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And the Day After

The snow finally ended around 5:30 p.m. but the wind picked up and the dry snow is being blown into drifts deeper than knee high. Our total was around 17-18″ (44+ cm), deep enough that a walk uphill to take pictures of the road and the house from the barn was very tiring. One of the deepest areas is a shallow rounded cut between the garage and the chicken coop that is there to drain water from the driveway away from the house and on downhill. I get a bootful every time I go over to make sure the chickens have food and water and to collect eggs, even with my Squall pants Velcroed over the outside of the barn boots which are taller than my snow boots.

Today is clear and bright with a very brisk wind blowing, but the temperature is above freezing.

Several weeks ago, we watched a news item about a snow phenomenon that I had never seen before, or at least not notices. It occurs when the wind blows across the surface of the snow, rolling it like you would a snowman, sometimes creating solid balls, sometimes a donut or pipe shape. Much to my amazement when I went over to do morning chicken chores, much more difficult in deep snow, I spotted them in the yard.

The dogs continue to romp and leap through the snow, rolling and playfully attacking each other until they are exhausted. I haven’t figured out how to get them to “plow” me a path over to the coop yet. After nearly an hour of moving snow, packing snow down and digging out one of the hay bales, I got enough hay on the snow to coax 6 of the fuzzy butts out to eat and drink. While busy adding more hay in the run to give them a bit more space to be outdoors, I heard a racket inside the coop and found two hens trying to occupy one of the six nesting boxes together to lay their morning egg. That was rather amusing but after checking under the one who had claimed it first there was only 1 cold egg, so I guess I interrupted them. The hay is re-covered as we may get up to 3 more inches tonight. That chore will have to be repeated again tomorrow. I don’t want to keep food and water in the coop. All of the cold weather and snow we have had has taken a toll on the coop’s cleanliness and even the deep litter method struggling to keep up.

February 14, 2014
. . . The Storm

Two days ago, I blogged about the preparation that we go through each time a storm is expected. The preparations were completed, tub and jugs filled, dry beans cooked for chili or goulash, bread made, supplies for the dogs and chickens replenished, wood brought in to the garage. Yesterday we waited, wondering if this storm too would fizzle though the news from southeast of us was showing freezing rain and sleet, we are far enough west in Virginia that we could have only gotten a couple of inches, not the double digit snow that was predicted.

Around 2 pm yesterday, as I was kneading the bread and looking out the kitchen window that faces south, I watched as the snow came over the ridge behind us, moving toward us and it has been snowing ever since. We had gone out about noon and parked the SUV part of the way up the driveway in a parking pad away from the house. After I thought the mail had come, I drove my CRV up to the barn and parked it on a gravel pad in front of the barn and walked the rest of the way up to the mailbox. The contractor mailman drives a 2 wheel drive sedan, so he either had not come or decided our steep snow covered gravel road was not happening yesterday afternoon.

That was only an hour or so into the storm.

By the time I went out to secure the chicken coop for the night, we had about 5 inches. By bedtime after watching the Olympics it was up to 7 inches.

This morning before letting the pups out to romp, I went out with a 12 inch ruler that sank into the snow.

Same shot as Tuesday with the addition of the car and the snow.

After the snow pups had their chance, with the snow up to Shadow’s chest

they came in snow coated and worn out and I ventured over to deal with the chickens. I knew they would not come out of their coop when I opened the pop door, so today until the snow stops, they have food and water in the coop. As their keeper/feeder/protector/egg collector, they seem to think this is all my fault. The snow is mid calf on me, over my boots and I returned to the house with a cuff of packed snow inside.

We awoke to it 10ºf warmer than last night, but it is still snowing and we are expecting several more inches.

Today we will play. Tomorrow our 36th Anniversary was to be celebrated in town at a nice restaurant, but we may have to cancel our reservation and postpone it unless the plows get up our mountain. So far we still have power, so the conveniences of life are still in place.

We wanted a good snow this year and we have gotten it. Once this is gone, I’m ready for spring.

February 13, 2014
The Calm Before . . .

