Two of them were bred so we put them back in with the bull and his heifers. So we spent a couple of hours driving back and forth transporting 18 beasts to their new winter home. We have a winter pasture we put them in they still had plenty of grass in the summer pasture in Windyville, but weatherfolks are predicting possible 6 inches of snow this weekend it's not fun driving a bale of hay 5 or 7 miles or so every couple of days-especially on icy steep roads. On Thursday we had to move our heifer herd from Windyville back here to the farm.well, just up the road from the farm here, so husband can take them hay with the tractor. There was a large crawl space under the house where the dogs slept, and where the occasional skunk visited. Only by God's grace did it not slip off them during earthquakes. My father not being the most progressive type, the house remained without a foundation it was propped up on regular cements blocks. We moved into the house a year or two after my grandmother died, I was about 4, I think. My father bought me a small ax for my 10th birthday (or Christmas, I forget which) and it was my job to cut kindling. We had electricity and running water of course, but relied solely on the wood stove for heat. You can, on occasion, hear them squeaking during the day when you are outside and close to the house. The house is covered in redwood shakes, under which bats roost occasionally. The back half of it was added on later by my dad and uncle, who finished it off for their mother to live in. The front part of the house was built by a bachelor logger who first owned the property back in the '40s I believe. If someone is cleaning up their place and need to get rid of the burnable stuff they just take it over to these people. That is they will burn any junk that anyone brings to them old torn up buildings, old tires, all kinds of burnable garbage and stuff. We know people who have much, much larger furnaces than this one who keep it going on handouts from others. The main issue is to keep enough fuel on hand for it. You just have to keep up a demand for heat in the house or hot water in the water heater so that the fire keeps going.

This furnace will burn just about any kind of wood dry, wet, you name it. We have it hooked up to the hot water heater inside the house so that hot water is piped into the hot water heater as needed, which saves a bit on electricity. So, of couse, it only works with forced air heating systems. The wood fire inside the furnace heats the water and that water is piped though copper coils and somehow the heat is blown off of that into the house. I don't understand (and therefore am unable to explain fully) how it all works but these are the basics: It runs off of electricity-to power the blower-and has a huge tank of water in it. Until I moved here I had never heard of a wood burning furnace. This isn't the best of pictures and was taken back in '04, but it will have to do until I can locate my camera. In any case it came to my attention this afternoon, after my 3rd wheelbarrow load of wood, that I have neglected to document how we heat the house during the winter.

Rainy daze farms adn genetics