{"id":4611,"date":"2026-02-02T20:54:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/?p=4611"},"modified":"2026-02-02T20:54:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:54:58","slug":"snow-storms-cold-and-cozy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/02\/snow-storms-cold-and-cozy\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow Storms, Cold, and Cozy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Katie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The snow reflects the light of the sun back into the blue sky. The cold, has been, horrendous and it isn’t going to let up any time soon. It’s so odd as the last several years were so shockingly warm and snowless that Massachusetts, stopped feeling like the home of my childhood. The apples and peaches suffered. One year, it was so warm we didn’t get enough cold and the wisteria failed to bloom over the back patio. We look forward to our wisteria every year. Seeing Dr. Farmer Moomin’s down cast face, eyes tearing up, mourning the temporary loss of our most beloved blooms, was hard to take. He isn’t prone to sentimentality and emotional reactions, unlike me, he is well balanced. Seeing him disheartened as if a friend’s scheduled arrival had been canceled, a visit he so looked forward to, that he became visibly depressed, was more than I could stomach. This year, the freezing temperatures and the snow are back with a vengeance. There will be wisteria in the spring. We will celebrate it’s return. I am thinking early May BBQ, out on the back patio.<\/p>\n

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Have a cookie straight out of Katie’s innards.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\nThese short frigid winter days, I spend a lot of time in the house. I have been very busy. Baking, cooking, and we picked up something new and I am so glad we did due to the winter we are having. I call her Katie. She seemed to whisper her name to my soul when we found her at Good Times Stove Company, out in Goshen MA. West of us. Katie, looked as if she had seen better days. She was highly rusty and we were able to get her at a good price as no one else would have looked at her and seen what she could be with some love and care. She got that love and care and was restored. I have stopped using the gas stove and the electric oven. Now, I just use Katie. She runs on wood. Originally birthed in 1895, courtesy of the Magee company, she is beautiful after her refurbishment. She runs well and does everything I ask of her. She has become a new best friend. She helps heat our home in her spare time. Her creation, happened in an era when mass production wasn’t possible. Her parts were created in carefully and artistically carved wood molds. From there she was built from the sum of her parts. The workmanship involved in her creation inspires a great deal of awe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Things I have noticed about working with a wood burning stove, it is somehow much more fulfilling as it speaks to your soul on a deeper level than a more standard modern stove. The consistency of food that exits the oven also tends to be somewhat different. Better actually. Timing is everything, and knowing your stove’s idiosyncrasies can make a big difference to outcome. For example, I tend to bake to one side of the oven as much as I can to avoid too much heat. Then half way through I turn whatever I am baking to prevent burning and ensure proper cooking on the edge that was in the coolest part of Katie’s oven stomach. On top of her, I also have been cooking. Many things…. So it has been a really wonderful experience. one I always wondered about but never dared to even ask about, because it seemed so outside of all possibility, modern convention, and modern reality.<\/p>\n

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I use copper or cast iron when cooking on Katie.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\nBut that is what Wildflower Farm is at it’s cottage core, (pardon the pun.) A place outside time and place where we bring in the best solutions of the past, and modern sensibilities that prevent old ugliness from polluting our lives. We live an open minded existence in the good old days. Leaving the negative parts of the past behind. This means, gardens, books, fresh baked bread, vegie patch, closeness to nature, and cozy. It means chickens and milking goats, pressing wildflowers, knowing where to find wild violets for turning into canned jelly. It means no hate, of people of color or the lgbtq community. No bigotry. No male as head of the household we prefer egalitarian, equitable partnership between the genders. Bring back the beauty of the past, leave the ugly back in time, is the philosophy here. Katie, definitely, adds magic to our winter lives and the cozy of homestead life.<\/p>\n

