Hurricane Farm

It's back into the woods to start gathering sap.  It's been still pretty cold at night--it got down to 10 here last night--but the sun is doing its work during the day and there is sap to be gathered.  Here's Liev making his way across our smaller brook.

As I've mentioned before, we like to put people to work here at the farm.  We like them to feel like they are at home, and we all know that there is no sitting around while at home.  Here we have my Dad tapping a tree.  Watch out for that poison ivy, Dad!  Everyone helps out.  Liev is carrying the bag of spiles and Violet is supervising and explaining to my Dad how to use the brace.

A closer shot of my Dad hard at work.

In addition to using the new 5 gallon pails, we also put out our older style buckets on some of the smaller trees.  Even though they have to be emptied more often, I think that they have a warm old-fashioned feel to them.  My grandfather was a painter and he had a fondness for painting maple sugaring scenes.  There is one large painting at my Uncle's house that offers a glimpse of the sugaring process complete with oxen pulling out the sap from the woods!  This photo of our buckets reminds me of my Grandpa and that painting. 

Finally, here is our "Maple Syrup Quality Control Tester" hard at work.  Note that she does not feel it necessary to wait for the sap to be actually processed into syrup!  Her verdict:  yummy!

For the past two days we have been trekking back and forth from the woods, hauling in planks to get across small brooks, hauling in tapping supplies, and hauling back our two children when they are finally ready to go inside.

We have a series of photos to share from the past two days.  The photo spread will take you from the arrival of our new sugaring equipment through to the tapping of the trees.  We will be adding more as we fire up the new evaporator for the first time.  I made a pretty cool device that will allow us to continually add sap to the boiling pan and I will add a photo of that later on.  It seems that the camera is on strike from being dropped in the snow...

Here is the new gear arriving from New Hampshire.

And here we have it all unloaded out behind the barn.  We have used a combination of aluminum buckets and milk jugs in our previous experience making maple syrup, but with our new evaporator we will need LOTS more sap to keep up.  So, as you may recall from a prior post, we are resorting to one of the most useful farm implements all around:  the 5 gallon pail!  We'll be adding 50 more (for a total of about 100) taps this year.  Also, the buckets will be nice as we can empty them once every other day instead of the twice daily routine with our smaller pails and jugs.  It is pretty far out to the woods, afterall.

You can see that we have the evaporator just about assembled in this shot. 

The next step was tapping the trees.  We still have a bit of snow on the ground out in the woods, and there are also lots of hidden "water holes" beneath these patches of show.  Look out!  There goes a boot!

My son has taken to using the brace and bit.  If we're not watchin him, he'll have every tree in the area tapped.  I wonder how oak syrup would taste? 

Here is Erica carrying the tubing.  We're using short pieces of tubing to connect the spouts (technically called "spiles") to the buckets.  In the future, we might run tubes directly from the trees out of the woods to large gathering drums.  We would start tapping the trees higher up, about 6 feet, and then gravity would help move the sap out of the woods as we slope down to the drums.  We're not sure that we want tubing running all through the woods, though.  I guess we will decide on this once we've determined the relative fun-to-labor ratio of hauling this stuff out by hand this year.

Here is a close up of a tapped tree.  On a good tapping day, you should be able to see the sap start dripping out.  If you look closely, you can see it starting to run out of the hole. 

Here is shot of several trees tapped alongside of our stream.  This summer the stream swelled significantly during a series of storms.  It was well up beyond the buckets in the photo.

And here we are after working hard at enjoying a hobby.  My son snapped this one whilst the camera was still with us.

Part two to follow.  Stay tuned...

The new evaporator is here!  Erica went up to New Hampshire Friday evening--returning at midnight--to pick up the supplies. 

With the help of my father, who put in some solid work while keeping strong hold of his advisory role, we assembled the evaporator.  It is supposed to use 40 firebricks.  We managed to use 48 of them.  We got it all together, ready to try out, and.....The doors did not fit!  Someone at the old evaporator makin' factory drilled the holes in the front doors incorrectly.  The doors DO fit upside down and backwards...Hmm...too much Moosehead up there in the Canadian factory, perchance.

The good news is that Chris, one of the guys at The Maple Guys, where we bought the unit, is sending a new set of doors to us today.  We should be up and running tomorrow making our first batch. 

We'll be posting photos of the tapping of the trees later on today...

Whew...Glad that's over.

