January - Baby, It's Cold Outside

Luxury ice fishing hut.  Note the chimney.

    Mid-winter has arrived here in Madison. How do I know? The ice fishermen arrived on the lake earlier this month. They are encamped almost at the mid-point of the lake (they will get there soon), and their ice fishing huts, which look like a cross between a dome tent and a port-a-potty, are beginning to dot the frozen surface all the way to the other shore which must be at least a mile away.

    I have yet to understand this activity, since the products of ice fishing are paltry, indeed. It appears, by all accounts, to be a means by which men sit in a tent on upturned buckets with their lines dropping through a hole they've drilled in the ice and drinking themselves into a such a state that the cold can no longer be felt. There are even radar-like devices which can detect fish swimming toward said hole so that, in their inebriated state, the fishermen will know when it's time to haul up their line and bask in the glory of a six-inch bluegill.

    I watched one episode of this activity on the local Wisconsin PBS channel. Watching paint dry is more exciting - positively riveting - in comparison. The dialog, of which there was little, went something like this:

    "Yep, we got a line down there." (long pause)

    "Yep, you can see those fish comin'." (longer pause)

    "Yep. These detectors are great." (nearly interminable pause) 

    "Yep. I caught a few last week." (camerman sighs audibly)

    This is one part of Wisconsin culture that even Wisconsin wives do not understand. I'm sure there must be a few women who find this "sport" intriguing, but I have yet to meet one. On the other hand, I've met a number of women who think this a grand method for getting some peace and quiet for a few hours.

    The first fisherman to claim his spot on the lake this year (like an old miner, they leave some kind of gear behind to stake their claim) was dressed from head to foot in safety orange. A friend of mine assures me that the reason for this was because he was wearing his hunting clothes from fall rather than buying a new set of coveralls for winter. I think the real reason was because he had encamped on rather thin ice, and if it broke through and he went in, someone would spot him as he went down and fish him out. He has returned to his spot several times now, so it appears that all is well, and as far as I can see, he no longer wears safety orange. I still feel vindicated even if my theory is dead wrong. I do think about what will happen when the thaw comes sometime around mid-March and those huts are just a teensy bit too heavy for the thinning ice. I wonder how many ice fishing huts dot the bottom of the lake. Quite a few, I imagine.

    Meanwhile, back at our house, the chickens continue to endure the cold with as much grace as they can muster. We do have a heater in the coop and in their water bucket, but it's still not anywhere near warm. They are still laying some eggs, bless their fluffy little backsides. Isis and Judy have grown their feathers back after their badly-timed molt and are willing to come out of the coop and into the run.  On the downside, Barbara has decided that it's her turn to drop a pillow full of feathers and turn sulky.  Chickens don't usually molt at nine months old.  I'd never seen this before, and I was rather alarmed, expecting to find her, rigid as a plank, on the floor of the run or keeled over in the coop.  She looks fairly dreadful, but this is apparently not uncommon, and she is otherwise doing well, though her egg laying has stopped.  I give them extra scratch seeds to keep their fat and protein up which helps them deal with the cold, and they get any chicken-friendly leftovers we have such as oatmeal, cheese, and veggie peelings.  It seems to work.

Goldie discovers snow.

      There was a day in mid-January that was warm enough to open the run door and let them outside.  They had never had a chance to stroll around in the snow, and the initial shock took them aback somewhat.  Isis and Judy were having none of it, since they were still in molt, but the "big girls" were willing to wander about for a while, though not too far from the warmth and safety of the coop.  My greatest fear was that a hungry hawk might spot a midwinter snack and decide to launch a full scale attack, so I didn't leave them out for long.  As it was, the neighbor's dog started to wander over which sent the girls scuttling back toward the coop and me barreling out the back door to rescue them if need be.

    Hattie McDaniel, the big, black Australorp, has decided that she is a feathered puppy and will follow me anywhere, even in the snow, demanding to be held and "bwaak-purring" at me if I don't pay her enough attention.  Australorps are known for being gentle, personable birds, but she has become quite attached.  Most nights when I arrive home after work, I trudge out to the chicken coop, flashlight in hand, to give the girls a nightly snack and check to make sure that everyone is accounted for and the heaters are working.  Despite the dark and cold, Hattie will always come to the door of the run to greet me, which means that she will get first crack at whatever I deposit in the big, blue bowl.  Smart bird.

