Planning, Sugaring, Expanding the flocks

It may seem like a slow time of the year on a farm, but this is not the case.  Sure, aside from obtaining more firewood, tapping trees, and building portable structures, some of the physical demands have been reduced a bit, but the amount of planning, marketing, equipment sourcing and budgeting going on is at an an all time high.

For starters, after months of deliberation and hundreds of used tractors viewed online, it was finally time to pull the trigger and make a decision on a multi-purpose farm tractor.  In the end we didn't have to go far, as we found a 1959 Massey Ferguson T035 tractor at a good price right here in Honesdale.  The tractor has a live PTO (power  take off) and 3 point hitch on the back so that mowers and other attachments can be hooked up and powered by the tractor.  We are also presently sourcing a front end bucket loader that we can take on and off as needed to lift and haul loads or turn compost, etc.  We think our old tractor certainly has an "old school" feel.

We also purchased an old "running gear" wagon frame from local farmer and talk radio farming personality, Dave Williams. For this Dave Campeau will fashion an oak flatbed, bench seats and sidewalls to form a wagon that will be used to move guests around the farm and for hauling hay and other bulky materials.  Another addition to our small collection of farm equipment is an old John Deere corn/seed planter that gets pulled behind the tractor.

We have a lot of plans on the books right now for when the weather warms - for starters, a privy up on the hillside so that guests can have a complete "old school" experience when visiting the farm this spring and summer (superior in every way to a porta-potty.  We are also currently planning a cold frame, and an additional shelter for some dairy goats we will be bringing to the farm.


Old School Farm will have a booth this April at the Philly Farm & Food Fest on Sunday, April 14th - www.PhillyFarmFest.org  We will be there to promote our upcoming Family Farm Getaways, sell some homemade wood-fired bread, and to get the word out regarding our sister company that provides and installs backyard family food gardens -  www.BackyardFarmers.com

The boys and mom, Deena were up over President's Day weekend to visit their cousins at nearby Elk Mountain.  Some sledding fun, a bit of snowmobiling on Dave's snowmobile, and tapping sugar maple trees for sap added to the excitement for the boys.

Maple sugaring season is upon us, and we have a gravity feed line tied into 15  trees up behind the barn.  This sap line drains into our rain barrel (a reclaimed olive barrel) up near the hen house, and then drains down from there to our massive cast iron caldron suspended over our fire pit.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to cook down to make just one gallon of syrup.  Soon after set up it got so cold that our tap lines and bucket taps froze, so we now await warmer temps to get things flowing - and cooking.

Watch a funny video of the boys getting their sap here:  http://youtu.be/vqE-lgSj940

Nesting boxes are almost complete for our laying hens and female turkeys.  We expect these heritage breeds to go "broody" soon and sit on eggs so we can proliferate our flocks.  It take about 28 days of nest sitting - quite a commitment, but Al had success with a Buff Orpington hen hatching out 8 chicks a couple of years back, so we remain optimistic.  The best news is that even though we lost our tom turkeys to predation and disease back in November, we just confirmed that mating season began in September, so we are pretty confident that our girl's eggs have already been fertilized.

As for our sheep, they are thriving even in this very cold weather.  Elska, the largest ewe is still calling the shots and continues to butt heads (literally with our still smaller and younger ram, Uncas.  We certainly hope Uncas did his "work" this past fall and that we in fact have four pregnant ewes ready to lamb come late spring - it's hard to tell at this point w/ the shaggy winter coats.

During mid-February Al and Dave journeyed to State College for the 22nd annual PASA (PA sustainable Agriculture conference) - www.pasafarming.org held at the Penn Stater conference center.  Over 2,000 people were in attendance to select from over 100 workshops/seminars to learn the latest sustainable agriculture practices.  Some excellent food and a great time was had by all.   If you are interested in where your food comes from, bettering how we produce it, and would like to meet some really great people, then you might want to consider joining PASA. Keynote speaker, Ben Hewitt, an author and farmer raising two young boys on a farm in Vermont was pretty incredible:  http://benhewitt.net/   - he's a great read.

