winter storm warning remains in effect until 4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
tomorrow heavy snow and blowing snow total snow accumulations will range from
12 to 18 inches with locally higher amounts in the mountains and Vermont's
Northeast Kingdom Travel will be hazardous snowfall rates of 1 to 2
inches per hour are expected late tonight into tomorrow morning
temperatures will also be near zero across northern areas with dangerously
15 to 20 below zero tonight
my my would you look at that snow is starting to fall definitely coming down
so I'm in this room that we have here at the farm it's in the farmhouse that when
we did the restoration of our house we never quite finished and this winter one
of my goals is to try to finish in here my plan is actually to take a whole
bunch of the barnwood that we have from that barn right there
and use it to make flooring and potentially wall paneling or it might
just sheetrock that I don't know we're gonna see but the idea is I want to make
kind of a cool office and hangout space and so in these winter months when I'm
not too busy it's been kind of nice to just sort of take a little time here and
there and work on this right now I'm just putting in the floor seating and
then once that's done the process will be to start pulling barn wood from the
barn and planing it and putting it down just like rigger or old hardwood
flooring I really don't have a ton of experience with home restoration stuff
so I just came out here to the edge of the cedar swamp where the middle of a
pretty good sized snowstorm and I really just came out here because I wanted to
sort of hang out think a little bit so they say that the road of life is paved
with squirrels that couldn't make a decision right now I'm starting to
wonder if I'm one of those squirrels I'm in the process of trying to build out
the business plan for the farm this year and I've met them a little bit
struggling with some decisions that I have what it comes down to is this there
is a good list of things that I want to try to do and pursue for the farm but
I'm also trying to make sure that I'm keeping things in balance and I don't
burn myself out and melt down on the farm side it's all about my vision of
trying to create a sustainable farm one that's sustainable economically
emotionally and ecologically trying to create a balance there on the homestead
side of things it's about all the projects that Allison and I have that we
want to do with our home in terms of trying to get closer to our food as well
as try to lead a lifestyle that's a bit more self-sufficient than we are today
trying to balance those two things is important too because if I have too many
homestead projects I'm never gonna be able to tackle the farm stuff and if I
get too deep into the farm stuff I'm never gonna have that balance I'm
seeking as a person and on top of balancing the farm in the homestead I
have to contend with the fact that I have a full-time job that's off farm
that's the thing that pays our bills so I guess my gripe is I got to list a mile
long here but my plans with the farm are very much focused on three things first
as I've grown to learn and understand and become kind of good at taking care
of ducks I really do want to try to expand our duck operation this year that
means hatching our own ducklings here on the farm and that means selling eggs
here on the farm and I want to expand that of course I am still struggling
with frozen eggs but that's life here in northern Vermont
the second piece of the farm plan is I want to start to do geese specifically I
want to start to do grazing of geese and raise them for me well I love working
with the Ducks and I think they're cool fun animals the one thing I don't like
about the Ducks is that they require a grain input taken here from our farm
because I'm going through bags and bags of grain that I'm buying and bringing
onto the farm and if I'm really thinking about sustainability with the farm
having an animal like geese who eat grass using natural resources that we
automatically have at the farm that to me is significantly better than having
to truck in the grain for the Ducks so the plan with the geese would be I get
50 geese I would raise them from goslings I would you know put them out
in essentially modified chicken tractors move them daily on pasture
I would then sell those geese as meat Birds I don't know I think people might
be into buying a Christmas goose so focusing on a rotational grazing pattern
for the geese where I'm moving them on a regular basis and having them eat and
move to the next day eat move to the next day eat move to the next day and
almost treat them like they're sheep or cattle
that's an interesting experiment and as a creative guy who often has a tendency
to get a little bit ahead of himself and a little bit over-ambitious with what
he's trying to do that idea of coming up with a system for rotational grazing
geese it's just completely exciting to make the other business that I'm
seriously exploring is hemp production I know I mentioned this a bit in the video
I made recently about why I don't want to get a tractor and so I think this
idea of growing hemp and harvesting it and selling it off for CBD production
could be a very interesting evolution for for me as a farmer and so I've been
researching the heck out of this one and it seems like it's very feasible for us
to do here at our farm of course it would be a fair amount of work so
between these three things of the Ducks the geese and the hemp I feel like I
would have a rather ambitious plan for the farm then if I throw on top of it
the trees and what we're doing with our permaculture orchard and the continued
maintenance of our permaculture orchard and continuing to plant and explain
that permaculture orchard oh boy oh boy that is a lot of work so I very much
right now feel like that proverbial squirrel skittering back and forth on
the side of the road trying to determine if I should run across or not with this
nagging sensation that there's this 18-wheeler barreling down towards me and
I'm feeling like I need to just make up my mind and go or I'll so I'll probably
just get run over in the breakdown lane
all right all ducks go to bed it's gonna be an interesting night tonight we're
supposed to get a lot of snow and it's gonna be really cold so what you gonna
do that's life in Vermont so I'm starting to try to take this mindset of
every little bit of discomfort that comes your way like a blizzard or
sub-zero temperatures as just like another little thing that kind of pushes
you in the right direction and pushes you on that path towards getting better
and being stronger and being more effective and building something really
cool and I'm embracing it I know that's sort of just a mind trick I'm playing on
myself but I found it to be pretty effective and makes things a lot more
fun when you take that attitude that right Pablo look at him Pablo's out
there he's probably not embracing the discomfort he's like dude why don't you
get me some food I could really use some dinner
all right so now it's about ten o'clock and it's been snowing pretty hard I'm
gonna go outside and check on the Ducks and probably do a little bit of snow
cleanup I find that it's really important to do that snow cleanup kind
of while the storms going on if you wait until everything keeps falling and then
stops you're gonna have so much volume when you get these bigger storms that
it's gonna take you forever to try to clear I find that if you do it like two
or three times in the middle of the storm it's really not that bad it's nice
and easy work and you have a lot less of a hassle once all the snow stops are you
doing a little huh how's it going yeah the snow
just a little dusting really powdery on days where it's this cold I'll often
give the duck some extra water
the winch came loose and dropped the plow
well it's been a good day
it's just a dusting it'll be fine it's not right barn cats
so Wow on morning's like this it's a lot more work to live here on a farm in
Vermont I got to say I can't get enough of it I mean yeah just spent the last
hour and a half fish or so clearing snow from various parts of the property and
I'm probably gonna have to do this two maybe three more times today until
it actually finally stops snowing and everything's all cleared but I love it
the tranquility of it all the beauty of it all the stillness of it all I know
it's not for everybody but for me as a weirdo here I kind of like it oh my gosh
look at Pablo barking he's looking he's commando crawling through the snow hey
buddy he told me I love this this this is the
lifestyle that I was hoping for you know when I was just a guy sitting in an
office building in Washington DC I would dream about what it would be like to be
on a farm in the middle of winter and it wasn't nearly as cool as this has become
and so I gotta say I'm just really expressing some gratitude here just how
awesome this has been and I also want to express some gratitude to you guys I
appreciate so much that you take the time to watch these videos and comment
on these videos you have no idea how much it actually means to me that you're
following us here at Gold Shaw Farm as we try to build this farm in Vermont
thanks