What You Should Know About Winter On A Farm

 Every year a new batch of potential farmers or just starting out farmers make their way to the groups Chad and I help with or belong to. Every year they ask the same questions, the underlaying theme is obvious, they have no idea what a midwestern winter will look like on a farm.

We didn't. We pridefully went into our first without taking advice that was given. These folks will do the same. You don't know until you live it.

We lived in an urban centre just 60 mile from our farm, lived in the Midwest most of our lives, and yet we were still not prepared. So with winter on the horizon, oh it is still just over that hill even though it was -1 F last night, I give you a few observations.

1) 9 months of the year we are preparing for winter. 5 months of the year ARE winter. We start joking in July that Winter is Coming.....

2) Tires. You need good tires and they wear out more often. Budget for tires, get them rotated, pay attention to them. Good tires.

3) Make sure you have enough feed for the animals in October that will last through April. Make sure you have enough storage and that it is in good storage (the rats won't nest in it, raccoons won't feast, ect). Make sure you know how you are going to make sure that livestock has water when everything freezes. Planning to use hoses? Make sure you have enough length on hand. Plan on hauling buckets filled in the kitchen anyway.

4) Make sure you have actual cold weather farm clothes. Real wool socks. Carharts coat/overalls. Thermal gloves. REAL BOOTS. Then double them for when the first set gets soaked and you still have chores. Make sure every member of your family has this gear. *I shop the thrift store all year round and get about 3 pairs in every size. I get expensive, good quality boots for next to nothing this way. I look for coats like this too.

5) Have a plan for unfreezing pipes. Revise it when it doesn't work. After the first dozen times, you'll get the hang of it. Have a back up plan for drinking and flushing water.

6) Have a backup plan for electricity. Have a whole years worth of good pastured meat in your deep freeze? What will happen when the power goes out in an ice storm? We fill gallon jugs with water and freeze them too, those take the empty space and fill it. In an ice storm you can't just run out for dry ice. A generator is expensive but a good investment, however, it will run the freezer and not much else and you'll have to keep gas on hand to run it.

7) Car safety. Keep extra socks and gloves in the car for each passenger. Get thinsulate jackets for kids in car seats that can't wear bulky coats. Keep a bag of hard candy, a freezer safe mason jar of water, power bars, extra diapers, and beef jerky in the glove box. Make sure your cell phone is fully charged when you go anywhere in the car. Pay attention to gas tank levels and never let it get less than half full. Do NOT underestimate the dangers of blowing snow creating "white out" across the roads. Prairie winds can blow around 2 inches of fluffy snow and make it so you can't see 3 ft in front of you.

8) Wind is not your friend. Get to know all about it, what kind and direction works for and against you.

9) Get a wench. Not that kind, pirate fool, though I suppose that might also help keep warm..... Get the kind on a chain that will help you pull your car or truck out of a ditch when it is too icy to use another truck. You can attach it to a tree or a post and then crank your car up and out. In theory.
*I have since been informed that what I thought was called a "wench" is a "winch" and is actually a "come along"....sorry for the confusion (and the giggles, COME ALONG!).

10) If you heat your home with wood or propane or electricity- make sure you have enough BEFORE winter starts. In the case of wood, make sure you know who to call to get more when you run out. It is not practical to plan on heading out to the woods to cut some more when you run out. Wood has to dry and season and hauling in 4 ft of snow? Yeah, call someone and have it delivered.

11)  First aid. I'll do a post or two about this soon. You'll need to have your kit stocked and not the way that the local grocery store sells them. Just know that what you need on a farm is different than a tube of cream and some bandaids. IF you have livestock, make sure that you have a first aid kit for them too AND a place for them to be if they get injured. We call ours the med shed. It needs to be near the house and a real shelter. If you do not plan for this just know that bloody sheep in your kitchen is really hard to clean up after.

12) I am sure there is more. Sure of it. There will also be problems that happen on the fly that are unique to you and your farm. Like septic lines freezing, dogs getting skunked, broken windows, and the like.

13) Ice. If you have a pond.... TEACH YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT ICE. Don't you be foolish about it either.

What would you add to the list? If you would, my friends, share your most horrible winter stories and let us all be wiser.

Mercy in a Ziplock

Most of us are only a heartbeat away from the kind of poverty that is harsh and cruel and inescapable. None of us believe it to be true, but in my years working with poverty level students, living in an urban neighbourhood with economic diversity that ranged from the elitist antique dealers to the homeless veterans living in tents on the banks of the Des Moines River, and my own experience as a child in a family that used food stamps....I can tell you for sure, each of us is closer to the edge than we will ever realise or admit. Those already there work fiercely to hide it and survive and others just sink.

