Today, February first, Charlotte came to me with the request if we could please go out to the garden and retrieve the any ears of Indian corn that had grown this past summer. Last night we had had a snow and the garden was under a blanket of white, but I had been putting her off for some time to do this, so I told her we could this afternoon. At 4 pm we donned our coats and gloves and braved the five degree temps and wind and found one stalk of corn above the snow.
Charlotte carefully pulled back the husks on the ear.
She was absolutely thrilled to find rows of beautiful kernels of corn. Shades of maroon, stripes and creams. The whole ear was almost filled-out end-to-end. Pretty good for the 12 hills of corn she, Annie and Lydia had planted back in June.
When the stalks had made tassels and the silks were emerging from the ears, we had talked about how all it worked together in an amazing chain of events. It was really neat to see these results. I'm thinking I was just about as amazed as Charlotte! Our Lord's creation is just thrilling.
Good neighbors of ours have been sharing dead trees from a shelter belt near their home for firewood. Problem is that most of the trees are up on a hill quite a ways from where we load the pickup. We had been using a wheelbarrow and a good bit of manpower (girl-power actually, see earlier post) to haul down the cut pieces of firewood. We thought maybe a better plan would be to move larger pieces down the hill and then cut them into stove-sized chunks down by the pickup. A little tinkering resulted in the wood cart. Watch the video here to see what we were able to create. And lately, we found it works pretty darned well in the snow! Happy New Year!
In an earlier post, I mentioned our goal to burn more wood this winter for heat and less propane. To meet this goal, we needed to get our wood pile in the garage better stocked. As dead trees in our own wood lot were now scarce, we had to look beyond the boundaries of our little farm. A generous neighbor a mile down the road offered us access to their aging shelter belt. I had cut here a few years ago and knew this location was full of dead or dying elms that make ideal firewood, so I took them up on the offer. I tuned up my chainsaw and spent 4-5 mornings cutting firewood before I went to work in town. Now I only needed help to get it hauled in.
Margaret, Eleanor, Lydia, Charlotte and Anne
I didn't have to go far to find excellent help! Wow, these young ladies can haul firewood.
Our system went like this: Charlotte and Lydia were the wheel barrow loaders.
Here they are in action:
With a load full of logs, I would scoot down the hillside (a big thank you to the Creator of gravity!) about fifty yards and strategically dump the logs for the pickup loaders, aka Margaret and Eleanor.
With the "help" of our neighbor's dog, Margaret would hand the wood over or through the fence to Eleanor who would carefully stack it in the bed of the pickup. Anne served as our cheerleader and supervisor in the cab of the pickup. After about ten trips with the wheelbarrow, we had a full load and were ready to head back to the house.
Here they are in action:
At the house, our goal was get the logs unloaded onto the wood pile in the garage. Here's the crew ready to unload.
As our heap of firewood grew, it took more and more skill to get the logs correctly positioned on the pile so they wouldn't tumble back down to where Tim parks his car. Here's a clip of the girls showing-off their log-tossing talents.
After three days of hauling logs, our pile has now just about reached the rafters of the garage. This is usually a sign that it is almost large enough to get us into February or March of next year. We celebrated with a trip to Hokey Bro's Soda Fountain in Broken Bow for lunch on the final day of work. I have a few more loads of logs cut and ready to haul when the need arrives. Yep, I think I have an excellent crew.
In an effort to meet our commitment this winter to heating more with wood and less with propane, I've been searching for ways to make the job less strenuous. One aspect of the task that's not very pleasant is carrying out the ashes. In the past, I used a pair of metal buckets and heaved them out once a week to our dump site at the far end of the garden. I thought that maybe some sort of wagon to carry these buckets would sure be easier on the shoulders and back.
From our sale of bakery equipment, we had one remaining baker's rack with some nice casters beneath it. It seemed to be begging for a new lease on life. With a little ingenuity, I fashioned it, along with the handle from an old lawn mower, into a nice little wagon that could carry a couple of pails of ashes.
However, in the meantime, the kids thought it would be more fun as a kid's wagon! So we gave it a good trying-out today.
It seems to function pretty well, although it's a little snug for four. Listen-in on the conversation here:
When the "crowd" thinned a bit, Edmund took a turn by himself.
Until...
Maybe I can convince our little red hen to carry firewood?
These are fun days.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Equine Re-construction: The Beginning
Today, the girls and I began a year-long project of rearticulating a horse skeleton. We'd like to share our adventure with you!
You might be wondering, "Where did we get the horse bones to begin with?" A few years ago I had the opportunity to receive a horse which had just made the inevitable passage to "greener pastures." I had always wanted to rearticulate a horse skeleton and this looked like the perfect opportunity to protect the bones while they were drying-out to prevent the smallest bones from getting lost. This set of horse bones has resided at the rear of our Quonset building bleaching in the sun for about six years.
Then, about two years our own horse made his unexpected passage and again, we were able to protect his bones to minimize loss. Because this horse was much "fresher" than the first, we opted to move his remains out to a pasture north of the house to get "dried-out." We now had two sets of bones for our project.
This year, the girls in their home school science course began a study of mammals and we felt this was the perfect time to gather up the bones and learn some basic large animal anatomy in a very hands-on way! Creating a complete skeleton which would be useful for others would be our goal.
We headed to pasture north of the house in my little pickup to gather the set of bones from our horse first. Our plan was to get both sets of bones into one location and then I'd do an assessment to see what we had and didn't have.
Here we are heading out.
It took a little hunting to find him, but eventually we found him hidden beneath a red cedar which was recently placed there while the pasture was being cleared. Because prairie rattlesnakes are common inhabitants in this pasture, so we were cautious as we made our initial approach.
While coyotes had moved them about, we were pleased to find many of the bones.
Margaret developed a tap-stick method for locating bones hidden beneath the grass. Watch her here in action.
There were also some very nice cow bones a little further down the hill, so we stopped and got those. The cow bones are neat to have on hand in order to make comparisons between the two species.
We then headed back up the hill to the pickup, took one more photo and headed to the house.
