Here are the more recent e-mails
we’ve sent out to people on our “Fresh from the Farm” list, letting people know what’s up
on the farm. Barb took these pictures, by-the-way, not Maya. (You
can tell the difference because Maya's photos are spectacular; Barb's are not.)
If you’d like to be on the list, e-mail Barb at
barbaraghstewart@gmail.com.
March 23, 2009
In these trying economic times,
Chairman Dave aka Farmer Dave, leader of the farming revolution here on McClary
Hill Farm, announces the implementation of the latest revision to our five year
plan. This plan shall hence forth be known as our “Great Leap Backwards”.
Agricultural transformation was pushed forward too quickly, which has left
long-lasting after-effects.* The multiple projects that have been undertaken, in
combination with the decay of the stock market, and the limitations of my labor
and planning abilities, has resulted in needing to cease farming activities on a
commercial scale. I will be pursuing a non-farm job and will return, humbled, to
hobby farmer status.
I am truly sorry that I must stop providing the products that you have been
purchasing from McClary Hill FArm. It has meant a great deal to me to
participate in providing foods that you have found valuable and important. In
some small way, I believe the world is a better place when a farmer and a
customer can look each other in the eye with respect and trust. It has been a
real education for me, a load of heartache and a whole lot of fun.
We will keep moving on the various projects here on the farm. Chief among these
is the project involving biochar; it’s innovative, important and needs more of
my attention. In two years, we’ve made huge progress toward becoming a
sustainable operation and if not for the tanking economy, might have crested the
hill.
Alas, it was not to be. Should you have comments, suggestions, well wishes, good
riddances, or even if you want a good milking cow, please feel free to contact
me at dmhstewart@gmail.com or call me at 738-4717.
Thank you all, for your kindnesses, assistance and patronage, it has been for me
a profound experience and I will miss it greatly.
With gratitude and thanks,
Dave
March 10, 2009
Sorry I forgot to mention a
couple of items unrelated to the contents of a barn or freezer.
Dave has a couple more blog entries. I have none.
http://www.blogsnh.com/drupal/blog/barbara_stewart
I had a column essay in yesterday's Monitor, but it got bumped to page
four of the "Your Life" section. It didn't make the online edition, so if you
missed the paper and feel you must read this essay, let me know. I understand.
I can send it to you.
I just learned about RSS feeds the other day. I don't feel exactly modern or
anything now, but I do think I've stepped a few inches out of the Pleistocene
Era.
Here's the Wikipedia article that clued me in to what most of the populace
probably already knows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss_feed
In a nutshell, RSS feeds allow you to subscribe to online blogs, news sites, or
similar, frequently updated things. If you download an RSS reader, such as
Google Reader, then you just add a subscription to the reader for each site you
like. Your reader will let you know whenever there's an update to the site, so
you don't have to keep checking the sites to see if there are any changes.
You can get Google Reader at
http://www.google.com/reader/view/#directory-welcome-2-page.
To add a subscription, click on "add a subscription," near the top left. A
search box will appear. Then, either enter search terms to find a feed or, if
you've already found it, paste a feed's url (web address) in the box. You can
usually find a feed's url at the bottom of the page of the website you like.
Look for the RSS logo -- an orange square with a white dot in the lower left
corner and two white arcs over the dot.
For example, if you want to subscribe to the farm blog, go to
http://www.blogsnh.com/drupal/blog/barbara_stewart and then scroll
down to the bottom of the page. In the lower left corner, you'll see the orange
RSS logo.
Click on that and you'll get to the blog's RSS feed page. Now, copy and paste
the url (http://www.blogsnh.com/drupal/blog/barbara_stewart/feed)
into the "add subscription" search box of your reader.
Or, while you're on the blog's RSS feed page, choose your reader from the list
on the top of the page and just click on the "Subscribe Now" button.
Speaking of subscriptions, please let us know if you'd rather not get these
e-mails. We're still pretty low tech here, so we have no button to click. We
promise it won't hurt.
Barb
Hello all --
I was going to wait to write until I could announce the birth of Zinnia's calf,
but I think she's holding out until Madeleine and I are out of town. We're
leaving tomorrow morning to spend a few days in D.C. I'm already wondering how
on earth I'll be able to handle all the pavement. I'm bringing my yogurt with
me and hoping for the best.
