Down on the Farm

Especially beautiful moon tonight

Picking rocks

The greenhouse is starting to dry out and warm up. You can see snow still piled up against the walls in the photo above. (Though its not as deep out as it looks in that photo. I think it must be drifted up against the greenhouse wall.)

We picked rocks for a bit this afternoon. Even Waverly picked up a rock and threw it in, which I think was her first official act of farm work, if you don't count her selling vegetable at the farmer's market last year.

It's warm enough that some of the grass left is turning green. This grass is in the part of the greenhouse that we plan to use for seedlings, so it's not a a big problem. I just post it because it's nice to see something green and growing, even if it is only grass.

Late winter ramble

Having spent a lot of my life living in either Vermont or Minnesota, people often assume I love winter. And I do kind of like winter, but love is too strong a word.

Really, what has happened for me is that long winters with lots of snow and subzero temperatures have become normal. I thought about that the other night when I went out to "plug in" our diesel truck. It was a beautifully clear night, but it was supposed to get down to 10 below zero, so I had to go out and plug in the heating block on the truck's engine so that it would start in the a.m. when I needed it. As I looked at the stars, I thought, "People who live in Georgia probably aren't plugging in their trucks tonight."

But as Maryellen says, that is why there is chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. I know one thing for sure, I infinitely prefer the winters we have up here to the winters we had in southern New England. There, it would be cold enough to be unpleasant, but never really cold or snowy enough to have a prolonged real winter. At least up here, with several feet of snow on the ground, we can go sledding, and snow shoeing, and cross country skiing, and the mountains look beautiful, and you know what you are dealing with.

The reason I have been thinking about this is because late winter is a funny sub-season up here. The days start to lengthen, the mercury stays above zero more, and the sun feels so much stronger and warmer. And each year, while I am looking forward to spring and summer about now, I also find myself dealing with a note of remorse. I think to myself, "Boy, I can't believe winter is slipping away. I wish I had made more time for sledding and snow shoeing and skiing and drinking hot chocolate this past year."

But I suppose before I know it, that sense of dread that hits in late fall will be back, and I will be wondering how we are going to make it through another winter. So I will enjoy what we've got today, and get ready for spring.

Seedlings

Sungolds, jalapenos, and more. A little bit of summer in our house!

Ice Station Alpha

Not really Ice Station Alpha. Just Peter sweeping the snow off the greenhouse. In the first photo, if you look carefully, you can see the snow sliding off.

The snow is piling up outside, but there's no snow inside the greenhouse, even with no heat except the sun. Just mud inside, I think because under the top layer of mud, the ground is still frozen, so the water has nowhere to go.

NOFA Conference

We had a great time at the NOFA conference. Great music, great food, great people. It was nice to see so many people I recognized from markets -- farmers and customers alike. We had lunch with the very first customer from our fall CSA!

I went to an awesome presentation from the Greensboro Worm Ladies. Makes me realize I need to get my worms somewhere warmer and drier.

More logging photos

Cornelia, Waverly and I went to see the logging on Wednesday. (We've gotten a ton of snow since then!) I think Cornelia was a little sad, in a Lorax kind of way, at the loss of trees. But she enjoyed watching Terry and his skidder at work just the same.

Goofing

Thinking summer

Mmmmmmm . . . watermelons. Via Metafilter.

Warming up!

So in that last post, Maryellen was referring to the fact that the greenhouse plastic has gone up!

The greenhouse house has two layers of plastic, each of which are 48' x 96'. The plastic comes in these big rolls that weigh between 200-300 lbs. The way you get the plastic on the house is to hoist a roll up to the top ridge pole on the frame, tack one end of the roll to the endwall, and then two people climb up on the frame (like a jungle-gym), and walk the roll along the length of the ridge pole (all the time balancing your body on the purlins), until the plastic is unrolled. And then you do it again with the second roll, which is a little harder, because you have to try and work on top of the first roll. Once both the rolls are unrolled, everyone pulls the plastic down the sides, and battens it down to the hip boards and baseboards.

If it sounds a little hairy, well, that's because it was. Our friends Richard, Kurt, and Tom (of Tom, Dana, Ethan, and Emma fame) came over to help, and it wouldn't have happened without them. Richard has eight of his own greeenhouses, so he largely directed the operation and he kept our confidence up. Kurt and I were the ones climbing across the top with these heavy rolls, and Tom and Richard secured the ends and bases.

Afterward, I covered the endwalls in plastic and put a door in. There is still a lot of work to do (i.e., putting in heat, thermostats, vents, etc.). But I have to be honest -- for some reason I am surprised each time this project moves ahead another step. I am just psyched that we have even come this far.

Last of the broccoli

We ate the last of the broccoli last night. Yummy. Still plenty of that pureed arugula though. Not sure what I was thinking there . . . .

But there is something much more exciting to report on about one of the large structures in our yard. More exciting than the weather we've been having, which has been sunny and in the 50s. Involving unsuspecting friends dangerously high above the ground with large, unwieldy, heavy objects. So far Peter's been too busy actually working on this project to post about it, but if he doesn't soon, I might have to steal his thunder!!

Greenhouse people

The Peacham Historical Association put on a wicked fun Groundhog Day Dinner last night.

Though it seemed odd to me at first, it is very socially appropriate at town events to ask new acquaintances where they live. In fact, people often offer up that piece of information. Oh I live in South Peacham, the house with the big wraparound porch, across the street from where the Johnsons used to live.

Anyway, used to be that when we explained to folks where we lived they'd often say, oh, you live in the old Shaw place. That's why we named the farm Old Shaw.

Now we more often get identified as the people putting up the new greenhouse. As in, oh, yours is the place with the new greenhouse. How big is that thing anyway?

This one's for Billy

The logging has begun. Waverly and I, with our friends Deirdre and Elliot, went out and watched Terry Williams, our logger, at work. It was awesome. One of those times I am glad to have a small child to give me an excuse to watch mighty machines at work!

Here are some photos of the skidder from Sunday, when Terry wasn't working. This end of the skidder he used to push the logs around. We watched him use it to move around and build up the piles of logs.

This end of the skidder he used to pull logs.

We watched Terry pull logs out of the forest down to the landing, where he was stacking logs to get them ready to be trucked out.

We also saw him pull a log down out in the forest. I think it must have been cut through at the base, but still propped up by the other trees around it, and we saw Terry pull it down from the bottom with the skidder.

Here Terry is cutting the logs to length on the landing. He cut through them like they were butter.

Walking through the woods, you can definitely tell they are being logged, but they are still beautiful.

Mud season preview

Maybe the groundhog is going to tell us spring is just around the corner, maybe we've got six more weeks of winter, but, in any case, someone around here is already in training for mud season.

Sigh

We are not quite there yet.