A New Furnace

The new furnace waiting to get into the house.

I own a big 121-year-old iconic Vermont farmhouse that has been added to decade after decade. It is drafty and cold, with granite boulders as a foundation that were quarried from Barton Mountain behind the house. The original part of the house was built with no windows at all on the north side to keep out the cold! My husband was renovating the house, but he only was half done when he died.

I've had years of severe problems with the old furnace. It required $1,000-$2,000 of repairs each of the past two winters. With the cost of heating fuel the highest I can ever remember, this is causing severe hardship. This summer I was finally able to get a new furnace. The problem was that all the home heating companies here are swamped with furnace repairs and replacements, so I had to wait in line. Monday, September 26, was the day it was finally installed!

The old furnace was a combination wood and oil burner. Most people here have these, but I didn't want another one. John burned wood for 10 years here with wood harvested from our land. It was a tremendous amount of work. 

Here are photos of the old furnace that the technicians somehow managed to drag out of the cellar. It had holes rusted through it. The old cast iron fire box was in bad shape. My husband had repaired a lot of it during his life. 

It took two days for them to install the furnace, balance the heat ducts, replace some duct work, and make a new cold air intake in the kitchen. The upstairs is heated by gravity: in the old days, they cut holes in the downstairs ceiling and let the heat rise. And the last addition to the house had no heat at all until John ran a duct over to it. 

I love this furnace. It is so quiet that when I came home from school today I thought it had stopped running. There are no more roaring, cracking, or screaming sounds from the cellar. The heat is even throughout the house now. My new thermostat is digital and tells me the room temperature in real time. I'm running it cooler now, set to 65°F (18°C) all the time. I'll see if that is sufficient when it is -30°F (-34°C) this winter. Well, I'd rather not see that, but it will happen. 

I finally found my lost step stool
that belongs in the kitchen!

For Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for a stress-free winter with no worries to what I will find when I come home from school. Good riddance, old furnace!

Thankful Thursday at
Brian's Home

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A Watering Hole

One of the brooks comes down the mountain and flows through the apple orchard. John and I went out four days after the first day of spring when the snow was three feet deep and so crusted that we did not need snowshoes to move around. It was fun being taller for a few hours! I saw that the orchard brook was open in this one spot and there were tracks down to the water. Foxes are using this spot for their water. If you look carefully on the left end of the open brook, you may see the faint tracks. Below, I have a closer shot of the tracks. They are faint and difficult to see.

I don't really like foxes. They have been known to eat kitties.

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The Big Storm

Our first view of the storm on the morning of March 7 after it had snowed overnight

That poof of snow on the car roof visually shows you how the wind comes down off the mountain (which is on the right), into the driveway and up and over the car.

This is the snow outside the back living room window.
I darkened the photo so that you could see the height of the snow.

Snow blocked the backdoor but I was able to push it open enough to stick
the lens of the camera out the door.
That is the window at the back of the garage totally buried under snow.

Our mailbox. The roads were not plowed at all until the day after the storm was over.
This was natural accumulation, not plowed snow.

John begins to plow on the morning of the storm.

Still plowing . . .

The tractor's gas line froze in the wind and was thawed with industrial blow dryer.

Wind blows snow off of the barn.

Because no plows reached us for 36 hours,
John had to plow the road in order to plow the mailbox.
Here, he has just gotten down to the road.

Plowing the mailbox out.

We were safe and warm in that house!

There wasn't a soul on the road.
It was quiet and peaceful for two days.
We got three feet of snow and much more in drifts.

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Thirty Below

The thermometer actually reads -29F.

I've heard a lot of complaints around here about closing schools today because of the cold weather. But when it is -30°F (-34.4°C) outside and you have to wait for the bus, it can be a dangerous situation. I think we can all agree that one day of school is not worth the risk. The chickadees and other birds outside are doing just fine this morning. I don't think a child would do as well.

I took this photograph sometime between 6 AM and 7:30 AM this morning. The thermometer is on our southeast window. The temperature jumped at 7:30 AM when the sun hit it. This is the coldest temperature I have registered at the house in 10 years. I don't know whether it is a record breaking temperature for Barton or not. But on January 24, 1907 a record low of -34°F (-36.7°C) was recorded in St. Johnsbury.

Of mathematical interest: -40°F and -40°C are identical thermometer readings for air temperature. It is the only time that the two temperature scales correlate.

Stay warm out there!

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WTF at NWS?

I woke up Friday morning to snow on the roof. There were patches of snow on the ground. The wind was roaring around the house and through the old windows. This is a very old house and there never has been heat in my bedroom so it was brutally cold — about 44°F. The fiercer the wind blows the more you feel the cold.

