History re-enacted

*** Between changes to Blogger and this new computer, I can't enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.  I have to right-mouse and say "Open in a new window".  I don't know what Mac people have to do.***

Yes, folks, it's the last weekend in January and that means the stalwarts gather on a well-frozen pond (officially called "Sunset Lake", by the Floating Bridge) and see how folks got the ice that kept food cold in ice-boxes, way back when.The ice harvest is in its 31st year of tradition. On the right you see Jon Binhammer, the Town Forester (his day job is with the Nature Conservancy), who has inherited the Ice Harvest from Art Wilder, a local resident who was a boy when ice was harvested each January and has managed the festival for years and years.  Jon is now the man in charge, and Art is the Resident Expert.

The man on the left remains nameless, because I got there after the introductions, and all I know is that he lives in Brookfield and works for the Randolph Herald.  He's shoveling ice pieces out of the water patch where the ice is being harvested.  Water on ice becomes very slippery, and the shovel (looks like a potato shovel to me) is perforated so as little water as possible hits the ice. Jon's metal net serves the same purpose, but only for big ice chunks. The "vehicle" to the right of Jon is a type of "ice scorer". Many scorers were pushed by hand, but this seems to have been horse-drawn, to score the ice in a checkerboard pattern. The scoring shows the cutter where to cut.

Today the ice was between 14" and 24" thick, depending on where you stand on the pond, but we've had rising temperatures and freezing rain over the last couple of days. The exciting part of today's experience was that there was so much slush and water on the pond that anyone involved was going to be soaked to their knees. There was a real risk of falling in that had Mr.Wilder a little concerned, once the cutting began. 

Jon demonstrated the sawing.  The saw cuts on the upstroke, so he put the saw into the water until the end of the blade was below the ice, and then drew the saw back along the scored line.  Look at all the water Jon was working in!  Why is there a rope on the saw? So if it get dropped into the pond, it can be retrieved!

Next, getting the block out! Jon's using ice tongs, but the risk is that if the  block is too heavy, it will be dropped back into the pond, or the person will fall in! His helper brought the big tongs attached to the pulley, and the block was hauled out of the water, faster, easier, and safer!  Click on the picture to enlarge it. You'llsee the size of the blocks that had been harvested already.

Several onlookers tried their hands at this, all successfully. "Hold onto his(her) coat, there!", said Mr. Wilder, as a rank amateur attempted to wield the ice saw. That was not going to be me, no way. About half an hour after this started, they discovered that the upright supporting the pulley was getting pretty unsteady, and that put an end to the ice-cutting!!

In Vermont, ice was always harvested from lakes and ponds and was very labor-intensive. Mr. Wilder said an experienced pair of workers in good very cold weather could bring out a couple of blocks every minute.  But we're talking tons of blocks to harvest. It took dozens of people: the ice had to be moved ashore and then onto wagons.  Ropes, pulleys, home-made ramps, teams of draft horses hauling ice on sledges, people loading blocks of ice into wagons and packing them with sawdust ... apparently crowds of men and boys turned out, not to watch but to really work hard, from dawn until just before dark!  

Horses and wagons took the ice to people's homes. Horses and wagons took crates of ice, lightly hosed down with water until the individual blocks froze together ("It wasn't hard to chip them apart. Didn't take but a minute or two", said our expert) to the train, which took the crates to Boston. Imagine! Boston, and not thawed on the way. If it was really a really cold winter ambitious ice-harvesters could harvest 12" blocks of ice in January and then another 12" block in late February. 12" thick ice. Mr. Wilder said that ice cut in January and properly stored would last a household into October.

The Christmas cat has a life of its own

I said in a previous post that my sister had given me a pretty much life-sized black and white plush cat, who sits on Ernie's cushion on the sofa, and who I've started to greet when I come home, and whose head get scratched before I go to bed.  

The BrookField Generator guy (previous post) needed a walk through the house and basement before we started our discussions, and when we came back into the living room he looked at the cat and said "My goodness, that cat is quiet."  Then he said "My goodness, that cat isn't real!".  We had a good laugh.

 

Plush Ernie

Ladies and gentlemen, winter is served.

Oh yes indeed.   Yesterday we got several inches of wet stuff, necessitating a very careful drive to the office and an early departure from it.  Snow has been moving off the roof, making an assortment of threatening noises before the great THUMP! Today I’ve stayed home because at some point it’s supposed to do the freezing rain thing, and I’ve had my adventure on ice for the year.  Then there will be another couple of inches of snow.  

Ooh. The wind has picked up.  The predicted Fast Freeze is moving in (lows tonight about -5, tomorrow about  -10). It is going to be Vermont Cold.  Now my friends and neighbors and I can go into Winter Mode and feel normal. 

The installer from BrookField Service came this morning about putting in a generator. When power goes off (and we lost power for 3 days after Irene), I have no water as well as no electricity. No electricity is one thing.  No water is quite another. 

Here is a summary about the generators that you and I know about. “Portable” generators, which are only portable in the sense that you can move them if you have a truck, run on gasoline. They must be sheltered from the weather, but not fully enclosed. The water begins to separate out of the ethanol after about 6 weeks, and then gasoline-powered engines (cars, lawnmowers, and  generators)  fail to start.  This means putting an additive into the generator tank, and also means buying gasoline in relatively small quantities so that it doesn’t degrade waiting for the generator to be needed. You also have to test the generator every month or so to make sure it will start, and when the need arises you have to start the generator. Portable generators do not attach to the main line into the house.  They attach power to a circuit, and then you run big orange extension cords to the (carefully chosen) things you want to run.  When the power comes back on, some kind of alarm sounds so you can head to the basement and turn off the generator.  The generator and supplied power must not run at the same time.  Bad things happen.