Having a medical needs child and not qualifying for any assistance and having crappy insurance can push a family to the edge of that.

Let me tell you about my own experience though. The shame of food stamps and free lunch was so great for me that I would skip lunch instead. From that experience I struck out at others, you should be ashamed and work harder to pay for your own food! I would not back down. Then as I grew into a mother and adult and nurtured students along, I realised that even food stamps were not enough to hoist them up and out. Cycle of poverty it was called officially. One student could not afford to renew her tags, so she kept driving to the job that would give her the paycheck to do so, but got pulled over for having expired tags, and now has a $350 dollar ticket that she can't afford either. $350 was also her rent for the month. Which does she pay? Once behind, never caught up.

I thought of her the next time I saw someone at a gas station trying to pay for gas and her card was declined. Her shame was palpable and her panic real. What happens next?

Does she stand outside and beg for the money? We live in an independent society and often have no one to call that can help.

A generous stranger stepped up and paid her bill. Smiled and said she'd been there too.

I wish I had been that stranger instead of a bystander.

But so often I would be a bystander and think, I wish I could help. I don't even carry cash. One day last Spring I was having a terrible week. Terrible. Someone posted a kind word on my facebook wall and much of my woe melted away. Kindness is powerful. Kindness heals. This is where we need to direct our hearts.

I set out to not be caught helpless when someone needed 5$ for gas or food. A friend was making Mercy Bags to send overseas to a 3rd world country, why not address the poverty and suffering of our neighbours. Why not make this mercy a part of our lives. Those of us who stand on solid ground, offering a hand up to those on the edge. If all we have is words, give that. If we have extra food, find out who needs it. Extra gloves, give them to someone who has cold hands. I don't mean bagging up your unwanted and dumping them at a charity, though that is good too, I mean looking your friend in the eye and saying, "I see your need. I want to help. You are loved and valued."

You could carry a Ziplock with a water bottle and granola bars, a 5$ gas card, or grocery store gift card, some candy, a simple note inside. Even a cup of coffee delivered to a new mom and left on her doorstep with a card can make the day better for someone. Think of the kindness you are capable of, write it down, and then DO. Take these bags of mercy out into your community, then be IN your community.

Here's my list that I hit hard when I get gloomy and overwhelmed and eye twitchy (like this week):

1. Post on 10 friends' facebook or twitter feeds what is special about them to you. Maybe they have never heard you say it before, maybe you say it all the time, and maybe they need these words more than you will ever know.
2. Bring a meal and coffee to a friend for no reason.
3. Listen when someone starts to share what is on their heart.
4. Fill a bag of groceries, good food that you would eat, then bring it to your local church and ask the pastor to pass it on to someone who needs it.
5. Invite others into your home for meals. Send them home with leftovers. Especially on holidays when so many people are far from family and alone.
6. Send cards to troops. They are missing folks back home. They are.
7. Pay for the coffee of people in the drive up line in front of you. 
8. Leave a gift card for groceries at the local food bank.
9. Find out what your food bank needs that week. You may be surprised at what is on their shelves and it may break your heart.
10. Carry 1$ gloves in your car. Give them away. You may be surprised how fast they go and how many people can't even afford that simple accessory. 
11. BE KIND. When the secretary snaps at you, when the bank teller is bitchy, when your cousin says something hurtful- remember that it is probably not you. We all have battles we are fighting and most of the time hiding from others. Sometimes it bubbles over. Be the calm. Be the light. Be patient with those who need it the most. 
12. Pay attention to people around you. Start seeing their suffering. Be the person that brings calm instead of adding to the pile. Even if you are just as broken, this effort will turn others to you as well. 

What things would you add? What will you do?  Share in the comments!

Laundry Time!

Ok, you all know if you have been reading here that I am a little (soap) nuts about laundry. You may also remember how resistant I have been to line drying my clothes. I would sometimes run dried towels in the dryer just to warm them up.

And then our electric co-op mentioned that our monthly bill is higher than it should be, nearly double of our neighbours. We wrote it off as the electric tank heaters for the livestock....but then I noticed that the trend continues in the summer.

So the first step was to use a Kill-O-Watt meter on all major appliances. Nothing was pulling unreasonable amounts, it all added up to less than 100$. So what could it possibly be? We could not hook it up to our electric dryer because the plug is different. So I stayed upstairs and Chad stood at the meter......I hit power and the meter went from near still to spinning.

Yeah. We found our offender. I usually do three loads of laundry a DAY. Running the dryer, meter spinning like that for 3-4 hours each day. Whoa. So, things are also getting frugal with our monthly expenses and this money needs not to fly out the window into the farmyard.

