Cold dawn, and winter concerns.

I'm not a huge fan of waking and getting chores done during pre-dawn twilight, but there are some advantages to it. Really spectacular morning skies like this are certainly part of it, even if I can't quite capture the real colors with my cell phone camera. Came out better than expected once I gave it some editing. Anyhow, winter is here officially for me, though technically I guess it isn't. At the point where we've had snow, and a nice solid sheet of ice I say we have winter. That doesn't mean we haven't been getting the last things done we can. I'd intended to talk about the local farming forum in town today, but yesterday the Lady of the House needed an extra pair of hands with the Critter so I didn't end up being able to go. Hopefully there will be more of those.

Chickens, wood, and babies. Now with pictures.

As promised, today we have photos from around the homestead. We've finally been letting our chickens wander the property and do their thing, and they are quite different in behavior than the chickens we had around before. They don't have to be coaxed to come to garden beds with scratch, they're curious, and they are an unruly bunch that make quite a rapid impact on the grounds.

Splitting Wood

It's that time of year again. You know, the time of year when there's things you should have done over the summer but it was so hot, and winter was so far away, and so many other things to do. Remember those times when winter was far away? Well, now it's not, and I still have a vast pile of trees to buck and split.

That's about half of the pile of trees that has been sitting behind the studio long enough to show up on Google Maps. The Lady of the House's father was kind enough to come up and buck some of the trees for us a bit back, and will be coming up to show me how to properly and safely use a chainsaw to buck trees in the next month or so.

So, on Friday and Saturday I took a few hours and decided to see if I'd lost my skills at splitting firewood. Turns out, as one of my co workers said, it's a lot like riding a bike. You never quite forget, but you definitely aren't as good as you once were, or at least thought you were.