hey everyone,
We've spent the last couple of days starting to learn the basics of driving teams with Donn, namely by pulling huge ash logs out of a woodlot with a two-horse team. It has been really fun, there is a lot to learn, and Donn is a great teacher. Our friend/ fellow wintern Elizabeth took a bunch of great photos while we were skidding logs today, see below. Also briefly, we went to visit
The Good Life Farm west of Ithaca yesterday to get some additional teamster training from Melissa, one of the farmers there. Their farm is really cool but I was most intrigued by their in-construction ice house, which basically consists of a really well insulated room filled with 4000 2-liter soda bottles, each of which being filled with frozen water. The theory is that the bottles will remain frozen and provide cooling to their produce cooler throughout the summer (i.e. no electricity costs), and then will re-freeze each winter by a system of fans and pipes pulling in sub-freezing air from the outside.
Here's a story from Vermont Public Radio detailing a similar project, sorry we didn't get any photos while we were there.
anyway here are the photos.
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| We got six or so inches of snow on Fri/Sat- this is Donn plowing with a sweet snowplow he designed |
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| We've been working with Connie (L), a Suffolk mare, and Polly, a Percheron mare, for the last few days |
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| Daniel driving the team into the woods to pick up a log |
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| Lee, Connie's 5-month old mule foal. She has been making "mule angels" lately (think snow angel but with a 500 lb mule) |
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| Getting a log ready to skid. We skidded mostly ash logs, some around 1000 lbs |
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| Donn driving the team out of the woods |
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| Scott driving, with Lee in front |
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| Daniel driving |
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| Lee interrupts the process to nurse |
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| A great shot of George, another mule on the farm |
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| The horse barn, above which Scott sleeps and beside which Daniel sleeps (you can see the back of the trailer to the left of the stairs) |
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| Some of the ewes in the sheep barn |
