The meltdown is ON!!

Whooo hooo!! I woke up to 40 degree, rainy weather this morning. Never have I been so happy to hear it raining!! The piles of snow are shrinking nicely, and while there isn't any green grass yet to be seen, it can't be far behind. Above is our oft-pictured deck off the office. You can see my pitiful yardstick listing to the west. It used to measure 21" of snow (see previous blogs) but its job is about over now.


How nice to see wet, non-icy pavement! The chicken coop wall is just on the left and you can see that my worries about flooding are so far unfounded. The water appears to be sinking into the earth rather than flowing over the concrete and into the coop. Yeah!


The "dome o' death" has fallen into the run, making a drift that is higher than the chicken's little door. Luckily, all chickens are accounted for, so there is no worries about there being a flat hen under all that snow. The girls have continue their good laying streak at 5 or more eggs per day, but I'm afraid they might go on strike as I took their heat lamp away from them today. They surely don't need it when it's above freezing. I'm sure I'll get those chicken cranky looks and grumbles about it though!


The big snows and cold weather have caused my hay supply to be seriously depleted. I think I'll be OK, though, maybe only cutting it close in March when the grass starts really growing.


Sandy loves the fact that there is hay missing off the stack, especially since it's pretty much a big stair step to the top of the pile. She was racing up and down to the ceiling, then rolling on the bales and rooting in the cracks, then back to racing up and down again. It's hard to believe that this girl is over 13 years old! She's a happy, active dog.


This is my favorite picture today!! I know most of you won't appreciate it, but with Frank unable to help with the chores this week (thank you so much for all you do, honey!) I am thrilled to get the hose back in action today (Frank was bucketing water to everybody) and the poop-wagon is in place. Frank had been carting the wheelbarrows through thick snow down into our dump spot in the lower pasture, and there is no way I would have been able to do that. So our neighbor kindly is letting us use his utility trailer on which to collect the cleanings and then he'll take it back to enrich his garden. We are blessed with wonderful neighbors. With all of us being pretty much stuck in place, we had some great time carrying by foot our cookie plates to the neighbors. We were invited to one home on Christmas Eve (where we had PRIME RIB!! Sandy is still enjoying the bones!) and another on Christmas day for turkey dinner. We so enjoyed the time spent with these great families. Even though the weather was trying, it brought some wonderful blessings as well.

Wow, no snow in the last 24 hours!!

My mom was complaining that the blog doesn't have pictures of me, so I had Frank take this picture to make her happy. I am leaning down quite a bit. I didn't want you to think I was barely taller than the bad pony. As usual, someone else was horning in on the picture: notice Bailey's big mug to the right.


We are able to get a little bit of a look at the damage left behind of the storms so far. Here is the gutter on the east side of the barn. You had to pretty much expect this with the amount of snow sliding off the roof. But you can see that at least the Christmas light's held on! My yardstick on the back porch that yesterday measured 21" of snow is now showing 18". I don't know if it's melting a little or compacting. Probably a little of both.


Here's the west side of the barn. All of the snow has slid off this side and luckily didn't take the gutter with it. This pile is 1/2 way up the side of the barn and definitely much taller than the mini's. The weather report is for more snow sporadically for the next three days, but hopefully not the big dumps like the last few storms. Please!!


This is the door to our shop. It used to be a garage that the previous owners enclosed and put two bedrooms on. The front bedroom is now my chicken coop (there is a door on the right you can't see in the foreground) and the other bedroom is at the back of the shop. That one is really nice (carpeted, insulated, finished wallboard, trim, full closet. We store my canned goods and a few other household items in there. Anyway, you can see how deep the snow is that Frank pushed off the roof. I am sure hoping the thaw is slow or that sucker is going to flood my coop and shop. Oh well, not much we can do about it!


Here's another picture to make my mom happy. Hi Mom!


All this inside time has kept me busy making Christmas goodies. I have yet to make the chocolate covered pretzels (white and regular), then I need to find something decent to put them on/in to take to the neighbors. We have not been able to get out to go shopping so I don't have any pretty plates or containers to put them in. Oh well, it's the cookies that count, not the plate!


We hope you and yours are experiencing warmth and peace as you prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ. I was just telling Frank that I was thinking about Mary and Joseph as they were trying to find a place to rest and deliver the Christ-child. They had no home at all and had to bed down in a barn with the animals. A very humble beginning for our savior. I feel quite foolish complaining about being snowbound in my warm home, and thankful that this forced quiet time around the holidays has me contemplating more deeply the reason behind it all, namely the greatest gift ever given: out of God's love for us, he sent his Son to earth to make us right with Him. Merry Christmas.