These stoves, are rather large. They don’t fit in every fireplace. More important for most they are a poor idea, because it can be hard to follow modern regulation related to wood stoves with one so large in most homes. We happen to have a very large fireplace. We measured carefully. We read the regulations for our state and township, which exist for safety purposes. We paid attention to them, and part of what we loved about Katie, is that she fit and honored every single one. Had she not, she would not be in our home now. We were exceptionally careful to be sure about being within the parameters of all regulation. So if this is something you want to do, first know your local and state regulations and be sure to follow them to the letter. Safety must always come before all else. Safety for you, safety for your home. Those regulations protect both.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shortly after bringing Katie, home, the weather hit, the big storm that over came so many all across the country. Here, we were slammed by an obscene amount of snow. and a sudden massive drop in temperature. We did not lose electricity, but here it doesn’t really matter since we also keep and maintain kerosene lamps just in case. We would have been just fine.\u00a0 Outside, the snow fell whiting out the town road about a quarter mile from us when we travel to it via our private dirt and gravel road. Visibility, in the snow was less than a quarter mile. Which made us feel a bit like a warm, peaceful, cozy place in a shimmering bright glass ball floating in the dark and the snow, alone in the universe. Any New Englander, will recognize this state of being during a colossal snow storm. But many elsewhere in the country, where it is always warm, unless there is a disaster, will have no idea what I am talking about. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to explain it any better than I have. Here, while many panicked, we made hot spiced cider on top of Katie, in a lovely copper pot and watched the snow fall happily enough.<\/p>\n

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Hot spiced cider, cooking on Katie, during the recent snow storm.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\nI have been reading many books lately. Right now, I am reading The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon. It is a murder mystery based on the life of a real woman, a midwife up in Maine, in the 1700s. I am loving it. My tea kettle, sitting atop Katie, whistles, I collect my tea, I have had a thing for chamomile lately, not sure why. Then it is off, back in time to the Kennebeck river where a man’s beaten, then hung, body has been found… A midwife, a historically real person, is following the clues that will rock her small puritanical community to it’s core. (to be fair though…. What doesn’t rock puritans to their core??? Pretty much literally anything that isn’t an afternoon in church.) Still, even by those standards this is a wonderful story. But I don’t want to get too into it here. I will write about it when I have finished, and talked it over with my book club.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other news, we have obtained a male goat. The vet has been out. We are expect a couple kids in the spring! This is the beginning of our small self sufficiency breeding program. So this spring, there will be cheese! There will be milk! There will be goat milk soap! It will be wonderful since I am not allergic to the protein in goat dairy. Just cow dairy. It isn’t just the goat pen offering up future goodness. my second round of vegies in the greenhouse are coming up. We always have something out there for salad. but it is game of playing musical vegetables at times. As they don’t all become ripe at the same time. I used to think that was kind of a bad thing. Now I am finding it actually isn’t. As it means there is always something for us out there even if we don’t always have everything.<\/p>\n

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Cornbread, cooling fresh from Katie’s innards.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have begun planning the spring garden and even as I am enjoying the indoor cozy, I miss being barefoot dancing in the garden planting my food until it gets so hot I must go jump in the water for a while before returning to my garden to “work.” The long days of sunshine, the wild flowers… Today, they feel like a far away dream, as does the green of the barn yard and the goats playing on the hill. (right now they are hiding in their house and if I look out at them they glare at me miserably as if I am responsible for the snow, that blights their lives for the time being.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many changes are happening here on so many levels. When it comes to technology, we have fully embraced Tidal, over a company that airs ads for an agency who’s agents have killed American citizens in Minneapolis. I am awe struck by the people of Minneapolis, and deeply touched and moved by their non violent peaceful protests even as their neighbors are being rendered helpless then shot to death in front of them by masked men, for no good reason. Keep on staying peaceful and non violent. Let them be the violent ones offending everyone’s sense of morality, we are better than that. Stay peaceful and non violent and stand your ground! Solidarity Minneapolis! All my love and strength to you from Boston. Don’t stop shining a light on the evil unfolding in your city. Other tech changes, I am finding that boycotting stuff is like a drug. I am enjoying it very much. I have now dumped Windows. I am officially a Linux user. The privacy is better. We dumped Google some time ago, for one of the better options, and we keep Proton email. So those are some of the more recent changes and some of them we did a while ago now, while some are super recent. Other things I am boycotting completely or doing my human best to avoid as much as humanly possible include, Meta, X, Google, Amazon, and AI anything, Youtube, and Tiktok. We create the problems we have then we whine about them. I have a homestead to run. I don’t have time or energy to create more problems for myself. I don’t have time for whining about them either. Plus it is more effective, to starve the beast of what they make money off of, me. Or you. I can not encourage people loudly enough to dump the big social media platforms for Bluesky. It is just a better platform, doing good things, not weaponizing algorithms or stealing privacy from users. Not hocking product at them with ad after ad. Physical reality means real on Bluesky, not open to alternative facts. So far better situation there. I am now using Peertube, and am trying to gradually replace youtube all together. I encourage more people to post their videos there. Because the only way things change, is if we change our habits and choices. I have changed mine opting to believe a better world is possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Making pasta on Katie.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Other changes too are coming to Wildflower. I have plans to put in a barn in the spring, and see what I can do to improve my goat set up. I am also considering tearing out the raised beds and trying a more direct in the ground gardening method in the vegetable garden. We have put in a hot water pump and we are working on arranging a heat pump as well in an effort to be even more environmentally friendly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But right now, all of my plans must wait as the ground is frozen and buried under nearly 2 feet of snow, (yeh i have no idea what that is in European measurement and I am educated in the usa. I don’t have the math skills necessary to figure it out. While the ground is frozen, I will be busy, reading, studying gardening ideas and raising goat kids, and doing more research on honey bees, while sipping tea boiled on good very old Katie, as bread bakes inside her, spreading a warm wonderful fragrance through the house, creating a very special winter cozy.<\/p>\n

