Apple Festivals

The hay is in, the weather is turning cooler, the leaves are changing colors, and fall is upon us once again.  As part of a fundraiser for TBear's hockey team, Whit and the horses spent last Saturday offering wagon rides around a local orchard to visitors who'd come to pick their own apples.  It was a beautiful, sunny day.  

Everyone took a break for some lunch.  

Look closely and you can see Sunny helping his Papa take the horses back to the wagon after lunch.

And, of course, we snacked on apples.

Today, we went to the Apple Festival in Manchester where TBear performed both with his violin school and his fiddle group.  It had rained for the past three or four days, so we were really happy to see the bright sunshine this morning!  Sunny and Riss came to watch too.  It was chilly in the morning breeze.

My fine fiddler.  Notice the short sleeved shirt while everyone else is in long sleeves, and he wasn't cold.

The stage is new this year, and the sound system is run by solar power.  How cool is that?

One of the advanced kids' favorite fiddle tunes is called "Wizards Walk" by Jay Unger.  It was a fine end to a fun performance today!  On the way home, however, TBear asked if we could just visit a fair this fall without having to work or perform.  I laughed and told him his dad and I were actually talking about that very thing this morning over coffee.  Perhaps we'll get to the Fryeburg Fair this week.

A New Wood Furnace

We finally decided to install a wood furnace this year.  We have enough wood available to us that it just didn't make sense to keep paying for oil if we didn't have to.  So about two weeks ago Whit prepared an area and we poured a concrete pad for it.

The next project was to dig the trench and install the plumbing and wiring for it.

It was a dirty job, as you can see.  The trench was about 5 feet deep.  Those first few steps out the door to hang my laundry were a real toughie.  I had to jump over the trench near the house, where  it was narrowest, and walk around behind the dirt pile to get to my clothesline.  Well, yes, I did have to do the laundry this particular day for the same reason he was digging trenches across my backyard.  It was the only sunny one in the near future.  And yes, I did get in the trench (and in the basement, and I even stood on my head to reach piping from inside the wood furnace as Whit stuffed it up from the trench.)  I was more helpful than just taking pictures.

The day before this, TBear, Sunny, and I went apple-picking in the rain with my sister; well, it wasn't raining when we went, but it had been raining all day.  Anyway, I made an apple pie after I helped play work in the dirt, but nobody ate it after I left that evening because they didn't pay attention when I told them it was for them.  Just sayin'.  The local apple festival was last weekend, in between the wood furnace jobs.  I'll share some pictures about that next time.

A Snapshot of Summer

I certainly haven't done a very good job of keeping up with this blog again.  Part of the problem has been finding a big enough chunk of time to sit and write in the middle of hay season.

After our Fresh Air friend went home in July, we had a few weeks to finish up some chores, like turning over the manure pile, and finish getting in our first cutting of hay.  Whit let TBear do the pile-turning.  It was a good opportunity to figure out the controls on the loader-backhoe without worrying about hitting anything.

Nutmeg came home in July to farm sit for us so Whit, TBear, and I could take off on a fiddle tour of Prince Edward Island with the Pineland Fiddlers.  We would spend the next week or so camping and listening to not just our kids but also some phenomenal fiddlers as they played in the Atlantic Fiddlers' Jamboree.  It was a great week!

Waiting to perform

We arrived home again at the beginning of August in time to start on a second cutting of hay in the fields we'd first cut in June.  Happily, all the grandparents were able to come visit in August.

School started on August 16th for us and, somewhere in there, we squeezed in TBear's recital.  The hay is in the barn now.  The wood shed is full.  The weather is starting to turn cooler too, which I'm really thankful for after the four or five weeks of sweltering 90 degree heat that we had.  It's time to turn our focus to school!

Some Days Are Better Than Others

Whit has a t-shirt that says, "Crops are green, tractors are red."  He likes that shirt, but lately hasn't felt like wearing it since all our red tractors are out of commission right at the minute...and we've had to resort to using our dear friend's green tractor.  Of course, our friend's green tractor (I can't say the JD word :) is about 50 years newer than our red tractors, but nevertheless it's painful.

