:::mutter, mutter, mutter:::

Arrrgh.  The guy came on Monday to pump out our holding tank, and backed right over the flag pole that Tony and I spend so much time and energy reinstalling (someone else had apparently backed over it right before we moved in in 2010).  How annoying.  In his defense, the sun was in his eyes and he never saw the thing.

So now it's lying beside the back deck, waiting for the next time Tony comes to visit.  It's a few more inches shorter but still imposing.  We are planning to install it in the middle of the FRONT yard this time.  No one should be driving over it there. 
 Sigh.
 Meanwhile, we got 4 or 5 inches of new snow to make everything pretty.  At least it was pretty until Bella opened the barn yard gate --again-- and everyone milled about in the back yard, filling it with footprints.  Bad horse!

The birds are enjoying our feeders this week!  Here are a couple of Goldfinches eating thistle seed.


And my personal favorite, the little Chickadee on the right, chowing down on shelled sunflower seed.  They act like this stuff is candy and they can't get enough of it.  When I fill the feeder, the Chickadees are not afraid to sit nearby and holler at me to hurry up.


I have a feeling they know what's coming.  The weather people are predicting highs in the single digits and lows down to 9 below zero.  Winter is definitely here!

We're ready for it, though. We got a tank full of heating oil for the furnace and another load of hay for the Barn People.  We'll all just stay inside our respective houses and wait it out.  And I'll layer clothing until I look like an overstuffed armchair and waddle out to feed a couple times a day, then say my usual "Stay warm and dry, sweetie pie" to Bella and waddle back to where it's 70 degrees!

It's a Bit Nippy Here...

Here's what the thermometer showed about an hour after sunrise yesterday morning.  Before the sun woke up, when I went out to give the animals their early morning hay, it was actually 20 below!  Everyone must have spent the evening in the barn, though, and generated enough heat to raise the temp in there to 0, which actually felt warm.  Everything is relative, no?

The cold temps and recent snowfall brought out the birds in droves.  There has been a constant stream of chickadees and goldfinches (who would have thought any bird would overwinter here of all places?!) to and from the feeders, providing lots of entertainment for the cats:

Bones waits patiently, unseen.



Even Sasha interrupted her usual marathon nap to go birding

 I spent the afternoon yesterday trying out the new snow blower.  I successfully cleared the drive and a few paths here and there, but it was really tiring!  Had to do it in two attempts.  Later last night, I was feeding the barn people and got "clipped" by a sheep.  For those of you who don't follow football, "clipping" is an illegal method of tackling a runner by hurling your body into the runner's knee from the side.  It's illegal in football because it can cause career-ending injury.  Sheep don't follow the NFL rulebook, though, and I ended up flat on my back in the middle of the barn, with the feed pans next to me, oddly intact.  I was afraid for a minute that I would be trampled in the usual rush to get to the grain, but everyone just stood there, frozen, and waited for me to get back up again.  Today the knee is swollen and sore, but not too much so.  I must have miraculously avoided the type of injury that requires surgery--not my usual kind of luck!

An interesting start to the new year.

Finally, the New Year Brings Some Snow

After a quiet Christmas, we spent a quiet New Year's Eve with Janette.  She came over in the afternoon of the 31st and spent some time with her favorite dogphew, who was cold and searching for a warm lap.

After a few adjustments, he was "snug as a bug in a rug," as the old saying goes.

He actually smiles when he's content

After Janette went home, we had chips and dip for supper and went to bed at about 8:30.  Whoo-hoo!  We really know how to live life in the fast lane!  It started to snow that evening, and by New Year's Day we had at least 4 inches of fresh white snow on the ground, covering all the ugly half-frozen stuff that had been on the ground and making everything look pretty and clean.

One of the reasons I like snow--you always know who's been here.

Snow always looks prettier from inside a warm house...

As the day progressed, though, the north wind started blowing harder and things started getting downright wintry around here!  It's still blowing, with a wind chill of 15 below zero, I hear.  I have lots of snow moving to do, using the new snow blower Mom got last fall, but since we don't have anywhere pressing to go, I'll wait until the wind dies down and tackle it tomorrow.  One of the few perks of being unemployed...

Happy New Year to everyone!  I hope 2012 is a better year all around!

Oops

Sigh.  The caption beneath the first picture in my Christmas 2011 post was supposed to read "December 2010" NOT "December 2012."  I don't have a magic camera that will take pictures of the future.  Too bad, no?

Christmas 2011

Well, our second winter in Wisconsin is underway.  It certainly bears no resemblance whatsoever to last winter!  Where we had lots of pretty, clean, powdery snow last year at this time:

December of 2012, looking from the barn to the house

This year we have had very little snow and many warm-ish (mid-30s, quite balmy for our neck of the woods) days so we've ended up with the sort of mess we usually have in late February/early March--that nasty, half-melted, half-frozen stuff that is hard to live with:

 

Yuck.

