A delicate little flower

This is a blog about the newest member of our duck flock. Her name is Flower -- because she's a delicate little flower.

As you all know by now, Anna is a veterinarian.  Flower was bought by a family as an Easter present to their kids (that's a topic for another post) and was brought to the clinic where Anna works to be euthanized because she had a twisted neck.  Twisted neck can happen with improper diet, vitamin deficiency, toxicity, or more serious diseases.  When Anna found out about Flower, she knew she had to bring her to our farm.  If she could show us that she's capable of eating and living a normal life, there's no reason for her to be euthanized.

Here's what Flower looked like on day 1 with us.  She's probably about 2 weeks old in this photo. We were hopeful that increasing her vitamins would help her to straighten her neck out -- that and telling her regularly to "put your head on straight!"  She came with that teddy, and after we put it on the ground, she snuggled it nightly….adorable.

After a few days of having Flower at our house, Anna got some bad news.  When the previous owners got her, her neck was already like this.  She was only a couple days old at that point, and all the other ducklings with her were fine.  This made us pretty nervous that increasing her vitamins and bettering her diet wouldn't be enough.  We started preparing ourselves for having a very special needs duck, and if she proved to be unable to live a happy, healthy life, we were preparing ourselves for the tough decision to go ahead with the euthanasia.

So, we worked out a daily vitamin/greens routine which she enjoyed thoroughly.  Ducklings LOVE fresh greens -- I often feel like there should be some sort of signage a local ponds telling people to stop throwing bread and start throwing salad. We gave her water with some vitamins A, E, and B, and we added nutritional yeast to her food for more vitamin B -- B is a big one for duckling development and the main ingredient that commercial chick starter food (for chickens) is lacking.

Flower taking a break from greens and vitamins….still crooked. :\

Mmmmm….greeeeeeeens!

You can see that her neck is getting a little less crooked, but it still isn't quite right, and she still has some pretty severe episodes.  We started taking her outside with us if we were working in the garden or somewhere where she'd be protected from the dogs and we could keep an eye on her.  Outside, she was really good.  Her neck was pretty normal most of the time…unless she got stressed out. If we walked too far away from her, she would get really stressed, start freaking out, get twisted upside down, start stumbling backwards…it wasn't good.

Here's a video of Flower doing well in the garden with Anna in her early days.  You can see that her head is looking better but is definitely a little crooked still.

Filmed that same day -- one of her not so good moments. Anna stopped filming once she really started freaking out, but you get the idea.

At this point, she'd been with us for about a week and a half, and we were beginning to wonder if she was going to get better.  She was showing improvement, but she still wasn't as good as we would have liked.  Within a few days, however, she started getting better and better, and her episodes of upside-downness were getting fewer and fewer.  Given that she's a duck, we knew that if she was going to be fully integrated with our flock, she would need to be able to swim.  We decided to put her in the bath tub to check out her swimming abilities.  It wasn't pretty the first few times.  She freaked out, turned her head upside down and swam in backwards circles.  Upside down head in the water = no breathing.  Not good.  We really wanted to see if she could swim, so we kept at it.  We'd put her in the tub with enough water for her to stand so she didn't have to swim if she didn't want to.  Eventually, she got more and more comfortable in the water, and one day she just did it!  She started swimming happy laps around the tub splashing, bathing, and being a generally happy duck.

Since then, she's just gotten better and better.  I don't remember the last time she had an upside down neck moment.

Eventually, she got too big and the splashing got to be too much for the counter, so vitamin time got moved to the sink.  Her neck is MUCH better here!

Napping with the farm manager while we were doing some planting.

She's now been with us about 3 weeks, and we've been starting to give her a lot of unsupervised outside time.  We have a poultry seclusion pen -- we use it for new birds, sick birds, etc.  She's been spending almost every day that the weather's nice out there -- she doesn't quite have enough big girl feathers to spend rainy days outside yet.  Downy feathers + rain = waterlogged, chilly, unhappy duckling.  We've also been giving her supervised time with the entire flock -- adult ducks and teenager chickens.  They're definitely interested in her, but they haven't been too overly aggressive.  At first, she was pretty wary of going in the pond with the big girls, but she found a somewhat secluded corner of the pond and started swimming and dabbling at the greens we tossed in.  Within a few days, she took the big plunge into the middle of the pond and started swimming with her new friends.

Today, she's having her first unsupervised time with the flock -- though, admittedly, we keep looking out the window at her.  Some of the chickens are paying her a bit more attention than we'd like, but she's holding her own.  Naturally, we had to photo/video document the occasion.

