THE FURROW: The online newsletter of Howell Living History Farm

A brief video of the Surge milking machine in action:

Today I took photos of the entire process of milking Layla using a Surge milking machine -- from cleaning the equipment, to setting up the system, to milking, to processing the milk, to disassembling the equipment to clean it again.

This blog post is a work in progress -- Farmer Rob is going to help add some caption information to each photo.

In the meantime, here's some information on the history of the Surge milking machine: surgemilker.com. A special thanks to the Bunbury Company for helping make Howell Farm's Surge Milker possible.

Howell Farm's young oxen are now on training wheels.

A report from Farmer Rob:

Star and Stripe are pulling quite well now. Stripe is very responsive to verbal commands, but Star less so. This may be because Star is too dependent on the lead rope as a cue. We have been working on weaning him from that by doing some figure 8s around a couple pins in their paddock with the lead rope removed.

The cart was primarily to give us something to back up as it is hard to back up a dragging load. It also gives the calves a variable load so that, for example, it gets heavy for a few steps when they pull it through a ditch. It also pushes them downhill which gives them practice holding back a load.

Last week Star weighed in at 290, and Stripe at 345. The amounts were not much of a surprise, but I thought the differential would be greater because Stripe looks quite a bit bigger.

Today marked the beginning of maple sugaring season for school groups visiting Howell Farm.

The students worked through an entire sugaring circuit. They started off learning how to tap maple trees and set up sap collection buckets. Then they helped cut and split firewood that will be used to fuel the evaporator. In the sugar house, they saw the evaporator in action, and learned about the process of boiling 40 gallons of sap down to one gallon of syrup.

Finally, in the historic kitchen of the John Phillips House, the students learned what it takes to make pancakes -- from scratch. For their hard work, each student received a pancake, topped off with Howell Farm maple syrup.

The Howell Farm horse barn has a new roof. It was finished this week. Meanwhile, roofing work has begun on Howell Farm's historic John Phillips house.

Today is the first full day of boiling at the Howell Farm sugarhouse. About 400 gallons of maple sap have been harvested so far. Now begins the long process of evaporating 40 gallons of sap into one gallon of maple syrup.

According to Farmer Jim, the wood stove heating the sap burns at a temperature of at least 1200 degrees, and, with good firewood, several hundred degrees hotter than that.

Groundhog Bill didn't see his shadow today. This doesn't necessarily portend an early spring, however, as Groundhog Bill is a non-predicting groundhog.

Groundhog Day festivities were in full swing today, including a groundhog roping contest, groundhog-inspired food, and a groundhog creative arts contest. The following poem was penned by Howell Farm director Pete Watson:

Marmota monax, Seer of Seers,
has common names less glitzy
His word is held in trust by some
To me, it's whistlin' Dixie

In places where he hibernates
this celebrated squinter
Comes up to see his shadow fall
and cause a longer winter

In Punxsy he prognosticates
on February Second
While humans droll outside his hole
revere what he has reckoned

He's prone to sleep in Chesapeake
where Spring arrives with fishes
And Farmer Ed will shoot him dead
unless of course he misses

In Pensacola, Florida
his presence can't be rallied
The land is bare of shadows there
and winters are not tallied

On Moore's Creek Hill our rodent, Bill,
has never made predictions
Our weather comes from Ice Cream Jim
whose facts outshadow fictions

All in all, though tales recall
his legend, lore and wisdom
All that's for sure, is the allure
that Groundhog Day doth give him.



Postscript

Wuchak, Wojak, Ockguchaun
His names are quite prolific
To some he's Chuck or Gus or Phil
Don't eat him, he's horrific

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: