Ice, more ice, and more learning.

There are times I envy the poultry for their firm footing. While they are having a good time out in the grass, and have no problems with the reality of most of the property which is still, sheet ice everywhere. Those of us on two feet for the most part are having a much harder time of it.

Fast moving water all over.

"Tis nothing but a sprout, but well budded out . . ."
Always a line that stuck with me from Alfred Noyes poem a May Day Carol. Of course, it's not May yet, or close to it. The pear tree doesn't seem to know that though. We will see if that works out to good or ill. It also reminds me it's time to learn how to prune fruit trees since we had one survive the winter. Though it's always worth remembering, winter isn't over.

Ice and balance.

Well, we successfully got down the driveway this morning, but it was something of an adventure. We've officially discovered the limitation of YakTrax, and have recommendations on more robust replacements for them. On a slope of this grade, with hard black ice at low temperatures, the YakTrax aren't even gripping. You're just relying on your balance, and limiting contact with the ice. The areas I shoveled all the way down are actually the most dangerous now, but they will be the first to melt, so I did make the right choice at least, but there will be a lot of salt. This brings up one of the things I've thought about many times since starting to homestead.

Unpredictable weather extremes.

Shoveling snow while rain is pouring down, and the snow sublimates due to the temperature is one of the more surreal experiences I've had recently. Especially after multiple days of below zer temperatures.

Unfortunately with the snowblower out of commission, and out for repair right now it was a purely shovel job. With a few inches of snow, almost an inch of ice, and rain it was heavy work. This is definitely an example of me not injury managing well enough, because I actually wasn't able to complete shoveling the whole driveway.  As you can see on the Right since I figured out I wasn't going to be able to do the whole thing, I shoveled down as far as I could to the snow/ice mix that wasn't going to move. I got tire tracks, and then did a ladder pattern with a "cross bar" every 10 - 15 feet or so. I figured that gets things down as the melt happens. Now, the ladder pattern is sheets of black ice, and the parts in between are thick sheets of heavy ice with a bit of crunch to it. Wintery mix after serious snow is one of the worst types of weather in the world, but it can be pretty.

There are better uses of a day, and worse.

Today has turned out a bit frustrating, but not a total waste of time. It mostly just pointed out some of the differences in how we have come to see the world from others. We were schedule to get a stove delivered today. Now to us the driveway is totally doable. Especially with the extra sanding I did to prepare it for the delivery truck. To them, with this amount of sand, and getting through to the gravel beneath for much of it, it wasn't something they would even consider. They'll try again in a week, and if they can't deliver it then, I'll tie it to a hand cart, and haul it up myself. For all that I'm frustrated though, there are other things going on, and while I hate "wasting" time off from work, other things have been done, including rest my sore back.

Poultry on ice.

It's still very cold out there, and our poultry are for the most part doing well. The black tom is another story that I'll get to in a moment. The liquid water that we have around the property even when it's in single digits whether due to the seeplands North of the house, or the drainage ditch, or even the french drains under the parking area are important congregation spots for the poultry worth even dealing with braving the way up the icy slope, or the enthusiasm of the dog.

Sounds of melt.

After a remarkably nasty couple of days with every branch of every tree covered in ice and sagging low, this morning we woke up to the sounds of rain. In our location the sounds of rain when the sun is shining isn't unheard of, but in this case it was a different sound. A sound that is unique to the woods really, it is the rain of melt pouring off the branches and leaves of the trees. Outside it was loud, and continuous, and exactly what we were hoping for. A nice day of 36 degrees Fahrenheit was enough to get things really going in the warm sun. 

While this goes on in the trees, our hope is that it does everything we need to get the driveway safe enough to use that we can effectively sand it. Right now it's bad enough going up and down that it takes a long time to get anywhere, and requires care with every step well beyond that of tromping through a normal frozen landscape. Last night things were so frozen up and so slippery that the chickens had some trouble getting home. One of them even required a rescue to get back to her house. Fortunately they're friendly and tame enough it wasn't a big deal to pick her up.

It was this white hen that was stuck, and she just let me walk up and pick her up, squirming curious toddler strapped to me and all. I just picked her up under my arm, and walked her to the coop. Why do the chickens take the trip up when it's tough to do in any kind of inclement weather. For one, the area under the rabbit hutches is full of delicious piles of manure that have to have lots of things to devour for chickens. Second, any spilled rabbit food is delightful for them. Third, they can see much of the property from there. Fourth, and probably not finally but definitely most important, there is ready access to water nearly year round. It's not that I don't give them water, but free flowing or seeping water seems to be their favorite. When it's moving their favorite area is the drainage stream in the back near the rabbit hutches. Right now it's lovely, but even when it's frozen over it isn't usually too much work to get to some water. Even when it is, there's a seep back there.

Today after much rearranging and child proofing, we finally lit our first fire of the season. Honestly with the weather it hasn't been a huge thing to not have going as long as you're ok with 60 degree house temperatures which is warmer than keep life going temperatures. The Critter really enjoyed watching the fire being lit, and our challenge for the wood stove this year is going to be more tending it while the kid is around than tending it to keep it lit. He's moving fast, so we're just going to have to team tend, tend when he's sleeping meaning more timing than I think we have with the fire and kid combined, or tend fast. I'm guessing it's going to come to tend fast.