But, frankly, we haven't the slightest idea when Zinnia is going to calve. I
might as well stop pretending.
Meanwhile, Dave discovered that his "Stewart Family Freezer" sign on the Stewart
family freezer in the barn was a little more ambiguous than he had anticipated.
We now have five chickens left to last us (meaning the Stewart family) until
June or whenever, rather than the fifteen or more so we had squirreled away for
ourselves. If you were one of those who misunderstood the sign, I want you to
know that we are harboring no hard feelings towards you at all. We're glad we
could sell some more food. Cash is good. And there's still some bark left on
the apple trees, although the cows have pretty much beaten us to that.
Now, I believe, Dave has revised the sign to read something like, "Stewart
Family Freezer: Contents Not for Sale." Don't worry about steel-toothed beaver
trap hanging overhead.
There is one turkey left! Let me know if you're interested in a half or the
whole.
Barb
February 23, 2009
Hello all --
I don't have much to say, but I thought I'd say it anyway, in case anybody got
worried about us.
Chicken Count Down
There are now FIVE chickens left in the freezer and two turkeys. Spring is
coming, but the fresh birds won't be ready until the dawn of summer.
Zinnia Count Down
She's still holding out. We thought the low pressure system would help her
along, but it didn't. She is bagging up, though. (That's a technical farm term
for the slow engorgement of the bovine mammary gland during the days preceding
parturition.) We'll keep you posted.
Blog and Article
Dave has a couple new blog entries -- one about egg rules and one about the fine
line between clever and stupid.
http://www.blogsnh.com/drupal/blog/barbara_stewart
The Concord Monitor will have my column in next week's Sunday paper. It'll be
about our own, private stimulus package, complete with shovel-ready projects.
Meanwhile, the March/April issue of New Hampshire Home has an article of mine as
their end piece. It's about tree-tapping, changing seasons, changing lives,
adaptability, ennui, and persistence -- all in about 450 words. It will be
online in a couple of months. For now, you can go find it on the news stand,
although I suggest waiting a couple of weeks, when it's actually March and
everything in the article makes some sense.
Pictures
I hope these aren't too many pictures. The first is of Griffin Brook, at the
south end of the property. The next two show Zinnia, with her
"I'm-going-to-get-through-this" face. Then come some pictures I took this
morning, just as the sun was coming up over the new snow. (That's a new roof!!)
The last two show "Stubbie," Axel's usually patient cat, waiting for me to put
the camera down and let him in the house.
I hope all's well. We will get through this winter.
Barb
February 14, 2009
Hello all --
Auction Winner
It's time to announce the winner of the calf-naming auction: Michelle Hurley,
who happens to live right across the road from our dairy barn. She and her
family are already faithful friends of the cows, but it'll be great when her
little ones can come by to visit "their" calf. We can't wait for the calf to
arrive so they can all meet each other.
Thank you, all who bid in the auction!! There were several of you, and the high
bidders were not that far apart. Maybe we'll do it again sometime. Lambing
season is just two months away, I'm amazed to say. In the meantime, if anyone
wants to bid on the right to name an egg that gets laid tomorrow morning, let me
know.
Chocolate
I can't let this Valentine's Day e-letter go by without making some mention of
chocolate. A few days ago, I decided I would make some chocolate ice cream to
mark the day. Love needs to be fed, and I feel certain that if love could speak,
it would ask for chocolate.
The recipe I use calls for three egg yolks for each quart of milk and cup of
sugar, so the custard needs to be cooked up many hours ahead of freezing time.
The gods of timing smiled on me, and I remembered to start everything yesterday,
just when I was supposed to. Happily, divine kindness stayed by my side this
morning, reminding me to take the cooled custard out of the refrigerator and
pour it into the ice cream maker, batch-by-batch.
All this luck really would have been plenty to carry me through the day, but the
very best thing that happened to me during this ice cream-making session came
after I finished with the last batch. It was time to clean up -- not an easy
thing to do with this particular machine. It's a Musso Lussino, a relic from our
pre-farming days, back when we were prone to a few more ridiculous indulgences
than we are now. It came straight from Italy, has its own compressor, and weighs
a ton. Right now, it's sitting on the floor of our dining room, waiting for a
chance to live on the counter of our far-imagined, rebuilt kitchen in the ell.
