It's been a while since I've been able to blog. We've been quite busy around here. Instead of telling you all about it, I thought I'd let the photos do the talking...
Winter set in, in earnest, and the sight of it never fails to leave me awestruck.
The girls aren't as enamored with the cold as we are, spending most of their days huddled in the coop. The coop, surprisingly, is ALWAYS warmer than the outside air temperature, and is, obviously, drier. The "babies", who are not really babies any longer, seem to love to frolic in the snow...
Our poults (the chicks we raised) are growing quickly. The girls should begin laying at any time now, and Jefferey has found his voice:
We've had some excruciatingly cold weather. The humidity climbs here during the winter, and so the sub zero temps combined with the humidity makes for some amazing hoarfrost!
My man continues to keep our home toasty warm with the firewood he's harvested and continually cuts.
On sub-zero days, I don't envy him the task. Frankly, I don't envy him the task in any weather!
We received several inches of snow around Christmas and have enjoyed it since.
I found a fabulous photo taking site during a hike. Unfortunately, you have to hike into the back country for about an hour to find the site. Think I'll keep that one on my "not now" list of picture sites. I was glad on this day, to have my camera, though.
I had grand plans for a Christmas card using the two pictures above. Then, those plans changed to a New Year's Card. And now? Now, you just get to see them on the blog. So, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Heh, heh, heh...
Before deep winter kicked in, Mr. Farmer Man started working on a greenhouse using upcycled windows and timber.
While we have some finishing touches, I now have an amazingly huge (and free!!!) greenhouse. I can't wait to order seeds and begin planting!
Over the Christmas holidays, our friends' heifer calved. What a blessing it was to meet this sweet baby when she was only hours old. We've since had several opportunities to spend more time around "Annabelle" and I have even had my first milking lesson on her mama!!
We've had a great winter in terms of wildlife sightings. Elk, deer, coyotes, wolves, foxes, skunk, eagles, hawks, and quail. While most sightings are either too distant, requiring binoculars, or too quick, we do have frequent quail visitors. Watching their little heads bob and their plume shake is truly entertaining. It is also interesting to see the babies' plume as a little shoot, while Dad's is quite impressive. Their coloring is exquisite!
We are loving winter! There are challenges (keeping critters' water unfrozen, getting out of the road/driveway after a heavy snow, needing 15 minutes to get dressed to go outside, etc.) but the benefits far surpass the challenges. We have enjoyed hiking, walking, snowshoeing, sledding, snowmobiling, snowman making, snowball fights, real snowcone making, and all other other fun activities that snow and winter bring.
(Confession time: The layout of this particular post is driving me CRAZY!!! I cannot figure out why some of my photos are centered and others are not, and why the text is not uniformly spaced between the pictures! Perfect I am not!)