Bob Martin - 2nd from left

Finally, Al had a nice visit from Bob Martin who works locally for the Army Corp of Engineers.  Because OSF recently received a USDA grant and will be installing a 100' x 28' high tunnel (greenhouse-like structure) this spring for crop  season extension, Al decided to check with Bob to make sure this structure would be acceptable in the garden area which is within the floodplain.  No problem as it is considered a temporary structure.  Bob was then kind enough to drop off a few old photos of himself in class at the old one room school house.

Olive Walter - the much loved teacher at the Pleasant Valley School

Prior to the Jadwin dam being installed to protect Honesdale from flooding, the school was located directly across the Dyberry river from us.  Bob also shared copies of some old photos of Olive Walter (above) whose family had built our house, and who was the teacher for many years.  Olive can be seen above in the background behind her students. Bob then went on to tell me how each day students would walk over to our springhouse to get drinking water and how they were also responsible for keeping the wood stove stoked during winter months.  Thanks for the great history lesson Bob !

Until next time, enjoy the photos, stay warm, and think spring !

Your Friends at Old School Farm

Turkey tracks

Hen enjoying beets from our springhouse

Pileated woodpecker work

Our old Kalamazoo Stove in Basement - 100% wood heat

Old school sugaring bucket

Windows added to back of hen house for ventilation

An unknown creature;s winter burrow - possibly a weasel 

Winter's Grip

As we move into mid-winter at the farm, routine can become a bit dull, so we find it important to  get outside and have some fun, making the best of what cold temperatures and snow have to offer.

With twin six year old boys, finding fun is quite easy, as a winter wonderland can be a paradise.  From snowball fights, to sledding,  snow angels, snowman making, skating and ice fishing, a farm in the country has a lot to offer.




Our old road bed that leads to the newly developing upper pasture provided for some fast sledding action, and a nearby farm pond offered an opportunity to skate, set up some ice fishing "tip ups" and have a big snowball fight on a warm day when the snow was packing well.

Indoors also has it's moments, especially when Farmer Dave livened things ups with some solo electric guitar that had the boys and their cousins going pretty crazy dancing to.

Planning is also important this time of the year, and we are currently designing a large cold frame for the SE side of the barn as well as a seedling growing area with special grow lights in the basement.

The Kalamazoo 23 wood stove in the basement is proving to be a real workhorse for heating the entire house, and the locust logs provided to us by our neighbors Pat & Jim Sanders have really been keeping the house nice and toasty.  We also cooked a complete meal on our "New Wyoming" wood burning kitchen cook stove - it was excellent - the fish and veggies were cooked on top and we lowered our potatoes in foil right into the coals in the burn box.

 Since we are still in the market for a used antique tractor for the spring and our pick up truck does not have a plow, our always helpful neighbor Ben Masucci has been plowing us out and keeping our driveway clear - thanks Ben!

We just ordered 1,000 feet of tubing and related connectors and spouts so that come March we can tap about 20 sugar maples that are growing on the hillside above our barn.  The sap will drip by gravity to a large catchment drum and then be heated slowly over a wood fire to evaporate. It is a 40:1 sap to syrup ratio, so we need a lot of sap to have enough syrup for the coming year!

We are also obtaining additional firewood from several maple and ash trees that came down in 2012 during the Irene hurricane.  With the snow on the ground we are able to roll and/or skid the logs to get them down the hillside - using gravity to make our job easier.

Repairs continue around the house and Dave put a permanent metal roof on our 2nd sheep shelter.

The sheep and birds are all doing extremely well.  The chickens are enjoying whole beets and are also still foraging outside beneath evergreens that are protecting the ground from snow cover.  The sheep are butting heads over spent kale and brussel sprout plants and also enjoy an occasional beet.

All in all things are going well at Old School Farm.  The seeds that we were unable to save from last year have been ordered, and our stock of potatoes, beets, and carrots in the spring house continue to hold out very well.  The small pond below the spring house still refuses to freeze and even steams a bit.  We plan on establishing watercress in there come springtime.

Wild food update:   Acorn Muffins !    These are an incredibly delicious, nutty and nutritious treat - we use 50/50 ground white oak acorn meal and whole spelt flour.  Collect some acorns next fall and find out for yourself how delectable these really are.

Until next time, enjoy the photos below from the farm, and stay WARM :)

Your Friends at Old School Farm

Holiday time at the Farm...

Things slow down at the farm during the winter.  The activities and projects  that can be undertaken during more favorable weather conditions are now limited.  It's a good time to focus on keeping warm and planning your agenda, seed selections/planting arrangement, pasture rotations,and budget for the coming year.  It's also a good time to catch up on those nagging deficiencies around the house that were put off during warmer months - the door that locks on it's own, the old kitchen cabinet that sticks, and that pesky pull cord light that isn't functioning.

There was one very pressing issue that finally got addressed just before Christmas - the chimney flue that had cracks in it.  This was of concern since we are now heating the entire house with the old Kalamazoo #23  wood/coal burning furnace in the basement (we are only using wood).
As creosote builds up over time in the flue, it can migrate into these cracks in the terracotta liner and possibly start a chimney fire.

It was decided that the most cost-effective and best way to remedy this problem was to insert a new stainless steel liner (sleeve) into the existing flue.   How to do this?   The chimney is close to 35' off the ground, and on steep angle at one corner of the mansard roof - quite dangerous to access with a ladder.   As it turns out we had a local tree professional out to remove some dead limbs that were hanging over our new barn, so we decided to see if Bob Myers (from Hawley) would be willing to use his 50' hydraulic bucket lift for lowering the liner into place.  Bob was game, and it all worked out great.   Thanks so much Bob!  We even hooked in the old wood burning cook stove in the kitchen.  Our first test fire yielded some awesome blueberry pancakes, but also a lot of smoke in the kitchen - we need to address some cracks in the Old Wyoming stove made by the Pittston Stove Company near Scranton.

The sheep are now receiving a larger ration of grain to keep their body fat up, and also regular bales of first cut hay.  Dave built a really nice hay feeder, and grain feeding trough.  We have also found a use for our old worn out kale and brussel sprout plants - the sheep love to eat them, and they even but heads over them!

We've also found that the pulp left over from the juicing of beets, carrots, kale, apples and oranges is a favorite of the sheep and the chickens - a great use of an otherwise worthless by-product.  At $35 for a 50 lb bag of organic sheep feed and close to $30 for chicken feed, this is a cost-saving and healthy addition to their diet.

The chickens are now laying fewer eggs - about 1 every three days.  This is due to the lower light levels and the seasonal molt some of the birds are experiencing.  We could force higher output by adding a light in the coop during periods of darkness, but we have instead opted to let the birds maintain strength and vitality during these cold months and letting nature dictate output.

Some good news - Al recently spied the brook trout he and the boys had stocked in the new pond last spring - we thought she had become dinner for a hungry heron, but happily we were mistaken.

Even though hunting season is over, the boys still enjoy seeing what passes by our game camera out in the woods.  We have here a link to our video showing a pack of coyotes that were seen up in our newly forming upper pasture area.  We certainly hope our electric fence stays well charged and our flashing predator eye lights keep doing the job for protecting our sheep.

We recently finalized our logo - many thanks to graphic artist, Charlie Layton for his excellent artwork in bringing Al's concept to reality.  We also have a website -  just click the logo here to take a look. It's a work in progress, but it will provide even more insight into the reasons for the farm and what we plan on offering moving forward.  Our first family farm tour/workshop that will feature learning how to build and cook in an earthen cob oven is set for Sunday, May 19th, with our opening Friday Pizza night is slated for Friday the 31st of May.  Check our website for more details as they unfold.  We hope you can pay us a visit in person come spring - we're even planning on constructing a traditional Lene Lenape Indian sweat lodge on the property.

Lastly, we part with a humorous photo of our "invisible" Christmas tree that was dragged out of the woods by the boys and was so void of branches, it is hard to see any green aside from the wall behind the tree !  Thankfully at Christmas time six year old boys don't seem to mind :)

Enjoy this special time of year with your family...

Your Friends at Old School Farm

Note:  If you enjoy snow boarding, click here to see a link of
"Farmer Dave" doing a 360 at the farm!

Below are some additional farm photos for your enjoyment...

Owen uncorks a fastball at Dad.

Giant "Grax" beet with our eggs & potatoes 

Syphoning Hard Cider 

Checkmate?

Sheppards tending their flock

Turkeys venture out during snow storm

Dave makes final connections to cook stove

Owen writes his name in the slush forming on pond

Brussels still going strong

Coleman Benner after conquering the "half pipe" jump

"Happy Thoughts" - The caption on the bottom of our "Old Wyoming" 1920's kitchen stove plates

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