The worst kind of winter weather.

Christmas has come and gone, as has our strange late fall that felt more like spring. The turkeys of course, are still roosting in the trees over the rabbit hutches. Once the ice storm came they were less thrilled about it though, and have been reluctant to come down. I can't really blame them. If I didn't have reason to be outside I wouldn't be. Of course, with livestock we have reason to be outside.

We'll get to the snow shortly.

First, we are doing well, Christmas was lovely and many people were very generous to us and the Critter. We felt very fortunate, and feel extremely fortunate to have the friends both proximate, and connected through networked media. Thank you to everyone that reads this as we come in to the end of the year, and thanks especially to the Patreon patrons that have helped us significantly this year. That said, let's get on to what's occupying us right now. The weather.

Mud season has (sort of) begun!

Today was a landmark morning for us, this somewhat unremarkable picture of a very happy Dorado shows something we haven't seen for a while. A water bottle with liquid water in it that hadn't been brought in over night. It's a wonderful change, and while we aren't going to be able to do that over the weekend, it's a very nice step towards "real" Spring.

A real taste of spring, preparing for melt.

Spring has shown its first signs as far as we're concerned, believe it or not. How do I know? Dorado is drinking from a water bottle that was out overnight. Not all of the water bottles stayed liquid over night last night, but most of them did, and had been liquid all day. Yesterday hit almost 40° F, and it stayed just below 30 last night. Of course today it's dropping all day, and it's going to be below 0° F overnight so we won't do the water outside thing again, but it's still nice!

A wonderful gift of sourdough starter

Last night I came home to a box in the snow off the side of the driveway, and was somewhat confused because I wasn't expecting it. When I opened it I was delighted to see sourdough starter as a gift from the lovely Caity who writes domestiCaited. I promptly and without thinking out timing properly, got started. I also in my glee didn't do the first step photos that I really need to get myself to start doing if I'm going to blog about things. Anyhow, below the cut, more about sourdough starter and ice.

Northampton Farmers Market winter fair, chicken watering thoughts on an icy Saturday.

As those of you in this area know, the amount of ice on the ground this weekend and holiday was a bit excessive.  The driveway was about as bad as it had ever been, but fortunately we'd just purchased YakTrax which are amazingly useful on getting up a sheet ice driveway. Note the photo Above isn't the current state of the driveway, right now it's just a sheet of glass basically. We've also gotten much better at sanding and dealing with the driveway, we only had to walk up and down once, which is a much better record than the past. The reason we ended up having to ice walk up the driveway was that we went to the Northampton Winter Farmers Market and their winter fair which has some really interesting educational classes. We only made it to one of them, but it led to some interesting thoughts for the future.

Quick hit: Ice, bunnies, and an eggstacy of eggs

It's cold, icy, and I'm working way too much so this is going to be a very short post without too much to say. The young kits are doing well, and while their mom Sunshine doesn't like me bothering them too much she's gotten used to it. They aren't as friendly as kits as I'd like, but a large part of that can be attributed to the fact that I haven't had time to handle them, and it was too cold to do weight checks. In the future I'm going to really try to push for handling if there aren't weight checks, but that means figuring out a way to keep kits warm and healthy when being handled when it's REALLY cold.

Oddly enough it's been warmer lately than it was earlier in the winter and fall. The difference is and why the work on the new hutch has stalled is the snow, and more importantly ice all over the place. 3" of snow, no problem, a good solid 1" of ice Is however a problem. Combine that with a really insane work schedule lately and I just haven't been able to get anything done. Barring being bad at sleep I think I've spent about 10 hours at home awake this week, and 7 of that is morning wake up, and farm chores.

On the other hand, we do have some really pleasant things happening. In particular Dora, the smallest of our chickens has gone on an egg laying binge. We were just thrilled to have Some eggs before she knocked off for the winter, but she's just gone and laid 6 eggs in the first 7 days of egg laying. This time I cheated and took the photo of the eggs against a white background so you can see how blue they are without me actually enhancing the photo at all! You can also see why I'm not working on the hutch since that's the bottom wire.

Sorry for the short post today, this is going to be my 4th, 14 hour work day in a row. I'll try to have a solid quality post Thursday, but no promises.

BOX FORT! Strange weather, and design fatigue.

 So over the weekend, we gave the babies some new toys. You can see one of them in the background, and the other is the box. So far 5 days later the nice new chew toy we get them is un-touched, and the box has been so thoroughly used and destroyed it is now on its way to being compost.

Chicks have been ordered, and yet more ice.

Today has been a bit of a difficult morning, so today's post may be a little less than usual. The babies are doing well and we are approaching the next theoretical butchering date, though I'm not looking forward to trying to deal with doing killing in the depth of snow we have. Especially after the ice storm last night.

Today is very cold. The babies were cold, thirsty, and hungry when I came out this morning. Unfortunately when we go out at 8:00 AM and it is -8 degrees the water doesn't stay un frozen for long. All we can do is re fill their water when ever we can, and try to make sure they get sufficient food, and lots of hay for both food and something to help them keep warm.

Ice Clad World

The up side, ice clad grass is gorgeous. The down side, if there's ice clad grass while it's still raining constantly that means there is ice EVERY where else. Getting up the driveway last night in a light car was a real adventure!