So first up? I bought a 12$ indoor line. Mounted to the ends of the room above the machines. Pretty good tension, is supposed to retract but that part is a pain so we do not, but cannot really hold jeans or wet bath towels. This becomes the line that dries underwear, t-shirts, diapers, and dance clothes. Downside is that I have to use a step stool to hang them. I'll live.


So I had a brilliant thought. We already dry mittens and coats on the metal baby gate around the stove..... how many loads could this dry? So one full load of towels or jeans is the answer and it takes about 8 hours to dry during the day or overnight. The towels stiff and crunchy until first use, but that makes it super easy to fold. The jeans dry stiff like ironed and starched. Totally awesome. Bonus, the fold so easy that it makes them easy to stack neatly and then go straight upstairs and get put away.

As you can see, I am still working on having mad folding skills. Not there yet.

Other benefits we have found? No static build up. No lint. So much moisture goes into the air. Moisture that would otherwise be wasted! Moist air feels warmer so the heat can be set lower and we feel comfortable. The woodwork, animals, children, and my skin are thankful for the extra moisture in the air. Holly breathes better too.

Our monthly electric bill arrived showing just two weeks of our efforts resulted in 100$ savings. I only ran the dryer two times in those two weeks, both times with the vent outlet into the room instead of outside so we don't waste the heat and moisture that way. I was really surprised at how much lint it produced and static electricity was horrible from those two loads.

I am looking into getting racks. If I had forced air floor vents, I would set them over those.

This method is definitely saving us money. I am also extra attentive to clothes that are not dirty being thrown in the laundry pile. Not cool folks. Way too many things. How could we be so wasteful? For so many years?! We are also shopping around for a good stable laundry line and T bar system for outside, it has to be able to stand up to the really strong prairie winds, sometimes gusting at 60 MPH.

Failure

Today the discussion over at Midwest Homesteading and Permaculture is about things that we've tried and then failed at. Also, about how dangerous and violent emus are, but that I already know all 

about....

Music. I have tried and failed to learn to play a number of instruments. It is hard, I have a lot of respect for those who can do this, but it is not something I enjoy enough to keep trying.

 

 See these? Oh, the picture is gorgeous but the filling had so much salt that we had to scoop it out and just eat the pepper and the bacon.

These fried green tomatoes were way too salty too. Salt has been a problem in my kitchen lately. I am having a hard time finding the balance since I switched from Kosher flake salt to fine ground pink sea salt. I have since switched back. One year I put too much cayenne in everything, or so I thought. I have since decided that there is no such thing as too much cayenne. Maybe that's why I can't taste salt...

Failure, as I tell my writing students, is an indicator of what needs improvement. It is a chance to revise and do better. If you always get it right then there is no learning, or if no one pointed out that you needed improvement, that is even worse. Revision is learning. Life is about failing over and over again.

When I was in the sixth grade I came home sobbing every day for a week and hid all my homework from my parents. A teacher had told us that if we failed an exam we would fail the class and that homework was just as important. It was history and the homework was stupid map colouring. I pointed out that one of the maps was wrong and I failed the worksheet. I got so anxious over failing the class that I couldn't eat or sleep for a week. I finally broke down crying to my dad and he called the school.

I had a B in the class. Also, failing that worksheet for pointing out an outdated borderline and country name is bullshit. I should have gotten extra credit.

Failing is not something to be afraid of. It is what life is all about, learning holds a lot of it intrinsically, and kitchen failures? My mistakes make me a better cook. Yes, I still have a fire extinguisher and activated charcoal in my first aid kit- I have set the oven on fire too many times and spent too many nights in the ER with Chad over food poisoning when we were first married to not be super aware of that. Those experiences made me research fire safety, food safety, and general health. Bonus is that I am pretty sure Chad is now immune to most food poisoning bacteria. So there is that.

I want my kids to fail too. Lily has burnt eggs so many times that she knows now how NOT to burn them. She used the wrong kind of paper to paint with and the paper ripped when she tried to move it, she knows now that details like paper thickness matter. She cut herself with her new pocket knife. She knows now not to cut toward her hand AND she knows how to deal with a deep slice of a cut. She is my brave girl and being fearless of failure has led her to fail a lot. Instead of shaming her and internalising it, we focus on how failure is part of the process and not a destination. It is only the outcome IF you stop there and do not keep trying.

Sometimes failing is a good place to stop though. Sometimes relationships fail and you just have to walk away. Sometimes there is nothing that can be done for the lamb attacked by a fox during birth and the vet has to put him down. Sometimes failure is a sign that it is time to move on. Is it still failure then? Maybe. Maybe we have too much tied up in that word as a culture to really embrace it?

 

I usually only blog success in the kitchen. Should I start including the failures too? What things have you tried and failed at?