Farm Update Feb 27, 2026

As I sit in the SImsbury Ambulance Training room suffering through our Annual training, I thought how long its been since I wrote an update.

It has been a challenging winter. We have had more snow and cold this year. Farming is hard. Farming in the cold is harder. Morning chores normally takes 20 minutes. With the added difficulty of the weather, it is taking almost an hour right now. Water has been the biggest challenge. Our hydrant froze a couple of weeks ago. We wrapped it with heat tape, but it is apparent that the freeze is down at the plug. We have been forced to carry buckets of water out from the house. Our Boar Porky enjoys dumping his water as soon as I fill it. He drinks his fill, then tips it with his nose. I swear he does it so the little boar wont get any.

We have tried all kinds of containers for the Boars water. Porky has eaten all the rubber tubs we have tried. The issue we have is the Kuni Kuni boar. He is soo short that very few tubs will work. I cut down a steel garbage can and glued a heating element to the bottom. This worked well for a few weeks, but eventually he bent the side and broke the weld along the bottom. Then we found the pictured steel feeder and purchased a small heater element . (a $200 expense for both) First we set it on the ground and attached it to the fence. The first week he pulled out the heater and used it for a chew toy. Luckily the armor on the cord kept the wires from breaking. So I attached the heater to the pan with wire clips and self tapping screws. He could no longer drag the trough away or remove the heater. Still he drinks and then lifts it with his snout and dumps it all out. Yesterday I used two 8 in screws to anchor the front to the ground. We will find out if this works.

So much snow: We have mountains of snow everywhere. We don't have anywhere to put it at this point. Under the snow is ice making removal even more difficult. All of our gates were built to keep babies in, not allow for a foot of snow. The runoff and ice build up is an even bigger challenge. Our horse paddock has the hill draining at the gate. The water gets stopped at the gate and builds into an ice dam. At this time, we can only open the gate enough to squeeze through. We have chipped the ice a few times, but it keeps building up. The sheep pen is having the same issue. Specifically the boar pen gate is getting locked up by ice. A lot of chipping.

Meanwhile, one of our Ewes gave birth to her first baby. The lamb is doing well and we anxiously await our second ewe to birth.

Firewood became an issue this year. Last spring I had asked my son and eldest daughter to work on cutting and splitting firewood 15 minutes a day. As you can imagine, this did not happen. I also continued to place other projects in front of firewood. Suddenly it was October and it was time to start burning. December covered our wood with snow and has remained covered. We ordered two cord from a friend and one from the nuns at the Abby. The first loads were good dry wood that burned hot. With two months of sub zero temps, we burned through the pile twice as fast as last year. We then were unable to get more from our friends because their processing machine froze. We went back to the Abby and did not notice how heavy the logs were. We burnt wet wood through the coldest part of our winter. Misery....getting the fire to start and getting any heat out of it was difficult and required continual attention.

Normally we let it burn down to a thin layer of coals and then refill the stove. With the wet wood, we had to continually add one or two logs. The fire below needed time to dry the new additions before they will begin to burn. If we let the fire die down, we would have to start from scratch.

Sarah put out the call on facebook and found one of our firefighter friends had wood and he was able to bring it over the day we asked for it. This was a godsend as we got another 24 inches of snow that night. We have another two cord ordered from one of the boy scout parents but his main line is plowing so we have not seen that order yet.

We will continue the fight and keep our animals well.