The wood pile
Posted on June, 20, 2011 by rodh -Well the wood pile shrunk by 2′ yesterday, at least thats how it appears after the drifted snow lifted the ground around it. It was getting small anyway, we have been using a lot of wood this year. I am referring to the furnace pile which is different from the stove pile. The furnace pile is my job and my pile to worry about and the stove pile is Grandmolly’s pile.
The furnace pile is the one that appears to have shrunk yesterday and it’s the biggest one we have because the furnace, which is one of those outdoor models uses a lot of wood. This furnace heats the house, the woodshop and our hot water. It burns unsplit 4′ long and green wood is not a problem in fact I prefer it once a bed of coals is going because it lasts longer. The furnace will go for 2 days if loaded to the top and if the shop is not on and it’s not too cold out. Normally I put small loads in twice a day which seems the most efficient way to run it. The same fire is burning that we started before Thanksgiving. The neatest thing about this furnace is that you can see the smoke coming out of the chimney from the kitchen window.
There are two other homes in our valley which we can see from the house and I sometimes check their smoke stacks to see how they are doing. Kind of like a smoke message that all is well. Wood heat is part of living in Vermont and lots of people use it either entirely or in part. We have lots of wood in Vermont. It’s part of the culture and it’s often a conversational opener like ” hows the wood pile lasting, or do you have all your wood in?” The work and thought that goes with wood burning extends outside the heating season. A friend once told me that Vermont has two seasons which are winter and getting ready for winter. Anyway their is the cutting , moving, splitting and drying that accompanies the activity of building your winter season wood pile. Putting things by is a large part what we do. Like squirrels we store up our needs for winter. Their is also haying and storing garden produce and fruits which together with the wood pile keep us and our animals going throughout the winter season.
So our wood pile is important. Of course we could heat with oil and we have a furnace to do that but besides the cost we prefer wood. It smells so good too. Grandmolly’s stove (we call it that because she loves it and likes to tend it) is used in the fall and spring and during long cold snaps when we need an extra thawing out heat source. It’s also a great assist to a deep rest. My chair is opposite the stove and their is nothing like coming in with a wind chilled face , cold hands and feet and sitting the recliner soaking up the radiant heat from Grandmolly’s stove. It will knock you out in a few minutes.
Anyway back to the wood pile. Up to now I was confident we would make it through with the wood in the pile and wood shed but this cold spell has been a long one and is still hanging on and the pile is getting low. Backup was supposed to be the wood which is cut in the wood lot but it’s sort of out of reach now until the snow melts back and becomes accessible with the tractor. But it’s the middle of February and the sun is up longer each day and is a little warmer even if the cold air would lead you to believe otherwise.
And their is Grandmolly’s stove to fall back on.
A Chicken story
Posted on June, 20, 2011 by rodh -One new thing we are doing this year is participating in a program called “Farmer to School Correspondence Course” Each farmer participant get assigned two classes to write to one time each month about farm life. Ours are an elementary school class and a 6- 8th grade class in neighboring Towns. I wrote this story about my wifes chicken flock and hope you enjoy it.
Finally we get some snow, enough to ski and slide and make snowmen and all the other fun things that come with snow. Our cattle dog loves the stuff, he likes to run down the lawn area and it diving under and then bursting out at the top in a shower of flying snow. He does this till his paws get caked up then he comes to a quick stop and goes to work with his teeth cleaning them out. Actually Dusty takes very good care of his paws all the time, grooming them and keeping them in top shape. Maybe it’s because he loves to run and jump as his favorite thing. He will jump the 3’ high electric fence around the chicken pen if I tell him the command “over” and over he goes with his paws tucked under just as neat, looks like a horse going over a jump.
