You can see the back wall! The fairly massive, once-in-a-century farm clean-up continues, and the two-floor drive shed, home of a million parts and pieces of not-junk, is an action center. I can’t imagine how one could capture a real feel for all of the stuff that was in there, you had to poke around and experience it first-hand. It was literally packed to the rafters with EVERYTHING. There were all sorts of shelves, racks, parts drawers, crates, boxes, a couple of decommissioned fridges used as storage, stuff hanging off endless nails and hooks, and much of it in murky half-darkness. All of that is being slowly and carefully peeled away. The superficial mess of tiny farming gear from a couple of weeks back is long sorted out. And as cluttered as this one corner still looks, that’s nothing compared to what was there even a few days ago. What impresses me now is not seeing, but FEELING the amount of life and time it’s taken to accumulate all of this, through having built and fixed so many things, with unexpected parts and tools that’ve magically appeared out of there. This is the history of a generations-old family farm recorded in its spare parts, methodically being unravelled… The whole clean-up is fascinating and kinda awesome to observe, in a low-key, mildly melancholy, wheels-keep-turning way… Life on a farm!
Tools
Equipment for large-scale agriculture is too big or too expensive, and many home gardening tools don’t work efficiently on larger jobs or break easily. Tiny farming on plots up to two or three acres requires its own special gear…
Stacking cages
The backdrop of snow turned the puzzle of sorting tomato cages into a bit of abstract art. I don’t use these exclusively, most of the 500-600 plants each year are tied to stakes or sprawled. But the cages get used, too. After every season so far, I’ve been determined to move beyond these lightweight wire gizmos to a more robust tomato support solution, but come spring and the transplanting rush, I end up with even more of ’em. They work great for the first eight weeks after transplanting, but once the toms really get going, they’re kinda useless, too short and not strong enough to hold up the plants. At the end of the season, they have to be hacked and torn out of the tangle of dead toms. And then, they have to be bent back in shape and stacked, tossing the ones where the rings have broken from the spines. I’d left this last little task till today, and now it’s done: the before (above) and after, around 200 cages, stacked and ready to store. Next season, something new!
Chickens at work
The Shaver Red Sex-Link laying hens are doing fine in the fairly chilly chickenhouse, eating up a storm, looking and sounding healthy and happy, and producing away. They’ve been in artificial light days for the last couple of months, about 16 hours made up of daylight extended by a 60W bulb on a timer that’s on till 11pm. I’m curious whether at least some of the girls would really stop producing for the winter if the light dropped below 15 hours for even a single day. I don’t actually want to see it happen, but what if there’s a power failure? Hmmm… Kerosene lamp? In any case, fall egg production has so far stayed steady at about 20-23 a day for the 25 girls… Chickens are easy, you don’t have to know a lot to raise them casually, but there is a lot you could know. And of course, the more you know, the less you need! My winter chicken reading is Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens.
Battery change
There’s nothing remarkable or even that interesting about changing a battery—routine maintenance on the tiny farm—EXCEPT… Today, I finally got around to replacing the battery, for the first time, on the Kubota compact tractor. It was a quick and simple operation that put instant new life into the trusty little tractor. It also made me realize how fond one can become of a MACHINE. I know this is nothing new: for example, car lovers. For me, though, it’s a first. Like, I love my wheel hoe, but it is such a simple tool, the attachment is more to the idea of it than to the machine itself. The complex workings of the tiny tractor, however, are largely a mystery to me. I can maintain it, and fix an increasing number of things, and I understand the general principles it runs on, but mostly, I simply trust that turning the key will bring it to life. And it hasn’t failed me over the years, faithfully and reliably performing its tiny farming tasks, asking little in return (it’s even good on diesel!). So here I find myself, strangely, with a deep affection for a machine… Cheers! This new $100 Mega-tron II battery is on me! :)
Farm gothic?
All sorts of old things are being unearthed as the entire farm gets a thorough, top-to-bottom, no-drawer-unpulled going through, something that probably hasn’t been done in a century. There are all kinds of finds, like horse-drawn plows and a farm-built chicken defeathering machine. Today’s most intriguing item for me: an old, iron tricycle (with an upgrade, a much newer seat). No-one here is sure, but the guess is that it’s gotta be a good hundred years old. Except for the plastic seat, which looks more like the last 30-50 years. It’s cool because the design and construction are soothingly simple (and easily fixable), although it looks like it delivers a bumpy ride on those solid rubber tires, especially on gravel in the barnyard. For some reason, though, I also find it mildly creepy… Imagining the squeakily-pedaling ghosts of farm children past, I guess. Yikes… :)
Bringing in the pipe
Bit of unusual fieldwork on the menu today, something we don’t do every year. Bob and I brought in about 1,000′ (305m) of 1″ (2.5cm) and 1-1/2″ plastic irrigation pipe, that ran all the way from the pond to the gate into the garden field. Why wasn’t this done in better weather, when, besides having no snow to deal with, warmer plastic would’ve been a lot easier to handle, especially to BEND? There’s no good answer, except maybe, “Didn’t think it’d be this cold and snowy so soon!” Anyhow, it got done, and probably in exactly the same time…
I used the Kubota compact tractor to drag the pipe in three 300′ sections, right into the barnyard (the rope is tied to the front end loader bucket; in the pic, this is at the very end of the garden, where it meets the hay, so all that stubble is mainly long grass). Backing up down the field, I worked it from the far end for the section that lay in the unmown grass right near the fence, so that it could more easily tear its way out of the overgrowth. Then, some coiling (that’s Bob), tying off the loops every few turns with baler twine (plastic twine used to bale hay, it’s all over the place)… Easy!
Drive shed clean-up
The drive shed is in a transitional mess. I’m part way through the post-season clean-up, delving into shelves, unpacking boxes, dragging things around, sorting it all out. Even with the trusty Troy-Bilt Horse rototiller as a bit of a clue (on the left, in red), to the untrained eye, it might be hard to tell that all of this is essential tiny farming gear. Who’d know that the stacks of Rubbermaid storage bins are in fact our mainstay harvest containers? Or that the weathered cedar trays and folding metal sawhorses (leaning on the left), transform in minutes into the farmers’ market stand. Those indoor/outdoor twin halogen lights are critical lighting components for after-dark veggie sorting and rinsing in the barnyard. That front-loading dryer I’ve kept around for years, in case it could become as useful as its companion the top-loading washer has been as a heavy-duty salad spinner. And so on. Every little item in the pic has its purpose. Much of tiny farming gear is plain, old ordinary stuff, pressed into garden service. And it all works!