While they don’t come around when we’re around to see them, there are plenty of signs that the deer are coming to the feeding station.
The snow was absolutely trampled this morning! You can see it all the way back to the corner of the spruce grove, before the tracks start splitting up into smaller trails.
Here, you can see their trail coming from inside the spruce grove. More tracks go through the gate and towards the barn.
We may not be able to leave much feed out – and the birds eat a lot of what we do leave out – but at least they know they can come here for a winter snack!
The suet we have right now seems to be a bust, though. When I bought it, the Walmart I found them in was out of stock except for packs with 3 different “flavours”. All mixes of seeds, nuts and fruit. Usually, the only ones I can find locally are basic seed mixes, or special mixes for specific birds. The brand is the same, though.
The individual packs were not labelled, so I don’t know which is which. The first one I put up was, as far as I could tell, completely ignored. Usually, the chickadees and nuthatches are all over it! After several weeks of it looking completely un-pecked at, I decided to put a different one in. I put the first one in the snow in the bird bath (which I am not trying to keep with water this winter; it is just too damaged for that, and I’m amazed it actually lasted another summer!).
Since then, I’ve seen Blue Jays on the bird bath, pecking away at that piece of suit, but none on the hanging feeder!
I’m thinking the larger birds don’t like the little feeder basket as something to land on, and the little birds don’t like these mixes, so they’re not bothering. Not with delicious black oil seeds for them to eat, instead! :-)
I might wait just a bit longer. I’m sure the critters won’t mind staying sheltered a bit longer, either.
The temperatures plummeted last night! It’s now almost 10am as I write this, and it’s still -27C/-16.6F with a wind chill of -35C/-31F out there.
The app on my phone says we’ve already “warmed up” to -25C/-13F with a wind chill of -28C/-18.4F
It’s supposed to continue warming up but we won’t be getting warmer than -20C/-4F for a few more hours. So I’m going to have to get out there and get some warmer food and water for the outside cats soon. There will still be both food and water out there right now. I just want to make sure they have some that is a bit more pleasant to ingest!
The plan for today was supposed to be clearing enough snow in the yard to drive the van to the house tomorrow, so we can load it up and make a trip to the dump. We haven’t been able to make that trip in way too long, but with temperatures like this, it might have to wait again. :-( We could postpone clearing the snow in the yard until tomorrow, but the dump is open for only a few hours in the morning on Tuesdays, and it will probably be closed by the time we’re done. It’s supposed to reach an absolutely tropical -7C/19.4F tomorrow, bringing a couple of centimeters of snow along with it.
Yeah. I think we’ll do the clearing tomorrow afternoon and make the dump run when it’s open again on Thursday evening. They are open for a full 8 hours on Saturdays, but that’s New Year’s Day, so they’ll be closed this weekend.
Definitely one of the downsides of living in the boonies. Maybe this explains why we’re finding so much garbage as we clean up around the farm!
I can tell how much milder the temperatures have gotten these past few days, but how many of the outside cats I see when I do my rounds in the morning! I saw 9 of them this morning, including Rolando Moon, who has been away for a week or two, but showed up yesterday.
I had 5 cats following me when I went to check on the gate. When I came back to the house, I had this surly face to greet me.
We had brought several pieces of the maple that I’d cut away from the roof of the old chicken coop to the house, for future wood working projects. They’re odd shapes and keep falling over.
The cats really like them, and Rolando Moon seems to really appreciate having a relatively warm perch to sit on, out of the snow!
As I write this, we have warmed up to -26C/-14.8F, with a wind chill of -30C/-22F It’ll keep warming up for the next couple of days, and tomorrow – Christmas Day – is now expected to reach a balmy -5C/23F!
When I headed out this morning to tend the critters (I have been skipping most of my rounds outside right now!), I was surprised to find no kitties in the cat house, though a couple were outside. I know they had been in the shelter last night, as I went out to give them a treat. We set our turkey to brine overnight, and I cut up the organs, neck and excess skin as a treat for them. All of which was frozen solid. It doesn’t look like any of the cats braved the cold for the treat at all! In fact, most of the kibble was untouched. I do put some just inside the door of the cat house, and most of that was gone, but I think it’s just too cold. Even dry kibble freezes and can be harder to eat, I think.
As I was putting out fresh warm water and topping up the kibble with some that wasn’t frozen, I could hear a plaintive meowing. I spotted Nosy, out by the storage house, tucked under a lilac bush. He is normally a quiet kitty, but this morning, he was just looking at me pathetically and complaining.
So, I shoveled a path for him.
There was already a slight path in the snow, showing where they had been leaping through the snow to get to and from the shelters. They were very happy to not have to do that anymore! You can see that Nosy immediately took advantage of the situation to get to the food, no longer complaining. :-) Even Ginger was happy for the path. :-D
There were plenty of deer tracks in the snow around the house, including here, where you can see they were trying to get at the ornamental apples. These apples are smaller than cherries, but food is food! The snow at the feeding station was well trampled and dug up, as both deer and birds tried to get at the buried feed.
Now that the critters are fed, it’s time to get to work for our non-traditional Wigilia feast tonight.
