After the storm

Note:  click once on photo to enlarge.

 1. Damage to the barn roof - lots of broken shingles on the ground.   That one will need a home equity loan.   Oooooof.   Not in the budget.
2.  Snow blew under the metal garage rolling door, through a 1/2 inch crack, and piled up 2 feet deep inside (with a nice drift shape) (dug).
3. Snow blew in between the door and the door frame of the hay barn.   Probably will lose about 10 - 12 bales that got damp (enough left to get through until spring, and the damp hay will get used in the garden).

4.  One snow shoe blew off the porch and got buried (found).
5.  Farm sign blew off the house (found).

6.  Lots of digging.

7.  Beautiful snow patterns.   Lots of beautiful snow patterns.

Driveway before we started digging

8.  Percy (orange cat) sought out the front window basket today, which is the first sign of spring.

George working on the driveway

Percy in the front window today:  sure sign of spring to come.

This is more like it

This is more like it.  Picture at left is an upstairs window screen, with snow blown into it by the winds, making nice, curvy, waves.

The picture was taken during the early hours of the storm, on Saturday morning.   They are saying now it may start winding down around midnight.

The picture immediately below was also taken early morning from an upstairs window.  That is the small greenhouse.    Not too long until seedling time.

Last picture:  window frost.

Bare ground in February

Looking across back yard toward hay field

First day of February, and we have bare ground out in the hay field.  I took the picture at right yesterday, around sunset.  The snow in the picture is in the back yard, which has some shade.   The hayfield beyond looks dark, because the snow is gone.

The picture below is looking toward the vegetable beds.   Most of the snow in this picture is still there because it is in the shade of the barn.

This is so weird. 

I always mean to get some good December pictures for the website, and then December goes by.

The shortening days and muted colors lie heavily on my ambitions.

But, there is color in December and January.   The first picture looks across part of an uncut swale near the back of the farm, across hayfield, and on to woods.

The picture below looks along a path that I bush hogged through the edge of the swale last summer.   The tracks in the path are mine (snow shoes) and those of one coyote.   I try to go a bit further each day.   I go so far, and then he (or she) goes further.

At some point we will get more snow and I'll be breaking trail again.  But, for now, the broken path makes walking easier.

Little bit of snow

Picture taken from inside the house, near the wood stove.

There is a little bit of snow on the ground this morning, unless one imagines it all rolled up...all the snow in the hay field, all the snow in the woods, all the snow in the gardens.   

Then, it would be one huge snow ball, out of which one could tunnel a seriously good snow cave.

Slow and quiet

I am trying to move slowly, in deference to my face, which is recovering from some well-done, and postponed way-too-long oral surgery.   My upper lip and left face are swollen.  From the left side, I kind of look like a bunny rabbit.  

I've been doing paperwork, and cooking a bit.  George just left the comfy chair, as evidenced by the coffee on the floor.  The "comfy chair" is the only chair in front of the wood stove.   For some reason, George and I rarely seem to both settle at the same time, so the single chair  has worked.   If neither of us is in the chair, Percy (orange cat) usually will be.   This is a very well-used chair.

There are two tubs of little pumpkins in the living room, that don't seem to be moving very fast.   I didn't count them as "farm product", because we aren't using them, and are not likely to sell them now.   They are just kind of here.   Pretty though.

Another cat is sleeping on my new seed catalogs.   Looking at catalogs is too energetic for today, so she is welcome.

Rutabaga in the pot

Chopped up rutabaga about to boil.   The rutabaga is lighter in color than the photo appears.

I pulled a couple of rutabaga a few days ago - much later in the season than usual.   They have been sitting on the kitchen counter, and I noticed they were starting to get soft.

So, they are now in a pot on the back of the stove, and will boil for awhile.

I like mashed rutabaga.   I'm also a mashed potato fan, but sometimes variety of flavor is a good thing, and rutabagas have a distinct flavor of their own.    I don't know how to describe it, but the flavor is stronger than  potatoes. 

Rutabaga (northern grown) and turnips (southern grown) used to be winter staples, and I've read that there used to be lots more varieties available through seed catalogs than there is now.   Maybe with more people interested in local foods, and more people using root cellars, and maybe even more people saving seed, we'll get some of that variety back. 