Again we are being threatened with a winter storm. How many times has that happened this winter and it fizzled? But this time they seem to be serious and instead of adjusting the storm away from us at the last minute, they are giving us more and more intensity. It is to be a snow event in this part of the state. I love snow and snow sports, so I’m fine with it, however, it always requires more effort on our part as we do live rurally in the mountains and heavy snowfall often means loss of power. Loss of power means loss of heat, water and all other conveniences of life, so today, the cold, calm day of azure skies will be filled with the preparations for such occurrence.

The downstairs bathtub must be filled with water for necessary flushing and so the dogs will have water. All of the emergency and camping jugs also filled as to get water when we have no power, we must trek downhill a few hundred yards to the gravity fed yard hydrant from our cistern that is there to water horses and cattle next year after our fencing is done. Trekking down is not difficult, but toting one or more 5 gallon jugs of water back uphill is tough. With enough snow, they can be loaded onto one of the toboggan sleds that we bought for our grands and us to play on in the snow, and dragged back uphill.

A supply of firewood will be brought over and stored in the garage to keep the woodstove and fireplace stoked for heat. The wood is stacked against the end of the huge compost bins by the garden, but who wants to carry wood over in the wet snow when we can just grab it in the garage.

The hay used in the chicken pen and coop needs to be covered as they won’t come outside their coop if snow is on the ground and I don’t want to have to dig the large round bale out and deal with wet hay to get a layer down on the ground for them.

A pot of stew beef that can be finished on the wood stove or the propane camp stove will be started, or a pot of chili made that we can heat on the wood stove or camp stove will be prepped.

The freezer will be rearranged to make sure that there are few air spaces and jugs of ice that I keep in the basement refrigerator freezer when not needed, will be packed on top to keep the remainder of last summer’s bounty frozen.

Some day we might finally get a decent generator, maybe a whole house generator so these preparations will become unnecessary. Until then, time is wasting, I’d better get to work.

February 11, 2014
A Passing

This morning I lost a friend who was lost from me and then found again through Facebook. In reconnecting with him, I learned how parallel our lives had been, yet how different they were.

We both became educators, married about the same time for the second time each. Had children near the same age. Both built our own homes. When I reconnected with him, one of the first questions I asked was whether he still played the guitar and learned that treatment for Hodkins disease his senior college year had robbed him of the use and feeling of his left arm and that it had also caused other damage that ultimately caused other difficulties with his health.

He loved his teaching at Utica College where he had been since completing his PhD. He adored his wife and daughters and a grandson that he got to share only two years. He was well traveled and had many stories that he told in blogposts. He was planning on retiring at the end of this school term. Most of his posts he ended with, “I am a fortunate man,” and I believe that he, in spite of his disabilities he was a fortunate man.

I am going to miss his blog posts, his humor on facebook and his friendship. I was a fortunate woman to have known him. He will be missed.

February 10, 2014
The Editor

In January, my husband published his first book. This book was started 36 years ago, hand written on legal pads and typed by me on an Olivetti manual portable typewriter that I had been given as a high school graduation present by my parents more than a decade before. About the time he was ready to send it off, a well known author published a book not on the same topic, but based in the same region. Revisions were done over the next several years, allowing the famous author to come out with a new book and I again typed it on the typewriter.

In the 1980’s as home computers were just coming on the scene, we got a computer lab at the school where I was teaching and after a couple of planning periods in the lab, I was excited that I could create my classroom tests and exams on the computer, in Dos, saving the test questions for future use. My excitement led us to buy a Tandy for home and the manuscript was again typed and saved on the larger floppy disks, many of them. Now several decades later, with the development of Kindle, Amazon, Nook, etc. and those old floppy’s no longer readable, again I typed the first third as he decided the original manuscript was too long and he made a decision to develop the book as a trilogy. The section was given to him to rewrite and for me to read, as I can mindlessly type and not follow the content. My final act is to perform the editing and formatting which after several years of retirement, my Word skills are rusty. Today I was trying to relearn how to number the pages as each page has a header. We wanted the author’s notes to be in Roman Numerals and the body of the book in Arabic numbers and for some reason, in spite of adding section breaks, the title page and copywrite pages get numbered. My frustration level with it at this point has caused me to quit for the night. It took internet searches to get as far as I did and each time I deleted the numbers on those two pages, all of the numbers disappeared. Arrrgggghhhh!