It also makes fantastic ice cream. But clean-up is time-consuming because the
bowl is a seamless continuation of the rest of the machine. This design
necessitates frequent rinsing and sponging at the end of every ice cream-making
session. This, in turn, gives a person absolutely no reason to shy away from
doing what any small child would do, given the chance.
So, there I was, sitting on the floor next to our Musso Lussino, licking the
spoon, licking the paddles, and licking my fingers. I believe it's the only time
I've ever considered the advantages of having the tongue of a dog. And as the
chocolate dribbled down my chin, my happiness was marred only by the anxiety
that one of my own issue would soon walk in on me and demand a share.
But neither of them did that to me, and I'm thankful I remembered that it's
really important to love yourself . . . and feed that love, too.
Here's the recipe. I gave it out last summer, but I think it bears repeating.
1/2 gallon fresh, whole Jersey milk (accept no substitutes)
8 ounces 100% baking chocolate (really good quality)
6 fresh eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1. Heat the milk in a largish, heavy-bottomed, stainless-steel pot on
medium-low. Stir occasionally. Do not boil or even simmer. Milk should be
steaming when it's warm enough.
2. Meanwhile, place the chocolate in a similar, smaller pan. Turn the burner on
the lowest possible setting for a couple of minutes; turn off and stir. Repeat
every few minutes until the chocolate is just melted.
3. Separate the eggs and place the yolks in a mixing bowl. Do what you will with
the whites.
4. Beat the yolks on high and then gradually add the sugar.
5. Still mixing the yolks and sugar, ladle out some hot milk and pour it into
the yolks and sugar. Do this again three or four times, then add the yolks and
sugar to the rest of the milk. Stir well.
6. Add the melted chocolate to the milk, yolks, and sugar. Stir constantly,
until the mixture starts to thicken. This may take fifteen minutes or so. When
the foam disappears, you're pretty much there. The thickening will be subtle.
Just don't let the mixture boil at all.
7. Remove from heat and add the vanilla extract.
8. Cool down on counter top for a half-hour, stirring occasionally, or cool by
placing the pot in a sink of ice water for five minutes, stirring frequently.
9. Cool down further in the refrigerator for five or six hours and then put into
your ice cream maker. It'll probably make two batches.
Happy Valentine's Day!!
Barb
February 11, 2009
Hello all --
In an effort to skate delicately around the sensitive issue of payment, I fear I
have left many people confused about some of the more critical details of this
silent, calf-naming auction. I am sorry. I will try to be more blunt. Plus, I
realized, a lot of people have never been in a silent auction before.
So, here's how it works. You win the auction if you offer us more money than
anyone else does for the right to name the calf. The offer is "the bid," and you
make the bid by sending me an e-mail telling me how much you're willing to pay.
("Hi Barb. I bid twenty dollars in the calf-naming auction.") We suggest a
minimum bid of five dollars.
By making a bid, you are promising to pay that amount if you win. The highest
bidder wins. So, if Billy bids ten dollars, Sally bids fifteen, and you bid a
thousand, then YOU will win. (Hey; I can dream. You can't take that away from
me.)
If you win, you will have several rights that nobody else will have. First, you
will have the right to name Zinnia's calf anything you want. It can be Zamboni.
It can be Zarathustra. It can be Asterisk. We don't care (much). It will be your
right. Second, you will have the privilege of visiting the calf very soon after
it comes into the world and then frequently thereafter. Third, you will receive
monthly updates about the calf's progress, along with photos. Fourth, if the
calf is a bull, you will get a couple of steaks and some burger from him in
about a year or so, when the time comes to "convert" him. If the calf is a
heifer, you will get a couple of gallons of milk.
So, this will be an exchange of rights (from us) for cash (from the winner).
Sorry again for the confusion. I will extend the bidding time until Friday
morning at 9:00. Whoever has e-mailed me the highest bid by that time will be
the winner.
Thanks!!! Happy bidding.