This weekend we had to take three hogs to the butcher.  What was supposed to be done between the butcher's preferred window of 9:00 and noon ended up encompassing two days, 12 hours of pig wrangling and rebuilding of chutes and ramps, and two seperate butchers.

Our good friend Jeff was kind enough to lend a helping hand and was even kinder to contain his laughter at our attempts as pig wrangling.

There he is assessing my ramp and chute. 

See, I built this chute about 75 feet long.  It was made of some plywood, two old doors, my saw table, some actual tables, and some wooden pallets.  The chute was supposed to funnel the hogs from their pen, through the barn, into my work area, and onto the waiting truck.  We even constructed a nice ramp for them.  The concept was that they would walk down the chute, eating along the way, and move quietly and serenely into the cage on the truck.

Learned pig fact 1:  they don't prefer ramps.

The ramp ended up being too steep and the hogs never once even attempted to get onto the pitched ramp.  Back to the pen.

Here Erica is trying her best to coax this one up the ramp. 

Learned pig fact 2:  It's hard to coax an unwilling pig.

So, we swapped trucks for one with a lower tailgate, and made a new, improved chute and ramp.  This time, the pigs would have to use a ramp that only suggested an upward pitch.  We also tightened up the final portion of the chute to keep them from spinning and darting and clogging up the works in general.

This pig on the move was shot by my daughter, Violet.  Pigs are slow, right?

Learned pig fact 3:  Pigs are not slow.

Here you can make out the old door and my saw table.  It is, of course, the New England way to make everything available at any given time serve multiple purposes.

We finally got one hog into the truck and to the butcher.  We were able to cut down on the chute time for the second pig and got her to the butcher the next morning.  But we found out that this would be the last delivery that they would take.  They were, for their part, very understanding that we were having a tough time getting the hogs into the truck.  I forsee a trailer in our future...

We luckily were able to take the third pig to another butcher who was more than happy to accomodate us.  I'm glad, too, as I did not want to have a pig chute in my work area all week.

Here is a final shot of one of the hogs successfully using the ramp!  I am so lucky to have such a patient wife...she made a nice little trail of various foods for each pig.

Final learned pig fact:  They can be quite picky when they want.

The first pig liked pasta.  The second preferred cheese.  The final pig went for pizza!  We have the makings of a modern-day nursery rhyme.

So, one of the first things we did when we moved into our new farm was change the sign on the truck.  In fact, I ordered the new town label as soon as we found out that the closing was going through. 

We love tooling around in our pickup truck.  This is actually our second one.  We had a 1985 F-150 for several years and must say that it was the perfect truck for us.  It was a "self-oiler" and the only maintainence that we performed for the four years we had it was adding new oil. 

Our new truck (1991 F-150) was a step up environmentally as well as in terms of its relative usefulness.  This "new" one has 4 wheel-drive.  Woo hoo!  I've never had to load up, find out I'm stuck, and then unload an entire truckload of wood since this fine acquisition!  They say that heating with wood warms you several times...the cutting, the splitting, the stacking, etc.  Well, with a 1985 2 wheel-drive truck, you get one or two extra heatings with all the pushing, pulling, digging, and reloading when you're stuck in the mud.

Now that we have two kids, though, we have a hard time fitting into the bench seat of the truck.  Luckily, my wife's friend just gave us a 2000 Ford Ranger.  That's the newest vehicle we have!  With the dump truck purchase impending and the new Ranger, it is time to start thinking about a new logo for the doors.  I hope that I can fine that same font.  I think it's quite fetching.

How can one not love such a face?  The newest hog trio has a new game:  destroy the feed sack.  See, here are the easy rules...

1.  Pretend to eat your feed.
2.  Quickly sneak out of the gate as your water is being changed.
3.  Seek out nearby sack (either feed or wood-shaving, it does not matter).
4.  Proceed to rip it to bits while running up and down the barn.
5.  Smile as in above photo.

I can't tell if the pig is gloating or apologizing.  Your thoughts?

These sheep are about to give birth to winter lambs any day now.  We are hoping that all four of our ewes are expecting.  We'll be cleaning out and setting up seperate stalls this weekend to house the moms and their newborns.  We'll post pictures as this progresses.

This last one is one of the cattle.  Perhaps Mr. Greenshoes.  I am not sure which one this is.  We have eclectic names for our livestock, it's true.  But that is some of the fun.  We have had many rabbits named after characters from the Simpsons.  We had one trio affectionately named Patty, Selma, and MacGuyver. 

