last few weeks...

We've had some computer issues, so here's a few updates from the last couple of weeks, beginnig with February 23rd.  We had a crazy storm that came through.  There was thunder and lightning and then the skies opened up and I thought it was hail coming down, but not nearly loud enough.

When I went outside and picked it up it was a light as popcorn and I noticed that most of these snow pellets were shaped like cylindrical cones.

I've never seen anything like it.  Someone called it a "thundersnow".  The chickens were out there eating them up before they melted.

We were watching cousin Eliza that afternoon.  The girls were being so silly.  The light was so bright coming through the window so this was the best picture I was able to get:

Also, I finally used our Christmas giftcards to buy some things for the kids...most of the gifts are still on the way, but we were able to pick up Stephen's new bike.

He was amazed at how fast he was. 

When he realized that he was faster than Superman he had to put on his superhero cape.

I'll leave you with a big smile from Michaela.  We've been enjoying this warmer spring weather, blue skies and sunshine!

going...

...going...

...gone!


Yesterday's rain took care of the last little bit of snow...we had 4 solid months with snow on the ground at our house! Now I really need to get some seeds started for the garden!

melting...

Looking down the (clear) driveway towards the road to the east:


Looking out the kitchen window to the west:


Still plenty of snow left in the southwest corner, though!

when possum comes a-knockin...

The Virginia Opossum is the only North American marsupial. It has more teeth than any other mammal (50). It has opposable thumbs on its back feet, which makes it dextrous; and a prehensile tail, which it uses when climbing (not to hang by). Such an interesting animal...

Everything I've read says that these wild animals rarely cause problems for farmers and ranchers. Apparently this possum didn't get the memo. We have a nice secure coop, so this "nocturnal" animal shouldn't be causing us any problems except that opossums "may become diurnal during cold weather". That means if you free range your chickens and leave the coop open during the day, the opossum can get in and eat all the eggs! That means possum has got to go.

We found eggshells in the nest boxes day after day and were wondering if it was the cat...or the chickens themselves! Then, one afternoon I went to collect eggs and found a possum neatly curled up in one of the nest boxes. I left it and although my husband rustled it out of the box with a long-handled shovel later that night, we couldn't get it out of the coop - so we left the door open, hoping it would leave. No such luck. The next morning I found it curled up in the corn barrel. What to do, now? Leave it there to eat and poop in the corn all day?

I had some pretty thick insulated gloves and my Carhart jacket on, so I slowly reached in, picked it up and set it down outside! It was surprisingly docile - it was not exactly "playing dead", but it didn't bare it's 50 teeth and hiss at me either. I left the chickens locked up in the coop for a few days and we didn't see the possum again for a while. It warmed up and I let the chickens out again. It wasn't but a day before I found eggshells in the coop and a few days later I found the durn critter in a nest box again. So I picked it up and put it in the trap that we bought after a raccoon (or something) had killed our first flock of ducks. The possum never did play dead or hiss, but bared its 50 teeth briefly when I came out with the camera to get a quick picture.

Now, I suppose the "humane" solution would have been to keep the chickens locked up in the coop until possums go back to being nocturnal. We keep the eggs and grain safe from predation and the possum lives happily ever after until it gets hit by a truck. (They only live about two years in the wild). We weren't all that crazy about co-existing peacefully with an opportunist who knows where there is a free lunch available, though, so we decided to release it 10 miles away by a wooded river so it had a chance (however slim) to start a new life away from our chickens, bird feeders, and compost heap (where I've seen opossums scrounging before we had chickens). Now the chickens are happy to be outside eating all the lovely green grass that has been hidden beneath the snow and the various bugs that overwintered there.



*Whenever I hear "possum" I think of Possum Come A-Knockin' by Nancy Van Laan, illustrated by George Booth, hence the title of this post.

spring is coming!

We've had a week of warm. Temperatures have not dipped below freezing, even at night. I took a picture at the beginning of the week, after a few days of melting snow because I could finally see the first bit of green grass in our backyard. This morning you can see the difference.



Our chickens were happy to find the green grass that has been buried for three months straight. Here they were last week on the iced over driveway, pecking at some grain my husband dumped out there from his last homebrew (something like a Boulevard Wheat) and one enjoying the green grass yesterday:



You can see that our driveway is no longer iced over, either:


The layers are giving us about a dozen eggs a day and at least one of our Easter Eggers has started laying again. This was one of the first funny looking eggs we got:


I'm trying to save the light colored eggs so that we can have them hard-boiled at Easter. You just can't peel a FRESH egg - unless it's frozen solid!

guess what?

We're snowed in again.

Our Valentine's Day treat was a few more inches of snow and near ground blizzard conditions that have blown our driveway shut AGAIN...

DH got up early to clear the driveway on Sunday so that we could get out for church. Half an hour later, he had to clear it again! When we got home (slowly and carefully) we parked in the neighbor's driveway and DH walked over to blow the driveway clear. By the time he got to the end, the front was closed in, so he had to clear it twice ...I drove up and in and ten minutes later, we were snowed in for the day.

The wind started dying down after lunch, so DH is outside doing what? Clearing the driveway, of course:

strange weather

It has been foggy for the last week or so, which has resulted in the formation of some pretty awesome frost on...everything.









After I took these pictures, we had "freezing rain" in the forecast and the next day instead of "frosty" everything was icy. It warmed up today and we had showers of ice coming down from the trees...what's next?

more snow...

We had another 8 inches of snow + wind that left us stranded once again last week. We knew this storm was coming and bought a snowblower for the back of the tractor so that we could get ourselves out. Unfortunately, the 4-foot-deep drift of dense snow between our driveway and the road proved too much for our little tractor, so we had to ask our neighbor, who was clearing the road with his payloader, to dig us out once again.


The kids had fun playing "King of the Mountain" with dad on the 12 foot pile of snow that our mailbox is buried under:


They made a fun snow slide down one side:


The kids discovered a winter wonderland among the cedars on the south side of our property:


A picture of the re-sculpted drifts from the kitchen window:


Here's my view out the dining room window:


Hoarfrost on Monday morning:


Today it is warm and with 40 degree temps in the extended forecast we'll see how much of this melts. In the meantime, I'm kicking the kids outside to play.

Christmas Blizzard 2009

Well - this isn't news to most of you, but it snowed again! We left for Grandma's on Tuesday so that we'd be sure to get there safely and waited until Sunday afternoon to attempt the return drive. We made it home safe and sound to this:


Our neighbors with the BIG tractor dug out our driveway so we could get in. My husband had a to finish clearing a path to get in the garage and then dug out a one-shovel wide path from the garage to the house so we could get inside:


This is the view from my kitchen window. These drifts FILL our backyard and are taller than me.


This is the drift across the garden on the south side of the house:


The front yard is a pretty uniform 2 feet deep:


Here's looking down our driveway to the east:


Our firewood is piled under these drifts on the north side:


We have to climb over this to get food and water to the chickens and ducks:


This is the coolest (and tallest) drift next to the chicken coop:


Here I am standing at the door of the chicken coop looking straight west at that drift:


The last winter storm PLUS the snow we just got made all this (~30 inches, according to the NOAA). I don't expect it will be melting anytime soon...and if we keep getting more snow to add to this - YIKES!