Full Moon on the Farm

Written by Ian:
Winter in Wisconsin is cold. Mostly. It's also dark. Mostly cold and dark. The daylight is limited, the nights are long, and the earth goes into a big chill. It is this time of year that when walking through hardwoods on a cold day you hear the trees pop and crack as the moisture in their trunks freezes and expands. The moisture in the ground freezes, too. Normally up to three feet deep, it can freeze even deeper in the absence of a thick snow cover for insulation. This time of year you take advantage of the less cold days. Once a person's body is acclimated, anywhere from +5 to +25 f. feels just great. Perfect temperature, not too frigid at +5 and not too sloppy at +25 . If it gets much warmer and the sun is shining the snow turns to slush and you'd nearly wish yourself back to zero (Yes, that thermometer reads 20 below, that was last tuesday). But on nights when the reading gets down in the negatives, you settle in, put on an extra sweater burn all the white oak, elm, and whatever else you have stacked in the woodshed and soak in the heat of the wood stove because you know for some reason or another you'll be back out in the cold in the morning.
If I anthropomorphise and allowed myself too much sensitivity I would cry myself to sleep each night thinking of all the non-hibernating and non-torporing creatures in the Wisconsin woods in the winter time. My good friend John and I were deer hunting this fall when he made a simple, but profound comment. He observed that when fall arrives, comfort ends for deer (and most other critters for that matter). After a spring of new greens, a summer of abundance, an autumn of fruit, they are plunged into a winter of scarcity. Their only source of warmth is the byproduct of their metabolism digesting a spartan diet of twigs, some grasses, gleaned field crops, and select evergreens. The snow deepens, sometimes up to their bellies. Their small cleft hooves poorly suited for travel in the snow. Not too mention, a Wisconsin white tailed deer's initiation into winter is being pursued by a few hundred thousand individuals with rifles-- like John and I! (There are couple of genuine, non-native, chinese ring neck pheasant roosters tolerating the cold in this photo...many pseudo-conservantionists will hail the proliferation of this bird as an ecological success story. Those who are better informed know that it is a classic case of a non-native species elbowing in on native territory. Well...I do enjoy hunting and eating them, though).
However, I avoid anthropomorphising and try not to be overly sensitive. I appreciate deer, and all other creatures of the Wisconsin woods for what they are. I carry on wishing them the best through a cold winter.
The prevailing cold and dark makes for a reason to celebrate when we get a little reprieve that is not as cold, not so dark night. The full moon came up over the farm on Saturday as the sun dropped on the opposite horizon. It was half as big as the barn as it bounce up the horizon. I was out skiing on southwest corner and was able to capture the moment (above banner). I skied back to the house as my Dad was pulling up the driveway. We had planned to make beer that evening and he was right on time. Arthur came over, as well, and joined in the beer making. Here he is removing the grains from a batch of "Russian Imperial stout". I brewed an improvised recipe that I deemed "Starvation Moon Amber" on account of the Amber malt and the midwinter full moon.
-6 pounds Amber malt extract
-various grains...about 1 pound
- 1 oz each: Saaz and Cascade hops
My cousin, who is a professional Brewster says..."its easy to make a good beer, its a whole other challenge to make a good beer twice". If this beer turns out to be good, it will never be repeated.
As we brewed we sampled from a batch I had brewed way back in August, the day before my sister's wedding. After putting it in the fermenter I neglected it, The temperatur got above 90 deg(!). My Dad, however was able to rescue it. He bottled it using maple syrup (from his sugar bush, last spring) as priming sugar. Typical priming sugar is a super finely granulated corn sugar. In an effort to get away from refined corn products my Dad experimented with the maple syrup. It worked very well, actually too well. Its pretty tough to pour a pint of the August Bride IPA without overflowing the glass.
We finally siphoned off the wort into carboys and retired them to the fermenter around midnight. At my dad's insistence we then went out for a ski. The moon was fat and bright. We cruised at top speed through hardwood and pine forest over the smoothly groomed track beneath the midwinter midnight moon for over an hour before calling it a night.