Today at Howell, Jeremy hitched the four biggest horses to a soil-pulverizing contraption called a spring tooth harrow. In addition to being the final step of field preparation before the oats can be planted with a grain drill, it made for a decent photo.I had an interesting conversation with Jeremy about how it's a lot easier to find a good plowman these days than a good harrowman – likely because plowing is more glamorous, he said. I laughed, because I didn't realize there was glamour in either plowing or harrowing.
On Wednesday at midday, I entered the brooder in the chick barn to stoke the coal fire as I've done many times this past week. The first step in the process is to clean out an ashtray at the bottom of the stove, transferring the ash to a metal bucket using a small shovel.
In order to get more ash to fall down into the tray, the stove is equipped with a tiny lever on its side that operates a grate. The more your turn the lever, the more ash falls down through the grate. Turn the lever too much, and you start to get hot coals in your ash.
Well, I turned the lever too much.
As I removed the iron plate at the base of the stove that holds back the ash, a significant heap of orange coals poured out onto the floor. (Now consider, the floor of the brooder was covered in dry wood shavings that had been cooking at 95 degrees for the past week.) Aware of the danger, I moved quickly to shovel up the hot coals and scoop them back into the tray. My performance was less than perfect, because in my scooping I managed to scatter a number of the coals further from the stove and onto a greater quantity of the shavings.
I watched with increasing apprehension as the wood shavings alighted and started to burn. My response was I think sensible -- to stomp on the flames with my boots. Incredibly, this didn't do the trick. If anything, my stomping seemed to spread the growing fire to whole new areas. I speculate now that perhaps hot coals or burning wood shavings became stuck in the engineered crevices of my Vibram boot soles. I don't know. But the fire was growing.
My next attempt at regulation was to create a fire line of sorts. Using the toe of my boot, I traced a circle in the wood shavings around each hot spot, thinking to rob the fire of fuel. This didn't work at all, and after another 30 seconds of firefighting my blaze was beginning to look like a real threat. All the chicks on the near side of the brooder chirped in horror and ran to the farthest corner, huddling there with expressions of great concern.
At about this point I believe I arrived at the conclusion that I needed either help or water, maybe both. Everything seemed to be happening very quickly now, but here's my best recollection of the exciting conclusion (I'm throwing in a "best recollection" caveat because I know from my reporting experience that participants in stressful events often make poor eyewitnesses):
I ran out of the brooder to the adjacent room in the barn and then out of the door. I called out to the nearest person I saw, which happened to be one of the young ladies who works on the farm. I told her something about finding Jim and telling him I needed help with a fire. (Farmer Jim had been nearby when I entered the brooder, and he's the type of guy who would know exactly how to best squelch the situation.)
Having delivered my important message, I ran back into the barn, located the nearest bucket, and started filling it with water from a faucet located, thankfully, right next to the doorway. I hauled the water back to the fire – I was shocked to find the flames had spread exponentially during my short absence -- and tried my best to deliver a well-aimed splash. The water helped, but I didn't have nearly enough of it, and the fire started to regrow almost at once.
In the meantime, no firemen came running to my rescue. I must have somehow bungled my initial communication for help, so I tried again. As I ran to the barn door for the second time, I found a miscellaneous farm visitor walking past the barn. I sputtered something terse, like "Need help, bring water," and then I turned my attention back to the faucet and a hose lying right next to it on the ground. I fumbled with the hose connector for about 10 seconds as I tried to thread it onto the faucet head in the wrong direction.
Frustrated, I tossed the hose aside and opted instead to fight on using bucket power. It was at about this time that the shadow of Farmer Rob at last appeared in the doorway. He took over the job of assembling the hose as I returned to the scene of the fire with my second bucket of water. As I unloaded it toward the flames (they now covered more than half the floor) some of the water hit the hot stove and sent steam hissing through the air, adding to the apocalyptic dynamic in the small, hot, dark, smoky room.
Moments behind me, Rob entered the brooder with a working hose. He seemed calm in his movements, perhaps even nonchalant. He aimed the hose brooderward and before long the fire was retreating and then defeated.
