While waiting for a jingle-belled wagon ride, Farmer Pete offered farm visitors two different opportunities to stay warm. The first was to stand by the fire. The second was to grab a basket and pick field corn.
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Once Howell Farm closes for the winter (closed to the public that is, the animals still demand care) the first farming drama of the New Year swirls around the pond. Will the water freeze enough for an ice harvest? This year's ice harvest is scheduled for January 31, 2015. Stay tuned! With a few weeks left to go before Howell Farm closes for the winter, this is in the day when visitors can purchase some jingle bells or take a ride on a jangling horse-drawn wagon.
Originally, in the days before automobiles, jingle bells were strapped to a horse's harness as a way to avoid collisions at blind intersections, as a horse-drawn sleigh makes very little noise as it glides over the snow. The history of the song "Jingle Bells" is somewhat more provocative. According to Wikipedia: "Jingle Bells was often used as a drinking song at parties: people would jingle the ice in their glasses as they sung. The double-meaning of "upsot" was thought humorous, and a sleigh ride gave an unescorted couple a rare chance to be together, unchaperoned, in distant woods or fields, with all the opportunities that afforded. Sleigh rides were the nineteenth-century equivalent of taking a girl to a drive-in movie theatre in the 1950's and early 1960's, so there was a somewhat suggestive and scintillating aspect to the song that is often now unrecognized." Here are the full lyrics to the song: Jingle Bells Dashing through the snow In a one-horse open sleigh O'er the fields we go Laughing all the way Bells on bobtail ring Making spirits bright What fun it is to ride and sing A sleighing song tonight! Jingle bells, jingle bells, Jingle all the way. Oh! what fun it is to ride In a one-horse open sleigh. Jingle bells, jingle bells, Jingle all the way; Oh! what fun it is to ride In a one-horse open sleigh. A day or two ago I thought I'd take a ride And soon, Miss Fanny Bright Was seated by my side, The horse was lean and lank Misfortune seemed his lot He got into a drifted bank And then we got upsot. |: chorus :| A day or two ago, The story I must tell I went out on the snow, And on my back I fell; A gent was riding by In a one-horse open sleigh, He laughed as there I sprawling lie, But quickly drove away. |: chorus :| Now the ground is white Go it while you're young, Take the girls tonight and sing this sleighing song; Just get a bobtailed bay Two forty as his speed Hitch him to an open sleigh And crack! you'll take the lead. Blacksmith Dan paid a visit to the Howell Farm forge today to demonstrate how to make a candleholder out of heated iron.
Photo story: Belgian draft horse gets a drink of water from the pond.
Farmers do tend to talk about the weather a lot, but it’s been an even more frequent topic of conversation recently around these parts. November has seen some chilling days and deep frosts—colder than we’re used to at this time of year. And then on Monday it’s forecast to hit 72 degrees.
But the biggest weather story of the year—even bigger than the huge snowstorms that have hit Buffalo—is what’s happening to the weather on a global scale. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, January 2014 to October 2014 was the warmest such period on record, and 2014 is on track to be the warmest year ever recorded. This is especially significant because there has been no El Nino this year. All the other record-breaking years have occurred during periods of El Nino, which tends to push up global temperatures. The implication is that the next El Nino year could be significantly hotter than any year ever experienced by modern civilization. The work for next year’s corn crop begins now. Corn is a very nitrogen hungry crop, so Farmer Ian is out today spreading manure on next year’s cornfield. Over the winter, the nitrogen in the manure will migrate to the soil, where it will feed the growth of the corn plants in the spring and summer.
“Bacon, Sausage & Scrapple Making Day” is one of the more eye-opening of the public programs hosted by Howell Farm. When I’ve blogged about the process in past years, including posting photos, these are some of the comments I’ve gotten back from the public:
“Nice, although I don’t know if I always want to know exactly how my food is made.” “That first pic of a side of hog is surprisingly non-disgusting. It looks like plastic!” For many people, there seems to be a limit of how much they want to know about where the meat-portion of their diet comes from. It’s easier to eat something if you don’t think about it recently having been a living animal. It's better if it looks like plastic instead of flesh. I imagine this queasiness is a very modern problem. For most of human existence, killing, butchering and cooking animals was a crucial part of the work required to survive and prosper. It would be interesting to know if early humans ever gave killing and butchering an animal a second thought. I myself had never killed an animal until about two years ago, when I worked a few days helping butcher chickens. I had mixed feelings about doing the work. I didn’t mind butchering a few chickens at a time, especially when one of those chickens was going home with me into my own soup pot. But killing 50 chickens in a row felt a little different— more like it was just a job that needed to be done. I was relieved when it was over. Like most things, I found that doing difficult work at the scale required for an individual or family group felt more satisfying and humanizing than doing the same work at the scale required for production and commerce. For better or worse, modern society has replaced the need for one person to do many different small jobs with the need for one person to do one job, over and over again, as efficiently as possible. Coles Roberts is one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of apple peeling technology, and today he shared that knowledge at Howell Farm. Apple peelers, he told the assembled crowd, are an excellent example of human ingenuity and their desire to work ever-more efficiently.
As a teenager, Eli Whitney’s first invention was an improved apple peeler. He later went on to invent the cotton gin, which changed the history of the United States. The first apple peelers merely peeled an apple, and had to be loaded and unloaded by hand, one apple at a time. Innovations included peelers that also cored the apple, peelers that removed the apple once it was peeled, and eventually peelers that also loaded the apple. Coles demonstrated an automated apple peeler than can peel and core 90 apples in a minute, and said that modern apple canneries now have dozens of machines that process up to 120 apples in a minute. Some of these canners will process millions of apples in a single day. Overall, said Coles, there are more than 200 apple peeler patents on file. Coles doubts that apple peelers can be improved much further, because he thinks they’re nearly perfect. Then again, humans have proven to be very ingenious. While attending college, Former Intern Alex has been returning to Howell Farm on odd weekends to continue his ox droving training under Farmer Rob's instruction. Today Alex moved firewood to the sugar shack in an ox cart, in preparation for maple sugaring season.
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The Furrow is the online newsletter of The Friends of Howell Living History Farm. We will be updating this site about once a week with crop reports and other insights into life on a horse-drawn living history farm. Archives
June 2015
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