Just in case I don’t get a chance to post tomorrow, I will take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. May you all be warm and cozy, and your days filled with joy and blessings. May the new year bring you peace, good health and abundance!
That just doesn’t happen. Especially with a locked gate and snowed in driveway!
It was the renter’s farm hand. He had been driving by with their tractor and noticed we’d cleared a few paths in the snow, so he stopped, climbed the gate, and offered to clear the driveway for us! Last year, he happened by while I was out with the electric snow blower, working on the driveway. The gate was open, so he drove right in and cleared it for me! He did in a few minutes, what would have taken me hours.
What an absolute sweetheart!
I quickly got coat and boots on and unlocked the gate for him.
What a beautiful sight!
The picture looks blurry because the window I was taking it through was frosting up faster than I could clear it and get my phone ready to take a picture!
I had started to lock the gate up when I figured I should take a picture from the road. He even widened the sides of the driveway at the road before he left!
Isn’t that amazing?!!
So now we just need to do the part inside the yard. He saved us so many hours of work!
We have some wonderful neighbours. What a fantastic Christmas present, too!
My daughter was a sweetheart and willing to get out with our little snow blower to clear a few paths. I went out with her to control the extension cords, to make it easier.
I grabbed a quick photo of what I’d cleared around the cat shelters, earlier.
The plan is to use the cleared snow to make a wall on the south side, as a little extra shelter from the wind. Eventually, I want to clear as far as the well cover and the BBQ my brother gave us, but neither is essential right now.
We cleared a bit in front of the garage, though the focus right now was a walking path. You can see where the extension cord cut through the snow, which was very soft and fluffy, still. My job was to keep enough slack on the cord behind my daughter, so she wasn’t pulling it along as she used the snow blower – which can be done, but it sometimes gets caught or tangled on things – then clear it to one side as she worked her way back again.
We don’t need to do another meter reading until the middle of January, but we cleared a path to the pole, anyhow.
I ended up tromping through the snow with the cord in the process. :-D
With two 100 ft extension cords, my daughter was able to make a quick pass up the sidewalk to the house, too. It will need to be widened enough for my husband’s walker, eventually, but this will do for now!
By the time she was done, my daughter was plastered with snow. It didn’t matter which way she had the deflector blowing the snow, the wind still blew it back onto her!
To the right of where you see my daughter in the photo is where we will need to clear enough snow to drive up to the house. Including the area needed to turn and reverse, there is a lot of space that needs clearing! For that, we can plug the extension cords into an outlet on the side of the house, instead of from the garage. We’ll still need to use both cords if we want to make a path around the house, but most of what we need to reach can be with just 100 ft of cord.
At some point, we should clear a path to the barn, too. We don’t go into there often, but it would still be nice to not have to slog through the snow to do it. :-)
Little by little, it’ll get done. I’m just thankful we don’t need to do it all at once. My poor brother and his wife, who live quite a bit south of us and would have gotten a lot more snow, don’t have that luxury. He was probably out clearing snow in the wee hours of the morning. At least they do have a very good gas powered snow blower!
I don’t expect our vandal will ever return the Bobcat he took, since he is convinced he owns it, but it sure would have made our job easier. I think that thing even had a heated cabin!
Our first blizzard of the season has passed us by. The weather system is still going, though. On the weather radar, I can see that a swath of the US, Ontario and Quebec are being hit as the storm makes its way to the East coast.
As I write this, we are at -22C/-7.6F, with a wind chill of -36C/-32.8F (I usually round the Fahrenheit down, but decided to include the decimals today. :-D ) Our high of the day is supposed to reach -19C/-2.2F with a wind chill of -30C/-22F Tomorrow is supposed to be a couple of degrees colder.
Then on Christmas day, we’re supposed to reach a high of -9C/15.8F with a wind chill of -14C/6.8F We’ll have these mild temperatures for a couple of days, then it’s supposed to drop around the -20C’s for a couple of days, before going back to mild temperatures in time for the new year.
It’s going to feel like spring.
The girls did some shoveling yesterday, so things wouldn’t accumulate too much as it continued to snow.
I was seeing this on the live feed from the security camera last night.
The storm came in from the west, but it was swirling so much, the winds in the image are actually coming from the east!
When one of my daughters had to take the bag of cat litter they cleaned out last night to the bin we have for it outside, she had to push the door open through a snow drift.
You can see signs of that, below.
This is how it was this morning.
You can almost see the path the girls shoveled down the sidewalk! :-D
They also shoveled in front of the cat shelters.
Do you see those icicles hanging from the cat house roof? You know what that means?
It’s warm in there! Warm enough to melt the snow from underneath.
I’m so glad that aquarium bulb is working out as a heater! It’s not enough to warm it up too much, either; too warm, and it will affect their ability to acclimatize to the winter and put them more at risk from the cold.
Some snow did get into the kibble house, unfortunately. We’ll have to clean that out later, when we’re doing more shoveling. This morning, I just did the minimum I needed to do to feed the critters.
The other water bowls were completely buried, but the heated water bowl was doing just fine!