The Farmall C and Farmall H died on the same day a few weeks ago.  Whit is hoping that the H just has a blown head gasket.  "Just"... I like that.  It feels like an understatement to me, but what do I know.  When the C died, he discovered it "just" needed a new water pump.  Sweet.  He put a new pump in and off it went back to it's job raking in the hayfield.  However, as Whit was almost done with the first round of raking yesterday afternoon, the engine suddenly just shut off mid-stride!  Our friend's John Deere was sitting there, waiting with the baler attached and ready to go.  Instead, the baler had to be disconnected so the nice new tractor could go finish the raking job.  Sigh.  We love working with our Farmall antiques, but it would seem that things are starting to wear out on them, and they're going to need some serious beyond-maintenance-TLC pretty soon if we're going to work with them again.

In spite of the tractor issues, we finished getting the hay in the barn yesterday afternoon.  Then Whit took our old red farm truck to go pick up the rake and bring it back here so we could do the fields next to our farm today.  As he was making the turn into the field off the road, it suddenly stopped.  We were beginning to detect a pattern here, and it wasn't good.  I thought he might cry when I got the phone call to bring the other truck and some jumper cables down to him, which I did.  The old red Chevy refused to start though.  Fortunately, there was a chain in the back of that truck, so we hooked them together and I towed the poor old thing home.  (That's a real challenge, and testimony to Whit's driving skill.  The truck is new enough that it has power steering and brakes, or at least it would have if it had power.)  I had to drive really slowly while Whit braked just enough to keep the chain taut so we didn't jerk our way down the road. 

This morning's project is to go get the rake with the other pickup truck so I can rake the fields near home.  I haven't done the raking before.  This should be an interesting day. 

On the bright side, I picked up our Fresh Air friend on Thursday evening.  We enjoy having him and usually put him to work haying the next day.  This year was no exception.  You'd think after eight years, he'd be on to us by now, but the boy (young man, he's 14 now!) keeps coming back for more.  I'm glad he does; we enjoy having him.  Perhaps it's all the entertaining disasters that swirl around us that keeps him coming back.  Who knows.  Once again, this year is no different.

Animal Issues. Yeah, I know, no surprises there.

There are certain things that will wake me from a sound sleep.  One of them is the sound of a baby crying, and, apparently, it doesn't seem to matter what species of baby.  Two weeks ago when I went to bed my tiny cat was hugely pregnant.  The poor thing would follow us around the house and then collapse to lie on the floor... until we moved to another room when she would have to get up and move with us and collapse again.  On this particular Sunday night she jumped (with some difficulty, I might add) up on my bed and went to sleep at my feet.

Shortly after midnight I was awakened by the tiniest little mew.  I sat bolt upright knowing exactly what it was, but was very surprised to see it was on the end of my bed!!  Then, of course, I was bummed because she was having her kittens on my bed for Pete's sake!  I got a towel and carefully put it under Stella Louise and her new kitten to save my quilt as best I could.  For the next few hours I read and watched as Stella produced four tiny kittens in all.  Here's a picture of them this morning, two weeks later.  They are the sweetest little fluffy creatures.

Whit looked over the side of their box this morning and said, "Huh.  It's going to be awhile before there's any good eatin' there."  Nice.  Look at them all lined up, snoozing.  It's been a really long time since we've had kittens (and will be a really long time before we have more) so we're enjoying these.  Especially since they're all spoken for already.

Another noise that will wake me from a sound sleep is the sound of hooves thundering down our road and across my yard.  I know exactly what that noise belongs to too.  I will awaken to the sound of one set of hooves (ah, that would be Scooby) walking across my yard, even if he's tiptoeing, which he doesn't because everyone knows a Belgian couldn't tiptoe if his life depended on it.  However, the sound of thundering hooves coming down the road always makes me sit bolt upright and cringe because that means the whole trio is out and terrorizing the traffic, or heavens to Murgatroyd, the walkers!  Okay, I really doubt they're terrorizing anyone because they tend to go on their walk-abouts pretty early, before my friend-who-doesn't-like-animals is out walking.  Furthermore, there isn't much traffic on our road, especially not at that hour on a Saturday morning.