…No chicks died during The Great Brooder Fire of 2008. But let this stand as a cautionary tale to all you out there who enjoy using coal stoves with bottom-emptying ashtrays in rooms whose floors are blanketed in inflammable wood shavings.
Following my entry last week about the chicks arriving at the Post Office, one of the questions I received was whether baby chickens circulating via U.S. mail is an unusual occurrence.
Apparently it is not.
For Howell's purposes, the chicks that arrive in a cardboard carton each year are pre-screened to ensure they are hens and not roosters. In addition to giving up the benefit of gender selection, I've been told that hatching chicks from eggs here would be a difficult process – for whatever reason many of the hens in our henhouse don't possess the motherly instinct to sit and stay sitting on their eggs.
Even taking eggs from the henhouse and putting them in a poultry incubator doesn't always work. As an experiment this year, one of the Howell staff members tried to incubate a number of henhouse eggs. I'm not sure about the details of what went wrong, but none hatched.
Tom, a retired gentleman who visits Howell often (Intern Tom is an entirely different person), grew up on a large chicken farm just down the road. He assures me their chicks used to come in the mail, too. In fact, the practice of sending chicks through the U.S. mail likely started in nearby Stockton, New Jersey in 1892. Local historian Larry Kidder wrote this informative article on the subject:
http://www.howellfarm.org/farm/animals/chicks/chick_article1.htm
Now, some unpleasant news:
Approximately 18 of the original 50 chicks that came in the mail last week died within three days of their arrival. One got crushed under a farmer's boot by accident, and the rest dropped dead face down on the floor of the brooder from unknown causes. We do know that a Post Office mix-up led to the chicks spending an extra day traveling, and the die-off may be partly attributable to the extended stress of their journey.
Some further harrowing news:I nearly managed to kill all the remaining chicks in one cataclysmic swoop. Check my next post for the disturbing details.
The lamb count this spring is now 7 and rising. The picture below is a fairly representative sample, with the exception that several of the lambs are black, some are smaller, and others are larger.
Also on the farm now are four growing piglets. They came in on the back of a pickup truck a few days ago from I know not where. From what I can tell, they seem to be enjoying their new home in a fenced area adjacent to one of the horse pastures.
I took grip of the ox team's steering wheel for the first time today (as Rob looked on like a nervous man letting a youngster take his prized Mustang out for a joyride.) At my prodding and pleading, the team pulled a disc harrow across ground we've already plowed – breaking up any big clumps of soil in order to get ready for a final flattening and then planting.
There are several ways to influence oxen to go in the direction you might wish them to go. The first is voice commands – "Haw" means go left, "Gee" go right, "Come" means come, and "Whoa" means stop.
The second tool is the ox whip. Hitting an ox on the back with the whip will clue them to go faster, on the snout to slow them down, and on the front of the front legs to slow them further or make them back up.
Finally, there is body position. Walking alongside and slightly in front of the head of the nigh ox (the ox on the left of the team) signals the team that all is well and they should continue on straight. Hanging back alongside the flank of the nigh ox signals the team to turn left, and walking up in front of the team tells them to turn right.
On my first time out, I found that my voice commands were mostly useless, and that the random flailing of the whip in my right hand did little to help me communicate my desires. Body position was my most effective weapon. I walked where I wanted the oxen to go, and sometimes they followed.
Friday afternoon:
Tom, Rob, and I were just beginning to poke into the manure pile with our pitchforks, endeavoring to fill the spreader once more for the oxen to pull out to the fields.
On a hillside in the distance, some hundreds of yards away, the sheep were grazing as puffy white clouds against a green sky. It was Tom, with keen eyes, who noticed that one of the sheep was apart from the flock. Further gazing confirmed what he suspected – a new white speck, much smaller than the others.
Tom climbed the hill as Rob and I leaned on our pitchforks and watched with great interest. When Tom approached the lone sheep, he paused a few moments before reaching down and picking up two tiny objects, one in each arm. The First Lambs of Spring. As Tom came down the hill, the bleating mother kept a close chase at his heels. Tom would stop periodically, allowing the ewe to nuzzle and lick her new young.
