Then & Now #12

December 2020, 2021, 2022

Jan 03, 2023

Our twelfth installment of this monthly photo-essay series depicting changes on the farm.

Elijah Graham is of course the main feature in our lives now. He is doing great - eating, sleeping, burping, farting, pooping, growing, vocalizing, doing all the usual baby stuff.

Rachael’s labor and delivery were difficult and complicated, and her recovery is and will continue to be challenging. We have had several return trips to the hospital (1 hour drive away) for dealing with problem symptoms. He recovery is heading in the right direction, just slower than we’d like. But we are thankful she has a generous allotment of maternity leave to heal and spend time with the little dude.

In the beginning of the new year I’ll be thinking about whether and how to continue this series of our farm newsletter Substack. Maybe I will come up with a variation on Then & Now, or a new and different idea for a monthly feature. Not sure yet - stay tuned.

Composing these monthly installments has had a salubrious, even therapeutic effect on me. It’s so easy to get caught up in what I have yet to do, what I am frustrated is being neglected or is breaking down and needs repair, what needs to get done first just so that other thing can get done, etc. … the sheer number and magnitude of projects, chores, and tasks needed to develop our farm to a state of ecological resilience and sustainability (especially including economic sustainability). Being compelled once a month to put together photo collections from the past three years has helped me to reflect on what we *have* accomplished and appreciate the developments and improvements thus far. It’s a good practice that I hope I will keep up in one form or another.

And I/we hope you have enjoyed these little installments. Please reach out and say hi! Better yet, come visit!

December 2020

I don’t have too many choice photos from December 2020, for whatever reason. This porch pic is nice though, and shows a few things.

For one, I had finally finished bucking, splitting, and stacking firewood from the giant pile of logs the previous owner had left behind the house. (Note the muffin-shaped stack with the tarp over it, and the bare spot of ground near the center of the photo.)

Weather conditions can be highly variable in December - it can be 65 F (18 C) and sunny, 20 F (-7 C) and snowing, hovering around freezing and icy, or 1 F (-17 C) with gale force winds blowing as we learned in December 2022. The mid-December 2020 evening pictured above looks pretty pleasant.

Cold and wintry weather was on the way, though. Luckily, Emmy was prepared with her stylish jacket.

December 2021

We completed the hunter’s shack demo begun in November 2021 in early December, salvaging as much usable wood and tin as we could.

the Kearns Lumber Yard

We spread plenty of straw in the pigs’ area - to provide them nest-building material for warmth and comfort, and to put organic matter into the soil.

Some evenings the sunset provides beauty among the bleakness of early winter.

Millie, always mugging for the camera…

December 2022

An eventful month with a newborn at home…

I bought a firewood sling and a hanging scale and started tracking our firewood consumption.

As a reminder: We use a wood fired boiler during the cold months to provide home heat and hot water:

From December 6 when data collection began until about the 22nd temperatures were pretty mild with averages in the 40s F (5-10 C). Over this period we were consuming about 1/2 cord per month.

(A cord is 4 ft x 4 ft 8 ft, or 128 cubic feet by volume. The mass is dependent on density of wood species, moisture content, and stacking density of wood. Given our circumstances I am assuming a cord of wood weighs about 1,700 kg or around 3,750 lbs.)

A cold front blew in on the 23rd with strong winds and it got really cold! Our consumption jumped to a rate of about one cord per month for ~5 days.

Our running average is now about a cord every 45-50 days. I plan to track this all winter to see how our wood consumption correlates with ambient temperature, and to be able to plan how much wood to lay up each year.

Christmas was pretty challenging this year and not very relaxing.

Strong winds started whipping up during the day on Friday, December 23rd as the cold front approached. We got home from doctor appointments after dark as the brutal cold was setting in while harsh winds howled.

I went down to feed the pigs and a huge tree had fallen in their pasture. I did a partial survey of the damage, mostly just to make sure they weren’t injured. It would have to wait for daylight to make a plan about what to do.

By 5 AM (Christmas Eve) our well had frozen. Not having water in the home with a newborn is not really a workable situation. So I suited up to go out in the pre-dawn dark with the temperature reading 1 F and the winds ripping across our mountain, threatening more downed trees around the house.

First I crawled around under the house to determine if any pipes were frozen. Under the house was just (barely) above freezing so I suspected the problem was at the well head.

Our pressure tank is at the well head. A pipe comes up from the well and into the pressure tank. Another pipe leaves the pressure tank and goes underground to the house. These are the most vulnerable pipes for freezing. In our first winter here they froze during a cold snap but as the day warmed up I exposed them to sun and they thawed easily. The original insulation was poor so I added a bunch more insulation under the goofy fiberglass fake rock well cover. This particular cold plunge was just too much though and the pipes froze anyway. So I ran a drop cord to the well, plugged in a heat lamp we use for brooding chicks, stuck it under the well cover, and prayed it wouldn’t set the whole damn thing on fire.

Later in the morning when Tractor Supply opened I bought a small ceramic heater and rigged it up under the well cover. By 10 AM we had water flowing again!

Now I have another project to add to my list: build a small insulated shed around our well with a heater, a light, and a window. It will rarely be used, but when it is we will be very, very grateful!

My buddy Mike the millwright awoke to a frozen well the same as us. He had to go off to a job that day, so after I got our well flowing I went over to his place and thawed out his well too.

OK so about that downed tree in the pig pasture…

Yeah that’s gonna be a bit of a job.

We were actually pretty lucky. It missed the pig shelter. The fence it landed across was an interior fence between two pasture sections, so the girls couldn’t get out and free roam everywhere. The exterior fence and gate were unscathed. The interior fence and gate to the farrowing pen are gonna need some work though. And the water tank got crunched. Not sure yet if it will still hold water - have to wait for it to melt to survey the damage.

And the biggest thing: the girls weren’t hurt by the falling tree.

Christmas Eve, Christmas day, and a few days that followed still presented some challenges though. I loaded down every shelter on the farm with plenty of straw for the animals to bed down in as protection from the brutal cold.

Of course, all their water tubs froze. I ratchet-strapped a propane burner and brewing kettle into the back of my truck and drove around dispensing hot water into their tubs to melt the ice at least long enough for them to get a drink.

As you can see from the photos, we did not have any snow. Just cold!

As New Year’s Eve approached temperatures warmed up and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

As my first official “Dad Project,” this month I built a tree swing as a Christmas gift for Elijah and Rachael.

I don’t have a proper workshop - yet - so I had to get over my procrastination for cleaning up and organizing the tool shed. I made it into a good-enough-for-now workshop and ran a drop cord to it from the house so I could work after dark while Rachael was inside with the baby.

The swing seat was made from a piece of walnut cut and milled into lumber by her best friend’s dad on their farm near Appomattox, VA about 40 years ago. He found this slab in his wood shop, ran it through the planer and sent it to me. (Melvin is the secret hero of this story. He is a true genius. Maybe he will let me do a profile on him for a future article…)

I experimented on scrap wood with a bunch of different router bits to see what kind of chamfer might look good. In the end, I did the exterior edging with a simple 3/8” round bit.