Author: lori@1765farm.com

Spring is here. Wait, what? SPRING IS HERE!!!

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And it couldn’t have shown it’s long awaited face a minute too soon! After the horrible winter we here in New England have just been through, the first 40 degree day felt like there might be a chance that we’d actually survive. Of course, it’s currently the middle of May, and I’m not real sure we’ve broken 75 degrees yet, but I don’t care. Surviving the brutal winter and finally seeing the beginnings of Spring have renewed my faith in the human spirit.

IMG_2855The chickens finally came out of their coop (after 6 weeks of captivity! Ouch!). We did not lose a single chicken over the winter. For that, I am thankful. We’ve actually just gotten some brand new baby chicks. More on that later……

And egg production is back in full swing! I didn’t realize how much I had missed my daily fresh eggs!

 

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The dogs love being outside again. Turns out, we were all sick of being trapped indoors. Although Cleo is a poodle–not known for their herding capabilities–she does a pretty impressive job of keeping the chickens in line. Whether they need it or not! Here she is in action……

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So at this point, my attention has fully turned to Spring-type activities. Getting the garden going, putting all the winter clothes away, spring cleaning, sleeping with the windows open, all things soul-renewing for me are in full throttle now. Let Spring begin!

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Winter is Upon Us Now….

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It should’ve grabbed my attention that I had to put on snow shoes to climb up to the roof of the chicken coop to shovel off the foot of snow that had accumulated there. But it didn’t. Activities of this nature have become the norm around these parts lately. It’s winter in New England! And Mother Nature apparently LOVES us. Or maybe she hates us. Can’t decide which. In less than 4 weeks’ time, we have gotten 90 inches of snow in southeastern Massachusetts. Just to put it into perspective, the average amount of snowfall in this area is 36 inches over an entire season. Nothing average about us this season!

IMG_2710That’s the chicken coop before I shoveled off the top. It’s a tough season to be a chicken here! They’re doing just fine, though. They haven’t been out of the coop for almost 4 weeks, which seems awful, but it’s safer for them. And right now, trying to keep them entertained, fed, safe,warm seems more important than letting them kick around the property.

The pups don’t really seem to be enjoying the season like they have in the past. Probably just because it has been so darn cold here. IMG_2688That’s just outside the back door.  That’s about as far outside as they’ll get. Nice little dusting of snow we’ve gotten, huh? This is their preferred roosting spot….

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The house seems to have withstood the back to back blizzards we’ve gotten without any issues. There’ s something to be said for the type of construction that was used 250 years ago. 🙂  This is a picture of the house during the latest blizzard. Can you find it?

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Yikes! But this is shortly after….. so much better.  You can see that the snow is just barely touching the bottom of the wreath on the front door.  Oy.

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The garden we will toil over in the summer is but a dream at this point in time. But I did sow some onion seeds indoors this past week. That’s super exciting. As I was scraping off the chicken coop today, I looked out over the garden. It is buried in snow! Just so you know……those are approximately 10 foot posts you are seeing here…

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With all the extreme weather we have had lately, I often wonder how our forefathers were able to survive in the early days of this country. I think particularly about the initial occupants of our house. I think about things like where they must’ve kept the woodpile (certainly not where we have it–way too far away from the house!), or how they were able to preserve food for the lean months. But right now, all the shoveling is done for the day, I’m sitting by the fire with my husband and the dogs and all is well.

Happy are we. 🙂

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The House At Christmastime

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Happy New Year!  Another holiday season has passed and I am reminiscing already.  I always love decorating the house at Christmastime. I usually think about all the “tours of homes” I would like to take and how I would love for our house to make the cut for a Christmas home tour at some point in the future. Then I remember the mile long list of projects we need to tackle and I am quickly rerouted back to the present. But the house does look pretty during the holiday season. It makes me happy to sit by the fire and admire the twinkly lights of the tree. Cozy. Happy. Content. All words that would describe me now. The main fireplace that we use is in the Living Room.  It never fails to take the chill off the room and lure me into believing all is right with the world. This picture is of said fireplace in the Living Room. That’s my Cleo in front of the ottoman. You can just barely see the Christmas tree in George’s “Tavern”. You can also see that tree from the outside if you are driving north on our street. Here’s another shot of the Living Room so you can see the Christmas tree there.IMG_2390

IMG_2397A nice redo of the Living Room is one of the items on the mile long list of things to do this year. I think it will be one of my top priorities. It’s looking a little tired.

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I also had a tree in my office because it faces the front of the house, so the tree could be seen from the street.  IMG_2391The Christmas cactus was blooming like gangbusters………IMG_2136And my amaryllis plants were beautiful! This picture is before they were even in full bloom.

IMG_2410I do my best with the outside, although I think there’s much room for improvement here.  IMG_2406So the holidays are over now, and I’m glad to be back in my usual routine. But I’m already looking forward to next Christmas and have a few thoughts about how to spruce up the house. Until then, here’s wishing a Happy New Year to everyone!

 

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The last of the summer tomatoes…….

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Every winter, I avidly read anything I can get my hands on—–books, magazines, etc–about gardening, self-sufficiency, putting food by, etc., and dream about the warm weather months to come and how phenomenal my garden will be. I envision providing George and myself with all the produce we will need to get through the freezing cold winter months. I imagine us hauling in tomatoes, beans, peas, lettuces, peppers,etc., by the bucketfuls. Then Spring arrives and I have all good intentions, but invariably, I get distracted. This year’s excuse was that I was in school again full time, complete with 300 clinical hours to finish. Sigh.