Looking good!  Strutting her stuff in the yard.

Checking out the camera. Yep, it's adorable.

Look at that happy duckling.  Give her a few more weeks (and some more feathers!), and she's going to be with the full flock all the time.

Oh, I forgot to mention one more ridiculously adorable thing that happened as we were raising her. Any time she was out and about with us...

Yeah, that never gets old.  We're really looking forward to watching her grow into an adult duck.  Based on her voice, it appears that she is, indeed, a female.  We think she's a Pekin duck, so we'll have another decent layer in our flock.

We're really glad we adopted her, and we're even more glad she recovered so quickly and easily.  All she needed was proper nutrition. What a lucky duck! I couldn't help myself.

Your life will descend into chaos.

One thing they don't tell you about farming/homesteading -- your life will descend into total chaos.  It is completely unavoidable, at least at this stage of the game, and this Type-A, left-brained, organizer finds it hard to handle sometimes.

Here are a few examples:

1. The garage is a mess, we'll clean/organize it once we move the chicken tractor out. Chicken tractor moved out. The garage is a mess, we'll clean/organize it once the rain barrels are all put together and moved out. Garage is still a mess and housing the rain barrels.

2. Rain barrels need to be put together so we can harvest the rain to water our crops.  But, wait, if we don't plant our crops now it's going to be too late. But, wait, it's raining, and the barrels are overflowing with no over flow spout. But wait….the seeds!

3. The ground is frozen, but we need to start seedlings. No problem, do it in the basement and get soil/water all over the floor. It's ok that there's soil/water on the floor because it is already covered with wood scraps. It's ok that the floor is covered with wood scraps because we're raising 20 baby birds in the basement and there are pine shavings all over the place too….and it smells like poultry poop.

4. New special needs duckling needs a home?  No problem, we have a guest bedroom for that.  What? Guests are coming?  No problem, clean out the shavings and cover up the poultry smell (thanks, incense), and move the baby into your bedroom. Again, with the pine shavings.

5. Piles and piles of cardboard and newspaper for sheet mulching (again, with the disastrous garage) are  just lying around -- but this is useful stuff, people!  We can't recycle it in any way other than putting it on the ground.  As soon as we harvest truck load after truck load of seaweed from our river, then we'll do the sheet mulching.  But wait, we need to sheet mulch to plant the seedlings in our expanded beds. But wait, we need to plant the seedlings really soon!

6. High tunnel construction -- this is an entire blog post or two in itself.  Let's get it done in the fall so we can use the tunnel all winter and have early spring crops.  What?  The ground froze?  Crap.  So, the high tunnel stands incomplete like someone flipping me the bird every time I look at it.  But now it's spring, and we can finish construction so we can plant our seedlings in the tunnel!  It's raining?  Crap.  Well, at least the rain barrels are….crap.

You get the idea.  I'm not complaining -- I'm merely pointing out our reality.  Rest assured, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I didn't even begin to touch on the things that need to be done in our house -- screens on the windows, vacuuming/mopping up the mess made by 3 dogs during mud season/spring shedding, actually cleaning something instead of just wiping it down, and I don't know, actually dusting for once in our lives.

And we don't even have kids!

I should end this post by saying that I do love our life, and I feel extremely fortunate to be able to live this way.  Sometimes, I just can't handle the piles of crap and disorganization.  I know it will get better over time as we figure things out and develop efficient/organized systems, but for now, I'm just going to do my best to breathe through it. :)

Also -- I'm making a concerted effort to post more.  So, there may be some posts sans pictures, but I'll do my best to put them as frequently as possible.

No till tilling

While we did decide to till the garden last year, we are not going to do it ever again.

There are things one can do to avoid tilling, and the long term effects of tilling are actually quite detrimental to the soil. Most people will tell you that they till to avoid weeds and enrich the soil.  The first year you till your land, it will produce an incredibly rich and bountiful crop.  In subsequent years, however, things won't be so great without a lot of amendments -- tilling exposes the precious topsoil resulting in topsoil loss and nutrient depletion.  As far as weeds go, there are lots of dormant weed seeds in the soil, and tilling simply brings them to to surface giving them the sun and air they need to grow.  They should thank us!

I'm not implying that tilling is some evil empire of agricultural practices, but for us, it isn't something we want to do.  For larger scale operations, it may be unavoidable, but on our scale, we're trying to avoid it. As I mentioned before, if you till, you'll need to add amendments to maintain fertile land, so why not skip the extra step and simply build soil from the ground up.

