Northern Farmer

Well, the week is wrapping up here and I’m more than satisfied. The last few days it’s been snowing gently off and on pretty much all the time. A little winter wonderland. It’s sometimes so quiet outside with the snow falling it gives a person those moments when he can reflect on just about anything. But, back to the day around here. As usual we start feeding cattle a little before dawn, but today around eight AM we cut short the feeding to drop our windmill down for repairs over winter. It’s quite a rig we have for gently lowering the whole large tower on its side. We use an auto wrecker that is owned by relation and hook up the cable near the top of the tower. I like using the winch on the wrecker because it is so slow and steady, unlike a tractor on ice. Plus we made a large boom that we dug into the ground that stands up about sixteen feet in the air so the cable can actually lift the tower when it’s getting nearer to the ground. I’m happy to say we didn’t wreck anything and now the whole working unit of the windmill is on the hayrack for repairs in the shed later this winter. And the tower is back up in place without its windmill.

In a town three miles away today there was a huge team of draft horses pulling a sleigh and giving local kids sleigh rides. It was really a beautiful site with the snow falling and the stately horses harnessed up with bells on them. Early winter is always kinda nice with all the things changing; it’s a couple of months from now when it starts to drag out.

This afternoon we stacked some wood that we made yesterday but were to tired to unload then. We also put the chains on the John Deere 50 tractor’s tires. That little tractor can be an awesome log puller in winter with those chains on. Without them all it’ll do is spin on the snow. This is going to help me a lot, pulling the old dead trees out of the brush and cutting them up out in a clean opening where it’s so much easier to cut and load them up.

And just a bit ago after late afternoon chores we drove over to a neighbor a mile away and got our Christmas tree. I sure do like their eighty acre farm, nestled down in the river valley with an assortment of farm animals all around. And I noticed that their barn which is about eighty years old was redone with a real nice tin. The whole thing, including the roof. Was I ever impressed how they salvaged that barn, it was beautiful to say the least. Now I’m thinking that would be a good way to salvage our one hundred year old dairy barn, believe me, they don’t build them like that anymore, all oak. A facelift like that would help insure that the barn would be around for another hundred years.

So I guess that’s our Saturday out here in the boonies. Nothing major, just life on the farm.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 3rd, 2005 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.