So on this particular Saturday morning, the sound of hooves thundering back up the road at 6am once again made me leap for my shorts and shoes from a sound sleep.  (I guess Scooby had knocked enough of the fence down that Pat followed him this time.)  Shortly after the two goons went past my window I realized that all three horses were out when poor old Magnum came wheezing up the road. It's tough keeping up with buddies who are running when you have asthma.

My garden is nothing to brag about, but yesterday TBear and I spent about 4 hours reclaiming it from the weeds that had sprouted with all the rain we've had lately.  We discovered that someone might have planted the beans a little too deep because there is a serious lack of plants in the first two rows.  So I had TBear try again with some more beans.  Pat and Scooby ran around my garden when they came galloping back into the yard, but, um, someone forgot to give Magnum the memo...

Ah well, he did a nice job patting them down into the soil.  I guess.

It took a few more minutes to get the bad dogs back into their field.  I managed to take hold of Wheezy there on the left (aka Magnum) and lead him back to their pen, whinnying in distress because he felt left behind again.  Little did the lunk realize he was actually leading the herd at that point. :)  After racing around the field behind my garden there, Scooby (on the far right) finally stood still long enough for Whit to put a lead on him.  I took him back to the field while Whit chased Pat around a little more.  Pat is naughty, no two ways about it.  He didn't want to be led.  I opened the gate for him so he could "escape" inside to his buddies without having to suffer the indignity of being caught.  Here they are.  Busted.

I hear a few cars going by on the road now.  Look at them standing there waiting for their breakfast like nothing ever happened.

I'm going to go have another cup of coffee.

A Day on the Farm

Our grandson spent six days with us on the farm a few weeks ago.  We had lots of outdoor chores to do, and Sunny was right there helping with everything.  What a fun age three years old is.  He wants to be independent and do things by himself.  He also wants to do anything everyone else is doing...even the hard work.  Encouraging his help is good training, I say.

A friend gave us this old Farmall tractor for Sunny to play with.  It steers like an old Farmall too.  Sunny's legs are a little too short to reach the pedals on the big tractor yet, so he likes to ride this one around.

Daily chores start and end with milking the goats.  TBear was most patient to let Sunny help; however, Sunny really was a good watcher this week.  One needs to be especially quiet around the first fresheners or they tend to jump around trying to get away from the scary, small noisemaker, which can be a real pain when you're milking.  Three is a big boy age.  Sunny was able to stay quiet and calm (as in no fast moves.)  Here, he's explaining how to do the milking to TBear.  Just in case he forgot.  (I love it!  He's naturally narrating what he's learned.)

The horses' pen isn't really that far from the barn, but it is a long way to try to carry the bale of hay and their feed pans, so Grampa uses the golf cart he's turned into a work cart (note the dump body on the back...excellent for transporting grass clippings to mulch the blueberries or take weeds to the compost pile.)  Sunny is holding the horses' feed trays on the way back to the barn.  He loves any job involving the golf cart.

We have a dear elderly neighbor a quarter of a mile down the road with beautiful fields that need to either be grazed or cut each summer, so we happily help her out and do both.  The horses graze all day in a pasture behind her house where she enjoys watching them through her kitchen window.  At the end of the day, Grampa, Sunny, and I go down and fetch the boys.  Sunny got to ride Scooby home.  I know I've mentioned this before, but we are going to be so distressed when Scooby goes...he is such a gentle, patient creature.  Sunny can barely get his legs around the old boy.

Pat is not exactly a juvenile at 10 yrs old or so, but he gets a little antsy when he knows his dinner is waiting for him.  Which is why Grampa is wearing that face...he's telling Pat to stand still while I take their pictures so as not to jostle Scooby and scare Sunny on his back, or worse yet knock him off.