Many people claim that no-dig practices don't work and you end up with compacted soil.  This parsnip grew at a friend's house in Maine -- clearly there's no compaction there!  She's been building the soil without digging or tilling for years, and look at this bounty!  Credit: Lisa Fernandes.

Our plan is to use permaculture techniques to build soil that will get better every year.  Why simply go for sustainable (status quo) when you can make something better than how you found it?

One of the techniques we're using to improve our soil involves letting our chickens to the "tilling" work. :)  The jury is still out for us on whether or not we are going to get organic certified, so we can still do this.  If we go the organic certification route, we can't put our chickens directly on our veggie bed, but for now we're happy to have them eat weed seeds, spread manure, and generally stir things around.

In order for them to do this, they need a temporary and mobile home -- enter the chicken tractor.  It's a mobile home that we built for them that we'll move around the field.  And now, a photo montage…

Cheapo bike tires that are going to make our tractor mobile.  We ended up replacing the tubes and tires because they didn't hold air for crap.  

The bottom frame -- we struggled with how to attach the tires, but you'll see below that we figured it out quite nicely.

Oliver is always on hand for scale. :)  Bike tires need two points of attachment or they wobble all over the place.  With this setup, they are pretty secure and sturdy.

Dr. Trafton thinks it is a really good idea to ride the frame down the hill into our field.  I made her wear the helmet.

Dr. Knapp, however, thinks this is a supremely bad idea since there are no breaks and no ability to steer.  Here's what happened...

We have a floor, people.  Olive and Oliver were clearly more interested in a squirrel than being scale models.

Wall frames are up!  

…and we have a chicken door!  

We started building this in the fall, and this was our beautiful view.  Not too shabby!

Walls, big door, and more.  All we need now is a roof!

Here's the inside -- roosts and the nest boxes will go on the top ledge there.  Clearly, we built this entire thing from scrap wood we had lying around.

I heard a lot of flapping coming from the chicken yard, and this is what I found.  Wing clipping followed shortly thereafter.  Don't worry, it is just like cutting a fingernail, there is no pain involved.

Fast forward to now -- we got a corrugated plastic roof, and Dr. Trafton put it on.  Add some temporary fencing with a solar powered electric charger to keep dogs and other animals out, and the ladies are enjoying their first days on the veggie bed.  Naturally, we had to observe them for a little bit to make sure they weren't going to jump out or the dogs weren't going to try to get in.  The only dog to attempt getting in thus far is Baxter….shocker.  He learned his lesson and won't be trying it again any time soon.  Oliver is, obviously, on hand for supervising and keeping everyone in line.

Here's a better view of everything from our deck.  They worked the bed like champs, and we have since moved them to the perimeter of the bed where they're eating weed seeds.  We're going to swap out chickens for ducks once the seedlings are in the ground so they can work slug patrol.  

This is what was happening during our supervising.  This guy is such a snuggler, it is borderline ridiculous.  Please note his little smile. :)

…and then we attempted a family portrait...

So, we're really pleased with how quickly the chickens can work things over.  We're hoping to try to keep moving them around the field, especially where we've planted fruit trees.  It is our hope that we won't have to mow these areas, and we can keep to only mowing the very lower part of the field where we have no trees around which we'd have to navigate.

Stay tuned for how it works...

The bridge to somewhere - part 1

Trail maintenance and creation is one of the many things on our winter list of projects (and general all season to do list).  The winter is when we do the most walking, skiing, snowshoeing, etc., so we notice when the trails need some help.

The Grouse Trail (named so because we almost always flush a grouse on the trail) is a short 20 minute loop that starts and ends at our house.  We commonly use it for a quick 'get the dogs outside' walk if we're in a hurry or feeling particularly lazy.  It is also just a nice way to start or end the day.  The one problem with the trail is that it gets really wet and swampy near the field, regardless of the season.  So we decided we should build a bridge over the small 'ravine' to circumvent the muddy area.

When we moved into our house, there were several telephone poles between the house and the river as a small building down by the dock used to have power (for oyster farming).  The poles have long since been disconnected from any power source, but they were still dotting the landscape (and our view).  I looked quickly, but I couldn't find a photo of our field with them still in it.  The short of it is that we spent a day cutting down the poles and removing all the old cables.  We then realized that we had the perfect bridge material -- they're straight, sturdy, and they sure won't rot any time soon.

