Music by Charlie Recksieck to usher us into the New Year.

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Most people commemorate Thanksgiving today, and all things associated with this holiday. There will be some celebrating family, some marking the day with food, and some praying at the altar of football. Some will be remembering the Pilgrims, and the earliest arrival of Europeans bringing colonists and their livestock to North America. NOT!

Stephen Monroe schools us on a common misconception about the domestic animals that were truly the first to be brought here to the Americas. Which livestock breeds beat the Mayflower across the Atlantic? What we currently call the “Spanish Colonial” horses were just one group, and the hardy and adaptable Florida Cracker Horse was a derivative breed of this impactful importation. Horses, cattle, chickens and goats - and they arrived 100 years before the big wooden boat we celebrate today.

But don’t forget – the Spanish brought the pigs in then, too, so football is truly appropriate. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Links:
https://themayflowersociety.org/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056085/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Cracker_Horse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Marsh_Tacky#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banker_horse#Breed_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Ponce_de_Le%C3%B3n
https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/juan-ponce-de-leon
https://www.fdacs.gov/
https://floridacrackerhorseassociation.com/

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We were in the mood for something sweet, so we thought it was time for a visit to the sugar shack. We packed up our gear and headed back east to Westbrook, CT to our friends John and Bonnie Hall at Maple Breeze Farm. There we saw the whole process of making that sweet maple syrup. Just in time for the maple glazed ham at Thanksgiving.

Links:
https://www.facebook.com/p/Maple-Breeze-Farm-100064517539226

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