It looks like it will be just about time to tap the maple trees here in Connecticut this weekend.  We are expecting highs in the 40's and lows in the 20's for a week or so.  This will be perfect to get the sap flowing in the trees.  As we mentioned before, we are making some new acquisitions here on the farm.  We've made some progress in the silo front, and Erica is going to check it out in person and get some photos next week.  We really can't install it until the ground softens up. 

Until then, though, our thoughts are on sugaring!  We have placed a deposit on a new evaporator.  It is a long way off from our homemade deal that we have used in the past years.  We actually started with a tiny pan on a mobile fire-pit, and then progressed to a series of woodstoves and cinderblock evaporators.  This year we will be moving up to a much more efficient system.  Not only will we cut down on our wood consumption, but we will also be able to cut down on all that sitting around and waiting that accompanied each of our older evaporators.  Not that sitting around and waiting isn't an integral part of sugarin'...but we have lots of new chores this year at the farm to fill any and all "free" time...

Here is what the new evaporator will look like.  Erica is going to try to pick it up this weekend, and with any luck we will be sugarin' in a few days.

The next shot is from our latest homemade setup.  We actually were pretty darn effecient for a homemade deal...we had a pre-warmer, two evaporator pans, and a raging fire...You can see that the sap is boiling away in the front pan.

Finally, here is a shot of a group of visitors learning about how to make maple syrup at our place last year.  Erica is always encouraging folks to come by and visit or tour the farm.  And I'm always looking to get some helpers in any and all farm tasks!  We use an old-fashioned brace to drill the trees.  That was a great Christmas gift that Erica was able to get for me at the livestock auction two years ago.  Sure beats the cordless drill and most assuredly beats using five extension cords (did it the first year!).  We have some "real" sap buckets, but never enough...so we supplement our sap collecting with 1 gallon jugs.  It seems that most large producers have been switching over to tubing, so there are lots of used buckets to be had.

We'll give an update once Erica returns from New Hampshire with the new equipment.  We've already decided on the location of the sugarhouse, for which I will "break ground" with an official ceremony of sorts as soon as the snow is gone this year.  I hope to start framing it up over the summer and maybe use it next year.  This year we will have to sugar outside again and cover the new gear with a tent to keep it dry and safe between sugaring sessions.

So here are some photos of our farm just before we moved in.  These were taken by my wife and our friend Jeff, who checked out the farm when it was for sale.  These photos (actually, mention of the barn!) was all it took to convince me to buy the place.  We put in a bid before I even stepped foot inside.  It's all been working out quite nicely...

Here is the meadow that we turned into our pasture.

  And here is a shot from the other end looking toward the barn.

The next two are some shots of the interior before we put up stalls and made a workshop.

        

We spent many days working into the wee hours of the morning cleaning out and building up the barn.  We now have stalls for our sheep and milk goat, cattle, hogs, as well as seperate areas for brooding poultry, housing laying and meat hens, housing turkeys, and for milking the goat.  Several other smaller areas can be converted into whatever needs may arise.  We hope to have a few lambs nursing in one or two of these areas in a few weeks' time.

Here are some shots of the work in progress from last summer.  The first one is just beautiful.  It is so cool watching the dew burn off on an early Summer morning.  Don't be fooled--those rolls of fencing are easily a couple hundred pounds each!

Here is the fence after a morning's work.  Let me explain about those posts...We dug those holes by hand.  That was by far the hardest and most time-consuming job we have had here yet.  It was also quite a mental challenge at first as the spot we started in was all rocks and hard soil!  We thought that it would take all Summer.  Eventually, though, the digging went much quicker when we got down the incline into more forgiving soil.

Have you heard the saying, "Too many cooks spoil the soup?"  Well, let me tell you that this absolutely does not apply here.  Notice how my mom is right there supervising?  It was the first real job that we used the tractor for.  I built a fence-stretcher out of two pieces of 2 x 4.  We bolted them together with the fence between and we were easily able to put enough tension on the field fencing to snug it right up to the posts.  I'm sporting my "Summer beard" there.

Here is a shot of the barn area after some work.  This area that my son is so diligently sweeping is now "Turkey World."

Finally, here is shot of the completed pasture fence as our young poults begin their explorations.  We are lucky to have such a great mixture of grasses in this field.  This year, we will be dividing up the pasture into two areas in order to rotate the animals back and forth and sustain high quality grass all season.

