The same weather pattern continues to be with us, 48° on January 9th, unbelievable, but very welcome. They do say we will have some cooler weather by mid-week, maybe near zero. That is nothing to what a MN January normally looks like!
It is probably a common thing in people that excessively mild weather has a way of throwing us off, in that it does not seem possible that it can be approaching mid-January already! We have no snow on the ground, we had a little but it is all melted. By the ‘feel in the air’ it could just as well be late October, but by the calendar we are forced to accept it is January.
As I have observed before, “time is not our friend”. The days, weeks and months go by too fast to keep up with. Before we blink our eyes it will be springtime, the time of year we in MN so long for. But, so far, this year we just keep enjoying the longest fall in MN history.
Even the livestock and wildlife seem to be in awe of the mild weather. I saw today a herd of cows that was out grazing on some brown grass like it was the best thing they had ever seen. I also observed a flock of wild turkeys in a neighbors yard, they appeared to be feasting on acorns that were not taken by squirrels and buried. We have a local flock of them that hang together which we see quite often. Among them there is what appears to be a half-breed, in that this bird has every other feather black and white. At a distance it looks to be grey, but up close you can see that it is simply a mixture of white and black. I have to wonder if it is a mixed breed or if it is simply a color variation that sometimes occurs in wild turkeys?
When we had the little snow on the ground, there was signs of our “enemy” a weasel about the place. Last winter the murdering varmint got a bunch of our chickens. We trapped one, but during the summer another one came in and killed the last of our chickens in a matter of minutes at mid-day. Bold murdering little rascals, weasels.
This gives me a project to do as soon as spring does come. That is to build a new chicken coup that is closer to the occupied buildings and make it as weasel proof as possible, which will not be easy since they can practically go through a keyhole. The coup will sit close to the dog house where the “vicious beagle” can at least raise a ruckus if a weasel comes about.
Keeping chickens to most people is more trouble than it is worth. I freely admit that from a purely economic consideration, it is cheaper to buy eggs than keep chickens. But what is life without some “principles”? One of our principles is to provide as much of our own homegrown food as we can and store bought eggs don’t hold much attraction, once you are used to ‘farm fresh’ eggs. Besides, chickens can be entertaining to watch. Nothing short of a pig can scratch, at seeming bare ground, and find something to eat like a chicken.
We don’t raise chickens for meat. For starters, I despise cleaning chickens, though I have butchered a great many from time to time. Nothing takes away my appetite for ‘chicken meat’ as does the smell of warm, wet chicken feathers! It just does something “bad” for my desire to eat one of those birds after having scolded and plucked it’s feathers. Then another problem is that our daughter loves chickens and makes pets of them, each having a special name. She will tame them and pick each one up by name and talk to it everyday. You have a hard time killing and consuming “pets”. J
For a Monday, it has turned out to be a productive day. I spent much of it on the road making some delivers of lumber to some Amish customers. They too seem to have taken courage with the mild winter. Most winters it is remarkable how hard life can be for some of the Amish folk, especially the ones who hold to the “old order of things”. Imagine cutting firewood with a one-man crosscut saw in this day and age. Although most of them do rig up some sort of gas powered saw rig, a few I know still cut up slab wood with their crosscut saws.
A lot of what they do is admirable, even if it does make their lives seem “hard”. One thing many of them do, that I believe is a very good practice to at least know, is they fill an ice house with ice so they have it for summer use. Some of them get ice from a nearby lake, but the problem with that plan is that, these days, you would not want to put that ice in you water for drinking. Most of them will build a framework out on the ground with 2 X 12” material in the flattest place they can find. Then they line that with a huge sheet of plastic and wait for a good cold snap. Then they use their well water and fill the pond with water to about 10” deep. If the weather is cold enough, this will freeze to a good clear ice in a couple days time. Then they have gas powered ice saws that are built especially for the purpose. These have a large set of steel wheels and a saw blade running off the gas motor. They cut to a depth of about 8”. In this manner they will cut their whole pond of ice into blocks that can easily be broken apart with an ice chisel. Then they load the ice onto sleds about the size of hay wagons to be pulled by a beautiful pair of well trained draft horses up to the icehouse. I got the opportunity, by accidentally being on hand when one of these operations was in progress last winter, to ride one of these sleighs. I was surprised how fast a good pair of horses could pull that empty sleigh with just me and a driver. We went zooming up a well worn trail of ice and snow in such a manner that made me think, that travel by horse sleigh in the old days was much smoother than a buggy would have been. Simply because a frozen road stays smooth much better than dirt, which will get ruts in when muddy.
Once they are loading the ice blocks into their ice house, they separate each layer of ice with clean sawdust. This adds extra insulation for keeping the ice froze and also prevents the blocks from freezing together whenever some melting does occur. In this manner the competent Amish have good clean ice to last all summer, plus they have refrigeration to some extent for food.
Personally, I could do without a lot of things modern, but a cold drink of water is one thing I would sorely miss if for some reason I had not electric power. One of my first projects would be to build one of those ice houses if necessity required me to live without electricity.
We marvel and enjoy an “easy life” brought about by modern inventions, but when we see the “old ways” up close and personal, we also marvel how our ancestors did have ways of making their hard lives a little bit more pleasant. It is worth noting that there are a lot of “old skills” that should not be lost, even if we never need to put them into practice for basic living.
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