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In the earlier post you may have read about the duck outside Lehman’s office and warehouse here in Dalton, Ohio. A Mallard duck has set up residence under a bush near the building. I am glad to report that she is doing fine, and she was even nice enough today to show me her eggs, we count either ten or eleven. She didn’t seem to mind me taking pictures of them until I got too close. Then she started quacking and waddling toward the nest from the opposite direction.
Saw the male duck recently, too. He is a bit more camera shy and wouldn’t let me get very close to him. I did get some nice shots of him in flight. The male does hang around but seems to stay away from the nest. (Sorry for the poor quality pictures.)
We are still working on naming these two ducks, some ideas that have been thrown around are Donald and Daffy, Luke and Leia, and Ward and June. Anybody have more ideas?
According to some research it will take about 28 days for the eggs to hatch. We assume the eggs were laid over this past weekend, so that would make hatching day on or about May 17th.
We also discovered a robin’s nest in one of the bushes iright outside our front office door. Seems nearly every time somebody walks out the door, a bird flies furiously away and takes a year off the startled person’s life. Spring has definitely sprung around northeast Ohio – and the birds certainly seem to love our building!
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This morning Lu Ann (one of our accounting gurus) comes in asking, “Did you see the duck?”
“No,” I replied, “where?”
We went outside Lehman’s office and warehouse on the north side among some of the bushes in the mulch, and there she was. This Mallard decided to nest right outside the door of the business that shares our building. Somebody put out a small container of water to keep Mom comfortable.
Seems our building is a popular nesting location for some of our local flying friends. Just last year we had some Killdeer nesting in the rocks at the edge of our parking lot. I know there are some more out there this spring, as one was trying to scare me off the other morning.
The Mallard did eyeball me as I snapped these photos, but didn’t seem to mind posing. She did get a bit more excited as I got closer, and settled back down as I moved away.
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Lehman’s office and warehouse is situated outside Dalton Ohio, less than 5 miles from our store in Kidron. The building is located in a nice rural setting: we have a horse pasture to our north, farm fields to our east and south, and a couple of residences near us to the west. Lots of green during spring to mid fall. There are some small ornamental trees around the building and a couple that have been planted on the grounds.
Jay Lehman (Lehman’s founder) loves his trees, and is known for planting a lot of trees around the area. Recently we watched him plant trees in the small field to the north of our office between Lehman’s and the horse pasture. Talking with others, I found out that Jay has been doing this a long time. I thought it would be interesting to get the whole story.
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Lehman’s retail store in Kidron, Ohio features a multitude of authentic historical products for sale. Did you know that the store is also decorated with actual antiques?
As folks walk around the store these antiques are prominently displayed. Some of these antiques are familiar to us, they resemble items we use today in our daily lives. The purpose of other antiques is sometimes not so obvious. Such is the case with one very large antique displayed above the checkouts at the West entrance to the store. Jay Lehman (Lehman’s founder) proudly takes us on a tour of this enormous machine here in this video. Enjoy!
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Things are moving along on the matched team of belgian horse mural I am painting in the ‘Buggy Barn’ at Lehman’s in the Kidron store. I am still working on the base and ‘blocking in’ and defining muscles and the bone structure of the horses. My hope is this will be a place that the visitors coming into the store stop to have their picture taken. Lehman’s gets visitors from all around the world and even though the Amish sights are common place here in Kidron it is a unique experience for many people. In the last photo you can see the beginnings of the collar and harness for the horses. The harness used is quite elaborate so I have a lot of detail still to do in this area. The horses learn what job is expected depending on the tack they are wearing. In the field and on the farm these animals play a very important role. One of the things I most enjoy is seeing the partnership between animal and people. In the spring during plowing and planting season the farmers are often seen resting their team at the ends of the rows. Slow and steady is what gets the work done. It is quite a different mind set than what is often seen in our world today. The horses also thrive on the routine and when treated with respect enjoy their job. I know with my own horses they enjoy the stimulation and challenge of training and being ridden and in return, as a good horse person, I provide them the care they need. To see more work in progress pics click on my name above under the title of this post and you can see the progression of this mural and others I have painted at Lehman’s. Thanks for stopping by!
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I am writing several blog entries, documenting my experience with the Hitzer coal burning stove. The following is the third entry. Oh and by the way, names have been changed (sort of) to protect the innocent. I recommend starting at the begining with The Coal Chronicles – Book I and The Coal Chronicles Book II
Problem: The Hitzer is in the basement, the family lives in the floors above.
The heat isn’t going to do much good trapped in the basement. As readers might remember, our house came complete with electric baseboard heaters. These heaters are attached to the wall and wired to the 240 volt electric. There is no duct work in the house, making circulation of heated air a bit of a challenge.
The challenge is to move the heat into the upper floors of the house and return the cold air to the basement.
The house is a rather unique house, a split level overrun with stairs. This was a novelty to us, coming from the flatlands of Michigan’s Saginaw Valley. The novelty has worn off now, since you have to go either up or down in most cases simply to use the bathroom. But, I digress.