February 8, 2014
Doctor season

February is the month. Somehow, over the years, I have managed to get all my annual medical follow-ups clustered around our Valentine’s Day anniversary.

Five and a half years ago, I discovered a small nodule under my left jaw bone. From Family Practitioner to specialist, CT scans,couldn’t find what we felt, but did find nodules/cysts on my thyroid. The specialist then sent me for needle biopsies of both the nodule in my jaw and those on my thyroid. The result was surgery to remove my parotid gland with the non malignant nodule and determined that the thyroid was probably cysts. This happened just as school closed for the summer, but it put my first followup in February. Annually, I have to go for a thyroid ultrasound and follow-up with the specialist.

About three years ago, I developed what I thought was another keritosis on my right shin. Family Practitioner shaved it off and sent it for evaluation as he didn’t think this one was a keritosis and it wasn’t. It was a squamous cell variant skin cancer and again I sent off to a specialist, this one who specialized in MOH’s surgery. After visiting with her and finding out how long I would be immobilized, we elected to postpone the surgery until after our annual ski trip to Colorado. After the trip, back to the surgeon again in February to have the cancer removed fully. This added an annual trip to the dermatologist for a full body check for the rest of my life. I was never a sunbather, but did work two summers on the beach as a lifeguard and I’m very careful to stay covered with long sleeves, wide brimmed hat and sunscreen when working in the yard, but my years as a lifeguard are catching up with me now.

In the middle of all of this, we will celebrate 36 wonderful loving years together with a nice dinner out at a local restaurant.

♥

February 7, 2014
Winter morn

A light dusting of snow settled between the blades of brown grass.
Gray sky, cold and bleak.
A flock of Robins, harbingers of spring, feeding along side of snow juncos, a winter resident.
The chickens showing little enthusiasm for their morning release from the night’s captivity.
A head cold, compliments of grandson last week.
If we aren’t going to get real snow, I wish winter would go on and exit.

February 6, 2014
Back on the Farm

The return to the farm has brought with it the return to Virginia winter weather. Today’s high occurred early this morning with a chilly day and frozen night in the forecast. With dusk last night came rain all night long, creek flooding rain and snow possible as the day wears on. The ridge behind us shrouded in low thick clouds.

Last week when I was babysitting in Northern Virginia and available regardless of the weather, it was sunny and warmed to the 40s and 50s, today they are on the rain/snow line of this storm and likely having to deal with another weather closure or delay. That problem, I remember well, having three children and both of us having professional level jobs that were difficult to miss.

It is good being home, watching the antics of the dogs. Ranger the English Mastiff romping with the German Shepherd indoors and out, but having much less stamina and collapsing on his back outdoors, or into this position next to Jim when he is spent.

The only place he is allowed to do that in beside hubby in his oversize worn out recliner.

When I got home yesterday afternoon, I went out to check on the chickens and do a bit of coop maintenance, I don’t ask that of Jim when he is chicken sitting for me and finally caught a Buff Orpington sitting on an empty nest, so now I know which eggs to set aside for brooding when one of the hens gets broody this spring.

I don’t know which breed is laying the pinkish tan eggs far left, the Olive egger is obvious, the nearly white tan eggs are the Buff Orpington (at least one of them though I think the pinkish ones might be the other one. The darker brown even colored ones are the Red Stars, nice sized consistent eggs with good yolk structure and flavor, and then there is the girl with the faulty sprayer that lays a brown egg, sometimes speckled always with a color distortion on the wide end and the girl that lays extra elongated pointy eggs. I may never know though, because as soon as there are 14 Buff Orpingtons including Cogburn or his descendant, the rest will go to freezer camp and my eggs will be boring, but my flock self sustaining.

