Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Much Sorry with Delays
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Labor Costs in U.S.
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Wednesday, December 26. 2012

Winter in New England, #3: Jump Starters

Part 1 was Lamp and Lantern Season
Part 2 was Keeping your humidor humid in winter


Winter in central New England entails jump-starters, oil lamps and lanterns, snow-blowers, snow plows, flashlights, snow shovels, plenty of firewood, hats and long-johns, and good gloves and boots of all sorts. Global cooling will be here soon. Oh, and 4WD for the sissies and the city-folk for whom a little snow and ice are daunting - and for your plow truck. Gas generators? We country folk don't go in for those.


I keep one of these charged up in the garage, and it came in handy when one of the tractors, rarely used this summer, had both a dead battery and squishy front tires Saturday. I had been using the Ford all summer, and figured I ought to get the Farmall moving a little to prevent Tractor Arthritis.


What was my chore? Heading up into the woods with the wagon to clear our cross-country ski trails of fallen trees, and to accumulate some more firewood in the process.


This cool thing solved both problems easily:



 

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 14:45 | Comments (12) | Trackbacks (4)

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Winter in New England #3: Wood and Pellet Stoves
This is the third in our Winter in New England series. First was Lamps and Lanterns, and the second was Jump Starters. More to come, on Tuesdays.A friend did the research on this topic for me, because we were both looking for something good.My friend conc
Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: Nov 04, 09:36
Winter in New England #4: Layers
This is the fourth in our Winter in New England series. First was Lamps and Lanterns, the second was Jump Starters, and the third was Wood and Pellet Stoves. More to come, each Tuesday come Hell or high water - until I run out of ideas.In the process of d
Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: Nov 10, 12:55
Winter in New England #8: Do you need snow/mud tires?
We all must adapt! With Global Cooling hastening our certain death and doom by freezing to death, we offer this final post in our Winter in New England series. The prior posts in this annual series were: Winter in New England, Part 1: Lamp
Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: Oct 28, 12:32
Winter in New England #8: Do you need snow/mud tires?
We all must adapt! With Global Cooling hastening our certain death and doom by freezing to death, we offer this final post in our Winter in New England series. The prior posts in this annual series were: Winter in New England, Part 1: Lamp
Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: Oct 28, 12:35

Comments
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You are lucky to live somewhere that has proper seasons...in my part of england it's pretty much just different types of rain for most of the year...tedious.
#1 thud (Link) on 2008-10-28 17:36 (Reply)
Proper seasons? Pah! I grew up where there were "proper seasons" and vowed that if I lived long enough I was going somewhere warm most of the year. It took me 32 years to get to Texas (1985) and that is where I intend to stay....unless I can get a plot in Costa Rica. Then it'll be jungle living for me.
#2 JoeC on 2008-10-28 17:52 (Reply)
rats! I wanted to add, I have never had much luck with those power-pack battery thing-a-ma-bobs. I've had three over the years and I find the gel-cell most of them use go dead at the most inopportune time, with no indication that there is no charge. Charge light shows full charge, use shows no/low current available (high resistance cell), or they end up overcharging and leaking. I'm glad you found one that works for you.
#3 JoeC on 2008-10-28 17:56 (Reply)
Well,had you used the Farmall this summer instead of the Ford,you would have had many more problems with the oval.

Sorry,I grew up with farmalls. If it isn't red,may as well be in the shed!
#4 chris horton (Link) on 2008-10-28 18:45 (Reply)
The smaller, less expensive models of these jumper thingies make good gifts for yutes heading off to college or wherever for their first time away from home with their own auto.

My experience with them so far is that they last roughly as long as a car battery. Another experience is that you need to keep track of the charging adapter - without it the things is worthless and I haven't found that my "universal" charging adapters work with the jumpers I've had.

I keep one of these charged and ready to go. I pondered getting the dual jumper & air pump devices but, so far, have opted for separate ones. Less convenient but more flexible.

Oh, and BTW, they are useful for the lamp and for recharging cell phones when you have a short duration home power failure.
#5 Knucklehead (Link) on 2008-10-28 19:24 (Reply)
Who you calling a sissy ? I grew up in a suburb of Boston, but know live in Cowhampshire, and can run circles around these country folk. I betcha you drive one of them thar Volvo's. Mr cherry bomb mouth. Oops I mean Mr B. : )
#6 jappy on 2008-10-28 19:41 (Reply)
Well, we "sissies" here in Texas [Houston} find small generators reeelly helpful. In the recent unpleasantness [Hurricane Ike], we had an 11 day power outage, and our little Honda generator, although not big enough to power the house electricity and air conditioning, was hearty enough to run our fridge, and two shop lights, a fan and our neighbors' fridge for all that time. We turned it off at 10 pm every night and back on at 6 am, so that it wouldn't catch fire while we weren't watching it.

I've lived through blizzards [my youth in Milwaukee] and hurricanes [see above] and by now I figure that there's no place with perfect weather. You pays your money and you takes yer choice.

Ohhh ... and I forgot tornadoes. Inland Texas has those. There's just no escaping it.

One thing we can be sure of, though. Despite what Fat Albert says, there is no manmade global warming. Great con you've got going there, Al, but more and more folks aren't buying it.

Marianne
#7 Marianne Matthews on 2008-10-28 23:02 (Reply)
Hi, MM. Thanks for the voltage, as always, and likewise as always, good of you to mind the amperage

--say hi to mom and dad if you see them. tell 'em i miss 'em too much to put into words
#7.1 buddy larsen on 2012-12-27 04:56 (Reply)
The daughter of my next door neighbor goes to school in Boston. I told her one definition of a masochist is someone who spends the winter in New England and the summer in TX. Laughing in response, she agreed.

One thing I remember about winters up there is being able to smell a snowstorm coming in. Cloudy dark and very humid air. Quiet winter nights in the country, with moon, stars and a light touch of clouds above, and with snow below. Ahh...

Marianne: was that marmalade global warming Fat Albert was talking about?
#8 Gringo on 2009-10-10 15:14 (Reply)
Well this country folk has four wheel drive in the F-150 and the wife's Navigator plus a 15KW Kubota genset powered by three cylinder water cooled diesel. Over kill on the gender but I got such a deal.

Oh and real country folks start their Farmalls with the hand crank. :-)
#9 Tom Francis on 2010-10-16 16:42 (Reply)
"I keep one of these charged up in the garage..."

I (used to) keep mine in the car, and check it roughly twice a year. And yes, I have had to use it away from home. Which, after all, does not have a garage.
#10 John A on 2010-10-17 11:19 (Reply)
Ours goes with us whenever we head out for a camping trip. Fits right up in the roofbox along with the toolbag, high lift jack and spare. Came in handy a time or two in Death Valley.

When I moved to Boston to go to college, I was occasionally asked about my memories of the Blizzard of '78. It always made me laugh because as a kid in northern Vermont, it seemed as if that was every winter! This was the mid-80s so less than 10 years had gone by.

It wasn't until much later that I learned just how powerful that storm was and how varied in terms of the fallout. My husband was 11 and had just moved from Southern California to Hudson, MA and had never seen snow in that volume before. He assures me he was out of school for a solid two weeks. Then, you see pictures of the devastation that was Revere, Gloucester and Scituate (among other places) and you realize it was a completely different experience along the coast. Hurricane Sandy proportions but in the middle of February. Brutal.
#11 KellyM on 2012-12-26 16:44 (Reply)

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