You can see tracks in the background, between the two shelters. Those led to the storage house, so we know that some cats are still sheltering under there, too.
Once I cleared enough snow to give the cats fresh food and water, I continued clearing a path to the feeding station, where the smaller bird feeder is hanging. That will do for now. Eventually, we will need to dig paths to the compost pile, down the sidewalk and to the electricity meter, and to the garage. The girls had cleared all three doors of the garage, including where the snow blower is stored. I can see on the security camera that it isn’t completely filled it again. :-D
I was going to take pictures of the shoveling I did this morning, but I just wanted to get back inside! Plus, my glasses were frosted over and I couldn’t see. :-D
Aside from the paths, we will need to clear the driveway to the road, of course, but we will also need to clear into the yard, for when we need to drive up to the house. That has to include space for a turning radius. Plus, we will need to make paths around the house, so we can reach the septic tank, if needed, and it would be good to have a path to the fire pit, too. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take the big snow blower in to see why it won’t start and get it fixed. So all we’ve got is the little electric one. We do also have an “electric shovel” that my dad used to use. We used it our first winter here. So we won’t have to do all of it by hand, at least!
All that clearing does not have to be done right away. We are well stocked and don’t have to go anywhere, so it can wait until it warms up a bit.
The last couple of winters, our first blizzards were in October, so this one was very late in the season. It may be a lot more snow than we’ve had so far, but it’s actually not too bad. We still only got hit by the edges of the storm. The more severe parts of the storm moved across the Canada/US border, so the south of the provinces all got hit a lot harder. We are doing pretty good where we are. I’m also happy to have more snow in general. Having this stored water will be essential in the spring, for gardens and fields. Lots of snow with a nice, gradual spring melt, would be ideal conditions for planting in the spring, whether it’s farmers’ crops or garden beds. Our first two summers here were drought conditions. Last year, we had a wet spring, followed by a hot, dry summer, and that wet spring was enough to keep crops going through the heat later on.
We shall see what the rest of the season brings us. I’ve seen predictions for both severe cold and mild temperatures for this winter. So far, it’s looking like the mild prediction is the one that’s panning out.
Until then, we’ll enjoy our Christmas while snowed in, all warm and cozy!
Including the outside kitties. :-) Relatively speaking!
I hope anyone reading this that got hit by this storm, too, is also safe, warm and well!
I had actually checked the tracking status last night, and was surprised to see it listed as delivered.
In the city.
It wasn’t visible from the security camera live feed, because…
… camouflage! :-D
At least the UPS driver found us! :-D Checking the trail cam video later, I saw him pull in, dash out the side of the van, slide the box under the gate, and dash off again.
So… among our projects for the summer is to build a person gate on the side of the main gate, and set up a box for deliveries. :-)
This is our new trail camera, to replace the one that’s gone funky and isn’t recording anything. It’s still trying to work – on some of the night videos on the other camera, I could see that the infrared flash was triggered, but there was nothing on the disk. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t
The new camera is up now, and I’ll be doing an unboxing post, next. :-)
There was a light snow overnight, and while I was out doing my morning rounds.
I noticed this, on the roof of the cat shelter.
Melted snow on the roof of the cat shelter, above the ceramic terrarium heater.
You can certainly tell where the heat bulb is!
There is no insulation on the walls or under the roof at all, so it wouldn’t take much for there to be heat leaking through, even with the aluminum shield between the bulb and the roof.
The cats are quite enjoying their warm shelter! There’s usually several that can be seen, watching me through the window closest to the heater. :-)
They will also sit inside the kibble house, even while not eating. Sometimes, I’ll spot one of the more skittish ones under the floor, watching to see if I come closer, before squeezing out again.
We still have very little snow right now. When it starts getting to where we need to shovel it, I want to make sure the cats still have access to under the shelters, as well as into them. They have claimed every bit of shelter these structures provide! :-)
The snow was gone in a lot of places before the storm hit a couple of days ago. I could even see green grass through last year’s thatch. So it was no surprise that we’ve seen virtually no deer. Even in the trail cam facing where they cross the road to our place went from streams of dozens of deer to … nothing. In just a couple of days.
With snow falling pretty much continually for the past two days, all the yards and gardens were covered with a pristine white blanket.
Yesterday evening, we saw three skittish deer making their way to the feeding station. They didn’t really get much to eat, as something spooked them and they ran off. They were the first deer to visit us since before the snow fell.
This is what I found this morning.
Tracks, everywhere!
The area around the feeding station was torn up as they dug through the snow to get at the seeds below (which a couple of cats took advantage of. :-D ). From the heavy trails through the garden and trees on the west side, more came and went from that direction than from along the spruce grove to the east. The east yard was full of tracks as they headed towards the barn as well. Tracks went through the spruce grove as well, and my rounds had be going past where a couple of them jumped the south fence to cross the driveway to the old hay yard.
It should be interesting when I check the trail cam files. That will wait until I come back from town after dropping my daughter off at work.
For now, I have to grab a shovel and clear the plow ridge. The snow was soft enough, we didn’t bother clearing the driveway, but the wall of snow at the road is something else entirely!
The Re-Farmer 