     Some of the local geese seem to be able to handle the cold rather well.  Rather than flying south with their brethren, a sizable number of hardy souls choose to stay put and weather out the winter, and I found out why.  In the early 1900s, non-migratory geese were brought in to populate wildlife refuges, and populate them they have, and then some, as any golfer or park walker will inform you.  They apparently find some kind of adequate shelter and sufficient food, perhaps under trees.  I've seen them poking about in the stubble of corn fields when the snow isn't too deep.  I imagine they huddle together for warmth on the coldest days and draw straws to see who gets to be in the middle and who has to be on the outside of the scrum.  In mid- December, there must be some kind of goose convention on Lake Leota, the small lake in Evansville.  Geese gather there by the hundreds to stroll around on the frozen lake, completely unaware that the person who is photographing them would like nothing better than to get inside by a hot fire and drink cocoa.  They even pose.

     For some time now, I've needed a spinning wheel that is better suited to being carted about when I teach classes.  Much as I adore her, my German wedding wheel, Wilhelmina Murray, is beautiful and lightweight, but she's also rather delicate. (Many spinning wheels are given names.  Wilhelmina has a "WM" picked out in small brass tacks on the top of the table of the wheel, so  I named her after the heroine in Dracula.)  Given that she is well over 100 years old, like many elderly folk, she doesn't do well being transported hither and yon, so I went searching for a wheel that wasn't too large but was sturdy and would fit my budget.  Which is how I found myself driving in pitch darkness and a freezing drizzle to pick up a new spinning wheel in Beaver Dam.  

    When you find a good prospect on a spinning wheel, you don't wait.  You call the owner, and then you  drive.  As far as necessary and as fast as safety will allow.  Speed limits will almost certainly be broken.  It was a miserable late afternoon when I contacted the owners of a little spinning wheel that looked like it would fit the bill.  They asked if I would come by to look at it.  I had planned to make a nice chicken dinner, but all that flew out the window with the prospect of the perfect traveling wheel.  Harvest merely sighed, knowing that there was no stopping me, and waved me out the door with a wan smile.  

    It was full dark by the time I reached Beaver Dam, made all the darker by the looming cloud cover and freezing rain.  I felt like I was inside an 8-ball. From what I was able to determine that night,  Beaver Dam does not believe in street lights.  The directions I received were rather sketchy as well, including a direction to drive around the left side of a theater and up a hill.  That theater, which was actually an old playhouse, might have been visible in daylight, but in the darkness it was just another looming building to navigate around, and there wasn't another car anywhere in sight except mine.  It was downright eerie.

    The owners of this wheel were a lovely elderly couple. The wheel had been built in Denmark in the 1970s and had been purchased from the wheel maker by a friend of theirs while she was in the country.  Some years later, the woman gave the wheel to the couple after her divorce, and it had been sitting unused in their home for several years.  This situation is actually fortunate for a spinning wheel.  Sitting indoors creating country ambience in a living room is far preferable to being stored in a cold, leaky barn.

    I always bring a small basket of basic spinning necessities (a bottle of wheel oil, some twine to make a  new drive band, a pair of scissors, a chunk of beeswax, a crochet hook, and some sample fiber to spin) when I look at a new wheel because many of them haven't been touched in years and need a little help to get them running again.  As I was giving the wheel a little oil to get her ready to spin again after a good 40 years, I nattered on about wheels and their names.

    "Are you going to name this wheel?" asked the wife.

    " I think so," I said.  "What's your name?"

    "Katherine," she replied.

    "Well, Katherine it is, then.  Do you mind if I call her Katie?"  

    There were no objections, and they were delighted to see their wheel in action spinning yarn.  They even took a video so they could show their friends and family.

Katie, my new spinning wheel

   

    I've had new bobbins made for Katie by a friend of mine, and her debut workday will be at the Home and Garden Show in Madison in February where I will be demonstrating spinning with Scott Johnson of the Low Technology Institute.  There are few things more satisfying than seeing a spinning wheel doing what it was built to do: make yarn.  The wheels seem happier, too, after languishing for so long.  Having restored and spun on so many wheels over the years, I've discovered that each one has its own personality.  Perhaps that's why spinners name them.  I hope Katie and I will become good friends and workmates.

    Harvest is well into her garden planning and has already bought two batches of seeds.  She has allowed me one patch on which to grow my "boutique" veggies.  I like to experiment with things.  They don't always do well, but they're interesting nonetheless.   I'm not quite ready to order my own seed  or plan my garden plot yet, though I'm beginning to feel the gardener's itch in my frozen little hands.  Every day that passes brings us closer to warmth and green again, but it still seems a long way off, even if the sun is setting a little later every day.  Truly, the best part of any winter in Wisconsin is the spring.