On a farm, you don’t really live in the season that is current, you have to start thinking about the next one, or the next two. In upstate New York, where I live, the big season to think about is always winter, no matter what time of year it is. Winter is the big one, the one you have to always think about, be prepared for.

Spring is the time to order hay for the winter, you don’t want to be calling around in October frantically looking to fill the woodshed. It is the time to call Greg Burch, our wood man and tell him to start bringing seven or eight cords around by October. We will let the wood sit in the sun a while, then Maria and I will stack it in the shed.

What we don’t get to, we will ask Tyler to help us do. The first cord and a half arrived today, about $260. The cord to the right was delivered in March, and is about ready to be stacked. I am thinking about 175 square bales of hay for the winter, we will have a pony, two donkeys, eight sheep.

This week, I called the heating oil company and asked them to come and clean and check our furnace. We’ve arranged for the wood stove cleaners to come in July and clean the stoves and the chimneys. We’re asking our electrician for estimates on putting a couple of baseboard heaters in our bedroom, we turned into ice cubes up there this winter. We also want to try and figure out precisely why our frost-free line froze at the end of the winter, we might need to insulate it.

We also need to check the slate on the roof – lots of snow there all winter, and patch up some peeling paint spots.

So this is a long list, and we probably can’t afford to do all of these things, we’ll take it one at a time and see how it goes. Wood and hay are essential, obviously. It was good to see the first delivery of wood arrive today. In the Spring, I am most often thinking about winter.