As a testament to the warm winter, later this week we will use the last of the corn from the first of two wagons we use to store corn for the corn stove. Usually, we are well into the second wagon by now. January was 14 degrees above normal – warmest January since the dust bowl.
You can almost see the summer’s sun stored in these corn kernels! These little kernels heat our house in the winter.
Emptying this wagon opened up one of the wagons for its next rotation. Many farmers think hard about crop rotations – well, I’m working on a wagon rotation. The old barge wagon that the corn was in is now collecting mulch for spring mulching of trees. It’s a little bit of a pain to get it in without a loader, but it is good “off-season” work.
After our first few years on the farm when we were positively overwhelmed with spring/summer tasks, we’ve figured out which ones can be done in the winter – and gathering mulch is a winter task. When spring comes, it is mobile and ready to go where needed. After the mulch is gone, the wagon can be used to store bulk broiler feed – so there is a triple annual rotation for the wagon!
I got the new ethernet and fiber optic cables in the mail today (thank goodness for E-bay), so now the PCs are networked and the home stereo is streaming audio from the PC. Because my internet connection comes into the house via a USB instead on ethernet connection, I cannot use a wireless setup, since all the hubs/routers I found require ethernet and there is not a USB-ethernet converter I can find, even in specialty cables and networking web stores.
Also were able to get a couple of the 20 foot rafter extenders up to the attic today, so we can keep that project moving along.