Barb
February 9, 2009
Hello all --
Chicken Count Down
I asked Dave this morning if he could give me some idea of how many chickens are
left in the barn freezer for you all to buy. (We have enough stashed away for
ourselves; don't worry.) EIGHT is the answer. That's it. We won't have any
more coming in for weeks and weeks and weeks.
How did we come to this?! Does anybody remember the long summer days of begging
and shameless come-ons? I guess it worked better than I had hoped, and here's
the result. I'm glad some of us were able to store away enough to nourish us
through the dark months.
(But there are still two turkeys with nobody's name on them.)
Dave thinks that we'll have fresh chicken available a little earlier this year
than last, thanks to the greenhouse. The chicks can start their lives there,
away from dangerous drafts.
Pork Particulars
Although we're still not sure which i's need to be dotted or which t's we should
cross, a few of the regulatory issues are no longer murky at all, thanks to a
lecture I attended by a USDA meat inspector. We now know that if we have our
pigs slaughtered on the farm and then taken to a local "custom" butcher, we can
only hand the meat over to you if you already bought the animal from us while it
was still alive.
So, that's how we're going to have to do it. Included in the price of the pig
will be the cost of us taking care of the animal for the brief remainder of its
life and the service of handling the slaughtering and butchering details. We
will strive to figure and finagle until we can make the price per pound the same
as it used to be; we'll just need to create some documentation to show a change
of ownership while the pig is still breathing.
Is anybody wondering how we're going to do this figuring and finagling? So am
I. There is, I'm pleased to say, a "live-weight" formula you can use to
estimate a pig's "hanging" (dead) weight. The sticky part is that it involves
measuring the pig's length and girth with a tape measure. As pigs tend toward
the ticklish, I think it might be fruitful to set a date for the procedure and
sell tickets.
This year, we'll probably ask for a deposit on pork orders, due when we buy the
piglets. I'm not sure yet when that will be. But if you would like to buy half
a pig, don't worry; we won't go Solomonic on you. We'll hook you up with
another halfer and the two of you can own the pig jointly and then decide
between yourselves who's the lefty and who's the righty.
Zinnia Watch/Calf-Naming Auction
Zinnia is so huge -- so huge. Dave thought she was going to calve two months
ago, but we have had some timing issues around here, as most of you know. "Any
day now!" is the constant refrain.
I was going to suggest a calf-naming pool, in which the person best able to
predict the delivery date gets to name the little thing. But Dave has a better
idea -- we'll AUCTION away the naming rights. (Well, it's better for us.) It
will be a silent auction, and you have until this Thursday morning at 9:00 to
place your bid. Simply send it to us by e-mail.
Whoever wins will then become the foster parent for the new calf. We will
invite you for a special meeting as soon as the calf is born, and we will send
you e-mail updates with photos each month. You can arrange visits every month,
too (more often, if you're a neighbor and you know the ropes and gates of the
farm).
For those of tender hearts, we have to warn you that things go wrong sometimes.
We have not lost a calf or a cow or a bull yet, but it is always possible.
Also, if it's a bull calf, he WILL end up in the freezer. You will then get a
couple of free steaks and some burger from him.
If you can handle that much reality, then please -- send in your bid! Any
amount is fine.
Building Report
I wish I had a new-calf picture to send you, but instead I just have
construction. But isn't that greenhouse building irresistible? It IS pretty
cool to see the framework for the greenhouse half going up. And the windows are
nice.
Our own home building -- would that be "the house"? -- is undergoing some major
surgery, too, in the form of a new roof. It's completely unrelated to the ell
reconstruction. And it has nothing to do with the dairy barn, either, I'm happy
to say, although you never know.
All day long, I heard the sound of roofers ripping the roof tiles off the roof.
Roof, roof. It's unsettling, but not nearly as disconcerting as the stead drip,
drip of melting ice dams falling onto your bed, damning your dreams in the
process.
Blog and Column
Dave and I have a couple more blog entries. They're at
http://www.blogsnh.com/drupal/blog/barbara_stewart.
The latest Farmwifery column is at
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090208/LIVING03/902080311.
I hope you're all doing well! We'll keep you posted on Zinnia and the auction
winner.