The difficulty with building a bridge here is that it requires the tractor since the poles are heavy….but….the reason for the bridge is that it is always wet and muddy.  Using the tractor in this location is very much less than ideal because it makes huge ruts in the mud that just don't go away on their own.

Enter polar vortex.

This super cold, snowy winter has provided us with the perfect conditions for driving our tractor through what is normally a muddy mess.

Charlotte's booty in the late winter sun….I mean, the stream bed across which we're building our bridge.  The goal was to use the winch to pull the poles across the bed and let them rest there until the snow melts and we can get them into their final locations.

Two poles chained up and ready to be pulled across.

In the interest of full disclosure, it didn't go as smoothly as this leads you to believe.  We were thwarted first by the tree just to Anna's right of the pole and had to drive the tractor back to the field, pull the poles back a bit, drive the tractor back to where it is in the picture above, and re-pull the pole across.  It pretty much landed right where we want it, though.  We only finagled it a little bit with the peavey.  Also, Baxter is trying REALLY hard to get Oliver to play with him.  Oliver is nonplussed.

Both poles in!  We're going to let them stay there until the snow melts and they settle down -- and, NO, there is no chance they're going to settle into the stream bed….none whatsoever.  Really….ok, I'll admit there's an EXTREMELY small chance.

Even though it's all blurry, there is something I really like about this photo so I'm including it.  Maybe it's the juxtaposition of the dogs, the tools, the light….I don't know.  I just like it.

The plan for after the snow melts is to get the poles secured using stones so they don't settle into the stream bed with shifting seasons.  After that, we'll cut and secure boards all along the top to make a mighty fine bridge.  We'll save that part for part deux of the bridge building endeavor.

Clearly, we made some ruts, but it was MUCH less than it would have been if it wasn't cold and snowy.  And apparently, Baxter really enjoys mud.

Charge every drop.

Today was a truly epic day.  We accomplished something we first said we would never even attempt by ourselves, and we learned a ton in the process.

Our surfing friends recently enlightened us on a phrase thrown around in the surfing world; "charge every drop." While surfing, this means to paddle hard at great waves, no matter how big and intimidating they might be. Give it your all and drop into the wave and the ride of your life. Today we took that phrase to a different level and tackled a hung up tree that scared us. We decided to take on a challenge, learn from the process, and hope for the best. So, charge every drop!

On Thanksgiving, we had fairly high winds in our area.  We had been inside cooking all day, but when our guests arrived, everyone kept commenting on the big tree that was hung up at the top of our road.  A big maple had been uprooted by the wind, but it didn't fall all the way to the ground.  It was hung up on a bunch of smaller trees.  For foresters, they call trees like this 'widow makers' because they are pretty tough and dangerous to bring down.  The lean of the tree changes all the dynamics of how it will fall, and there is a lot of tension in the tree making it easy for the tree to go very quickly without any warning.  Today, we successfully tackled our first widow maker, and here's how it went:

We've been calling her mega maple.  It isn't as horizontal as many hung up trees, and the fact that it is uprooted as opposed to broken off makes it a challenge as well.  The root ball was fairly secure still, so that changed the dynamic as well.  We were anticipating the the root ball would fall back down, but that didn't end up being the case. Hindsight is 20/20, and we would have cut it differently had we known what was going to happen.

Dr. Trafton -- ready to tackle the tree.  Actually we were both pretty nervous.  Anna was going to take the first stab at it, but I wasn't going anywhere.  This is definitely a task requiring supervision (as are all chainsaw activities in our book).

First task -- clear the area.  You always want to make sure you have an escape route.  We cut and cleared all the small trees to Anna's right and a few on the other side of mega maple.  

The first cut -- the plan was to cut a wedge in the top, then cut up the bottom side to meet the wedge.  This creates a hinge in the tree, and the root ball falls back while the bottom of the tree falls down.  Again, things didn't go as planned.  The root didn't fall back into place, and so the tree just got stuck where it was.  There was nowhere for it to go.  More on that later.

More work on the wedge -- the final wedge was much larger than what it looks like here.

The final wedge.  It's not perfect, but our skills are getting better.    

The next move is to cut into the side of the tree opposite the wedge in a straight line to the point of the wedge.  I apparently was too nervous to take any pictures of this, but let's just say Anna did a great job. The problem was that the root ball didn't want to go anywhere, but the tree wanted to fall down.  So, the bottom edge of the tree was being stopped by the stump.  Ugh.  What are we going to do?  Naturally, we called upon the strongest member of our farm team…Charlotte. 