OK, that's IT!!

It crossed my mind that maybe the reason it keeps snowing is that I keep blogging about it. Well, my fears were confirmed as we woke up to about 8 MORE inches of snow that fell overnight. We turned the news on this morning and heard about a building collapsing in Marysville (next town over) and we talked about our buildings and decided that our shop probably needed the weight taken off of it. So here's Frank with his HUGE chore today. We probably should have bought a snow shovel. Poor guy.


Last night about 9pm when we went out to the barn to tuck everybody in the for the night, the lights flickered and then were OUT. This is not unexpected but definitely undesirable! So I ran back into the house, got our headlamps (everyone should have these, they're GREAT) and we finished our chores, came in and wrapped up the little parrots with our sub zero sleeping bag, turned down the heat to about 62 and went to bed. Thankfully, at exactly 2:04 am the power came back on. So did the TV, and a couple of lights we forgot to turn out, but the heater did not kick on as I expected. So I went and pushed up the thermostat and it didn't click until about 64. Now that's pretty good to go to bed at about 68 degrees and only lose 4 degrees in 5 hours. It's probably all the snow insulating the place!


This is the back porch by our office from the inside. What you can't tell is that this porch is about 7 inches below the threshold for the door.


If you can't read it, that's the 21 inch marker above the snow. Then I took this long shot so you could see that I took this measurement outside the same office sliding doors.


I didn't get any big horse pictures today, but thought that it was funny to see Yak even deeper in the snow! I always called him a weiner-horse before, but now that he doesn't have any legs it's confirmed!!


The last thing I want to tell you about is our fences. They have taken a huge beating. I keep telling Frank that it's not a matter of IF the horses get out, but when. I am keeping hay in front of them all the time, so that's keeping them fairly close to the barn for now. I did get a little scare this morning when I went out and saw one line totally down, so I grabbed some supplies and walked (with snow up to my thighs!) out there and was shocked and pleased to find a number of fresh horse tracks right up to the breach, but no one went through. Those are some good horses if you ask me! We lost about 10 insulators on the Horse Guard fence system in the back pasture that I'll replace as soon as I can get to them. The side pasture by the barn is just T-posts, insulators and an electrobraid kind of line. That's the one that's not holding up under the weight of the snow. I guess you get what you pay for, because the Horse Guard lines are doing great (except for those insulators that just cracked in the below zero weather) holding up the weight of the snow.

Keep tuned for more episodes of "As the Snow Falls"! Hopefully the forecast is correct in that we'll have some above-freezing temps starting Christmas Day. Until then we've got one more blast of snow coming tomorrow night they say. In the meantime, we're doing everything we can to keep our animals and property safe! God bless!

And the hits just keep on coming....

Jake, the mighty hunter kitty, and I say ENOUGH ALREADY!! We both want to stick our head under the couch and come out when it's May. This is just nuts! We got 3 or 4 more inches of snow last night, and about as much is forecast throughout today. I've totally lost count of how much snow we've gotten which is good because I would be even more demoralized.


On the other hand, the horses are pretty happy with this stuff. At least the temperatures are up in the 20's now rather than the 4 BELOW (that is NOT a typo) yesterday morning. I was able to catch these pictures of the boys running through their pasture from the warmth of our office. Needless to say, they were having a great time and frequently run by. The donkeys, on the other hand, are cranky like their human mom and either console themselves by eating or standing under the cedar tree sulking.


I have to kind of chuckle at Bailey, in that while he does canter once in a while (usually coming to the barn when I call him to dinner), most of his playing and running around is still at a trot. I guess it's not easy to take the trot out of an old hitch horse.


I know, most of you have seen a snow plow before, but this is a really big one that actually came down our road! I took this this morning from our front room window while I was still in my snowman jammies. I went outside not much later (dressed, of course) and there was still easily 3 inches of compact snow and ice on the road. Yuck.


This is actually the little deck off the office from which I took the above horse pictures. I can't find my yard stick, but I would guess there is 18" of snow on here easily. It's compacted somewhat over the last week (this all started LAST Saturday) so I would bet we've had over 20 inches. I do have to admit it is pretty, but the chores are actually getting to be a chore!! That's not happened before!


We have another "dome o' death" forming on the sides of the barn. The good news is that so far it's coming down a little bit at a time instead of one big WHOOSH! I wouldn't want a horse under that when it came down! Good thing it gives a little warning beforehand.


