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©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.

I discovered the place a week before Valentine’s day in 2007 in a frantic search for sea salt caramels (One of my wife’s favorites) and I didn’t want to pay the stupid amount of money that Crate & Barrel was charging. (And shipping was almost as much as the product!) Granted, my time and options were running short, but I was loathe to throw unnecessary money at big chain stores instead of supporting local merchants. That’s when I found Ovedia online.

It was obvious by the copy on the site that folks at Ovedia see candy as passion, and weren’t in business just to hawk chocolates. Artisan chocolates, no doubt!

I called from work and found out that I would not be able to get to the shop before it closed, so I inquired about delivery. The proprietor asked where I lived and as our house was so close to downtown Amesbury, she offered to drop them off with a note as well. I’m proud to say that I was the shop’s first delivery customer. But whether the shop delivers regularly, I couldn’t say.

Well, the sea salt caramels, with milk or dark chocolate, were a huge success. Every night for about three weeks, my wife would, chew, smack her gums, lick her fingers and thoroughly enjoy her confections while I sat watching her, with my jaw agape and drool slowly collecting at the corner of my mouth. She was almost through the entire box before she finally gave me one. I could see why she didn’t want to share.

Ovedia makes its own candy, as well as some of the best hot chocolate my wife and I ever had. You’ll always see a couple cars parked by the front door—no doubt someone enjoying a cup of hot chocolate or some coffee with a few sweets. Aside from a sure win with Valentine’s Day treats, I highly recommend Ovedia for any special occasion, a perfect hot drink and accompanying treats to warm you on cold days or for a quick morsel to satisfy your sweet tooth.

©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.

The Newburyport News reports that dredging the 16-mile channel from Newburyport to Haverhill to bring it to a depth of 8 feet will destroy much of the rocky river bottom, which is the ideal spawning ground for the sturgeon, which are on the federal endangered species list. The Merrimack River’s sturgeon population was estimated in 1993 to be between 20 and 100 fish.

Recent depth tests found that much of the river is 4 to 6 feet deep in many areas, with some shoals as shallow as 3 feet.

The decision not to dredge the river by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers was a tough call for Haverhill as it could mean the loss of potential business and boating traffic. However, any impact to the shortnose sturgeon population could be disastrous to the species in the Merrimack.

While this will probably hurt Haverhill’s plans for more riverside business and growth, I am somewhat pleased to see that steps are being taken to protect this fish. Too often these days, we hear how bits and pieces of animal habitats and nature preserves are slowly whittled away by business interests in the name of progress.

©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.

While homes in the area were not shaken, many residents did report hearing a loud bang from the earthquake. The epicenter occurred just southeast of Merrimac center.

Dana Smith, a seismologist and associate director at the earthquake observatory, said in the paper that earthquakes of this magnitude typically occur once a year in the Amesbury/Merrimac area. This is due to a fault line that runs through the two towns.

Thankfully, the seismic activity in this area is nothing compared to other parts of the world, but Monday’s quake is a reminder that the seemingly sedate geologic area of New England is still alive and kicking deep underground.

©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.

Not wanting to travel far, we went to Amesbury’s own Cider Hill Farm, of which we’re somewhat proud to tell everyone is one of the best apple orchards in Essex County. A small working farm, Cider Hill has a variety of fruit and vegetable crops that visitors can pick themselves, such as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, apricots, peaches, plums, nectarines, apples, pumpkins, and corn. They also have a farm store that’s stocked with a slew of local farm foods, a working honey bee hive and the best cider donuts within a 50 mile radius. Ohhhhhh, the cider donuts. [Drool]

The apple orchard works it’s way up a hill at the back of the farm property. If the 500 meter walk is too much for you, there’s a tractor pulling a hay-filled trailer that you can ride to the top of the hill.

A view of the orchard and farm from the back of the store.

Cider Hill farm also has gifts and assorted sundry items, including the coveted caramel apples. The day we went, Julie Hahnke, author of the children’s book “Through the Eyes of a Raptor” was selling signed copies of her book, as well as playing the bagpipe outside the store. And hey, who doesn’t love the bagpipes?

The view the farm store, parking lawn and green houses from about halfway up Cider Hill.

Finally, one last plug for Cider Hill farm: They have two working wind turbines, with plans to put in a third, to harness wind energy, rather than sucking electricity from coal, gas and nuclear powered plants. You can make them out in the picture above. They are left of center.