 

Another day found us cutting up firewood to stack in our woodshed.  It was not a good day for haying, but we don't have a chore shortage.  There's that faithful old golf cart, so of course Sunny wanted to help.  His job is to toss firewood into the back of the golf cart for transport to the wood shed while  Grampa and TBear do the splitting.

It was kind of a high toss, so Grampa set up a stump for Sunny to climb onto so he could throw the wood into the back of the cart.  I couldn't believe he lasted for the entire job.  When the cart was full, he and I would drive it up to the shed and he played while I unloaded it.  Then off we'd go for another load.

Some days are better than others in the haying operation.  This particular week, both our Farmall C AND the H had serious issues requiring them to come back to the barn.  Whit is diagnosing the issue with the C here, trying to decide which one can be repaired quickest to get back out to the field.  It turned out that the C needed a new water pump.  It went back to work.  Sadly, the H is in the dead row with, hopefully, only a blown head gasket.   Poor old H.

 

Nope, Sunny's legs still don't reach those pedals.

Finally, at the end of a busy day, it's time to sit on the front porch and chill for a bit before dinner.

Teamwork: Selective Clearing in the Woods

As of late, we've been using our dictionary more frequently.  Our curiosity  has been piqued this week by the multiple meanings of words we come across or use, notably, team and teamwork.  I was thinking about teams and teamwork recently in the context of using our horses to pull trees out of the woods.  I love Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary of the English Language.  Its first definition for team is, "Two or more horses, oxen or other beasts harnessed together to the same vehicle for drawing..."  The second definition is, "Any number passing in a line; a long line."  Nothing is mentioned of the present-day definition (from Merriam-Webster's School Dictionary, copyright 2004) of "a number of persons associated together in work or activity, such as a group on one side (as in football or a debate.)"  Our new dictionary does give the etymology of team though.  It's from the Old English word team, a "group of draft animals." 

Whit frequently tells me that when he and one other person work together he gets three times more work accomplished than when he does it alone. That would be the definition of teamwork from the new dictionary, "work or activity of a number of persons acting in close association as members of a unit," or team.

Whit has added a new line of work to his repertoire: selective clearing and thinning of trees with a minimal impact on the land.  The goal is to help landowners thin out their woods to make them healthier, without the impact and noise of using heavy equipment such as a skidder.  He uses our team of draft horses (Pat and Scooby) and the team effort of TBear and me.  The three of us working together, with the horses, really does make a huge difference in time and accomplishment as opposed to Whit working alone with the team.

For the sake of those who like picture stories, I have a few photos from our current job.  Whit first goes out and does the cutting and limbing.  He doesn't need us for that part of the job.  When he has cut enough to spend a day hauling out, the rest of the team goes to work with him (us and the horses.)  We used to just put a chain on the logs and the horses would pull them out.  Then Whit built a skid to help pick the logs up so there isn't so much drag (and leaves and dirt don't get dragged with it.  See? Less impact.)  Below, Whit is hooking up the double-tree to the skid, which he'll have the horses pull down to the woods.

Down in the woods where I hang out with the mosquitoes and black flies, my job is to unhitch the skid, drag it over the log, and chain the log to it.

Then I pick up the double-tree and carry it while Whit backs the team up to the skid to be hitched.

It's amazing how quickly these guys figure out the routine.  They watch carefully as Whit brings them up to the log to be drawn out, casing the job then carefully backing up over stumps and through low spots.  Scooby's listening to what's going on here as I hitch the skid to their double-tree.

Whit drives the team out with the log while I put another chain around the next one to go.

Here, they're walking up the hill to the driveway where the wood will be stacked until enough is accumulated to call for a log truck to take it to the mill.

TBear hangs out at the top of the hill in the driveway to unchain the log and measure the yardage.  We have to gather enough wood for a full load before calling for a log truck.

After he measures the log, TBear rolls them out of the way to stack them neatly, making room for the next one.