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But I did manage to get the tomatoes planted and harvested.  My heirlooms actually did quite well! I used a method that was new to me called The Square Foot Gardening method. You can find more about that at www.squarefootgardening.org.  Once I got everything set up, I found this method to be so much easier than the traditional ‘row planting’ method of gardening. There were very few weeds and I was able to produce a more bountiful harvest from a much smaller space. Basically, all I had to do post-planting was go out every afternoon to water the plants. Almost anybody can do that!

So what do you do with loads of tomatoes at the tail end of summer?  You can them, that’s what! And last week, when almost all the tomatoes had been harvested, canning day finally arrived. It took about 6 hours start to finish, but I wound up with a pretty good haul.

First you wash them….

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You have to make sure all the jars are sterile (and that you have enough!) …….

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After the tomatoes have been washed and peeled, toss them in the pot and cook them down until they’re stewed, about 30 minutes or so.

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After all that, the tomatoes are poured up into the clean jars and sealed.  18 quarts of canned tomatoes later………..

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So now that the tomatoes are all canned and put away, I can remember the days of summer during the dead of winter. Every time I reach for a jar to make a pot of vegetable stew or chili or spaghetti sauce, I’ll think about my little summer garden and the cycle will continue. I’ll dream about next year’s garden and vow to make it better. And that will keep me warm all winter long…….

 

 

 

 

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About the Isaac Brown House

~ lori@1765farm.com ~ 2 Comments

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People have been telling me I should blog about this lovely house and the things that are going on around here since we moved in about 3 years ago. But I’ve been resistant. I’m not a writer. I’m a Nurse Practitioner. My husband, George, is a writer. He has actually published a couple of books and is quite the wordsmith. He also just happens to be a nurse. It’s sort of a sideline for him. 😉

The house is a beautiful Gambrel roofed Dutch Colonial that was built in 1765 by John Brown in anticipation of the birth of his son, Isaac. John was the grandson of the great Reverend Samuel Brown, who graduated from Harvard in 1709 and was the first minister of the Abington, MA parish. History has it that the reason the town of Abington,MA became an entity at all is because the townspeople at the time appealed to the crown to break away from what was then Bridgewater. One of the requirements to do so was that a dedicated parson had to be in place. Reverend Brown was given 30 acres in the area and the First Congregational Church of Abington was founded. It still stands today.

The Reverend’s son, Woodbridge, was the father of John, builder of our house. John was Isaac’s father. The house is named for Isaac. It is called the Isaac Brown House. Isaac’s son, Isaac, Jr, went on to fight in the War of 1812. In New England, it is customary to name the house for the original owner. Our house carries a slight variation on that tradition.

The house was owned by the Brown family (or Browne–depending on which document you are reading) from 1765 until it was sold in 1965. 200 years in the same family! And as it turns out, the Browns were pretty good at documentation. They kept up with documents and who owned what when. It’s really a nice thing that we have an archived lineage of this house. We have the original deed to the land framed and on display in the room that George calls his “tavern” (see picture below). The deed is pre-revolution and is signed by the King’s men. The fact that we have this document in our possession and it’s not in a museum somewhere is mind boggling to me. In fact, sometimes it’s a little bit baffling to me that regular citizens live in houses this old in this part of the world. In Georgia, where I’m from originally, you don’t generally see such. Houses this old that are still standing would be museums.

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But back to the Browns. The last of the Browns to own this property were Percy and his wife, Gertrude Gove Brown, pictured below. Percy was a pulmonologist. Gertrude was a housewife who must have been an avid gardener. She kept very detailed documentation of the flower gardens she planted every year. Some of the pictures we have from that era are astonishing! We still see some of the things she planted. The Irises and day lilies are beautiful every Spring. And the row of lilacs we have in front of the house blooms every Spring. The blooms don’t last long, but the scent is 2 weeks of Heaven!! I’d like to replicate some of those gardens that have gone by the wayside, but I’m not promising anything……..

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Happy chickens, happy humans…..

~ lori@1765farm.com ~ Leave a comment

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This is Etta. She’s one of our 9 remaining chickens. We started off with 12. One was a rooster. He was mean. Really mean. He tried to kill me every time I went into the yard. And I was the one feeding him! He went to live at the farm. No,really. I couldn’t bear to put him in the pot or send him anywhere that might. So we found a real farm couple who needed an aggressive rooster and they came and got him. Walked into the coop in the dark of night and picked him up like a boss.

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After that, our beloved Peggy, an Americauna, went missing.  Just didn’t show up to the coop at night. We never found a single feather’s evidence of her anywhere.  You should know that we let our chickens roam free anywhere on our property.  They have free range. Most of the time, they never leave our property.  Occasionally, they might hop the rock wall and venture into a nearby neighbor’s place, but they always come right back.  Except that night. Peggy never returned.

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Since the rooster went to live at the farm, we’ve been rooster-less. People frequently ask us if we are afraid of hawks and other predators without a rooster. The answer is, not really. The ladies do a good job of banding together on the couple of occasions they’ve needed to when a hawk has swooped down. Our coop is secure enough at night that I don’t worry. One afternoon, I saw a hawk swoop out of the sky and plow into the entire group of chickens. George ran outside to thwart any potential deleterious activity and all seemed okay. But all wasn’t okay.  We later found poor Nancy, also an Americauna,  dead in the coop. It seems she had suffered the brunt of the blunt trauma from the hawk. And a rooster wouldn’t have prevented that.

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So that’s how the 12 became 9–3 Rhode Island Reds, 3 Plymouth Rocks, 2 Buff Orpingtons and 1 Americauna. Etta. The friendliest of all the chickens. My favorite. I often wonder if she misses Nancy and Peggy. I know she probably doesn’t and I have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing my animals. She is doing well and seems happy. Which is all that matters. We feed them well, give them plenty of space to roam and a safe place to sleep at night. Makes for a happy chicken life. In return, they give us the best eggs ever and lots of entertainment! Makes for a happy human life!IMG_1776

 

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