I just had to pause for a picture when I saw these guys, watching me when I came outside this morning.
These guys know well enough to stay out of the wind, even if they can see fresh food and water is about to be dispensed! :-D
Except this little Spice Boy, who has a thing for drinking out of the water jug. He prefers this over drinking from a bowl! :-D
Also, those bulk sized Orville Redenbacher popcorn containers are the handiest things. The plastic is really strong, and they are a very useful size. We’ve got some with the bottoms cut off and the lids in place, that I use to scoop and carry critter feed. I used to use a metal pitcher for their water, but this holds a lot more water, and the handle design is easier to carry with one hand and not slosh while opening and closing doors. Used to put them in recycling, but now I keep them because they’re so useful!
As I was finishing up my rounds, Butterscotch made an appearance, and even let me carry her!
Well, sort of carry her. :-D
She still moves around too much for me to get a good look at her wound, but from what I can glimpse, it’s still looking good. Understandably, she seems uncomfortable sitting in the snow, as much from the lack of fur around it as for the wound itself!
We’ve got another relatively mild day today, though winds are certainly making it chillier. We were supposed to get snow this afternoon, but a storm passed through to the south of us, last night. We got light snow and winds, in our area. Now, it’s just winds. I’m good with that. We need to make a trip to the pharmacy this afternoon, which is when the weather was originally predicted to hit us. We’ll just have to watch out for ice, high winds and deer, and not the edges of a snow storm, too! :-D
I am soooo appreciating our mild winter. The last 3 since we moved here got so brutally cold. We’ll be getting colder next week, according to the long range forecasts, but it’s more of a normal cold than what we had in previous years.
I have no doubt the wild critters are appreciating it, too! Much better chances of survival. With Butterscotch having a little of kittens so late in the season, it is a relief for them and their safety, too.
Happy Three King’s Day! Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, which is our last day of Christmas. After today, we start taking down our decorations. :-)
It was another mild day today, so when I finished my rounds this morning, I decided to go ahead and dig out the fire pit.
I considered breaking out Spewie, our little electric snow blower, but for the amount of snow we have, I figured it would be easier to just shovel it!
I shoved the snow off what I’m using for a cover, but didn’t bother moving it, yet.
On our warm days, the snow melted enough to create a layer of ice on the surface of the picnic table. We’ll be staying at these mild temperatures for a while, so now that it’s uncovered it should melt away on its own.
I cleared a path to the organized wood pile. That cover did not need to have snow removed from it. I didn’t bother shoveling to the big pile of branches. The little pile has kindling and should be enough for our needs. We may not use the fire pit at all, but at least now we have the option! :-)
I made sure to dig the path to the fire pit wide enough for my husband’s walker, should he feel well enough to join us if we do a cookout.
I was being watched the whole time!
You can see the cats’ favorite way to get under the storage house. The path that goes around the back branches off to a partially broken window they also like to use, as well as through the trees to the path they’ve made to the storage building outside the yard. Well worn little footy paths in the snow! :-)
I also had to dig a wider path around the kibble house. There is a lot of overhang on the roof that is working quite well for the cats, but not so well for a human with a walker! :-D
While clearing around the cat shelter and kibble house, I found this.
It’s a frozen little cat treat! :-D Next to the slab of ice that slid off the “porch” roof of the cat shelter.
Rolando Moon looks like she’s thinking of that delicious frozen treat! :-D
So we will now be able to easily get at the fire pit if we feel like having a cook out, or just a nice fire. I still like the idea of using a fire to thaw the ground out, so we can set up the fire pit grill my brother and his wife got for us!
We do have the BBQ they have us, and the propane tanks does have fuel in it, but I am much more interested in the fire pit, instead! :-D
In other things, I was able to get through to the clinic to make an appointment with my doctor about my breathing issues. After hearing the messages about restrictions before it ever got to a human, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make an appointment at all. The messages say nothing about medical exemptions to mask wearing, of course. Which sucks, since not being able to breathe properly is why I need to see a doctor in the first place. I was able to make a telephone appointment for Friday afternoon, and then it will be up to my doctor to decide if I should come in or not. I made an appointment for my daughter for right after mine, so when he’s done with me, I can just hand the phone over to her. This is the first doctor’s appointment either of our daughters have had since we moved. After seeing how difficult it has been for my husband and I to get good medical care, they have developed a strong distrust of doctors. I can’t say I blame them, either.
But that is done. We shall see what the doctor has to say when the time comes. I am not expecting much of anything, to be honest. No one is getting real health care right now, and our premier has just put us under another 30 days of house arrest, even has many of our politicians have been caught ignoring those restrictions and have gone traveling to tropical places, visiting with their friends and family, and then pretending to be sorry after getting caught.
Thankfully, we are out here in the boonies, and I get to focus on more pleasant things. Right now, I’m working on a project to help me be organized about our gardening, including keeping track of what seeds to start indoors and when.
We had a light snowfall all night, with almost no wind. This morning, the trees looked like they were covered in frost!
It’s enough to almost make the junk cars in the old hay yard look pretty.
Almost.
Fresh tracks at the feeding station, and around to the ornamental apply trees in the old kitchen garden, show we had quite a few deer visits in the night!
As promised, I got a picture of the wonderful gift from my brother and his wife.
Well. The box, at least! No point in opening the box until spring!
Being the incredibly thoughtful person he is, on noticing the spikes into the soil are not very long, my brother included a length of angle iron we can pound into the ground, and wired to tie the post to it, for extra support!
I find myself thinking… if we have a fire, that might thaw out the ground enough to install this, and we can have some winter cook outs! With the fire bans, we aren’t using the fire pit in the summer anywhere near as much as I had expected to.
It’s supposed to be pretty mild for the next while…
Yeah. I’m just looking for excuses to get this set up out there! :-D
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!
The Re-Farmer 