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New old wood stove.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In these difficult times, focus on being the solution.
\nBeing non violent, being safe, and keeping your mind and spirit healthy.
\nTake a break if you need to.\u00a0
\nHave a cup of tea somewhere outside the world, enjoy looking out at the beauty of nature.\u00a0
\nDo what you need to so you can continue to function.
\nDon’t allow yourself to be exhausted by it all.\u00a0
\nSelf care and time in the cozy can help.\u00a0
\nStop by here for a cup of tea and a break if all else fails…. Though…. I might put you to work kneading bread, watering the greenhouse, or helping me with some other quiet chore that needs doing, outside the crumbling world.
\nThank you for reading
\nAmanda Of Wildflower Farm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The snow reflects the light of the sun back into the blue sky. The cold, has been, horrendous and it isn’t going to let up any time soon. It’s so odd as the last several years were so shockingly warm and snowless that Massachusetts, stopped feeling like the home of my childhood. The apples and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[2021,2013,2017,2014,2026,2012,2016,2011,2022,266,270,301,302,311,319,418,457,461,479,513,514,2020,520,2025,602,687,721,722,2010,2019,2018,2024,801,805,809,813,1431,993,2023,2015,1004],"class_list":["post-4611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-news","tag-a-quiet-minute-by-the-wood-stove","tag-baking-in-wood-stove-oven","tag-baking-with-wood","tag-baking-wood-fired","tag-cooking-more-naturally","tag-cooking-on-old-fashioned-wood-stove","tag-cooking-with-wood","tag-cooking-wood-stove","tag-cozy-hygge-cooking-on-the-wood-stove","tag-farm","tag-farm-blog","tag-farm-wife","tag-farm-wife-blog","tag-farming","tag-farmstead","tag-hobby-farm","tag-homestead","tag-homestead-blog","tag-homestead-farm","tag-homestead-wife","tag-homestead-wife-blog","tag-homestead-winter-cozy","tag-homesteading","tag-life-on-a-hobby-farm","tag-living-closer-to-nature","tag-new-england-homestead","tag-old-fashioned-homestead","tag-old-fashioned-homesteading","tag-old-fashioned-wood-stove","tag-old-fashioned-wood-stove-baking","tag-old-fashioned-wood-stove-cooking","tag-quiet-time","tag-self-sufficiency-homestead","tag-self-sufficiency-homesteading","tag-self-sufficiency-living","tag-self-sufficient-homestead","tag-traditional-homesteading","tag-winter-on-the-homestead","tag-winter-warmth-on-a-homestead","tag-wood-fired-cooking","tag-wood-stove"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4619,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions\/4619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildflower-farm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}