But, for now, I'm growing one, basic rutabaga.   It keeps well in the root cellar.   I can cook it almost any way I can cook a potato, and it is a nice change in flavor.

The only thing I don't like about rutabaga is that it takes longer to boil to softness than potatoes do.   George and I were discussing this the other night.   Taking longer to boil means  using more gas (we cook with gas), which costs money, and uses a non-renewable resource.    I love our soapstone wood stove for heating the house, but the stone means the stove is not good for boiling things.   If we ever get a second wood stove, I'd really like a small stove that was good for a pot or two.

I wonder if the fact that this rutabaga went through some frosts, and got a bit soft sitting on the counter, will mean it cooks up faster?   How will it taste?  Good?   Bad?   This is my experiment for the day.   It is good to try to do at least one scary thing per day (assuming that category has not already been forced upon one), and have one experiment per day.   Today, the goals do not overlap.   

Later edit:   Tastes good, and cooked more quickly than usual.   Why?   No idea.   That's the problem with running an experiment with two variables.   Oh well.    Beef and onion over mashed rutabaga is also a good way to end an experiment.

When the onions don't turn out quite right

As mentioned before, a lot of the garden got buried in weeds when I pulled my back this summer.   Some of the onions started to grow, then lost their access to sunlight.

Those onions stayed small, and I didn't bother putting them into the cellar with the big onions. The little ones dried out nicely though. 

I've been gradually working through a large bowl of little onions in the kitchen.     

After sloppy joes yesterday, I'm down to the last few.     I put them in the small, red, plastic colander.   I like the way they seem almost luminescent. 

Things from today.

1.  The cats knocked a big, blue pan full of onion peels on to the kitchen floor sometime during the night.  George found it in the morning.

2.  The sheep started drinking out of the electric water bucket.   It always takes them a couple of days to get used to drinking warm water after the weather turns cold.   I left out a cold-water bucket the last couple of days, in case. 

3. I ordered a twin-sized wool blanket from LLBean.   It was the last day of the 15% sale, and we also used 3 coupons.   This will be an extra blanket for the coldest upstairs bedroom, and it should last.

4.  My sister Cate in California told me that she wants a large, square pot-holder, with a hanging loop, for Christmas.  Cate and I have a tradition of sending each other Christmas boxes, and hints help.   We don't always manage to get the boxes done, and sometimes boxes arrive in January or later, but we still enjoy it.  

5.  Movie and hot buttered popcorn tonight, after showers.

Sink that equipment in....

Whew....a celebratory post.    After tucking the hay rake behind some trees, and parking the hay wagon on high ground, we sank the last of the heavy equipment under cover. 

Getting the hay baler into the metal garage is always interesting, because the garage door opening is barely bigger than the widest part of the baler.   The baler is very long so it has to come in at a sharp angle, and the baler is difficult to back up. 

George drives and I make various hand signals from the ground, indicating if he is about to run into something, like the side of a building or another piece of equipment.  He is largely backing up blind, given the tight space.

This year, we not only got the baler into the metal garage, but the farm tractor too.   In previous years, we parked the farm tractor in the hay barn for the winter.  Since the farm tractor is now in the metal garage, I will not be running into this tractor in the dark, on the way to feeding the sheep....all winter.   I have tended to do that in the past.  Whoo hoo!!    My knees are already feeling better.

I am reaching back to November 1 for this photo, as I didn't have my camera with me today.

Yesterday, we met friends for Thanksgiving - really nice to see them.

Later, George and I stopped in Freeport at LLBean to pick up some bedding and Christmas snow shoes.  

Today it was beautiful and mild.   I brought in a couple of rutabaga to see if they were still good to cook, and we started putting away the hay equipment.   The ground has been so soggy that we've been putting moving off equipment around.   But, today the ground was better.   It always takes a bit of fiddling by the both of us to get the disc mower safely under the overhang behind the barn, but that is done now.

I didn't get nearly what I expected out of the gardens this year, due to problems with my back and leg, both of which are fine now.   I thought that we hadn't made the amount we needed for agricultural land classification purposes this year, which includes both products sold and value of products used on farm.

But, I added everything up today, and we just made it.    Hooray!    Turns out that since I planted more than in the past, I brought in a decent amount of food for our own use, even with losing quite a lot to weeds and lack of picking.   We also sold more hay than last year, which is good.