The chickens are my wife’s project on our farm. We call her Grandmolly because that is what our 11 year old grandchildren call her (they are twins and live in South Carolina). Grandmolly has 12 Buff Orpington chickens which she keeps for eggs for our table and sometimes sells the extra ones to get feed money. These chickens lead a good life. Grandmolly adds other treats to the chicken feed to make them healthy and happy. Happy chickens lay better eggs. She gives them ground seaweed which is also called kelp, flax seeds to make the eggs healthy, and lots of table and garden scraps. Do you know that chickens are meat eaters and love to pick the meat off table bones, that is the ones that Dusty doesn’t get first. The chicken pen has a big outdoor yard where the hens and Rooster can go out during the day to catch bugs, dig worms and their favorite activity is to dig holes under the balsam fir trees in their yard and lay in them taking dust baths. Sometimes they will get up on the branches and roost in the sun . But they do not like snow so Grandmolly being a good caretaker of her flock will shovel a path for them out to the trees so they can get out under the branches.
Chickens are a favorite food for hawks and they sometimes fly over looking for a nice plump chicken dinner but the hens are quick to spot their shadows on the ground and will high tail it (run like mad with their tails up) under the Balsam tree branches to hide. So far we have never lost a chicken to a hawk, the neighbors dog is another story for another time.
One last chicken tale, maybe I should say chicken story. Last spring Grandmolly decided that she wanted to have more chickens so when the chickens started to set on their eggs instead of removing them like normal she let them set. Low and behold in a few weeks we had first one then a dozen or so little baby chicks running around the chicken house. When we came in the little ones would run under the mother who would half squat and fluff out to make a place for the little ones to run and hid under. Well what happened then was the hens left the nests which still had some eggs in them which might have been ready to hatch in a few days because they were so busy watching over the ones on the floor that had hatched out and were running every which way and needed a lot on attention. So Grandmolly is not one to want anything to go to waste so she put the eggs in an egg box to take to a friends house to put in his machine which hatches out eggs. On the way to the friends house Karmen our Granddaughter was in the back seat with the egg box and she said “Grandmolly I hear some cheeping”. Well low and behold we opened the box and their was a brand new chick just hatching out of the egg. Well the care of this orphan chick is another story for another time.
Next time I will write to you about our miniature beef cows and all the adventures we have with then. Right now I have to shovel that snow we were talking about and see that the cows get fed and maybe if I have time and energy left I will romp some with Dusty in the snow.
Weather
Posted on June, 20, 2011 by rodh -I think it’s going to snow. Why ? Is it because I can feel it in the air ? Somewhat but I have to admit that I have come to trust the weather forecast more than my own weather “feel” and they say up to 18″. I wonder if it was better before the daily weather forecast when a farmer relied on his “feel” and/or was just plain surprised by what the weather brought each day. At least it was less stressful. Now the apprehension is usually worse than the event as our imagination works overtime creating virtual weather event that only sometimes resemble the forecast description. And anyway what can we do about it? Not much really. The Bible says “do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will care for it self, each day has enough trouble of it’s own”
It’s -12 degrees outside this morning, something to proclaim except that the sun is out, no wind and very low humidity. It’s really pleasant out if you are dressed for it and if it weren’t for the frost accumulating on my beard not really anything to noticed. So the temperature is only one dimension of the day and a small one at that. If you are moving around generating body heat and are prepared it’s like any other day for the living. We adapt, my diesel Ford truck does not, it goes with the thermometer, techies together. On days like this I think a horse would be better, would start right up and go to work. Cows have a inner furnace which burn hay and keep them warm. Actually the cows stay out side most of the time but come in the barn when it’s really blowing or wet rain.
Anyway it doesn’t feel like global warming has arrived today.
Good Morning Sunday
Posted on June, 20, 2011 by rodh -The mornings here are generally special. Our house is built on a rise with an easterly view and this time of year the sun comes up around 7 am. When it’s clear it streams through the big windows that face east and look down on the cow barns and lower pasture, what we call the big fields. I am usually up early and it’s quiet in the house just Dusty (our dog ) and I and today the sun and the cows which are visible out the window getting their breakfast.