Something strange and perhaps wonderful was happening. As Tom finally finished the hill and reentered the barnyard, the giant draft horses in the pasture moved as one to the near fence and then stood at attention, as if each was most eager to be the first to view the new life. It's nothing I've seen them do before. The rest of the sheep, too – all those who weren't pregnant we kept separate from those who were – crowded to the corner of their pen to try to get a better look.
I, too, strained to see. And then there they were – two wooly and wet lambs hanging from Tom's arms. (My first impression, strange though it may have been, was of their resemblance to scraggly white dishcloths hanging damp on a clothesline.) Tom carried the lambs into the sheep barn and we all gave them a looking over. And then we left quietly, leaving the two to their mother and privacy among the straw.
Saturday morning:
A few minutes past 7 a.m., I was the first into the sheep barn as I began the day's chores. The two new lambs were there, huddled in a pen with their mother. Then I looked deeper into the barn and spied two additional lambs – one tiny and white, the other tiny and black.
The smile that surely crossed my face would have been something to see. New life had sprung overnight. For a few moments I lingered there and considered my monumental discovery.
After some time, I thought I'd take an even closer look, so I took a few more steps into the barn.
The sheep I've gotten to know at the farm are at almost all times the most timid and fearful of animals. They run away in blind and unreasoning panic at a first step in their direction. So I was most impressed when that mother sheep advanced boldly to a new position between me and her infant lambs. She might have been a lion, the way she puffed up and started stomping the ground with a hoof. I backed off.
Amazing things all, these past two days. They seem so to me.
The chicks arrived today in a cardboard box. There are 50 in all – each about the size of a child's hand.
For the next few weeks, their home will be a small room in the back of the tool shed, which doubles as a brooder. My role in promoting their survival will be to help keep the brooder at about 95 degrees, the temperature the chicks like it. This will include stoking the coal furnace at 9 p.m. before I go to bed, and hoping they don't freeze before I return to stoke it again the next morning. When so many chicks are depending on you, it makes it difficult to justify oversleeping that alarm clock. No lambs yet. But they should be showing up any day now, too. And unlike the chicks, they won't be coming from the Post Office. They'll be born in the sheep barn.
The soil was dry enough today to get out in the field again and continuing plowing behind the horses. If you have read either of my previous posts on plowing, then you know I haven't exactly been a quick study. My furrows zig and zag in all the worst ways.
This morning went much better. I would go so far as to say it was a solid performance. Ian steered the horses as I plowed, and we kept at it for more than two hours. A good number of my furrows were still less than straight, but for the most part I was able to avoid the bigger mistakes I had been making when I started to get off line and found myself over-adjusting way too much to the opposite side.
What changed? Essentially my whole method, especially in a philosophical sense. On previous plowing days I was grabbing the two handles of the plow in my hands as tightly as possible, thinking a deathgrip would give me the best control. It didn't.
Today I relaxed a great deal and held the plow handles loosely. More than steering the plow, it felt like I was merely guiding it. When I needed to turn, I found I could give the appropriate handle the slightest push and usually that small adjustment would do the trick.
What have I learned? One – I still need a lot of practice with plowing. Two – don't control the plow. Be the plow. Like in Caddyshack.
I have been living on the farm for three weeks now, without my cell phone, without regular access to the Internet, and with an old TV that picks up about three channels.
(How do I update Farmbedded? After work, when I have the energy, I've been driving to the Lambertville Public Library.)
In the last two days, however, my situation of technological isolation has changed. First, I learned that there is a wireless Internet connection radiating forth from the farm's visitor center. I tracked down the farm's technological guru on Saturday, he did something to my laptop, and now I'm set up to feed from the signal 24/7.
Second, I've been waiting weeks now for the landline phone number I had been using at my folks' place in Flemington to transfer to a new cell phone. A procedural snafu within the ranks of T-Mobile dragged the process out over nearly 20 days, but now my cell phone is in hand and ready to go.
I wonder if I'll be better off or worse off to have my 21st century communication tools back.
