, but hidden from curious corvids under a tarp currently covering my bicycle.

Got Milk?

We do!

Que maniacal laughter....

We've recently acquired 14 litres of buttermilk and plan to get at least as much, if not double that amount more, all for free! Hurrah! (Normally we'd have to pay over $4 a litre.)

Have you plundered a dairy you ask? NooOOOooo silly reader, we're one of a few thousand beneficiaries of someone's big mistake: A local grocery store accidentally added a few additional zeros when ordering more supplies recently. They were alerted to this when a transport truck arrived in town with their order in the form of Twelve thousand litres of buttermilk (instead of the 12 litres or so they'd intended on purchasing) and the store is giving it away for free instead of throwing it out. Today I asked a clerk how much of the order has been given out since it arrived last week and she said that approximately half of the order remains and that it is moving slowly. However, considering that the store typically only sells 4 or 5 litres a week, getting rid of 6, 000 litres, albeit for free, in the same time seems rather quick to me.

Along with most of the town, we're now hunting up buttermilk recipes, other than for use in pancakes, for which TheManNorth has a killer recipe of his own. (Feel free to share favourite buttermilk recipes of your own or send me a link, if you like.)

Why couldn't they return the order? Aside from the lengthy time it would take to do so is that there wasn't time to make arrangements for it before highway transport became impossible. The ferries that carry highway traffic across two local rivers have just stopped running as the rivers are icing up and the only way in and out until the ice is thick enough for the ice roads to be ready (about a month from now) is by air.