Tag: snow

Winter’s Roar

Our winter has been unusual to say the least. Until a couple of weeks ago, I think the temperatures had been above normal with occasional snow flurries, a few barely covered the ground snow falls that didn’t last. Then things changed. We haven’t seen daytime temperatures rising above 20° (-6.7°c) and night time temperatures near zero (-17.8°c) in more than a week. On Saturday, we were expecting flurries and got several inches with sharp temperature drops. We had driven in to town to a nice restaurant to celebrate our 37th Valentine Day and Anniversary and the drive back home was a white knuckle ride.

Yesterday we took Son#1 and Grandson#1 to the bus to return home from bringing my car home and a weekend visit and it was brutally cold and windy, wind chills in the double digit negatives.
There were severe weather warnings posted for today and the school makeup day that had been scheduled for today was canceled.

We woke to the expected snow. So far about 5″ with the heaviest part of the system due this evening and overnight. We may be looking at a foot or more with extremely cold temperatures and expected to drop to -10°f (-23.3°c) Thursday night. We aren’t used to that type of temperature. Our firewood supply is running low and our heat pump is struggling.
My chooks won’t come out of the coop when there is snow on the ground and with the temperatures as they are, I didn’t even open the pop door today. I have gone out 3 times to change out the frozen water, twice to throw down a scoop of feed into the straw and collect the eggs before they freeze.
Our neighbor has two very pregnant cows and we saw her go down to check on them before the snow cover got too deep. Our steep gravel road will be difficult to traverse in a couple more inches of snow. I hope the cows don’t calve before we have a moderation in weather back to around freezing this weekend.
The grands are playing in the rec room, I am knitting, reading, and cooking stew and homemade bread. A good way to spend a frigid snowy day.

February 16, 2015
Winter Disappointments

By this time in winter, we have seen several snowfalls. Sometimes a dusting, others a real snow, but this winter has been mostly rain or freezing rain We went to bed last night listening to the dire warning being issued in the Northeast USA and a forecast for snow to fall beginning around midnight and accumulating up to 5″ here in Southwest Virginia. We awoke to no snow on the ground, no snow falling and broken clouds. Granddaughter hoping for snow later in the morning but wanting to wear her short sleeve, frilly “Frozen” dress, created a most interesting outfit.

Her leggings are black and white with zigzags, hearts and other patterns, the boots as you can see are black and pink with multicolored polka dots. She was ready to go out.

Daughter has commented that she needed slippers and warmer taller socks to wear, so we decided to venture out early to return something we purchased yesterday on our girls afternoon out while Mountaingdad and Grandson went to a movie. We also were seeking socks and slippers for her. Did you know that slippers are an item like gloves that are purchased by stores for Christmas and are not available year round? We finally found her a pair at the third store we tried.

While we were out, the chickens were free ranging, but when we returned home a bit after noon, she and I lured them back to the pen so the dogs could wander. Our dogs don’t mess with them usually, but their Golden Retriever by nature wants to chase them and barks at them even if he sees them coming and going from the coop. When we went to lock them up and check for eggs, the coop smelled damp and too strongly of ammonia. My two large round bales of hay that were set aside for coop use this winter and garden use in the spring have gotten wet and moldy and can’t be used in the coop anymore. The local feed and seed had square bales of straw so I drove in to purchase two. We are due for more very cold weather and I have already seen some frostbite damage on Romeo the rooster’s comb, so I had to do more cleaning than just adding layers to the coop and stirring up the layers. Trying to leave at least some of the composting layer in the bottom, most of the hay was shoveled out and tossed into the run and into the compost bin, including the nesting box hay. About a third of a bale of straw, clean and dry put a nice deep layer in the coop so hopefully the gang will stay warm and dry in the upcoming cold.

Though I don’t like to put food or water in the coop, I have been tossing a handful of scratch into the coop in the late afternoon to encourage the chooks to keep the bedding stirred up and broken down and the corn they eat helps them stay warm.

I guess the spoiled hay will be used to keep the run drier and less muddy and in the spring to mulch the garden. I hate having to buy straw when we harvest 80 to 100 round bales of hay each spring. Next year, I will find a better way to store it.

This afternoon, it has begun to rain off and on with a snow flurries expected as the temperature plummets to the teens tonight. More is expected later this week and weekend, just as I have to ride a bus to Northern Virginia to babysit Grandson #1 and pick up my car from Son #1 who has been using it for a bit.

I really hope we have at least one good snowfall for the kids.

