THE FURROW: The online newsletter of Howell Living History Farm

The warm weather this winter means there's not so much as an icicle on Howell Farm's pond. Saturday's public ice harvest program will still proceed -- there will be blocks of pre-bought ice to saw through and plenty of things to see -- but there won't be any actual harvesting.

We hope conditions will be much different next January.

For those who have never been to an ice harvest, it's often a memorable day. In January 2009, Howell Farm intern Maren Morsch wrote the following of her first ice harvest:

The very first public program I had the opportunity to participate in was January's ice harvest. An impressive igloo, a loaded ice house, a tired bobsled team, and a lot of ice candles were among the day's results. On the whole, the event was a new experience for me from beginning to end.

I was especially impressed by the enthusiasm of a number of the visitors. There were those who showed up at 9:45 a.m. to be the first ones out on the ice, who harvested for hours as if it was their own family farm they were working for, and who left reluctantly only after it was announced several times that the farm was closing. I can only anticipate that this same energy will be found in other programs I experience as my internship progresses.

Also noteworthy is the “polar bear plunge” I took that day. The combination of a sunny day and large number of people working out on the ice caused a great deal of the ice to soften and “go bad” or “get rotten.”

I thought that the odds were against me falling in, as only a handful of staff members have ever done so, and the running favorite for such an act was an employee whose reputation as a bit of a daredevil led me to feel a false sense of security in the distribution of the odds in this regard. Yet, while helping a child learn how to use an ice saw, I suddenly found myself floating away from the saw, and sinking rather rapidly. The child and his father were on firm ice, but I had been close to the edge, and I soon found myself wallowing waist deep in the chilly water.

After climbing out of the pond, I made my way to the farmhouse, where a combination of quick thinking, ingenuity, and clothing donations from the ladies tending to the hungry stomachs of visitors and staff alike had me dried off, re-dressed, and back out into the action in record time. (Thanks again to everyone who helped!)

Even though the untimely swim put my cell phone out of commission for a few days, and I just today returned the last of the borrowed clothing to its rightful owners, I can’t say it dampened my ice harvesting spirit in any way other than physically. I suffered no injuries — although for the remainder of the day people charged me with duties like tending the fire and going for bobsled rides.

In the end, I had a great story to tell my friends when I got back to school that afternoon. While I don’t necessarily recommend swimming in January, I certainly don’t feel it in any way tainted my first programming experience here.

Warmer days and freezing nights mean the sap is starting to flow in the sugar maple trees around Howell Farm. Getting ready for maple sugaring is a big job. The evaporator must be cleaned and reassembled, trees must be tapped, and tubing must be installed. Check back for more on sugaring in The Furrow in the next few weeks.

Work on the roof of the horse barn continues. This is what it looks like right now:

Right now, the pond at Howell Farm has the very thinnest skin of ice on its surface. But based on the weather forecast for the next 10 days, it seems there's little chance of having a proper ice harvest for the public program scheduled for January 28. Today is Thursday. On Monday the high temperature is expected to reach 54, followed by daily highs of 49, 45, 43, 51 and 45.

Visiting school children this week have still been learning about historical ice harvesting practices, but of course not out on the pond. On dry land, they've been learning about the tools of the trade and then helping saw through blocks of ice Howell Farm purchased last week. This ice is rather dirty -- as it's covered in the sawdust that helps keep it insulated in the ice house.

 

As they say in Boston, where I once spent the winter, it's wicked cold today.

It's not so much the temperature -- at the moment, it's about 33 degrees outside. But the wind is blowing quite hard. Winds gusts are up to 35 miles per hour.

The sheep have the right idea. They're nestled close together in the warmth of the sheep barn.

But for everyone else, it's a normal workday. The roofers working high up on the roof of the horse barn are certainly earning their paycheck today.

It's still uncertain if the pond will be frozen for the public ice harvest scheduled for January 28, but it's certainly not looking good. There's not a shard of ice on the pond right now, and the forecast for Tuesday is calling for a high of 48 degrees.

Visiting school groups come to participate in ice harvest programs prior to the public ice harvest, so there will definitely be no ice on the pond for the first groups of the winter.

