Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2016 - January 2017 i Farm and Ranch Living

Soon, Tom’s down-home manner and clever storytelling had us feeling as if we’d known him forever. Merriment settled upon us, and we truly enjoyed our newfound relative. Ididn’t feel like celebrating. My husband had died not long before, and even the significance of Christmas failed to bring peace to my broken heart. Memories flooded over me; we’d shared 50 years of holidays together. A few days before Christmas, my son, Jeff, said, “Let’s do something different this year—let’s have Christmas in the barn.” On Christmas Eve, I loaded a few presents into my car and drove to Jeff’s house, near Mount Vernon, Ohio. Farmhouses along the way were decorated with lights; evergreen trees were heavy with snow. Standing on the town squares were handmade nativity scenes of varying degrees of…

Dayze Gone Bye Carriage Rides has been in operation for 12 years already. We started the business on a whim, after the spontaneous purchase of a white vis-à-vis carriage at the Farm Show Arena in Harrisburg, in 2005. My husband, Nick, has always been a dreamer, and he often said he would like a horse-and-carriage business when he retired. He’s been driving horses for years. We chose the company name to depict an experience we hoped people missed: a bygone era when life moved at a much slower pace. We began by offering our vis-à-vis for weddings and proms. We moved to an Amish community in Allensville a year later, in an area of central Pennsylvania known as Big Valley. The goal was to offer a variety of carriages for…

Marty and I were still working full time when we started selling Christmas trees in 1986. We parked our old Volkswagen camper van at the front of our driveway with a few precut pines propped up against the van, and we waited for customers. Within two years we had launched Dale Tree Farm, a cut-your-own Christmas tree lot. We now sell about 1,000 trees each holiday season. After doing this for 30 years, we’re inching toward retirement, but both Marty and I can look back on decades of learning, happiness and dreams come true. Marty was a Ph.D. forester working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service when we met in 1981. He owned 38 acres on which he had started planting Scotch and white pine trees as an…

I once saw a 12-foot Christmas tree walk out of our field. To be fair, the tree had a man’s face and legs, but the man in the tree disguise was walking back to the barn with the season’s first cut tree. Dad and I celebrated the first unofficial day of winter every Black Friday. It’s near the start of Advent, and it’s the start of Christmas tree season. Dad was 44 when he bought his farm in 1969. I was a senior in high school. We didn’t share the same dream. We grew fruits and vegetables in the warmer months, but a lot of people would go hungry if the world depended on me to grow their food. Christmas trees were another story; I liked them even at 17.…

Trees are ablaze with color, leaves crunch underfoot, and honking symphonies of geese wing their way south. Wisps of smoke mingle with the pungent perfume of burning wood in the frosty air as families gather cozily to stave off the new chill of autumn. It’s time to search the pumpkin patch for “the one,” take hayrides under a harvest moon, and bob for crisp apples. Folks from far and wide head out for leisurely drives along rural highways to enjoy the brilliant foliage provided by God’s paintbrush. I was born and raised in New Jersey and Massachusetts, and both are prime places for breathtaking autumn foliage. My daily walk to school was along a meandering country road with trees that were a vision of flaming colors in fall. I was…

This 1940 Farmall H was in rough shape when we brought it home. Who knows how long it had been sitting on the east bank of Lake Winnebago? The engine was seized up, rusty and full of mouse nests. It was probably pulled into the woods rather than driven there, based on how badly the pushrods were bent when we got it, and the gas tank was full of rust. I do my own work on my tractors, including painting, and I really like how this one turned out.…

Driven by an unforgiving wind, pellets of icy snow pecked at our faces like a mother bird protecting her young. I grew up with six siblings on a farm in northern Illinois, where our 12 heifers and 37 homegrown Holsteins were the envy of local cow buyers. For years, Daddy refused offers to buy the entire herd. It wasn’t until a wild blizzard hit that he finally began to reconsider. Farming was challenging enough, but in the fall of 1968, Daddy took a job operating a sign truck for the Illinois State Highway Department. It was a good job, with plenty of exercise and good pay. He planned to sell the cows after he got settled in his new job, but he always found an excuse to delay the sale—with…

“You have been handed a gift,” the fortuneteller said, “and with this gift you can help a lot of people.” While on a business trip to England in 1995, Dennis Thompson and his late wife, Cindy, spotted a gorgeous black-and-white stallion standing in a field. They soon found themselves involved in an odyssey that changed their lives forever. Within two years they’d introduced a new breed of horse, the Gypsy Vanner, to North America and established the Gypsy Gold Horse Farm. The story of the Gypsy Vanner horse in North America begins at the Thompsons’ picturesque farm, located off a dirt road in the Horse Capital of the World, Ocala, Florida. The farm boasts 40 acres of land covered in Spanish moss-laden oaks, as well as a 14-stall show barn…

When Christmas Eve rolled around, more presents were under the tree for Mouse than for us kids. A ranch dog is a dog for working. That’s what I was taught growing up, along with adages like “the stock eat before you do” and “don’t turn the cows into pets.” But none of the old rules seemed to apply to Mouse. The size of a loaf of bread, the Chihuahua-pug mix was an unlikely addition to our pack of stock dogs. But a cousin couldn’t keep her, and my normally stoic parents were besotted from the first time they picked Mouse up and she gave her customary grunt of greeting, wagging her thin tail and licking their fingers. My brother and I were similarly entranced—if a little baffled by the way…