The house has a very large patio door on the northeast side, or as I have heard it termed around here, a door wall. To provide heat in the area of the door wall there are two unique heaters in the floor. They are quite large and deep. I surmised that they were deep enough to go through to the basement, but could not verify this due to the finished ceiling. 
I had taken the grates off the heaters several times to retrieve lost toys and other droppings to the child’s “wishing wells.” I carefully removed the ceiling tile in the basement where I thought the heaters would be located. Sure enough, there was the bottom of the heater enclosure. The heaters are simply oil-filled elements in a steel enclosure, nothing to them. I have worked with high voltage electricity in a past life, so working on 240 volts does not bother me. I removed the wiring and with a bit of effort the enclosure came out of the hole. I was delighted to see that the resulting space was nicely framed with floor joists. After a bit of trim work in the basement ceiling I was golden.
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It seems that readers of Lehman’s Country Life are interested in the Hitzer coal stove. This stove has provided us with some economical, reliable heat. You may have read my articles The Coal Chronicles – Book I and The Coal Chronicles – Book II, I will be continuing the series in the future. However I wanted to demonstrate just how easy it is to maintain the stove.
I am still working on my skills with the video camera and editing, Enjoy!
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I am going to write several blog entries, documenting my experience with the Hitzer coal burning stove. The following is the second entry. Oh and by the way, names have been changed (sort of) to protect the innocent. I recommend starting from the beginning with The Coal Chronicles – Book I
At this point I am feeling like the purchase of this stove is a good move for the family, especially our budget. I also feel that with Alan and Sharon’s help choosing the stove and Simon’s help installing the stove, that this is going to be a good thing – eventually.
Simon’s advice on where to put the stove and how to run the chimney helped me firm up plans on how to get the heat into the upper levels of the house. We had a plan to handle the coal and the ash, now we needed the stove. I got up the nerve and gave Sharon and Alan the green light to order the stove, this is an expensive move you know! We talked about the options:
How big? The 30-50 seems to be the right model.
You want a glass door? Yes, I like to see the fire!
Do you want gold trim around the door? For what?
Would you like one with a blower? Definitely!
So Alan and Sharon ordered the stove and a few weeks later the stove arrived. I got word about the stove’s arrival and went out to the warehouse to see it. Not much to see, it was in a box stacked on top of another stove. Oh well, going to have to wait for the stove to make it to the house. Simon was nice enough to bring the stove to our house and put it in the garage.
Now we needed to get the stove installed. With Simon’s help we got the bits and pieces ordered for the chimney. It seemed like a lot of stuff, but Simon Says! These parts do not weigh much, so I was able to get them home without trouble.
The day came to install the chimney, I have to admit to being nervous, after all we were getting ready to pop a large hole in the basement wall of my house. Simon is obviously very good at this, he knew exactly what to do, from where to put the hole in the eave allowing for clearance requirements, to how to line up the chimney pipes, proper angle of the horizontal sections, aesthetics, and above all, safety.
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I am going to write several blog entries, documenting my experience with the Hitzer coal burning stove. The following is the first entry. Oh and by the way, names have been changed (sort of) to protect the innocent.
We have been very happy living in Wooster Ohio, but we quickly found that we did not move far enough south to escape winter. No bother, I like to ski anyway. Winter, however, brings the inevitable heating season. Along with the heating season comes the ritual draining of the wallet to keep warm.
We also love our house. However, it was built in the mid 70’s and its builders, having amazingly short sight, decided to endow the house with cheap electric base board heat. Anyone familiar with this form of heat knows its drawbacks all too well. The heating system heats only the air around it so you end up with warm areas of the room near the heater and colder areas further from the device. On the positive side, you can turn off/down specific heaters in areas of the house, but you freeze going into those rooms. Add to that the thin layer of insulation in the house, terrible windows and leaky doors, and you have all the pieces needed to make life miserable during a cold winter. Now tack on the worst part of it, when you go out to the side of the house, you know the side with the spinning wheel that the electric company was nice enough to install, that measures the amount of money that will be extracted from your wallet at the end of the month. You observe the aforementioned wheel spinning with a fervor of a child’s toy top. Honestly, I have no idea how people managed to afford to live in this house. The first winter we just dealt with things, but as the next winter drew near, the time for action drew close.
Needing an alternate source of heat, I explored several options including forced air, hot water, corn pellets, an outdoor heat source, heat pumps, and a wood burning stove. I talked with Alan and Sharon, stove specialists at Lehman’s, many times exploring the idea of installing some sort of stove. We talked a lot about what type of stove would suit my needs. I can cut wood but I do not have access to a steady supply of cheap wood. Besides as one other co-worker pointed out, how economical is that wood anyway, cut, haul, split, season, and constantly maintaining the fire. A winter full of hauling wood into the house does not appeal to me.
Alan and Sharon suggested a coal burner.A coal burner???I immediately thought about the classic movie, A Christmas Story, with Ralphie’s dad fighting with the coal burning furnace. The black soot coming from the basement and the black smoke coming from the chimney. No way! My youth was filled with stories of coal bins the size of a large room in the basement of my grandparents’ house. My uncle told me he had to go into the basement and shovel coal into that behemoth that heated the house and coming out covered with soot.NO NO NO! Not this lazy bum!
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