Today was a special day for the chickens in that they got their outside door opened for the first time in 5 days. This is one of the new australorp hens looking to the right to check things out:


Then she looked to the left:


Then she looked forward and gave a "I am NOT impressed" cluck and went back in. I'm with you good hen, I'm with you.

More Winter Wonderland (enough already!)

Today dawned bright and crystal clear, but bitterly cold. It is stunningly beautiful. This picture (and the one below as well) was taken from the warmth of our office looking to the west over our lower pasture. I love how the snow is still on the trees. We are expecting high winds tomorrow, so I wanted to capture it before it all blows away.


Of course I didn't have my camera ready when the boys went cantering all over the field, first Bailey chasing LB, then Bailey taking the lead. Here they have found something fascinating in the snow that they worked over for about 1/2 an hour. I didn't want to get all bundled up to go check it out. This picture is a little deceiving in that there is a pretty good bank on the other side of the fence (that's not hot right now!) so they are standing lower than the ground on this side of the fence by quite a bit. But regardless, there is a LOT of snow out there!


Too bad this photo is a little shadow-y, because I love their expressions. Frank was coming back through the mini's pen after breaking ice in the trough in the lower field (there is another trough up by the barn) and he stopped to talk to sweet Maddie. She doesn't seem to mind the snow and cold, but she sure loves her stall. This little mare had a terrible health scare this summer (liver values off the chart, vet said he'd never seen a living horse with numbers that high) but she's doing well now. Don't even ASK what we just spent on a ton of special hay just for her. Good thing it'll take almost a year for her to eat it!


Here is one of the troughs that Frank has been tending. Luckily, after tonight it is supposed to start warming up at least a little above freezing during the day, so maybe our days of taking 6" of ice out of there are almost over. Thanks to Frank for all his hard work during this cold snap. Especially for trucking the full wheelbarrows down to the compost pile. It's HARD to wheel a wheelbarrow through over a foot of crunchy snow!


I just thought this was a pretty face. What you can't see is the mugging I was getting from Daisy the donkey from behind...pulling on my hat and my hoodie, snuffling my ear, pushing on the middle of my back. As usual, she makes every job so much harder, but also so much more entertaining.


I just wanted to say I'm so glad I got a red barn. It makes for lovely contrast in all the winter pictures! When I was sitting down with the builders and we got to the part where they asked what color to make our new barn, I just looked at them and said, "It can't be any other color than RED!" We went with a white roof, and I'm glad for that too.


This picture shows how badly the netting on the top of the chicken run has been trashed. We will be totally replacing it as soon as we can. Also notice the depth of the snow on the header of the old swing set, as well as on the roof of our shop. This is just so incredibly unusual for this area, with our usual marine influence and 40 degree winter days. It's been beautiful, but I'm ready to get back to normal.


I realize that I neglected to say how the chickens were doing in the last winter storm posting. Well, they are a tiny bit cranky because they haven't been let out of their coop for a number of days, but they have the heat lamp on in there and I just happened to stop and pick up a case of lettuce trimmings from the grocery store (they throw them away!) on the way home Tuesday before the storm hit, so they've had fresh greens every day and there is enough for tomorrow yet too. And the funny thing is that the girls are also laying up a storm. Got SEVEN eggs yesterday from 13 hens. Now that's amazing for older hens and in the middle of the winter when the days are so short. Good girls!

Well, that's it for now. We were thinking about trying to venture into town for a few groceries, but changed our mind when we saw the road is still just compact snow on top of ice. Our neighbors are buzzing around on their 4-wheelers and the kids are sledding in the neighbor's pasture, but there aren't any cars leaving the neighborhood, just a couple of big 4x4's. Oh well, it's not like we really NEED anything. My well-stocked pantry will keep us going for a long time. Maybe we'll try to venture out tomorrow. More later!

That wasn't snow, THIS is snow!

You've got to be kidding me! We left Wisconsin because of this! We are on our 2nd day off of school, with only Friday to go before Christmas Break, and we're betting that we actually started our break last Tuesday after school! The snow plows haven't even been here yet today. I'm measuring 12 inches of snow on a porch that Frank cleared at least 6" off of yesterday! We just got slammed!! It sure is pretty, but it is causing a lot of extra work here on the farm. Here's Frank and his trusty dog Sandy taking a break from shoveling the driveway. He said, "I never thought of this driveway as long before!" Poor Frank!


