One of the best things about living on a farm is the sense of continuity that comes from seeing and adding to the work of generations.

My wife’s family has always had a gift when it comes to building; electrical, automotive, construction, even aircraft maintenance. The level of competance can be seen at every turn, and it’s sometimes breathtaking. If you’re not careful, it can even be a little intimidating.

…And then you come across something that reaffirms the fact that everyone shares the learning curve.

😀

P.

I’m a morning person; have been for a while now. While I could wax poetically about various aspects of mornings, for me it comes down to two things. Solitude and beauty.

I got hooked on mornings during my time in the military, standing morning watches. I have memories that defy description, most of which are related to mornings. It’s the reason I like doing outdoor chores around sunrise.

🙂

P.

So when someone from the city is talking about the rural communities, I don’t believe they truly understand what they’re talking about (at least I didn’t) .

Take us for example; we went from an in City dwelling which had two and a half bathrooms to a single indoor bathroom dwelling with optional emergency options… so far, I haven’t had to go that badly yet.

There are many hardships and complications involved in moving from a very urban to very rural existence. I have to admit however that it’s the unexpected benefits that I find most appealing.

So based on the amount of food that’s been disappearing overnight, we’ve been fairly sure that we had “other” visitors apart from the cats. As I was getting ready to go and cuddle with them, I took a quick look outside and thought better of it…

I have to admit that the only thing that’s keeping me from going out there and trying to pet it, is common sense.

So the good news is that most of the kittens are comfortable enough with me at this point that they will sit there and eat while I’m still rummaging around; they were pretty much exactly like this while I was opening up a new bag of food for them.

… the bad news is that they seem to now treat the sunroom as their own very large personal thump dump area. I found no less than three landmines this morning.

So it looks like corvo has discover that hunting for Birds is a fair bit easier right after I feed them. This is the second or third time now that he’s taken up residence on the bird feeder and tried to take swipes at whatever birds come around.

And they do come around, flaring at him and otherwise showing there displeasure at his taking over their Roost.

… Funny as hell.

So this guy apparently has never been seen by anyone since we’ve been here. No clue where he / she comes from but he / she is a little jumpy…

I readjusted the resting areas a little bit to accommodate the new, large cat 😀

Suddenly, I’m quite happy with the fact that I braved nasty, nasty cold with toes to lay down deer feed.

:p

So we got a bit of snow yesterday, and it was essentially a catastrophe. At least in that it was unexpected, early, and it manage knock out the power for a few hours.

Now I love winter, don’t get me wrong… It’s my favorite season, and it’s absolutely beautiful to boot. It seems however that no matter how prepared or unprepared we are for snow in Manitoba, we are at the mercy of a somewhat flaky power grid. I think the fact that we are in a very, very rural environment does not promote the forward-thinking required by our local government to ensure that we have redundancy in our electrical system.

I believe I will start looking for an alternate power source ( either a generator or UPS) to ensure that the next time the grid gives out, our power doesn’t.

But it *is*pretty out there 🙂