Barb
January 26, 2009
Hello all --
There hasn't been much of anything new to relay, other than
the grinding cold up here. I know this isn't, technically, "new," but it
is a fresh shock to the
body every time I step out into it. Generally, we're at least six degrees
colder than Concord. That's probably not what six degrees of separation is all
about, but it feels like another country sometimes. The
wind is fiercer here, too. Someday, perhaps, we can find a windmill that's just
right for these conditions.
Where All the Chickens Have Gone
Dave came to me the other day with startling news:
we were down to three dozen chickens in the
freezer. Does anybody remember me pleading with you to come and buy these
things? Thanks for listening. I guess we found the
right price point, at least in terms of clearing inventory.
We have set aside sixteen for ourselves, based on the
calculation that we probably have four months separating us
from our first fresh chicken of
the new year. One chicken per week works well for
us; how about for you?
This leaves a flock of only twenty left for sale. I'm sorry. They are in
the left-hand freezer in the
farm stand, and they're all weighed, priced, and
marked.
Turkey
We have three turkeys for sale, too. These are the
birds we left unreserved at Thanksgiving time on the
worry that coyotes might get them and cause a customer riot during those
delicate pre-Thanksgiving days. The dogs kept their
distance, and so now we can offer these turkeys at the
marked-down price of four dollars per pound. They were fed organically and
raised on grass, and they weigh about twenty-five pounds or so each.
If you would like HALF of one, we can split a bird for/with you. Tell us
the day you want to pick it up, and we will thaw it
and halve it just in time. We'll cook up our half in our stove; you can cook up
yours in yours.
Building Report
The ell is all framed now and electrified, and all
the windows are in. The
next step is to find new doors. I'm excited at the
prospect of having a couple of back doors -- we never had one before.
The milk room in the
barn is on hold for awhile, but I think it'll get done by summer.
The "normal" half of the
Greenhouse Building -- great name, huh?! -- has a roof now.
The greenhouse half of the
Greenhouse Building might go up next month. The
footprint will be twenty feet by forty-eight feet, I believe, with a height of
sixteen feet in some spots. Dave is planning to grow some warm-climate trees in
there. I'm not sure we can hope for an olive grove, but figs are possible.
Article and Blog
The latest Farmwifery column can be found at
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090118/LIVING03/901180325.
I think it's about optimism.
Dave and I have a couple of posts to the blog site.
They are at
http://www.blogsnh.com/drupal/blog/barbara_stewart.
Stay happy and warm. Or, get happy and warm.
Barb
December 31, 2008
Hello all --
Christmas
Christmas morning was a picture-perfect New England farm scene
here. The well-scrubbed children eagerly gathered around the back-yard tree
they had picked out and bedecked, while Pa cooked up a nutritious feast of real,
good bacon and specially-made treats. Ma looked on indulgently, admiring the
aesthetics of it all and eating the tidbits offered to her. The obscenity-laced
argument over the sticking door she couldn't open would just have to wait til
later.
I must say, Santa/Farmer Dave was alarmingly generous this year to
Mama Santa/Farmer Wannatrytobe. Was I really that good? I'm betting "no." My
guess is that he's working preemptively for next year or trying out a new
incentive program. I'm not sure how else to explain the pile of loot I got: a
beautiful new brass whistle (Bb, with a thumb hole, in case anyone's keeping
track), a bamboo flute (low D), a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and two
bottles of really fine, single malt Scotch. I think I detect a
drown-out-the-world theme here, and I appreciate the courage it must have taken
Santa/Farmer Dave to act as enabler to my poop-free hobbies.
Mama Santa/Farmer Wannatrytobe was slightly less on the mark, thanks
to the typical assortment of sweaters, books, and socks I tossed at Dave. And,
sadly, Dave is quite certain he does not "need" the massage gift certificates I
gave him. (I guess I'll have to use them!!) But I did get one thing really
right -- beautiful bells for the bovine belles out in the barnyard, a dozen in
all.
Dave had specifically asked for a varied assortment of cow bells, so
I can't take any credit for the inspiration. Still, I'm delighted with their
sound and I'm happy to accept responsibility for the soothing level of
harmonious comfort anyone can now experience with a visit to our barn and
pasture. To achieve this, I had to go online (of course) and find a web store
that included a sound clip for each of its dozen or so variously-sized bells.