Some of the locals are a bit blown over about the wind turbines being installed and say that they “ruin the view,” but if it means paving the way for alternative energy sources in town and providing an example of making wind and solar power mainstream, we’re all for it.

©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.

For a prime viewing location, we drove to Woodsom Farm, here in Amesbury, near the New Hampshire border, and walked to the top of a grassy hill. The spot is perfect for viewing astronomical events, except for an unusually bright street lamp down by the street that seems to be aimed straight at the hill. But for our meteor viewing purposes, this light didn’t matter.

We set up our lawn chairs at the hill’s summit, donned hats and clothes to battle the slight chill and the voracious mosquitoes, slathered ourselves in citrus oil-based bug repellent (more effective than typical commercial varieties), sat back, and waited for the show to begin.

The Perseid meteor shower is actually Planet Earth orbiting through a long trail of dusty debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, which takes 130 years to  circle the sun. When the Earth passes close the comet’s orbit, the debris left behind the comet’s wake flies through our atmosphere at a wicked 37 miles per second, creating beautiful streaks of light in the mid-summer night sky. What makes viewing the meteor shower even better this year is that the moon will be new on Sunday, and there won’t be any reflection to ruin the show.

We sat under a beautiful night sky for a little over an hour, from 11:15 p.m. to just past 12:15 a.m. In that time, we saw at least 25 to 30 meteors streak through the sky, leaving bright or faint trails. The meteors mostly went from the east to the west, northeast to southwest and north to south. If anyone has good viewing conditions on Sunday night, they’ll likely be able to view from 90 to 100 meteors per hour for a few hours after midnight.

A Perseid meteor streaks through the night sky. (Photo by Chuck Hunt/Space.com)

Viewing conditions were so good last night, we were also able to make out the Milky Way, a faint milky white band of light that is actually the main plane of the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy. Even though many of the stars we see at night are not on this plane, they are actually part of the Milky Way, which is 100,000 light years in diameter and 1,000 light years thick.

©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.

The Newburyport Daily News reports that McKay, studying marine archaeology at the University of Bristol, England, is investigating the ruins of a ship that is half submerged in mud on the Merrimack River in Haverhill, Mass. as part of his thesis for a master’s degree. The hulk has been lying on the bank so long that trees, shrubs and grass are growing from it.

The working theory at this point is that the ship is a circa-1855 Nantucket lightship. McKay is trying to determine what ship it is and how it came to its final resting place, just downriver from the bridge that connects Haverhill to Groveland. According to official documents, it’s the LV-1 Lightship, 103 feet long, built in Portsmouth in 1855, and stationed for many years on the South Shoals of Nantucket. The problem for McKay is that the wreck on the Merrimack is only 80 feet from bow to stern.

He’s got his work cut out for him, and he’s been busy taking measurements and observations with Victor Mastone, director of the state’s Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources.

We wish you smooth sailing, Graham.

Graham McKay takes notes from the deck of the wreck. (Photo by Roger Darrigrand/Newburyport Daily News)

Anyone with any information on the ship is asked to contact McKay at grahamamckay@yahoo.com.

©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.

To help raise more money for the Amesbury high school band, we purchased a flock-back. Our neighbors, who flocked us this past fall, got a quick lesson in the migratory patterns of the elusive band flamingo, when a flamboyance of pink flamingoes spent the day on their lawn.

Here’s a photo of last night’s handiwork from AHS band boosters.

Want to help raise money for the Amesbury High School band? Check out their flocking web site. http://gotflocked.com/

©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.

According to a recent article in the Newburyport Daily News, Steve Klomps, the Peabody Essex Museum‘s director of finance and a homeowner in the riverfront area of Amesbury that was the heart of the town’s shipbuilding industry, was prompted to research the Essex when he received a letter from a man in North Carolina looking for the ship’s plans to build a model.

Here are some other interesting Amesbury shipbuilding facts gleaned from the article:

• Amesbury was the second-largest source of ships in the Boston registry during the mid to late 18th century and early 19th century.
• Before 1812, more ships were built by Amesbury shipwrights than Newburyport shipwrights, mostly from the northern bank of the Merrimack River.
• During Salem’s merchant and marine hey-day, there were more Amesbury-built ships there, than Salem-built ships.
• Thousands of ships were built in Amesbury, which ended up sailing to all corners of the world.

©2010 Blog de Puree. All Rights Reserved.