February 3, 2014
Home Again

This past week was one of my visits to Northern Virginia to aid with childcare for L (eldest grandson.) As RT (eldest son) had driven my car up there on Christmas to get their gifts home and to have some transportation for a month. Living in that area and on near a Metro line, they don’t own a car. Where they can’t get on the Metro, they go on their bicycles. If it is too far for that, they just don’t go. On Friday evenings, L has his guitar lesson for 30 minutes and RT manages to get their grocery shopping done and they load it all on their tandem bike or take the bus home. Having my car makes the whole process more convenient.

Because of the car already being there, I went up on the Amtrak train out of Lynchburg. It will be more convenient when it comes into Roanoke. I generally take the MegaBus, but there were no seats available on the day I needed it. The train ride was an interesting experience, I haven’t really ridden a train since before Jim and I married and prior to that taking it to college. For some reason, the train car was so hot, I stripped down to my t-shirt and slacks, but I wasn’t sharing a double seat, so I just piled all my snow layers in the seat beside me. Having not slept well the night before due to worrying whether we would be able to make the 109 mile drive in the snow that fell that night and having to get up at 3:30 a.m. to make the trip, I spent a good part of the 4 hours dozing.

Normally, L and I try to find outings together, but he opted to go to the School Aged Afterschool Care program one day to go roller skating and didn’t feel well the next day. Yesterday, he, RT, and I planned an outing to Chinatown in Washington DC to watch the Chinese New Year’s parade, fighting the traffic to get there and realize it was today instead. We used the time we had put on the parking meter to get some lunch in a Chinese Restaurant (surprisingly one of the only ones in Chinatown) then did the art scavenger hunt in the Luce Foundation part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

This morning, my car loaded, and breakfasted with bagel sandwiches made by RT for us, I pointed my car home and had an easy trip with little traffic and no bad weather. That is supposed to begin later with a bit of everything predicted this week, rain, ice, sleet and snow and one model showing us getting our first major storm this season with 18″ or more of snow. That will shut us in for a few days.

I enjoy my trips to help them, but am always glad to be home to my own schedule, our bed and routine.

February 2, 2014
The Compact Traveller

I have always been a minimalist when it comes to packing. This began when I was a backpacker and whatever I needed was carried on my back. I am a tallish, thin woman, not Charles Atlas and did not want to tote around 35 pounds of gear, it leeched my stamina and left me at the end of the day with a headache. My solution was to learn ultralight backpacking and when I gave up that activity after my sons grew beyond scouting age and our Old Farts group disbanded, the practices I learned spilled over to suitcase packing. For the three years that Jim and I commuted across the state to see each other every few weeks, the travel to visit and help out with one of our kids, our annual ski trips and most recently, our cruise and then the trip to Mexico have been in one carry-on suitcase. My preference is a small hard side suitcase except when skiing where I carry a two compartment case that holds my boots, two changes of quick dry ski wear from skin out, ski pants, gloves and helmet. Incidentals on those trips go into another case shared with Jim.

As the process has evolved, there are items that live permanently in the case, a small stuff sac with a USB charger port that holds 4 cables for phones, tablet and camera; a travel clock, book light/flashlight combo, a hand wash clothesline. Also there is a quart zip bag with a bar of my handmade soap that is used for body and hair, a Toob brush that is a toothbrush with a small tube for toothpaste or toothpowder inside, a widetooth comb for my long hair, and a deodorant stick, none of this needs to be removed for TSA checks. There is a pair of folding ballet flats for slippers and a fleece that rolls compactly. When I am ready to pack, the climate is considered. If laundry facilities are in question or will cost, quick dry layers are packed that can be hand washed and hung overnight to dry. Rarely are there more than 3 under layers and shirts packed, one change of pants, a skirt if dress up is needed and a sweater.

With this bag I carry a leather tote with my tablet, phone, wallet, a shawl or scarf to be used as a pillow, blanket or shoulder cover on a train or plane, or as a shoulder cover in a restaurant, a solid lotion bar, my knitting project and my camera.

When the northern Virginia trips are scheduled, half my case is packed in doubled insulated grocery bags of frozen chickens and venison for their freezer.

My minimal packing allows for the packing of these supplies for their family and I returrn home with a lighter case.

February 1, 2014