Tag Archives: draft horses

At least our farm isn’t in Boston

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“Winter is beginning to lose its grip.” What clueless chump wrote that bit of wisdom last Sunday? After penning those wishful words, I’ve watched our world here in East Tennessee fall into the deep freeze.

Our average high at this time of year is 53 degrees, with a low of 31. That comfortable range is one of the reasons living in Tennessee is such a joy. Each of the four seasons has a clear character, none too extreme, and about the time we tire of one, the next arrives. There are, of course, on occasional years, the extremely cold winter or the miserably hot summer. This is clearly one of the former.

Last Saturday we had a teaser of above average temps, which prompted the above bit of optimism. That was followed by a very cold week here on the farm. Yesterday, we had a brief respite, as the mercury climbed into the middle 40s. We spent Valentine’s Day thawing hoses and refilling stock tanks; we set posts in concrete and drove T-posts and stretched woven wire on the new horse paddock.

While we worked to complete this project, Bonnie, our newest work horse, eyed us from a neighboring corral. Pregnant ewes stuck their noses through the gate to conduct their smell test on her. Roosters chased hens under her feet, and Delores moseyed about her paddock next to the corral with piglets in tow—new experiences all for a horse that had spent her days working on a dairy in Minnesota.Bonnie 003

We completed the back fence on the new paddock around noon. Cindy began setting up the propane burner and chicken-plucker for our friend Sara. She had called earlier in the morning with a surfeit of male birds vying to be cock o’ the roost. Sumptuous dishes like coq au vin and dumplings lay ahead, but first the killing, plucking, and cleaning of eight bloodied and bruised roosters.

While Cindy helped with the butchering, I sneaked off to buy a late Valentine’s card to present during our evening dinner (Cindy having done the same earlier in the morning). By mid-afternoon we had settled down in the house, she for a nap and I to finish a mystery by Martin Walker. Coffee at four and then we headed out for a couple of hours of chores.

We fixed together a dinner of roast leg of lamb, mashed potatoes and “squishy greens,” and cheesecake for dessert and turned in early for a well-deserved rest.

This morning the low registered 13, with a projected high later of 29. Four to seven inches of snow are in the forecast for this evening and tomorrow and a low of minus 3 for Wednesday night. The cattle need to be moved to a late winter pasture, ice will be broken on troughs, and there is a bit of fencing I need to repair in the back forty. The sheep are bawling for hay—three ewes were due to lamb last night. I hear Delores snorting for feed. It is time to call the dogs and do the chores.

With the week ahead calling for another significantly cold week, I wonder if my ancestors had some ritual, besides sipping whisky, to bring on the warmth of an early spring. God knows I’m ready for it. At least our farm isn’t in Boston.

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Reading this weekend: The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker, Our Only World by Wendell Berry and A Guide to the Good Life: the ancient art of stoic joy by William Irvine.

Randy dogs, mutton and French country food

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Ah, spring! It brings the lovely smell of the Viburnum in the morning. And neat rows of weed free cabbages, onions, garlic, lettuce, potatoes and kale in the garden. An image that I’ll need to remember after the inevitable weekend rains wreak havoc on my plans for order.

Baby chicks hatched out underneath one of our hens last night. And both of our English Shepherds are in heat, leaving me patrolling the boundary lines with my pellet rifle looking out for unwanted males. Looking, I’m sure, like either a member of the Michigan Militia or a father greeting his daughter’s prom date.

The past couple of days we spent in Asheville celebrating an anniversary by dining at the terrific Bouchon on Friday night and attending the Mother Earth News Fair the next morning. I sat in on a well-done workshop on butchering mature sheep (mutton). With overhead cameras in place, the presenter, Adam Danforth, broke down a whole carcass in an hour and half. The crowd was perhaps a bit over enthusiastic when he cleaved the skull and removed the brains. Meanwhile Cindy went to a workshop on turning household wastes, both kitchen and toilet, into usable gas.

After the workshops we visited the food trucks and then hit the main event: the vendor hall. A couple of hours later we left with more books than we will ever read, watched a portable sawmill in operation, ate some goats-milk ice cream, talked with some editors from various publishing houses and in general had a great time. I got Adam to sign his book: Butchering: poultry, rabbit, lamb, goat and pork: a photographic guide.

Harnessing Ginger to a stone-boat

Harnessing Ginger to a stone-boat

 

After getting home yesterday evening, completing our chores we turned in early after dinner. Today we will work Ginger on removing some downed trees. She is our Haflinger/Suffolk cross draft horse. After many years of fiddling about with different horses we think she will be the one to help us displace some of the fossil fuel we burn on this farm.

Already she has hauled fencing supplies to remote corners of the farm and will haul logs in our woodlot management program. Hard to convey how exciting it was, after many false starts over the years, to successfully have a horse haul a heavy load without pawing the sky above my head, wrapping the load around a tree or taking off for parts unknown.

So, spring is our season for hope. Whether a randy dog, hopeful gardener or budding teamster it embodies that annual wish to get it right, make a new start.

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Reading this weekend: Mushroom: a global history by Cynthia Bertelsen.

A Farm Weekend

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Weekends on the farm: Attending a farm estate auction last weekend, picking up various tools and putting them back down, kicking the tires on a nice horse drawn buggy ($800), told by the estate operator “We can come down on anything you are interested in” and not really interested in anything enough to pay cash for, so we stood in the doorway to the barn and watched snow start to fall. An elderly man stood next to us as big heavy flakes drifted out of the sky. We talked about the weather for a few minutes.

After polite conversation he said cheerfully, “Since my wife died I can buy pretty much any damn thing I want.“ He went on to speak of the five tractors and bulldozer he had bought in just the last few months. “I could buy this whole estate if I just had room to put it.” Weather worsening, he then volunteered that he had to “go to the house” and we said the same.

This past Friday we both took some time off from work to attend a mule and draft horse equipment auction an hour and a half northeast. A cold rain fell in Mascot as the auctioneer ran through his high-speed pitch on the virtues of plows with broken handles and buggies with mismatched tires. A lot of items were selling for $5-10, a wagon sold for $75, with only about three bidders in the crowd of a couple hundred. We exercised restraint and headed toward home. That night we joined a group of other farmers to watch a documentary on creating an English forest garden. We ate our fill of BBQ and drank some deadly homemade Belgian ale (curse you Tim and Russ) before leaving with a beautiful mix of orange and purple carrots.

Saturday morning we were up before dawn doing the usual chores. Caleb and I cleaned out the barn, part of an annual spring cleaning. A few hours later,the barn now cleared of accumulated junk and the
truck bed full, I headed to the county landfill. From there, I ran up onto the Cumberland Plateau to bring home our horse wagon from a farm where it had been being used.

By the time I returned Cindy and our neighbor Sara had butchered and processed nine roosters, cleaned up the mess and were moving on to other endeavors. The rest of Saturday I spent setting up a new germination room for the garden, tilling the late winter garden. (Today the low hoop tunnels will be set up for early crops of kale, mustard, spinach and cabbage.) Cindy spent the late afternoon light working our Haflinger in harness. Coffee, final chores and then our neighbor Adrienne joined us for dinner.

This morning, back up before dawn with the usual chores–then the last couple of hours spent trying to load hogs for market. Loading hogs, as you may recall, requires the patience of Job. One is loaded and three more to go. We can outwait if not actually outwit these hogs.

And there you go, a standard weekend on the farm: work, community and pleasure.

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Reading this weekend: The Localization Reader: adapting to the coming downshift, edited by De Young and Princen and published by MIT. Well worth picking up.