Fortunately, we got an inch of new snow the day before Christmas Eve, so everything looked properly festive.  We did just a little bit of decorating (we STILL have boxes to unpack!) and had a quiet, but really nice, Christmas with Janette.

 

Everyone enjoyed themselves, and Santa Claus didn't forget anyone

Hadjo got 2 new babies and a giant cow bone from Santa Dog

Bones appropriates one of my gifts as her own.

Now that the holiday is done with, we will move ahead with our plans for the winter, which involve many days of weaving, sewing and interior home improvement.  Winter will pass just as quickly as the rest of the year has, and in no time at all it will be time to start planting and mending fences again.  2012 will be another year marked by a lot of hysteria over dire predictions of The End Of Life As We Know It--I suspect the Last Day "predicted" by the Mayans will be just about as shocking and eventful as 1/1/2000 was.  Looming world destruction or not, we will continue plodding along at our snail's pace, slowly improving our little farm and enjoying the process.  I hope the coming year will find my little group of readers well and happy, and we both wish you all the best.  Happy New Year!!

All Buttoned Up

We have spent the last couple of weeks finishing up some odds and ends that needed to be done before winter.  First off, we got a start on putting in the winter's supply of hay.  Check out Mom positioning bales so I could haul them in with the wheelbarrow--she never could have done that down in NC!

We put in about a third of what we need and will get the rest a little at a time, as usual.  We're stacking the hay on the ground floor of the barn because I didn't have help throwing it up in the loft this fall, and had a lot of trouble with the stairs toward the end of last winter.  We'll see how it goes this year--already Bella has broken in and stolen hay so I suspect I'll have to come up with another solution for next year...

The pasture grass is gone for the season, but I never got around to mowing the back yard before it got cold so we let the Barn People mow it for us.  It gave them another 2 weeks of fresh grass and saved me that much on hay.

Al has a nice shaggy coat coming in for the season.

My southern belle, though, is still working on hers.  She looks like a giraffe in places!

 One project I wanted to complete was an insulated contaner for my water tank.  Running the electric heater last year to keep the animals' water from freezing really had an impact on our electric bill so when I saw the plans for this thing in one of our magazines, I jumped on it!  I'll still need to use the heater in the really cold weather, but this should save us quite a bit.

3/4" plywood and 2" rigid foam insulation should help!

While I worked on that, Mom got Mr Trailer all set for the cold and snow:

Looks like we're leaving with the next wagon train, doesn't it?

 She also spent a day painting the south barn door, which we build last year but never sealed against the weather.  I like the green we picked out!  The barn will someday be white with that green on the doors and trim, to match our outbuildings.  Someday...

Once it was dry, we used a few inexpensive rubber doormats to keep the cold winds and snow out.  All of our heavy snow comes from the south, so it's good to have this end of the barn buttoned up.

I finished my insulated stock tank just as the first snow started falling!  I wasn't sure the animals would drink out of an opening that was so much smaller than they were used to, so for the first few days I left the other, open tank sitting there to help them ease into the transition.  All of them are now using the new water tank.

Just in the nick of time!

 We ended up getting about 4 inches of snow that day.  It was beautiful!

Here's how the open tank looked, the next morning.

The new one, though, only had a tiny, thin piece of ice where the hole is  The rest was just fine.  It works!!

  The snow was gone by the end of last week and we had some warmer weather (mid-40s) for the week of Thanksgiving.  Mom cooked up a storm for two days and we had enough Thanksgiving dinner to feed the whole family!  It was just the three of us, though.  We had a very nice holiday dinner.

Lots of good stuff!  We're still eating leftovers a week later!

Hadjo and Bones thought they were invited to celebrate too.

It's been a busy time, but we're all set now for the winter weather.  My next project is the tiny front bedroom, which I'm going to use as my office and temporary studio (I plan someday to build a small  freestanding studio for all of my spinning and weaving equipment, but for now I will just use the smaller loom in the house.)  I hope to do a lot of weaving this winter!

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!  We are very thankful for another year up in the big woods, for our little farm, for our friends and for our family, both 2- and 4-legged.

We Say Goodbye to Another Old Friend

Yesterday we had to sadly say goodbye to Mom's faithful companion of 17 years, Rex the Farm Dog.  He had been declining over the last year or two and recently had suffered a series of what I think were minor strokes.  The night before last he had a major episode after which he was unable to stand at all, and yesterday afternoon he left this world for a better one.

He was the gentlest of dogs, yet a fierce defender of his turf and his people.  He was a champion mole hunter, a friend to small children, and the only dog I've ever known who had his own pet cats.

He leaves us heartbroken but better for having had him in our lives.  Happy hunting, old man.