January 26, 2015
Snow play

Today we have a dusting of snow and frozen drizzle from over night. Enough to make the roads slick and close schools again, but not enough for real snow play. Granddaughter’s only other snow was when she was months old and being worn in a carrier by her Mom. After breakfast and chicken chores, we bundled her up and I took her out on the deck for some snow play.

The only place we could accumulate enough snow to “play” in was on the back deck. The snow was too dry to pack into snowballs but it stuck to her mittens like it was velcroed, but she had a blast and was so excited.

Such fun for this little Florida born cutie.

January 14, 2015
Dreariness

It is cold and raining. Not the biting cold of last week, that is due again tomorrow, but cold enough to make procrastination on outdoor chores inevitable. I cuddled in bed with my book until the Shadow, the German Shepherd was dancing cross legged by my side of the bed, Ranger, the big guy still lazing on his pad on the floor by Mountaingdad.

It is wet enough that the pups didn’t want to stay outside very long, not long enough for me to finish prepping their eggs, so they hovered around and behind me while I cooked. The recalcitrant hens producing barely enough eggs to have for home use and as I used one of yesterday’s 3 eggs to make cornbread last night for a meal we shared with our recently widowed neighbor after the Pipeline Opposition meeting, there were only two to cook this morning. Once I carton a dozen and put them in the refrigerator for neighbors or friends, I leave them alone and only use from the bowl on the counter. This left me with no egg today, but I had leftover cornbread, a wedge lightly buttered and toasted in a cast iron skillet is a treat to be savored, with or without an egg. The pan was heating to cook the pups eggs, so I got my cornbread first.

With the house critters (including me) fed, it was getting harder to stall about layering up in gumboots, coat and gloves and finally making the wet, chilly walk over to let the chooks out and to feed and water them. Their sloped run, bare of a single blade of grass and with the hay scratched and washed off was as slick as ice. It is too wet to uncover the big round bale of hay to throw more down at the gate, hopefully later it will quit raining long enough to accomplish that task. Their coop hay tossed to loosen it up for insulation and turned to facilitate the deep litter composting that produces heat for them, their feed served in two metal dog bowls to keep it from being trampled into the mud and a quick check of nesting boxes for cleanliness and I found a surprise.

Three fresh, warm eggs to keep my hands warm as I slogged back to the house. I haven’t seen morning eggs in weeks and am luck to find 3 or 4 cold eggs in the evenings. It would be nice to get back to going out and finding more than I can carry in without a basket, but maybe not until springtime.

If it is going to be wet and cold, it should at least be white. I’d settle for the mountain snow flurries that fall for days on end with no real accumulation, just the dusting on gardens, roofs and cars. Cold, rainy winters remind me of winters on the coast, you are supposed to have snow in the mountains. I know, I should be careful of what I wish for, we may find ourselves snowed in without power later in the winter and we haven’t laid in wood for the stove and fireplace, having only a bit left over from last year. I suppose we should set in an emergency supply at least.

November 17, 2014
Olio – November 13, 2014

Olio: a miscellanous collection of things.

My blogging goes through spits and spurts, sometimes my creativity is just not there, or focused on other issues. As the winter sets in, I am more content to sit and read or knit, sometimes both at the same time, if my book is on my tablet and my knitting is mindless. I have been going through books at a record rate lately, some of them not worthy of mention, but several quite noteworthy. The Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline fascinated me. The period of time related to my Dad’s young life and I recommended it to him and my stepmom. They both loved it too and set out on some research to see if her grandfather was one of the orphans. He was an immigrant orphan, adopted in that part of the US. They are still trying to prize out information for her, and her mother’s maiden name happens to be Baker. The Glassblowers, Petra Durst-Benning, a translation from German totally enthralled me. A loose historical fiction of the glassblowing village of Lauscha in Germany and three young women as they struggle to survive and break the gender barrier to create some of the earliest blown glass Christmas ornaments. Another good one was The Light Between Ocean’s, M. L. Stedman, a tale of love, loss, and deception, set at a lighthouse off Western Australia.

This is Yellow Cat, a sickly intact male barn kitty that rarely goes to the barn, spending much of his day on our front porch. He is a rescue that was born with Feline Aids and can’t be neutered because every time we try to take him to the vet, he has a rhinovirus attack. He is pitiful, wheezes like Darth Vader, but is loving, friendly with the dogs, and keeps most of the mice out of the house by his presence. He was enjoying the 5 minutes of morning sunshine we had on this brisk cloudy day. We certainly aren’t suffering the cold and snow of parts of the country, but the temperature is 20 degrees below normal for this time of the year and we are having snow flurries and very cold in the teens nights.
On my way to my spinning group today, riding shotgun for hubby, I finished knitting granddaughter #1’s sweater. The ends are woven in, it has been washed and is blocking on the downstairs bed. I can’t decide whether to use plain buttons the color of the sweater or go looking for something cute and three year old appropriate. I guess I’ll decide that tomorrow. I still have two kid sweaters to get done by Christmas, then I will get back to my own sweater.

