(2-13-13)  (Here I am again, my indents don't work on blogger...)



Stonewall Farm

Yesterday, we woke up bright and early to get ready to go to Stonewall Farm, to learn about ice harvesting.
Stonewall Farm is in Keene NH.  The drive to there from New Boston took about an hour and seven minutes.  I helped mom set up the new GPS app on her phone, and then, we were on our way.
Finally, when we arrived there, we brought in our backpacks full of snow clothes for later.  Then we came out to get the rest of our stuff.  Guess who we saw then?  Yep, the Riehls.  So, we brought the rest of our stuff into the classroom together, and sat down together.
The teacher cleared her throat and told all of us to quiet down, and take a seat.  When all of the kids did, she started telling us about ice harvesting, and when people did it most, and why.  When that part was over, she introduced us to some of the tools that we would use, to ice harvest.  There was the Pike, for moving the ice, an Ice Saw for cutting the sides of the ice, the Ice Breaker for breaking it off of the bigger mass of ice, and the Ice Tongs for carrying the ice.
When she was finished, she told us to get our snow clothes on, and head outside to start harvesting some ice!  After we used the bathroom, and got our snow stuff on, we headed outside, following the teacher.  When we got to the pond that we were going to harvest on, we got in lines to ice harvest.  I was second to last in the line, the last, being my friend Mitchell.
Finally, when it was my turn, I picked up the Ice Saw, and started cutting.  The teacher also held the saw to help.  After I finished cutting with the saw, I picked up the Ice Breaker, and pushed at the ice block until the block broke off of the bigger mass of ice.  Then, the teacher took the Ice Tongs, and lifted the ice block out of the water.  After that, with the Pike, I pushed the ice up to the Ice Tongs, which were clipped on to the ice, with a string attached to the tongs, to be pulled up, by the ice pulling crew.  When the block was pulled up, I took another pair of Ice Tongs, and picked up the ice block, and weighed it on a scale.  My block was thirty-five pounds, which meant that my block was the third heaviest block out of all the kids.  I tied with one of the other boys, who also had a thirty-five pound block.
That part was fun, but there was more!  We did an experiment, on how sawdust, can insulate ice.  The teacher gave us two cups.  One with no sawdust, one with.  My team, Nathan, Camden, and myself, buried the ice cube the the teacher gave us, into the sawdust.  The other ice cube went into the other cup, with no insulation.  The teacher told us to put the cups on a heater.  After we did, she told us, to go get some snowshoes from the closet if you didn’t bring any, and put them on.  We were going for a snowshoe hike.
After a few frustrating minutes of trying to get my snowshoes on, we left.  Following the teacher, we snowshoed up the driveway, and near a greenhouse, where there was a little field.  The teacher told us to keep following her, as she made a circle of foot prints.  She also made lines of footprints across the circle.  At this point, we still didn’t know what we were playing.  After the playing field was finished, she told us that we were going to play a game of snowshoe line tag.  Sofia, (Mitchell’s younger sister) was “It”.  She was chasing us around for awhile, not being able to tag anyone, until, she got Camden.  After Cam was tagged, he cried and never wanted to come into the circle and play again (he was embarrassed because he didn’t know what to do).
After the game of tag, (and my snowshoe falling off a couple of times) we were ready to hike.  The teacher lead us through the woods.  I was pretty much last in the line because my snowshoe fell off again.  But that didn’t worry me.  I took a shortcut through a little bit of weeds and caught up to them.  Now it was only Eli, who was behind.  We all waited for him for a little while, and finally, he caught up.  We walked back down the driveway, took off our snowshoes, and came into the classroom once more.
We checked on our experiments.  The one in the sawdust, wasn’t as melted as the one in the empty cup. (which was all melted) It proved that sawdust did insulate ice.
I had a most wonderful time at Stonewall Farm, and I can’t wait to go back!