Each clip only lasted a couple of seconds and took a good second to load, so I
had to open up a bunch of different Internet windows and go
click-click-click-click-click-click as fast as I could to test out
different combinations of tones. Phew! There's a fine line between Alpine
harmony and head-splitting cacophony.
Barn Progress
A visit to the barn will also induce cries of "Incroyable!" and "Mon
Dieu!" when you see the progress that's been made. (I recently discovered that
one out of every five hundred and twelve drops of my blood is likely to be a
French one, giving me license, I think, to fling ridiculous French phrases at
you.) The cement slab, complete with slopes and gutters and drains, is now
topped with stalls, fences, gates, and stanchions. Daily care and maintenance
is mountains easier now for Dave. About all that's left to do in the barn is
the milk room. That just needs wiring, plumbing, heating, insulation, and
tiling.
Eggs
Two or three weeks ago, a couple of kind, kind people gave us a
half-dozen layers. You may recall that we were getting approximately zero eggs
from our sixty or so hens. It seemed to me a bit counter-intuitive to add a few
more layers to the mix, but Dave knew what he was doing. Within a few days, the
new layers started laying some eggs. This fairly normal act seems to have made a
large impression on the other hens; several of them started laying again, too.
I guess all they needed was a little reminding. I don't know. I could go on
and on, anthropomorphizing about this until the cows come home, but I'll spare
you. At least we have some really good eggs again, both for ourselves and --
occasionally -- for others. Check the "available" shelf in the barn cooler.
Happy New Year! We will enjoy the evening with some neighbors who
completely understand farming; the party will begin at 5:30 and is supposed to
end promptly at 9:00. Somewhere east of the Falklands, on the windswept South
Georgian islands in the sub-Antarctic seas, a few hardy, British
penguin-watchers will be ringing in the new year with us, unawares.
Barb
December 15, 2008
Hello all --
I feel like we were just starting to get good at this business of living. I
perfected my dish-washing technique, and last night Dave cooked up a tasty
chicken stew over the dining room fire. Afterward, we gnashed our teeth a bit
about sleeping arrangements, but Dave finally realized that the heat from the
bigger, downstairs fireplaces could keep the upstairs rooms both tolerably warm
and smoke-free. So, we gave up on the bedroom hearth, much to the kids'
satisfaction, and they suffered no involuntary interruptions of our bedtime
recitation of A Christmas Carol.
In the morning, a hot breakfast of bacon and eggs was no big deal, I can proudly
say, and Dave figured out he could siphon the water out of the cellar.
Who needs an electric sump pump, really? And rather than watch that liquid
resource spill out all over the ground, he collected it all into five gallon
jugs and brought it upstairs for the bathroom toilet tank. He's a crafty one,
that Farmer Dave.
But there's no outsmarting the weather. We went to sleep and woke up thinking
about generators, with a cruel dream in between about the lights coming back
on. We opened the outside door this morning to find a warm, March breeze
streaming in, warning us that we had to act quickly. Our thawing toes and pipes
could only come at the expense of all the meat and poultry stored inside our
freezers. The food had been just fine and dandy during the bitterness of the
last few days, but now we needed power of the electrical kind.
Dave started making his reluctant, end-of-the-rope phones calls, and the
generators began magically arriving. By the time I left the house to go beg a
shower off a neighbor, there were at least three of them humming along, powering
every one of our freezers. As I rounded the front of the house, I saw Andrew
Walton, one of our very generous generator gents, up in the corner maple,
cutting down the cracked and broken limbs. I am so grateful for all this quick
and awesome help, most of which was offered long before we were ready to accept
it.
I just need to say that in the midst of all this, Dave heard me sighing about
all the extra mud the higher temperatures would bring in -- and then redirected
our wooden walkway so that it now leads to our new, temporary entrance in the
main part of the house, rather than toward the old entrance in the ell. Now we
(and you!!) can get from the road to the house without squishing through a vat
of mud.