In between logs, TBear manages to get some of his schoolwork done so he doesn't have too much to do later when we get home.  It's nice working and schooling in the sunshine.  Soon school will be done and haying season will be upon us.

Lacrosse

We have embarked on a new sport: lacrosse.  Okay, maybe not "we", but TBear.  I don't play hockey either, but I say "we" when I refer to  our participation in the whole hockey thing.  I drive the boy to practice and games, I keep score for some of the games and cheer for him through others, while Whit does a lot of reffing.

However, lacrosse is a sport that is so totally alien to me that after two months of practice and, finally, two games, I'm still trying to figure out the rules.  Here's what I've figured out so far.  The object of the game is to get a baseball-size, hard, white, rubber ball into the opposite team's goal net.  It's like field hockey there, except that ball can really bounce right over the net instead of into it if they throw it at the ground in front of the net hard enough!    The players use sticks with baseball mitt-size nets attached to the upper end to catch and pass the ball down the field, while other players also use those same sticks to beat the snot out of the guy who has the ball in his net and is running with it.  There are, of course, rules about how you may beat the snot out of each other, and the refs are pretty quick with the whistle when they see an infraction of those rules, but I'm still having a hard time figuring out the difference between, say, checking and unnecessary roughness.  Even with my hockey knowledge.

Still, they all look like they're having a great time running up and down the field playing keep away with the ball while trying to launch that same ball at the goal and avoid being whacked by other players.

I can see how this game was likely invented by Native Americans.  I can also see how this sport might well have been used to toughen up young braves in preparation for battle or as a method for settling inter-tribal disputes.  I can't see how they would have played it without protective pads on their arms, shoulders, and heads though.  Ouch.

In the beginning of the season, when it was all so new to TBear and me, I tried to help him get used to using his lacrosse stick by playing catch with him.  I have to tell you, the boy's got a lot more talent at it than I do.  (The coaching help he got from his dad didn't hurt either.  Whit's played lacrosse, but the osmosis isn't working on me.)  TBear uses a lacrosse stick.  I use a softball mitt to catch, and the dog's chuck-it to throw the ball back to him.  (Ah, yeah...old shoulder injury that had to do with Patrick and a horsefly.  Don't ask.)  I can't catch or throw with the lacrosse stick.  In fact, trying to learn to use a lacrosse stick was a little like trying to learn the violin for me.  We started out on fairly equal footing, TBear and I, but TBear soon proved (with both the violin and lacrosse) that you just can't teach an old dog new tricks.  (He blew the doors off of me before we even got through Book One, and I just threw in the towel early with the lacrosse stick.  I'm already proficient with a softball mitt and a chuck-it. :)

Whit took a picture of the two of us practicing with the stick and ball.  If you promise not to tell me how hard you're laughing, I'll share the pictures.  You have to give me credit for creativity.

Catch.....

...and release.  It works slick.

By the way, TBear's team won their first game and tied their second game tonight.   TBear played very well.  I keep wondering, though, if this is supposed to be a spring sport, why am I always so much colder at these games than his hockey games?!  Even with the fleece blanket wrapped around me!?

Wordless Wednesday

I like the idea of portraying our day in pictures.  This is what today was like.

Morning began with music practice .

Then we did Bible, Latin, Spelling, Literature (we read and discussed Shakespeare's sonnets today.)

Catching some rays at the other end of the table

A science test...

After lunch we decided to shake it up a little and go outside for some exercise and nature study.  We strapped on our snowshoes and took our faithful Jagger with us.  (As if he would have let us leave him  home!)

Oops.

This was a pile of pine cone pieces next to two or three holes in the snow that led down under a log.  We're thinking it's a chipmunk's home.

Then we came upon this footprint.  After looking it up we ruled out fisher, raccoon, and skunk.  It looks most like an oppossum's print!  (If you can see it, that 'thumb' print at the bottom right was the determining factor for us.)

After an hour of snowshoeing, we went back in to do math and history.  It's been a good day. 

Chores are next, then we plan to watch Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" tonight.