I took these pictures about 5 days apart. I thought the first one was about as much snow as we would see! Foolish Jayne! You can see that there is at least a foot of snow now on the lawn chair. You might remember from the Nov. 30 blog that it was nice enough for us to be out in T-shirts and enjoy sitting outside in that very same chair. What a difference a couple of weeks makes!



Too bad it's hard to get action shots with a digital camera, because I missed a LOT of good ones. The mini's had been locked in the barn the last two days and when I let them out they went NUTS!! They ran and ran, then rolled, then ran some more, of course with the all-important bucking and farting. The snow is truly up to Yak's belly (well, that's not saying much!) and he just trucked on through so happily.


Here's Maddie pawing in preparation of another rolling session. It's amazing to me that they didn't have snow stuck up their noses the way they just plowed through it. Yak is behind rubbing on the fence. Look carefully and you can see Daisy on the other side of the snowy fence! I didn't even see her there the first time I looked at this picture!


Yak is covered with snow! He's got it just smashed on his head and all over his body. I would say he's having a good day! Luckily it's cold enough that it's not melting and he just shakes it off and starts out again.


I couldn't end this blog without pictures of the rest of the horses! Here is Bailey taking a break from his endless hay buffet to talk to the minis. He and Little Bit like the snow and are happy to stay out. The donkeys not so much!


Snow sure makes things look not so white!! These girls are looking pretty dirty here. They are good natured about being outside for a few hours, then then want to come in and be spoiled. Well, as long as it's not snowing heavily, they're staying out until it's time to come in. I'm sure the neighborhood will reverberate with their cranky hee-haws before too long. Hey, it might shake some of the snow out of the trees for us! (Frank is going around beating the fruit trees to reduce breakage, as well as the trees that are leaning into our electric fence in a few spots.)


Lastly is a picture of the best pony ever. He is a fuzzy buffalo with more hair than two horses and he would never come in if I didn't make him. He's such a likable guy and is loved by every other horse/donkey on the place. He's been picky about his hay and beet pulp, so I've added a scoop of complete feed and he's happy.



I hope you are all enjoying your winter weather and preparations for celebrating the birth of Christ. We're enjoying our snow, but enough of it already!

Winter Wonderland!

Our friends and relatives in Wisconsin and Illinois will be laughing at this posting! We do realize that this little bit of snow that will be gone in a few days is nothing compared to what happens elsewhere, but it's the most we usually get here and it's fun! Plus, it's awfully nice to have pretty snow that's gone before anyone can get sick of it!

I thought it would be cute to start with another picture of our nativity scene in the yard. This one is in the 3.5 inches of snow we got last night. We actually put a ruler in the snow on the porch and measured it, but the picture didn't turn out.


From our school's band boosters we bought a beautiful wreath and centerpiece. Since we put up a screen door, we had to find a new place for the wreath this year. I think it looks lovely on our little shed/pump house that Frank painted to match our barn.


OK, you have to squint for this one. Over the top of the chicken run we put netting so that the hawks can't swoop in and get a chicken. Normally, you can't even see it, but the wet snow accumulates on it and weighs it down and stretches out the netting. We call it the "Dome 'O Death" for its potential chicken squishing properties!


This is the run after the sun came up. Frank went into the run with a little shovel and beat the "Dome 'O Death" into submission so that it wouldn't hurt his chickens. Here are a couple of the girls showing their appreciation for this as well as the 8 wheelbarrows of gravel he put in their run just yesterday.


When I went out after I made a scrumptious breakfast of biscuits and gravy, I caught this picture of the trees looking nice and fuzzy and the horses enjoying the brisk air. It was so beautiful outside in the bright sun. By now all the snow has dropped off the trees, but there is no melting going on. We're having a little cold snap and it didn't get above about 30 today and isn't expected to get any warmer in the foreseeable future. Good thing the horses like the crisp weather and I have a barn full of hay to keep their engines stoked.


I didn't tell you earlier that the dark photos in this blog were all taken this morning at about 6:00am. I always go out at that time to put the horses out and feed them, but Frank came too and we had fun turning on our Christmas lights and looking at all the pretty snow scenes. It truly didn't seem that cold and we were surprised to discover that we had stayed out about 45 minutes! This is one of the neat pictures that Frank took when we were out before the sun came up:


We sure hope you are enjoying your holiday season! Today we are playing Christmas music while I am starting to make cookies and Frank is working on schoolwork. I also made turkey and homemade noodle soup from Thanksgiving's bird leftovers. All in all, it has been an enchanting, lovely day. Merry Christmas!