Looking out my window and seeing those planks of wood curving gracefully toward
our door sure made my heart skip a beat. But I'm afraid that sight could not
hold an electric candle to the sound of the low, whooshing hum of hot air
blowing up from the furnace as the beast chugged back into life. I was in the
dining room at the time, finishing up my music practice. Madeleine was there,
too, enjoying a cheeseburger she had cooked on the hearth. I shrieked; she
smiled. I jumped up and down; she smiled. I hugged her; she said, "Okay,
Mom!!"
I turned on a light, just to make sure, and then immediately thought about
laundry -- and water. I went to the kitchen faucet, lifted the handle, and saw
beautiful convenience flowing out in an unbroken stream. I tried all the other
faucets in the house and couldn't believe our luck. Not only had the cellar
flooding not damaged the furnace -- not one of the pipes had burst!!
I started the washing machine, turned on the dishwasher, and flushed the
toilet. Still glowing with freedom, I turned to lunch. For a split second, I
considered making one more meal the old-fashioned way. Madeleine's burger
looked really good. "Don't be ridiculous," I told myself, and took the little
cast iron pan away from the hearth and over to the electric stove. Within
minutes, the whole house was filling up with smoke. There's no place for a
range hood in this temporary kitchen, and I had set the temperature a little too
high. I looked ruefully at the dining room fireplace, with its nice-sized flue
and healthy draft, and then opened the outside door.
We're back to "normal." I hope you are, too.
Barb
December 14, 2008
Hello all –
I hope every one of you is safe and
warm and hooked up to a working electrical system by this point. As I write
this, our family can only claim the first two, and the power companies simply
tell us that it will be a “prolonged effort.”
Days One and One and a Half
When I stepped out the door Friday
morning, I have to admit the scene looked a bit familiar. There were the same
twisted, misshapen trunks and downed limbs we had come across last July after
the tornado barreled through here. But, thank goodness, no trees were uprooted
during This Season’s Natural Disaster. (Do you remember when we used to say,
“This Year’s Natural Disaster”? Those were the days.) (And it’s not
even winter yet. Dave’s betting money on a plague of frogs, but I’m opting for
a more prosaic blizzard.)
It was all so beautiful. Even with
the sleet still falling, it was so beautiful. The four of us took a walk in it
down Griffin Road, stepping over trees and dodging the ice showers and the
breaking branches as we went. It was probably pretty stupid to go out then, but
we did it anyway. Weather is so exhilarating – until, of course, it kills you
or maims you or something.
As always, the neighbors rallied
around, those with generators offering help and comfort to those without. We
had hoped to be in the first category by now. The new building – “the Farm
House”?? – will, some day, have a massive generator as well as a wood-burning
furnace powerful enough to heat every room on the farm. But that “some day” is
way behind schedule, so we have turned to the generosity of the better-equipped
people around us, particularly for water.
It is funny to think we need help
getting by. This is a good house, and people got by in it just fine for many
generations before electricity or indoor plumbing came around. We can still
make fine use of the five working fireplaces here, but we can’t get to the water
that’s right below the surface. The hand pump for the well is long gone, we’ve
all come to rely on electricity for our water – an odd thought.
I had an interesting time washing
dishes today. First, I had to figure out how exactly to do it, given our
temporary kitchen’s one-drain sink. I’m relieved to say it didn’t take me too
long to come up with a two-pot wash and rinse system, with hot water coming from
a half-hour’s bake on the hearth. But I had to give up on my usual minimum
standards of pristine sterility. It’s no wonder people didn’t use to bathe much
“way back when” or care a whole lot about dirt.
By the end of the day, I managed to
tear my mind away from the germ theory long enough to appreciate some of the
charms of this kind of involuntary, faux-colonial living. One of the misty-eyed
parts came last night, when we all settled down into one bedroom. With logs
blazing brightly in our little Rumford fireplace, Dave and I took turns reading
A Christmas Carol to the kids while they camped out in sleeping bags on
the floor. Aaah.
And then this morning, I went out to
take more pictures – whoops, I mean help Dave lug logs and haul water – and came
back in to find Madeleine at the spinning wheel, sitting by the keeping room
fire. A couple hours later, she had a lovely bobbin full of pretty darn good
yarn.
This was all great. But at milking
time, there was no mist in Dave’s eyes. We have five cows in milk right now, a
daunting sight without an electrically-powered milker. Fortunately, we also
have four enormously hungry calves, so Dave decided to milk just the one
calf-less cow for the duration. (No, I don’t know her name.) The others will
go “au naturel.”