Sorry it's sideways!

Oh hell's yeah!  You can see the root ball in the background -- that thing didn't move!  We later cut it down to the stump as there's no reason to leave perfectly good firewood just sitting there.

After this, we limbed the tree and cut it into logs that we could drag down to our drying pile.  They'll stay there until we buck and split them in the warm spring sun.  Then, they'll sit there a long time longer drying so they're ready for burning 2 winters from now -- hopefully we can have enough wood to start actually being a year in advance.

And now, it's cocktail hour. :D

I built a toilet today.

***Warning*** -- this post is about poop.

One of the items on our winter projects list is to start using a composting toilet.  Today, I built that toilet. :) Why would we want a composting toilet when we have a perfectly good septic system? Good question.

First, flushing a conventional toilet is a total waste of potable water -- yes, the water that you flush in your toilet is drinkable (thank goodness for Fido's sake!).  You're also flushing away a perfectly good resource.

Second, what are the most common ingredients found in compost people put on their gardens?  Animal manure is a biggie!  Our plan isn't to use our humanure on our veggie garden (though you could, and it would be perfectly safe if you compost correctly).  Rather, we're planning to grow some food for our livestock (chickens, and eventually other things), feed them that food, then compost their manure for the veggie garden.  It's a way of expanding the loop so our humanure is still contributing to our veggie growth, indirectly.

Third, septic systems don't provide a good environment for 'waste' composting, and are, thus, inefficient at redirecting organic matter to the soil.

Fourth, why not?  It's a good conversation piece.

So, now for a quick rundown of how it all works.  Here's our super sweet toilet.

Yeah, I built it.  Yeah, it's just a box on legs.

So, basically, you treat it like a normal toilet, and you 'flush' with a handful (or two) or organic matter.  People use all different types of things for this -- sawdust, leaves, grass clippings, etc.  Our original plan was to use leaf litter from the forest -- it's a renewable resource, it's free, and it is already teeming with good organisms for composting.  While we still may do this, we're also going to use sawdust.  Lucky for us, our future brother-in-law owns a wood distribution company and also does carpentry.  In short, he produces bags and bags of sawdust.

For flushing -- much better than sending perfectly good water down the drain. :)

The immediate thing that people think when you talk about a composting toilet is that it is really stinky. Think: contemporary outhouses with water, chemicals, and nastiness. The same holds true for many commercially made composting toilets.  This is NOT what we're going to have.  I have visited many composting toilets that employ the system we're putting in place, and not a single one of them smells at all. The key to a not smelly toilet is the correct ratio of 'waste' to sawdust (or whatever dry, organic matter you're using).  The reason commercial outhouses and some composting toilets are smelly (and may require a lot of fans to keep it under control) is because they are decidedly lacking in the dry matter.  The whole system becomes anaerobic, and anaerobic = staaaaaaaaaaanky!  It's like a trash can with a lid vs. a trash can without a lid -- lidless cans aren't as stinky because air can get in there.

Anyway, I digress -- we're using a bucket system.  For a family of 4, having 4 buckets in rotation means emptying the buckets once a week.  This doesn't seem to bad, but we don't know what our system will be just yet, or how many buckets we'll go through.

The bucket system -- when it gets full-ish, then we swap it out for a new one.  Don't worry, that's just sawdust in there -- this is the newly installed bucket. 

Today is day 1 of the composting toilet system, we'll see how it goes.

End of poop discussion. :)

One last thing…

Yeah, we did.

Winter projects

Throughout the summer, there were many times when I said, "I am actually looking forward to winter when I can do all these things I want to do but can't because we're in the throws of the growing season."  Talk about not living in the now, but that's another topic…

So, I started writing down all the projects I hoped to get to during the winter (as well as all the books I wanted to read), and what has resulted from that is our giant winter projects list.  Some things are easy (make a wood box), some things are not so easy (business master plan), but I'm hoping we can make a significant dent in the list if not finish it. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing it is now January, so we better get cracking! Nothing like a massive to-do list to kick off your year, right? :)

Here is the list in it's entirety:

• Office organization -- we have a little room that doubles as our 'theater' and office (we are without a TV, so we watch movies on our computer), and it has been the catch-all for the 'I don't know what to do with this' stuff since we moved.  I'm going to organize those things and build some shelving to help organize the place a little more.
• Fire poker -- Anna's dad has this amazing fire poker, and I was going to try to make one.  Turns out, they're manufactured right in here in New England. Considering my metal-working skills are about nil, we're going with purchasing this one.
• Under-counter shelving/cabinet -- our kitchen has no cabinet uppers (I actually really like this about it), which means limited storage.  We have a breakfast bar that we don't intend to use as such, so I'm going to build some sort of cabinet to put under the bar that will serve as a liquor cabinet/glassware storage.
• Over stove shelving/plate rack -- again, limited storage in the kitchen.  We are going to install some shelving and a plate rack (think vertical plate storage) to free up some of our cabinet space.  This will be an 'upper' of sorts, but open shelving.  We're not building this one, but the plate rack does require us to finally make a decision on plates since they're size dependent.
• Wood cover -- we don't have a dedicated wood shed, so we want to make/get a cover for our wood that is stacked outside.  This can be as simple as leftover metal roofing that we put on top of the pile.
• Book shelf bonanza -- we have amassed a number of books over the years, but we don't have a lot of book shelves here.  I'm going to build a bunch.
• Sourdough perfection -- we have a sourdough started that is a few hundred years old.  We haven't quite mastered the art of gluten free sourdough, but we're working on it.
• Organize/clean 45s -- we were lucky to get my dad's turntable and record collection, which includes a fair number of 45s.  They aren't in any order (except for the ones in boxes -- and those have a card catalog -- glad my dad's so organized!), and they could use a cleaning.  I'm hoping to develop a system for them so we know what's where.
• Drying screens -- we need to be able to successfully dry some of our crops -- herbs, beans, etc.  Last year, we just sort of hung them around or laid them out on the deck.  They really need air from all sides, and we lost a number of beans because of this.  I'm going to make some framed screens and a shelving unit to hold them.
• Composting toilet -- we'd like to be able to start making humanure -- yep, humanure.  This involves composting our waste.  It is perfectly safe, we just need to get the system in place.
• Develop a master plan -- this is a biggie, and it will probably be ever evolving.  We need to put down in writing our plan for this farm.  To whom are we going to sell our products?  On what things do we want to put most of our energy?  Where are we going to sell -- farmers' markets, CSAs, wholesale, farm stand, all of the above? Like I said -- this is a biggie.
• Finish caulking -- we had an energy audit a while back, and I'm slowly making my way through sealing a lot of the cracks in our house.  It's a tedious, slow process, but it makes us warmer and more efficient. :)
• Smoking room woodbox -- now that the smoking room looks so beautiful, we need a place to store wood by the fireplace.  I made a super sweet woodbox for our tiny stove upstairs, and I'd like to make one for the smoking room fireplace.  
• Maple syrup plan -- we tapped about 8 trees last year, and we want to really expand our maple syrup production. We need to make a plan for sap collection, storage, and where the heck we're going to put our sugar shack!
• Black trumpet dogs -- this is more of a research project.  We have lots of black trumpets on our property, and we'd like to teach our dogs to find them for us.  I mean, they have truffle dogs, why not trumpet dogs?  I'm confident we can do this.
• Chicken tractor/bachelor pad -- our male ducks are beating the crap out of each other.  This is due to the fact that we have too many males and not enough females.  Since we're vegetarians, we're not too keen on killing our males.  So -- we're building a bachelor pad for them.  It is basically already completed, we just need to order the roofing and put it on.  It is mobile, and we'll be able to rotate the ducks/chickens around the garden when we want.
• Root cellar plan -- obviously, we can't put in a root cellar until the ground thaws, but we WILL have one next year. We must!  So, we need to figure out where it's going to go, and what it's going to look like.
• Yoga room -- we have a temporary yoga space right now, but I'd love to make our permanent yoga room plan a reality.  Some of this is out of our control, but once the opportunity presents itself, we're on it!
• Squash storage -- we're growing a TON of winter squash this year as it is something we're hoping to sell sooner than later.  Squash doesn't go well in the root cellar because it is too humid in there.  Right now, we have boxes of squash under our bed (actually a pretty common storage method), but we'd like a more organized setup.  I'm going to build some shelving specifically for storing winter squash on the other side of our bedroom -- it's a really long room, and it's cold, which is good for squash storage.
• Firewood -- we have an entirely separate list for places in the woods that we want to cut firewood, but I'll spare you the boring details.  Suffice to say, we want to put up enough wood for next year and the year after.  The winter part of this is just felling the trees, we can buck and split it in the spring/summer/fall sun. :)

Maybe we'll revisit this list in the spring -- I'm going to say that the winter projects list deadline is the day we plant seeds.  At that point, it is most definitely no longer winter….we hope!