It's been a rather snowy winter thus far, and we are loving it!  I finally figured out the most efficient way to plow snow.  What I mean by that is I have finally figured out how to do it and move the snow only once.  The first few times I moved it here, then moved the pile there, then realized it was in the way and moved it yet again...

Who needs a heated cab?  Or a cab, for that matter?  The little tractor is one of the greatest things we've bought for the farm.

My son also plows, though he does it with his shovel (his "blue plow" as he calls it).  Here he is after a successful summit attempt atop one of our snow mounds.

Our cat is a cat of many names.  The kids sometimes call him "Milk."  They more often call him "Paco."  I call him "Pibbs," "Mr. Pibbs," or "Paco the Pibbs."  Sometimes I call him "Paco Ike."  He answers to them all affectionately.  Here he is running along the pasture fence in the snow.

So as the farm grows, we get to purchase cool things that we would never even window-shop for if we lived in, say, a condo.

Case in point:  a grain silo.  We've located two different places that will custom mill grain for us and deliver as well.  The only issue is that we need to buy it by the three ton load.  Five gallon buckets won't work in this case.  Perhaps one of the only problems unable to be solved by the five gallon pail solution. 

Enter the silo.  We called a few places and Erica was able to find a woman selling a used one.  It also turns out that the place that gave us her number can also take it down and deliver it to our farm.  We will soon be able to take delivery of our first load of bulk grain.  It will be nice to save on the 50 pound sacks, and this will be a great financial deal for us as bulk grain is significantly cheaper than the sacked grain.  Additionally, the mill can deliver us grain to our exact specifications.  Way too cool.

Back to the deal about buying cool stuff...We're also getting a new dump truck.  That's right a "new" 1977 dump truck.  This will help in delivering hogs and cattle, as well as hauling firewood.  Pictures of this to follow.

Below, though, you can see a photo of part of our hungry crew from last Spring.  Notice that sack I'm awkwardly dumping into the feeder?  Well, without sacks and with bulk grain, I'll be using...that's right...FIVE GALLON BUCKETS!  Another functional use of one of the greatest farm implements in the world.

Hungry little devils, eh?  You'll notice only a couple heritage birds in there.  The rest of them prefer the food they can find on their own out in the field and in the woods.  Hey, it makes my job easier!  Stay tuned for photos of the silo.  We will try to do a photo spread of the whole installation process.

There is absolutely nothing more soul-affirming than eating the fruits of one's (or in this case, many people's) labor. 

Though the photo is from a warmer time, this meal can always warm up a chilly body on a frosty Winter's afternoon.

Ingredient	Source
Potatoes	Father-in-law grows them in Canada
Eggs	Free-Range chickens from our farm
Breakfast Sausage	from our own pigs
Salsa	everything but the cilantro from our gardens
Hot Sauce	my wife made over 10 different sauces one year!
Salt and Pepper to taste

                                      

Cook the sausage.  Drain.  Add the potatoes.  Add salsa.  Move to edges of pan and drop in some eggs.  Season to taste (hot hot hot!) with hot sauces.

You might even try wrapping this all up to make a tasty burrito...Mmmm...

Note:  You really do need to use cast iron and wood heat.  It just tastes better that way.

After last week's cold snap, everyone was talking about frozen pipes and frozen noses.  But that sort of cold weather reminds us that sugaring season is not too far away from us here in Eastern CT. 

It's just about time to start setting up the evaporator, cleaning out the sap buckets, and locating all those gallon milk jugs that we've been saving all winter.  Below is a photo of my two helpers hard at work during last year's sap run.

The one in the red hat is also known as my "official syrup taster."  In fact, she came out with spoon in hand about 30 minutes after I fired up the evaporator...And to her credit she was able to hang out all day and wait for her chance to "test" the syrup.

So one of the coolest things about having a farm is having a tractor!  We've managed to all share in its use.  When it is not being used to stretch fencing, haul manure or wood, plow snow, or pull logs, it spends its time doubling as a jungle-gym for our kids and their friends.  Many a visitor fired it up for a trip around the pasture this past summer...

Here is one of our son striking some sort of pose.

Here is Erica, my wife, pulling a log down the road.  It sure is great living on a road without any traffic!  Look at that form...

Our good friend Mose came for visit.  Not only did we put him to work tilling the garden, but we had him help capture and hold the sheep whilst we trimmed their hooves... Luckily, he came prepared with that fine hat.

