Truly this has been a winter with weather of biblical proportions. Before you panic...this is not our farm. It is a picture of a farm in our area that got flooded out due to heavy rains that followed the gigantic snowfall that I chronicled earlier. Ordinarily we are well prepared to handle a 'pineapple express' that dumps a couple of inches of warm rain a day upon us, but it came when we still had all that snow and flooding was inevitable. Our farm is high and dry, but many people in western Washington suffered greatly and continue to deal with the aftermath. Everyone was thankful when the rain ended, but the ground and air were so saturated that we then got to experience the next plague of egypt:
It's hard to take a picture that shows how thick the fog actually was. I finally found Bailey in the mist and got this one. This fog hung on for about a week and just cleared today. What a blessing to finally have the sun!
This is a picture of the Olympic Mountains that you can see from our house when the sky is clear. As the crow flies, they are about 50 miles from us. It would take about 4 hours to drive there as they are across Puget Sound from where we live.
So Frank took advantage of the beautiful weather to deal with some more of the things that broke due to the heavy snows. There are some trees in the mini's paddock that broke to pieces, so he was tackling getting all the bad branches out of there. Of course, he had plenty of help, and during one trip through the gate to the burn pile, Little Bit decided he wanted to come into the paddock too. This made Yakki's day as then those two proceeded to wrestle, chase, and rear...and thankfully quit 'helping'. Sweet Maddie stood quietly by and observed all that was going on around her, getting pats from Frank whenever he went by her. Of course he had to stop and pet the bad boys too!
I know that earlier I was complaining that the hens were freeloading and not producing, but I take that back now. They are obviously happy chickens and this is what the 12 hens produced in the last three days. Good girls! We did have one chicken funeral recently when "Alzheimers", who had been acting weird since last summer, lost strength and the will to live and went to chicken heaven. So we're down to 12 hens now, and one bad attitude little rooster. The three new girls were a wonderful addition to our flock and I hope to find something similar next fall to make up for the inevitable reduction in egg production as these older girls enter their 4th year. Wow, it's hard to believe we've enjoyed their company that long!
Frank has been enjoying his on-line teaching job and I am doing my usual subbing. We are looking forward to a couple of get-aways: a weekend trip to Long Beach on the Washington Coast in late January, and especially our spring break trip to Indio (Palm Springs area) to soak up some sun and float endlessly in the lazy river at our resort. It's nice to have found a reliable house/horse sitter in Kacey. We are also looking forward to a cross-country trip back to Wisconsin to see Frank's mom as well as meet a few of Jayne's draft horse friends (Ange, Kari, maybe John?) along the way.
We hope you are all doing well and keeping warm this winter. I can already tell the days are getting longer! Spring is not far behind! I'm already drooling over my seed and root stock catalogs! I'm having fun trying to decide what to add to our little farm this year. Last year it was raspberries, blueberries, table grapes, hazelnut trees and a peach tree. Maybe a pear tree? More grapes? It's so fun just thinking about it! Hope you are having as much fun anticipating spring as I am!
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