Green spring, not “grey spring,” is when I finally feel liberated. To me, real spring is when new grass grows, or a room is aired out without the heat kicking on. By the end of winter, what used to be cozy is now unbearable. I feel 10 pounds lighter the day I can finally trade my heavy socks, flannel-lined jeans and thick sweaters for lighter clothes. I know I’m more agile when I can jog the dogs along the road in my sneakers and sweatshirt, instead of tromping along in a heavy coat and my thick-lined barn boots. At some point, I get brave enough to leave the window open at least a crack overnight. It feels decadent and illicit. I know it’s not warm enough outside yet to leave…

Carrie Heimlich, a teacher/adviser at Tri-Rivers Career Center in Marion, Ohio, told her husband, Nick, at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year that she’d bring their 1962 John Deere 4010 to the agriculture and industrial power students for minor repairs. The class, though, spent nine months repairing and refurbishing the Deere before surprising Nick with a full restoration last May. The work was Carrie’s anniversary gift to Nick, and went way beyond the repairs he was expecting. “His reaction was shock,” Carrie says. “After a couple of minutes processing all the people, all that the agriculture and industrial power program had accomplished, and how well the tractor looked, his emotions got the best of him—which is exactly what I had hoped for.” To keep the work a surprise, Carrie…

You don’t expect a tractor to meet the maker’s power claims after so many years, but this was a surprise. My stepfather, David, always wanted a Farmall F-30, and this 1938 model is my favorite one to drive of all our tractors. During a restoration, we found that it had a road gear inside the transmission, and that the domed-shape pistons rise three-eighths of an inch above the engine block. David hooked it up to a dynamometer a few years ago, and the F-30 produced about 42 horsepower—12 more than the manufacturer claimed in 1938!…

That old barn was the story of American agriculture 60 years ago… It’s pretty rough around the edges, but this old, weathered barn was once the life of Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. I can still picture walking into the barn, with its impressive red paint, through a small door in the north wall. The entryway is next to the large doors that once let hay wagons in to be unloaded. I can see the big hallway with its set of stables housing Grandpa’s horses—Ole Harry and Tony. The gentle horses loved to stick their heads across the board, into the hallway, and have their noses scratched. Just past them is a larger room, the corn bin. Grandpa didn’t have a combine to shell his corn, so he picked the ears…

Our ranch, Black Velvet Bison, is about 300 miles northwest of Edmonton, in Alberta, Canada. We don’t allow hunting on our ranch, and we feed as many of the animals as we can. All of that means we have a lot of wildlife around here, especially in the winter. Because I’m getting older, we have only about 50 bison left, mostly pets that we raised by hand over the years. It’s a quiet life, but we believe the animals are important, and we treat both the tame and wild ones with respect.…

My grandparents’ farm is located just west of Seymour, Indiana, in the small town of Cortland. I have fun every time I visit. Their house was built in 1898, and there are always things for me to do. I woke up as the grandfather clock chimed six. Then I remembered I was at the farm for a whole week! P-pa was asleep in his recliner, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. (I call my maternal grandparents P-pa and Grammie.) I decided to get to the chores right away. There was no need to wake P-pa, so I was extra quiet. I figured I’d just go let the chickens out and come back in. I got dressed and tiptoed out of the house. When I stepped outside, I stood still and…

Watching the animals frolic in the light dusting of snow reminds me how much I love my life. At 7 on Sunday morning, fiery fingers of sunlight chase the night away as I listen to horses whinny and paw the earth. A truck drives through the yard; my parents have arrived. My mother is going to watch our children while the rest of us drive to the pasture and bring the heifers home for the winter. I kiss my little ones goodbye and climb into my husband’s truck. It takes about two hours to reach our rented pasture and 10 minutes to set up the corral before we are in the saddle. Dad lays out the plan as we ride single file through the gate. He’s in the lead, my…

PREP: 30 MIN. + CHILLING BAKE: 30 MIN. + COOLING Pastry for single-crust pie (9 inches) 3 large eggs ¾ cup sugar ½ cup butter, melted 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 cup chopped walnuts 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips 2 tablespoons dark rum 1. On a lightly floured surface, roll pastry dough to a / 8 -in.-thick circle; transfer to a 9-in. pie plate. Trim pastry to ½ in. beyond rim of plate; flute edge. Refrigerate 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 450°. 2. Line unpricked pastry with a double thickness of foil. Fill with pie weights, dried beans or uncooked rice. Bake on a lower oven rack 15-20 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Remove foil and weights; bake 3-6…

We spent an extra summer weekend at the county fair last year. Not ours, mind you, but the fair in the next county over. My husband, Travis, thought it would be a good idea to go to the county fair in the next county over to show livestock in the open class two weeks before our own fair. I thought he was crazy. It’s not like we had anything else to do but show livestock, right? The projects for our own fair weren’t done. The animals weren’t ready. The kids weren’t ready. I wasn’t ready. Travis was of the mindset that the girls are only young for a few years, and that it would be good for them. I don’t often get to say this, and probably won’t admit it…

This tractor is not just a piece of equipment—it’s also a reminder of an era when communities joined together for the common good. For years now, we, the Orrell family, have spit-shined and hand-cranked our antique John Deere tractor to prepare it for Christmas parades, and every year we hear people say how remarkable it is that “the Deere still runs.” What’s remarkable to us, though, is not the tractor’s running, but the history behind how this piece of machinery got to my family in the late 1930s, and what it means to Davie County. In the late 1930s, family and neighbors in Advance, North Carolina, helped each other and shared tools during the harvest. On Feb. 16, 1937, the farmers in Advance agreed to set up the Potts family’s…