I did get some spinning done today. My arthritic right thumb has been noncooperative lately and so I have only played a bit with the Turkish drop spindle, but today I spun on my wheel. Though I’m not a fan of pink and am not sure why I bought fiber that color, the darker purples and grays are making an interesting single.

Loving life on our mountain farm.

November 13, 2014
Arctic Zone

Yesterday was cold and wet, rain at our elevation, snow about 800 feet above us. With the cold was wind, stripping the gold and red leaves from the trees that had not lost their leaves yet. A good day to stay indoors, but it was Farmers’ Market day and if we were to have meat this week, other than chicken, a trip to town was necessary. We dallied, not leaving to have breakfast as on most weekends and knowing that there was a home game at the University in town, an attempt to try to miss the traffic seeking to find parking on side streets or failing that, paying $10/car in church lots or people’s yards. Home games are madness in our little town as the university is huge and the alumni dedicated, even in a cold rain. The market was done, the vendors all thanking us for coming out in such nastiness, but we came home with ground beef, stew meat, onions and radishes, still having greens in the garden and a bit of the last salad in the refrigerator. Our usual meat vendor wasn’t there, so I was unable to get the ground pork that I wanted to make a stuffed pumpkin this week, unless I can find a package in the chest freezer. Or perhaps, I will make a pumpkin, chicken curry in a pumpkin shell, there is plenty of coconut milk and red curry in the pantry.

Once home, the winter squash picked over the prior two days were toted down to the root cellar in the basement, two big canvas sacks at a time, many, many trips up and down the stairs. The shelves look ready to provide well this winter.

Pumpkins, sweet potatoes, garlic and canned goodies. This is what is left after loads to northern Virginia and what is upstairs in the pantry. The freezer stocked with green beans, peas, apples, chicken and a bit of pork and beef stockpiled from weekend trips to the Farmers’ Market. Our favorite meat vendor toughs it out at the market on all but the worst winter Saturday’s throughout the upcoming winter.

As the wind blew last night, and the temperature dropped, our power failed. Quickly gathering up the battery lanterns and flashlights and tossing a down blanket on the two quilts on the bed, I settled in with my tablet that had a good charge and the ebook that I am currently reading. Fortunately, the power only stayed out a couple of hours and we were awakened by the TV and lights coming on and the computer printer doing a self start, though it had been powered off before.

The morning dawned an hour earlier, thanks to the time change last night from daylight savings time. Yes, I know, an extra hour to sleep, hmmmph, I awake with the sun and get up once awake, my body doesn’t just switch gears like the clock. As I let the pups out, I realized that we were seeing our first snow flurries and the lightest of dusting on the ground and decks.

Mountain snow showers are a common occurrence, rarely amounting to anything, whenever there is moisture in the air and the temperature below freezing. The freeze last night, the first freeze burned back the pumpkin patch and the bean patch. The greens look sad this morning but will perk back up as the daytime temperatures rise above freezing.

After feeding the chickens and breaking the ice on their water, a walk through the ruined patch revealed as I suspected, several more pumpkins. The largest, not damaged ones gathered and brought in, like I really need more in the house.

Happily, several of them were Buttercup squash. A couple were tossed into the chicken pen and the rest left to be gathered in the garage or thrown immediately to the chickens over this week once the wind dies down and the temperature rises to a more comfortable range. This was the first morning that I had to don the heavy barn coat to go deal with the birds.

The peppers that were gathered prior to the expected Arctic chill have all been processed, the tiny jalapenos sliced and frozen, some used in last night’s chili with cornbread for dinner. The small bell peppers, sliced and frozen, the ripe habeneros packed whole in freezer bags, the green ones set in a bowl to ripen as you can see they are doing. They too will be bagged and frozen. The tiny hot orange pepper that I still haven’t identified, was pureed with vinegar they had been soaking in for the past few weeks and a Tabasco-like sauce made that a single drop burned my mouth for an hour. The rest of them are ripening on the upside down plants in the garage. The tomatillos that we gathered were rid of their husks, washed and packed whole in freezer bags, another 3 pounds to be used in Pozole this winter. A chicken, some tomatillos, a bag of dried hominy soaked, a handful of Mexican spices and a hearty soup to feed a small army is made.

We are lovin’ life on our mountain farm and now must accept another winter is upon us. We were lucky this year, we got an extra 2-3 weeks before the first frost.