The next one is my dad, also known as "Bumpa."  We were stretching fence that day.  He also came prepared with a fine hat, as you can see.

Finally, for now, here are my wife's grandparents.  They were on one of their "red-eye" road trips from VT and happily mounted the tractor for this shot.

So I was looking through our photo archives to see what I might use here on the blog.

I came across several photos that my 3 year old son took of his feet.  Pretty cool.  You've got to love the "hop-hop" boots. 

Notice his subtle progression in the three shot spread...

And then, when we were putting up our sign-post (we still have to make a sign for the farm, but the post is there!), we asked him to shoot some photos of us working.  He managed to capture this one in the midst of our labors...

Yes, he is wearing two different boots.  And the truly observant of you will notice they are on the wrong feet.  Both of them!

While we're inside waiting for the snow to let up enough to go work outside, here are some photos of my family hard at work this past summer setting up the farm.

Our kids love taking part in just about any farm task, and they really are great helpers.  In fact, we had to get a second shovel so that they could BOTH help muck out the turkeys, cattle, pigs...

I think that I have them almost trained to the point where I can sit in a rocking chair and "direct" the farm chores...Ahhh...A true "Gentleman Farmer."

  

You can really see Liev putting his muscles into that fence stretching!

  

Truly, Tom Silva would be proud! 

And Violet is not even slightly bothered by the large turkeys curiously eyeing her...

-15º F at our farm this morning.  Pretty cold out.  Just about too cold for our car, much too cold for our on-demand hot water heater in the basement.  But just about right for the animals, so it seems.  Last night the pigs were chasing each other about in their outer pen, seeming to ignore the cold.  Meanwhile, I was trying to scurry about to keep my hands and feet from freezing. 

VERY glad to have a woodstove in the workshop on a day like this.  I will be making multiple, short runs from there to the stalls and back to feed and clean the animals this cold evening.

This stuff is worth its weight in gold, as it were, on days like this.

So we started out our farm life several years ago with a rabbit.  Then we had two rabbits.  Then, well, you know how that works. 

We progressed to a small chicken coop with funky little diamond-shaped windows.  We had two chickens.  Then four chickens.  Then...

So, this past summer here at the new farm a customer asked if we could build a chicken coop for her backyard.  Recalling our first coop, we put together some plans and I built the coop.  Another customer stopped by, saw the finished product, and put down a deposit on the next one that I could build.  Pretty soon, I was building two at a time to meet the demand.  Who knew backyard chickens were so hip?

Well, that was in the summer and fall, and now it is -1º F here in CT.  A little cold to work on coops outside, but I will be beginning to fabricate the framing pieces, sides, and nesting boxes in the workshop (right next to the woodstove).  I've set my limit for Easter at 6 coops and 6 rabbit hutches, but depending on the demand and the incoming deposits, I may have to build more.

 

 No, she does not come with the coop.  But could I interest you in a "nice" and "friendly" rooster?

Since we were moving in and setting up the farm this past summer, I did not have as much time to ready my woodpile as I have in past years.  Installing fencing, building stalls, and the numerous other tasks involved in setting up a new farm consumed my "wood splitting and stacking time."  And normally, as my wife and kids can tell you, I am pretty particular about my stacking.  Parallel rows, uniform heights, etc.

So, to that end, I have piles of split wood, haphazardly covered with tarps, out in the side yard far away from where we actually need it -- in the living room near the stove.  I generally carry it in by hand each night, a few pieces at a time.  But man!  I wish I could do this:

  Maybe I'll practice after the next batch of homebrew is ready to sample.

Here is one of our hogs.  She is especially fond of dumping over her freshly poured water.  It's a game with her, I suspect.  I don't like playing THAT game, so I gave her and her sisters a couple of soccer balls to toss around.  Apparently, the fun part of the water game is watching me clamor about trying to retrieve and refill the water so they can dump it over again.

Any American pastoral (sorry Mr. Roth) wouldn't be complete without a reflection on the ability of large ruminants to turn grass into one of the best all-natural fertilizers available.  Having spent the last hour moving just under 1/2 ton of the aforementioned fecunderous material from the "cow stall" into the garden via my trusty orange wheelbarrow, I feel replete with visions of the gargantuan tomatoes, beans, and squash which will hopefully reward my labors.

There is also something to be said about a 1000 pound animal flouncing about a snow-encrusted pasture awaiting the return to his freshly cleaned stable.

Moo.