Buddy the Cat had slept under the covers with me all night and needed to be persuaded to leave his warm nest. We dragged ourselves out of bed and went downstairs where it was warm. I turned on the computer to see what the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted for the day. It said there was a 20% chance of flurries. Well, already it had flurried until it had accumulated. But at least there was no storm coming. Because I usually blog about the first snow every autumn, I grabbed the 20% snowy icon from the NWS for this post.

And guess what the URL for this icon is?

http://forecast.weather.gov/images/wtf/sn20.jpg

Yes, they keep the snowy icons in their WTF folder. I think it’s an appropriate place for them.

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Winter Damage

Of course, the mailbox was plowed. But John's fixed it for now (not seen here).

The snow brought down the shed on the back of the barn. The underground water springs have done their damage and grown the willows. This whole area is going to be excavated, drained and rebuilt. I can't wait!

My clothesline! I love a clothesline and it needs piles of work before it can be used again.

All in all, the winter wasn't that hard on the house. I can't wait for the land to green up in another month.

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Wordless Wednesday: Discouragement

I-91N, Wheelock, Vermont
Sunday, March 21, 2010

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Good. Bad. Worse.

Good News! I have finally, finally finished unpacking! It only took about a year but I did it. I had another allergy attack from the mice detritus that John had to clean up because the fat, lazy cats couldn't be bothered to do their duty this autumn. But the allergies weren't as severe as the week long asthma problems I suffered from in the winter.

Bad News (But not for me.) There was a tiny snow squall this afternoon. It made me very happy and took my heart back to northern Vermont where snow squalls can happen any month of the year (that is not exaggerating) (the link is to my favorite Barton, Vermont snow photos). John began growling at it. Seriously growling. And I began singing. Quietly. No need to rub snow happiness in! You can't see the snow too well in the photo, but it was a pretty decent squall.

The Worst News. I may be a great baker and bread maker. But I'm still learning some of the rest. Like (above) frying pork chops. John ate the mess graciously and even told me it was great stuff. It looks disgusting, doesn't it? (And yes, I actually pick up a camera to photograph my disasters. It's better than crying, right?) So for those of you who cook and bake and your loves won't eat it (thank you for the recipe in the mail today, Marcia!), just be grateful that you are not feeding them this fried cholesterol.


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How Did You Spend Your Snow Day(s)?

Chicken chili and Walter Sands' Bread

ME

• Wednesday: I did my chores, made bread and cooked the chicken chili recipe that Faith gave to me. It took an awful long time to cook this but it was worth it. I was very happy and fulfilled all day.
• Thursday: learned Apophysis and worked on photographs and old RSS feeds. I solved a problem with the coding on two blogs and e-mailed a couple of folks..I felt a bit of discontent and kept looking out the windows at the weather to see when it would clear.Ended up napping with the cats.
• Friday: shoveled the deck for the cats. Cats don't care; they ignore me and won't move any longer — just sleep 24/7 waiting for the storm to end. I'm feeling the beginning of withering boredom.. Thinking of going for a drive to see the widespread devastation that must be out there to cancel school for three days now.

One of the many plowing outings.

HIM

• plowed
• plowed
• plowed
• plowed

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Kimpton Brook: Winter & Summer

In August, John and I hiked around Butterfield Pond in the Gile State Forest. Kimpton Brook flows past the entrance to the trail. Above you can see the beautiful, lush forest in August.

This past week, we returned to the trail for ice photographs and you can see the same scene below, all whiteness and ice:

Butterfield Pond Hike Set

Kimpton Brook Set

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Winter Insect

Yes, they do fly in winter. I don't know what this is. It landed in front of me while I was snowshoeing. I have not submitted this guy to bugguide.net as of yet. I am waiting to see if I can figure it out its identification myself as I read Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survivalby Bernd Heinrich. I have just begun the chapter on insects in winter. Heinrich is one of my favorite nature writers . . . grab the book from the link below if you live in the northern tier of the United States. Read it!






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Sledding in Barton

This is a huge hill in the Village of Barton where people go sledding. I've seen people bring their snow machines, drive their sleds up and sled down. Otherwise they might only have two downhill runs in a day!

Scenes of Barton Set on Flickr

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Twenty Below

-29°C

A photo of the thermometer off of my sunporch on Thursday morning, January 15, 2009. It used to be this cold on many many mornings. Last winter it only happened a couple of times. On Friday morning, it was -22°F (-30°C) here in Barton but in Sutton it was -45°F (-43°C). We think that was the state record for that night. Today it is 22°F (-5.5°C) and snowing. Of course, it never really has stopped snowing. Our snow cover is great.

The bad news? Still no Internet!! So here I am in the library on Martin Luther King Day. The modem has not arrived and when it does, we still have to call Comcast to have them climb the pole to turn it on. AARRRGGGHHHH!
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