The generator I heard about this morning is permanently installed near the house, along with its propane (ugh) tanks.  It is operated by a box attached to the house and the electric meter.  When the power goes off, the magic box tests for several minutes to be sure the power is OFF (not a blip), shuts down the electric meter, and awakens the generator, which begins to feed power to the entire house.  When the power comes back for long enough that the box is confident the power is on, the box shuts off the generator and brings the meter back to life.  It tests itself every month to make sure that the system is working (how it lets me know that it’s not is something I do not know). This means no bad gas problems, no starting the generator problems (most generators are pull-started), no worries about shutting the generator off in time, and power to the whole house, not just selected circuits.  (The only thing that I can’t use is the oven.) This means that if I go on vacation, or to NJ, and the power goes out for more than 20 minutes, the generator will kick in and turn off without my supervision. 

For the kind of life I live there’s a lot of value to this system.  It means no quality-of-gasoline problem, which is very significant.  Some folks have siphon systems to pull gas out of the car, which is the “freshest” source of gasoline, assuming you can get to a gas station to fill your tank again. It means there will not be, given the location of my circuit board, the pump and the other necessary appliances, umpteen miles of extension cords to run whenever the generator is in use. It means not constructing a weather-proof generator shelter within 10 feet of the house (It cannot go on the porch unless I leave a window open year-round.  I put new windows in to keep snow out ).  It means that no one needs to be looking after the house and the water pipes when I'm away in case there’s a long power outage. 

So how much is this added value going to cost? Gulp. A whole lot more than I thought. And the propane, which is a fourth power source after oil, wood and electricity, still irritates me.  I have to talk to the fuel  company to find out what the propane installation is going to cost. This little house that started life as an equipment shed is getting expensive.  I haven't decided, but I still think that this is a worthwhile investment. 

(The installer said “We could do this in a couple of weeks.” “The ground is frozen!  There’s snow on the ground!”, I said. “Best weather we could ask for”, he said.  Who knew?)

Random thoughts

Winter isn't here yet.  OK, so it's been cold.  But not Vermont Cold. Last week I finally wore my winter coat to work - the warm toasty coat with the hood - for the first time.  Last week, people!  My fleece jacket has been doing duty all this time.  It's been warm-mitten weather, and I have had to layer up (turtleneck, sweatshirt, barn fleece, barn jacket with hood up) to do horse chores at 6:30 am, but I don't feel like every step outdoors is like embarking on a polar expedition.

We have almost no snow on the ground.  I think the ski slopes are good, because it's been cold enough to make snow every night.  The ice up by the floating bridge is reported to be 7" thick across the entire pond. But out-of-staters expect not only snow on the slopes but real snow on the ground, and it's just not there.  The hillsides looks a little pathetic, to be frank. I should be rejoicing: I have not had the doors snowed in, I have not had to put on showshoes to get kindling out of the shed, I have not had to shovel a path to the woodpile, and I have not had to use the roof rake.  But it still doesn't seem like winter.

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"  If winter doesn't come, will we ever get spring?
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The Christmas tree is still up.  This is not because I'm lazy, but because this tree is determined to keep going.  The man from whom I bought it had cut it December 1 and stood it up in his brook.  I didn't get to the December 3 dance (sick!) and he brought it to the dance on the 17th.  I put it up on Sunday Dec 18th, watering it regularly. I made sure to water it the morning of Dec 26 (complete with tree preservative) before I left for NJ.  When I returned on the 30th I expected it to be dry and have started dropping needles.  But no! And in fact it took in more water! It still has fragrance and the needles are still shining.  So although about half the ornaments are off, I'm leaving the lights on and I'm giving it until Jan 14.  It's been so stalwart, it deserves the extra time!

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Cooking today, soup again.  Cooks with families can make good stock whenever they roast a chicken.  But when I roast a chicken I have to be prepared to eat it for days, so a roast chicken doesn't happen very often.  The grocery had a very serious sale on chicken thighs so I bought a package of four and simmered them in water with seasonings for a couple of hours to make a broth.  Then I stripped the chicken off the bones to save for the soup.  Well.  That broth tastes pretty mild, bordering on insipid.  At least you know that there was chicken in the vicinity of the stove.  When I get right down to it, a broth-with-vegetables soup is really too thin for my taste. 

So I've taken to making a mirepoix (meer-PWAH) (slowly sauteeing finely chopped onions, celery and carrots together, along with some oregano and thyme, and today, the last of the mushrooms) and adding that to the broth. I cook that down some, let it cool a while and then puree it in the food processor. Insipidness, begone!  Then I add whatever the rest is: today, some diced carrot, some frozen green beans from the garden, some angel hair pasta broken into small pieces, and when the pasta is done I'll add shredded chicken and thinly sliced leek. If it's too much like stew instead of soup, I'll thin it with canned broth.  The freezer is filling up with soup containers.

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It may be time to think about feline companionship.  I still do not miss the cat hair.  It's the first time in most of my adult life since housekeeping was not 75% dealing with cat hair.  Part of this notion is because I have a mouse. I'm going to stuff a couple of SOS pads in the opening where the kitchen pipes come into the house, to see if this puts an end to the intrusions.

But ... my sister (thinking of my empty nest) gave me a cat for Christmas, a black and white plush one that looks for all the world the way a cat does when it's just lying on the floor. Its head is at such a realistic angle that when (as a joke) I put it on the sofa where Ernie used to settle himself it looked like it belonged there.

When I got back from NJ I walked in the house and saw the erstwhile-cat on the sofa and said "Hi, Ernie."  Last week, without meaning to or thinking about it, I came in and scratched its head.  I was not surprised when I got no response.  But now I'm saying goodnight to it as well.  I do not feel like I'm losing my mind (you may disagree) but I do think my subconscious is sending me a signal.