Wild Turkeys - Happy Thanksgiving!

Wild turkeys feeding in the field at the mountain house

The wild turkey is omnivorous and primarily feeds on nuts, berries, acorns, grasses, seeds, and insects. 

These turkeys are enjoying the winter rye that was recently planted.

The Green Violinist 1923-24 by Marc Chagall the inspiration for the title of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof

“A fiddler on the roof. It sounds crazy, no?” asks the poor Jewish milkman. “In our little village of Anatevka you might say every one of us is a fiddler on a roof. Trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask why do we stay up here if it is so dangerous? We stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance. That I can tell you in one word. Tradition!”

The fiddler is a metaphor for survival in a life of change and uncertainty through the upholding of tradition and joy.  Chagall used the fiddler in many of his paintings to illustrate happy celebrations in Jewish lives. Chagall painted "The Green Violinist" in 1923-1924, thirty years after Aleichem’s novel, Tevye's Daughters (or Tevye the Milkman), and forty years before the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof.

Winston-Salem Journal Review - "Fiddler"

‘Fiddler’ inspires us to weigh tradition’s place
Sunday, November 4, 2012 12:00 am

Matchmaker

Ken Keuffel/Winston-Salem Journal

Do we uphold tradition or let it erode?

That’s the principal question at the heart of “Fiddler on the Roof,” the popular musical that Twin City Stage is reviving. And it’s a question we’re inspired to care about in numerous ways as we take in the often-funny show, which opened Friday at the Arts Council Theatre.

The show, directed with aplomb by Bobby Bodford, also thrives on the able music direction of Margaret B. Gallagher and the imaginative choreography of Benji Starcher. The cast often fills the stage, but you never feel that it becomes unwieldy or unmanageable.

“Fiddler” is set in a Jewish settlement in a Tsarist Russia that is intolerant of it and ultimately shuts it down. The musical transports us to a time when resistance to “modern” ideas was beginning to weaken.

One result: a man and a woman might just bypass a matchmaker and marry because of their love for one another, even if such a union meant financial struggles, dislocation or being stigmatized for marrying outside one’s faith.

Tim Austin as Tevye

Tevye (Tim Austin), the loveable milkman, contends with revolutionary notions taking hold in his three oldest daughters as they find love and pursue marriage. The daughters are Tzeitel (Mary Lea Williams); Hodel (Katie Skawski); and Chava (Gracie Falk).

Austin is at his best when the rest of the play’s action freezes and he engages in a mini-soliloquy, weighing the pros and cons of a momentous dilemma. Tzeitel, for example, might not enter an arranged marriage with a wealthy butcher old enough to be her father, opting instead for Motel (Latimer Alexander), a poor tailor.

In each mini-soliloquy sequence, Austin goes back and forth thoughtfully between two extremes, beginning each scenario with “on the other hand.” His struggles emerge as genuine, exposing the tensions between rigid inflexibility and greater openness.

For some reason, I hadn’t seen a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” until I reviewed the current Twin City production. But I had certainly heard parts of it many times in the great songs by composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick. These were powerful enough to enter the collective consciousness and stay there for almost 50 years, delighting young and old alike. The original Broadway production of “Fiddler” opened in 1964, spawning numerous professional and amateur revivals.

On Friday, it was a joy to experience such classics as “Matchmaker, Matchmaker”; “If I Were a Rich Man”; and “Sunrise, Sunset” in their original contexts. The humor in Joseph Stein’s book, though sometimes a bit corny, usually hits the nail on the head in its expression of universal truths about life, money or the lack thereof.

Can Woolly Worms predict Winter Weather? Just Ask the Wooly Worm!

Wooly Worm 2012

Many people in the Appalachian mountains have used the wooly worm to predict the upcoming winter weather for generations. The wooly worm caterpillar is the larva stage of the Isabella tiger moth.  The woolly worm has 13 alternating black and reddish brown stripes and each stripe corresponds to one of the 13 weeks of winter, from December to March. 

According to the wooly worm, the prediction for the 2012-13 winter in the High Country in North Carolina:

• Beginning on December 22, winter will open with 4 weeks of snowy, cold weather.

• Week 5 (Jan. 20, 2013, to Jan. 26, 2013) of winter will feature light snow and cool temperatures.

• Weeks 6 through 11 (Jan. 27, 2013, to March 9, 2013) will bring normal temperatures.

• Week 12 (March 10, 2013, to March 16, 2013) will be unusual, with an ice storm possible.

• The final week of winter, week 13 (March 17, 2013, to March 23, 2013), will be cold and snowy.

We found this wooly worm crawling outside our house and is seems that this caterpillar's segments correspond to the official wooly worm's prediction from the Wooly Worm Festival in Banner Elk. We will just have to wait and see how the winter unfolds as the mountains have already seen snow and it's still fall.