Today Howell Farm embraced "plan b," which is to buy in ice. The farm received a delivery of 25 300-pound cakes of ice. That's 7,500 pounds total. To make each of the cakes easier to move from the back of a pickup truck into the ice house, Farmer Ian cut each cake into three using a chainsaw.

At this point, the modern ice harvest finally started to resemble a traditional ice harvest. The interns helped drag the blocks of ice up a ramp using ice hooks and then transferred them down into the pit-like depths of the ice house. Each block was then packed with an insulating layer of sawdust, which helps keep the ice cold and solid through the summer.

At Howell Farm today, the last of the feed corn was collected (by hand) by Intern Noah and Farmer Jonathan. The field of corn stalks was then chopped and collected using a tractor hooked up to a chopping implement and wagon.

Chopped corn stalks are among the world's best and most absorbent bedding materials. So this winter, Howell Farm's livestock will be bedded down in style.

Other updates:

-Work continues on the roof of the Howell Farm horse barn.

-Over at the Howell Farm corn maize (located on a separate property) a cover crop of wheat and spelt is up and thriving. A mild winter has allowed for good germination rates and growth. Hungry geese are a problem, but now that the ground is frozen, the geese seem to be nibbling only the shoots, rather than pulling the entire plant out, roots and all.

Happy New Year!

Howell Farm reopens to the public on January 28 for the ice harvest.

Will there be enough ice on the pond to have the harvest this year? It's still too early to tell, but conditions so far have not been favorable. The forecast for the week ahead calls for highs in the 50s and lows in the 30s. That's not cold enough for ice, and four inches of solid ice on the pond are required for a safe harvest. It usually takes about two weeks of freezing temperatures for 4 inches of ice to form on our pond.

However:

Farmer Jim, a highly-respected weather predictor, has a hunch that the temperature will turn just cold enough starting in mid-January to allow for a minimal 4-inch Howell Farm ice harvest on January 28.

Here's some more information about ice harvesting, gleaned from a blog post I wrote in 2008 as a Howell Farm intern:

• Ice must be tended like a winter crop. When it snows, the ice needs to be cleared off, or else the snow cover can act as an insulator and prevent the ice from getting any thicker. In other cases, the snow can get trapped under a layer of ice that freezes on top of it, creating ice blocks prone to breaking apart at the weak layer of snow.
  
  
• The ice house at Howell holds about 25 tons. Ice stored properly there -- with sawdusk insulation -- can last three years. (A block of ice will melt about 30 percent each year.)
  


• A hundred years ago, if there were a warm winter with no ice on the pond, the farmers would have had to buy northern ice shipped down from Maine.
  


• Back in the day, if you wanted a cold drink, you wouldn't drop ice into your glass, you'd put your glass or bottle into the ice bowl. That's because there could be some nasty things in the ice itself (dirt, mud, animal waste, etc.).

Today is the first day of winter. It's beautiful and sunny outside, but at 57 degrees, it feels more like the first day of spring.

More rain is forecast for tonight. If you've been reading this blog throughout 2011, you know that soggy weather has been a common theme. By the end of November, 2011 already registered as the wettest year in New Jersey recorded history. All the rain we've been getting this December is piling on to the new record.

The climate data we've been referencing in these blog posts all comes from the website of the New Jersey state climatologist. If you're interested in weather (which most farmers are) the monthly climate reports make for great reading:

http://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim/

Howell Farm has been closed to the public (except the visitor center) for the past several weeks, but life on a 1900s-era farm continues. Farmer Rob and the interns have been spending time training oxen, milking cows, and of course doing all the regular chores. In the winter, when animals spend more time inside the barn, mucking stalls becomes a big job.

Repairs continue as well. Farmer Jonathan recently repaired some fences taken down by the flash floods of Hurricane Irene, and the roof of the main Howell Farm animal barn is getting some fixes from a hired roofing crew.

The winter wheat has been taking advantage of a mild December and continues to grow. Both of the wheat fields look green and lush.

Coming soon: a PDF version of the 2011 Furrow, so you can download an entire year's worth of blog posts and read the story of a year of farming at Howell Living History Farm.

Tom the draft horse takes his first steps on a horse treadmill.