November 2, 2014
A Spring? Morning

The morning sight. Yesterday we awoke to it snowing and quickly providing ground cover, but not so much on the roads. The temperature hovering right around the freezing mark, thick gray clouds and we were driving an hour east to take my Dad who had been visiting for a few days, back to meet my step mom and her cousin who had been in a hotel there for a Garden Club conference. By afternoon, the sun was breaking out, the snow melted, but we continued to have bands of heavier snow that really weren’t accumulating. It was still near freezing at bed time and the mountain wind had picked up. Apparently it decided winter wasn’t quite over yet in spite of the calendar, because this morning we awoke to the snow cover and this

It is supposed to be springlike again by week end with rain and thunderstorms, but today is a winter day. Yesterday the chickens would not come out of their coop until they could see the ground and then they fled back in when it started snowing to come out back out with the sun.

This morning, they were confused and again did not want to leave the coop. I kicked around the straw so they could see it and since their ramp was clear, most of them came out to get food and water. When checking for eggs, I found this

The Delaware on the bottom, trying to lay her egg and a huge Buff Orpington trying to move her over so they could share the box. Maybe she thought they would be warmer that way. There are 5 other boxes, but interestingly, the 9 hens often all use the same box or the one at the opposite end of the row, rarely is there an egg in one of the middle 4. Crazy chickens.

Life is always an adventure on our mountain farm.

March 26, 2014
Stay Indoors weather

Our winter storm didn’t fizzle as we hoped, nor did it give us pretty snow. Instead we are encrusted in ice. The cars look like someone poured water over them in a deep freeze. The yard is white and slick. The chicken coop run has hay on the ground that has 1/2″ of ice on top. The chooks aren’t happy. I finally went out with a pitchfork and turned as much of it over as I could so that they had a place to stand and eat as they came out of the coop and practically knocked each other over trying to get back inside.

The weather prognosticators have extended the weather warnings “until further notice” with more ice, possibly freezing drizzle, maybe snow for the next 36 hours or so. But they are predicting 61ºf by Friday, it is 27ºf now and has been since I got up this morning.

This is a day to stay indoors and read, just finished Jefferson Bass’ latest novel Cut to the Bone. I am a fan of forensic science novels and found this to be a good read. It is the prequel to the Body Farm series. And to knit, still working on the sleeve. I hate knitting sleeves, they are so boring. Once I finish this sleeve, there is a feather and fan band to pick up and knit and I will have another sweater to add to my wardrobe.

This is Virginia, it is time for the winter to go away and bring us some springtime, though last year, we had light snow for 5 Fridays straight right up to mid April. This winter is wearing on us.

March 17, 2014
Late Winter

Skeletonized trees frosted with snow.

Cedars wearing white cloaks.

A smelting furnace from 1872, the remains sitting beside Sinking Creek.

Yesterday, we hunkered down and watched it snow again. The predicted amount did not materialize, fortunately and we only received about 4 inches. Last night it turned very cold again, but is slowly warming to above freezing and not dropping too low tonight. With a bit of straw turning in the chicken run, they were coaxed out to their food and water this morning and the coop opened up to air out. A bit ago, I found a supply of Buff Orpington pullets, so now a short road trip is in order to collect them and a harvesting date needs to be set with son, to cull out all of the hens of other breeds to allow us to have a self sustaining flock of heritage birds. I may still sneak an Easter Egger or two in the coop just for the fun of finding their colored eggs.

March 4, 2014
The Return of Winter

Spring is coming, we know it is by the flocks of robins, the few springlike days we have had in the past couple of weeks. The past two days have exceeded 60ºf ), absolutely delightful weather. The weather encouraged outdoor time, to clean the chicken coop, to give them free range time, and to allow Jim to take a jaunt on his motorcycle.

Yesterday afternoon it clouded up and by evening, it was a steady cold rain with the temperatures beginning to drop to the current 28º (-2º) and headed for tonight’s 8º (-13.33º).

By the time I awoke this morning, the rain had turned to sleet, then snow. The snow is falling steadily and accumulating.

The weather prognosticators are warning us of 6 to 12″ of snow, depending on which source you choose to believe. I’m hoping for a much lower amount and a return to the weather of the weekend, but it looks like winter is back and here to stay for at least another week. I’m ready to do more than think about the spring garden. Instead, I will knit and spin, make a warm comforting stew for supper and sit tight.

What I’m knitting, Beaucoup in Happy Feet, a light baby sweater for a spring baby, and Honey Cowl of Green Dragon Terminator color is Heat Wave.

March 3, 2014