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.
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.
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