This is Sunday morning so it’s a different than other mornings here for me for a lot of reasons one of which is I put on my Church clothes instead of my work outfit. Clothing is a big issue on the farm. One needs to dress for the weather which could be cold, hot, wet, snowy, windy, calm, Ice or just plain normal. Normal is the exception here rather than the rule. There are clothes for each set of weather conditions and since the weather may change during the day sometimes more than once that has to be planned for as well. Farming can be a messy business and it’s not unusual to be changing clothes more than once a day (something I detest) because the outfit is too hot or it’s wet or its covered with you know what, then theirs diesel fuel spill smell, grease, and of course if I am going to Town , you know you have to look right.
Last night the cows were fed extra to hold them over for a day. This means filling the feeders with round bales which generally will last 2 days in this cold weather. They last longer when it’s warmer out and perhaps an extra helping of grass silage for the steer pen. The wood furnace will still need its breakfast of hardwood sugar coated Twinkies to hold it for the day but other than that it’s a day of rest. Except I make a big and special breakfast on Sundays and today we have guests, our daughters and son in law up for the weekend so it’s an extra special day here.
Breakfast menu is bacon, eggs, herb tea, water with lemon, and pancakes on the side. Time to start it, makes me hungry to write about it.
Thanks for Tuning In
Posted on June, 20, 2011 by rodh -As I was planning this addition to our web site I discovered what Blog means which is a shortened version of web log. Makes sense anyway, this blog is going to be about living our life with our animals and other experiences on our small farm in Vermont.
We have been working this land and farm since 1979 and have tried many things here trying to make this small farm model work as a viable enterprise. No details now but I will at time to time fill you in on the successful projects as well as the ones that did not work as well.
Our grandchildren live far enough away from us so that they only get up to the farm once a year for a few day visit. The older ones are 11 (twins) and use the computer regularly, (home school kids). I am hoping that through this blog they will learn about the farm life we live and which has been such a large and important part of the life of Grandmolly and I as well as our 4 children over the years.
And I wanted to start a conversation with you, one of the many visitors we get daily to our web site and in a sense, virtual farm. Some of you buy our meat and others are interested in the Miniature cattle pages, some are farmers like us and others are city folks interested in food and sustainable farming practices. All are welcome and we (Grandmolly and I ) look forward to communicating with you all on our site.
Where to start? In the present I guess which means cold times in VT this last month. Daily thawing out the waterers for our cows, at least the energy free ones which we installed last year. Actually it’s not that hard to do, just bang the floating cover disk with the end of the hay fork to loosen it up in the morning. These units of which we have 2 are made by an Amish family and actually work quite well. One feature I like is that the sun doesn’t get at them and thus we have to do no or little cleaning out of Algae during the year, something which is a regular chore with our other waterer which has an open top with an electric heater underneath. The waterers are heavily insulated and rely on the heat from the ground and in the water to stay unfrozen, During the night the cows go in the cattle shed and do not use the waterers which allows the water to freeze around the edges of the cover.
One thing I like about farming is you never know what challenge the day or season will bring and what solutions you may have to invent to overcome the problems. They are not necessarily all much fun but they keep things interesting. For instance because of the lack of snow cover this year (I have used my plow once) some of the culverts under the driveway have frozen solid. These culverts drain some small springs down to the brook which runs through the center of the farm and they run all year. Now one of the frozen culverts water flow has over topped the banks and is building quite a glacier right where the driveway passes over the brook. This is in a spot that if you drive incorrectly over it (put on the brakes) you would slide off the edge and down a steep bank with the farm pond at the base.
Hmmm what do do. Sanding daily is too much work, sand pile is frozen solid, Grandmolly and I and most of our local friends know how to drive over the glacier so we do not slide (it’s at the bottom of a steep part of the driveway and at the end of a curve), the UPS man also is experienced enough to get over it with his truck ok but we have customers from time to time coming for meat or to look at livestock who may not be so good at this. We decided to wait and pray for a thaw and in the mean time put up a sign , something like ” glacier ahead, do not brake vehicle” Thats my first job for today.
Whew, that a lot of one finger typing. Please feel free to comment or ask questions. Feedback is what will make this blog interesting and fun.