Keeping Pigs Warm in Cold Weather: The Niman Ranch Way "We all remember The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, right? In the story, a house built out of straw is not structurally sound, a house built out of sticks is a little better but a house built out of brick is best. Think in reverse for keeping pigs warm: straw is best." READ ARTICLE By Ron Mardesen, 20-year farmer with Niman Ranch, based out of Elliott, Iowa
I haul in my animals' water. In coldest winter, I bring in a cat litter jug of the hottest water I have to melt the ice in drinking buckets. I do it at least two times a day.
"John and Peter Kleeman collect space age kitsch in an old hay barn in Connecticut. You can explore their collection on their website. Space Age Museum LLC" Rocket-shaped slides, climbers and rides popped up at amusement parks and playgrounds all over the country. Some eventually ended up in a huge red hay barn in Connecticut that is now a Space Age Museum. "The museum is private — owner John Kleeman is just not equipped to handle hordes of visitors on his property — but he hopes to work with established museums to display his enormous collection of giant robots, amusement park rides, ray guns, board games, rocket-shaped table lamps and thousands of other carefully curated items, all dating from and celebrating the Space Age." "This was some kind of a rocket car," he says, gesturing to a huge battered behemoth that looks like it came from a movie set. "We don't know what it was for or who built it, but it was found in a field with a lot of graffiti on it." "While you could fill entire silos with all of the objects representing Apollos, Geminis, Sputniks and flying saucers at the Space Age Museum, Kleeman has just one space shuttle-themed artifact. It's a piece of folk art — a weather vane made by a Pennsylvania farmer during the 1980s." "Westwick says that's when the space program began to run out of steam. And he's not surprised that design and architecture turned away from manned space flight. It remained stuck for decades and ultimately became something of a disappointment." "You're not necessarily going to try and celebrate it and translate it into other fields," he says.
These old barns are good for more than reclaimed wood and weddings Around the country, classic, crumbling farm buildings are being spruced up and put back to work by a new generation of sustainable farmers.
A storm came through and insurance had to pay for roof repair on all my buildings in the area. The barn house roof had a lot of original wood in it. The company that replaced it put in a LOT of new. It cost $27,000 in 2017. I would have had to let it go to ruin if it had not been covered. I hope the new families come with some money and/or elbow grease.