I've certainly noticed the absence of my gadgets. Yes, I enjoy waking up in the morning and having only my chores to worry about. This is the grand, under-rated, ever-fleeting Simple Life I've stumbled into, and it's pretty cool. But after work, after I've showered, eaten, and twiddled my thumbs for a bit, I start to wonder what's going on in the world. What's the latest drama in Clinton vs. Obama, how are my friends in Arizona doing, what's new on Youtube, and what does Weather.com say the temperature will be tomorrow?
In normal circumstances, I would boot up the Internet and surf for an hour or so. I'd read articles from my favorite sites, write some emails, look at Facebook for a few minutes, you know, waste of time stuff. But since I don't have the Internet, I go outside and study the new buds forming on the trees, listen to the birds, and start reading that great novel that's been collecting dust on my bookshelf for too long….
Actually, no, I'm making that up.
Three weeks on the farm hasn't done much yet to change my modern thirst for flashing lights and colors. Many afternoons I still find myself switching on the TV and parking my butt on the couch for half an hour, sometimes longer. All I can ever seem to get is Tucker Carlson on MSNBC, who I think is the most annoying guy ever. But I watch him, and then the commercials, and them him again, because I don't know why. I've noticed that sitting in front of the TV usually feels like the most relaxing thing I do all day, even though there's beautiful, unspoiled farmland all around me. It's like I know any other activity would be good, and that Tucker Carlson is bad, but I need my fix.
I'm not one who thinks everything old and natural is good, or everything new and technological is bad. But I am intrigued now to delve into the roots of my compulsion to have the TV on for at least a few minutes every day. I'll report back.
I've received requests from Farmbedded readers for more pictures. My aim is to please, so today I'm rolling out a new segment called "Meet the Animals."
First up is Blaze. Not only is he a horse, he's the elder statesman around here. At 30 or so years old, his days of pulling heavy loads around Howell Farm are behind him. Now he spends his mornings ambling slowly out of his stall, to the water barrel, and finally out to the pasture. He moves so slowly (the poor fellow has arthritis), that I can let him out of his stall, leave to do other chores, and five minutes later come back and still have plenty of time to intercept him if he's failed to point himself in the right direction.
I like Blaze. He's got presence, and a knowing stare.
The National Animal Identification System is a program first proposed by the United States Department of Agriculture a few years ago that would require the electronic identification and tracking of nearly all domestic livestock – think microchips and computer databases. The USDA's stated motive, as I understand it, is to use the program to protect the American public from outbreaks of animal-borne diseases. That sounds like a good thing – when a disease is detected in an animal food product, the source and history of that animal could be quickly identified.
However…
The NAIS proposal was met with fervent resistance from small farmers, ranchers and other animal owners. In fact, the outrage was so great that the USDA backed off the federal plan in 2006. Now, however, it seems that USDA is working with the states to get components of the program instituted on a state-by-state basis, and again the pages of small farming trade journals are filled with fiery editorials decrying the program.
The arguments against the NAIS generally seem to fall into two categories:
Economic: One editorial I read paints the NAIS as a scheme by agribusiness conglomerates to help themselves look responsible while hurting their competition – small farmers. The corporate owners of massive factory farms support the NAIS, the editorial says, because their animals are born, live, and die at the same location, and a loophole in the program will allow them to give a single lot number to cover their whole flock or herd (rather than tag and track each animal.) With little effort, they will able to show international trading partners the steps they are taking to ensure the safety of their product. And while these big corporations won't have to spend the money to tag every one of their animals, the small farmer -- who can least afford it – will.
The irony in this is that most disease outbreaks occur not on small farms but at the giant factory farms. According to the editorial, the NAIS will change little in how the big factories treat and process their animals. Meanwhile the small farmer raising his animal in a responsible manner will suffer.
Privacy: This argument seems pretty straightforward. Suspicious farmers don't want Big Brother meddling in their business. Microchips and government computer databases aren't popular among the farming set.
Check out this excerpt from a letter-to-the-editor in Rural Heritage:
"I am an anti-federalist, privacy loving southerner, direct descendant of a Revolutionary soldier, and a truckload of Confederate soldiers. … I will not go down peacefully."
Now, I should point out that there weren't any editorials in any of my trade journals praising the NAIS. I'd like to hear the other side of the argument, too.