There have been other “challenges,”
too. This morning, Dave brought me coffee in bed, as he always does. He had
made it over the fire in the keeping room hearth, and he apologized for its
tepid temperature. (Honestly, I was not going to complain!) Then, he told me
that the basement had flooded. This was a new experience for us. We have a
decent sump pump down there, and we’d never before lost power for more than a
couple of hours. But now there were seven or eight inches of water covering the
dirt floor, giving all of Dave’s carefully saved and stored root vegetables an
ill-timed swim. I am not a fan of Brussell sprouts, but I know they meant
something to Dave. The onions and potatoes and squash will be a heart-felt loss
for all of us (except Axel, of course).
There are frozen pipes likely to
burst, too, as well as water seeping into the inner parts of the furnace. But
we have good food, and at least one of us has the will to make use of it. This
morning, after getting my coffee and hearing the news about the cellar, I came
downstairs to find Dave kneeling at the hearth, cooking up scrambled eggs over
the fire. He had already fried a pound of bacon and a few salvaged potatoes; he
talked about roasting some chickens in the beehive oven for dinner.
Then, after taking care of everyone
and everything here this morning, he drove into town to attend a four-season
growing workshop. That’s Dave, in a nutshell. But I’m not sure you can be a
farmer any other way.
Day Two and a Half
Yesterday, a beleaguered Dave gave
up on the beehive oven-roasted chicken idea, and we all went into Concord for
dinner. Afterwards, we got to go to our favorite holiday event, the Christmas
folk concert at the Concord Community Music School with Susie Burke, David
Surette, and Kent Allyn. These are marvelous musicians, and their songs were
serious and funny and beautiful. They even let us sing with them now and then.
We weren’t the only ones in the
audience finding both kinds of warmth from the concert, and it was hard to go
back out into the bitter night, with a cold house waiting for us at home. But
the previous evening had been so picture-perfect, with our little fire burning
in the bedroom, I didn’t mind. I just suggested to Dave that he might want to
put one extra-big log on the fire after it got going, so that maybe the heat
would last more than an hour or two. He complied.
Unfortunately, the log was wet, and
the woefully tiny flue couldn’t handle it. At one point, I had to stop reading
from our book, right about when the ghost of Christmas past leads Scrooge to his
childhood home. From the clear air down by the floor, the kids cried out, “Mom,
keep reading!” But up on the bed, my eyes were burning too much to see the
page.
We finally decided that smoke
inhalation is really no fun, so we opted to let the noxious cloud accumulating
in the top half of the room escape out the window and up the attic – along with
all the heat Dave had so carefully created. Oh well.
This morning, I woke in the daylight
– highly unusual – and realized that Dave had not yet brought me a cup of
coffee. Uh-oh. I went downstairs and found him battling a fire in the dining
room hearth, gamely telling me that it wasn’t so bad if you sat on the floor.
“And it’s pretty warm in here now, don’t you think?” I noticed I couldn’t see
my breath, so I had to agree with him.
I tried my hand at frying the eggs
and bacon, managed quite nicely, and then set about eating my breakfast.
Mm-mm!! There’s nothing like a little ash and charcoal to season your food.
Dave had gotten the coffee made, too, so life was good. The smoke had even
cleared enough to permit eating at the table. What more could we want?
Gosh, I was even getting hot. I
took off my bathrobe in time to hear Madeleine say it was 56 degrees in there.
Really? I brought the thermometer into the kitchen, just for grins, and watched
the mercury fall down, down, down, down, and finally settle in at 41 degrees.
No wonder I could see my breath. But I was fine! Maybe it was the hearth-fired
coffee still burning my gullet or the singed skin from my fireside cooking. Or
maybe it had something to do with the layered look I was sporting. Beneath my
“Bean’s Extreme Expedition” fleece bathrobe I wore my long fleece zip-up
jacket. And I also had on two wool sweaters, two sets of long underwear,
flannel pajamas, two pairs of wool socks, and a pair of wool slippers.
The good news is that I no longer
have to worry about the refrigerator food spoiling if I open the door.
