It's Winter on the Farm...

The holidays have come and past and it's winter on the farm. We've just had our second snowfall of the season in a whirlwind of weather. Yesterday, we saw snow. We saw hail. We saw rain and then snow again. At times we had almost five inches, then two or three and then four again. The weather dipped down into the low 20's over night and we reached a high 28 degrees when I went out to feed the lot at 3:45 today. What is left is now about two or three inches of crunchy, partially fluffy glistening snow and judging by today's news report, it looks like its here to stay a day or two more. My father, who lives across the street, took 35 minutes and 10 trys to make it up his driveway to my house so I believe it's safe to say: we aren't going anywhere anytime soon and were perfectly happy with that! After being snowed in three weeks in previous years, its safe to say I properly stock up the house for all of us. From October through March, we always have at least three weeks plus of rations for all members of our house: whether human or not!

Here's the homestead around 1:30 or so when we arrived home from running a few last minute errands and stocking up for the weekend on Wednesday.


It was snowing so hard that in the fifteen minutes or so it took to empty the car, my tracks were gone. And oh my, was it fun getting home too! I have a van and we were sliding (and even burned some rubber) getting up the hill that day. Just ask the kids - they were so scared! The little one even wanted me to stop so she could walk up, silly girl. Honestly, I would have if it wasn't for the fact that if I stopped, I would have never of made it.

And here is what it looked liked around 7pm or so, about 4 compacted inches of snow, rain and hail. There was about two inches on the roads, but it was also nice, crunchy and compacted. All in all, not fun stuff but it sure looks pretty!


And with the snow, we used the opportunity to try out Mama B's new winter coat. It is technically a foal coat, but there is no such thing as a "goat coat" so this works. Unfortunately, it's still too big so I think I will start looking for a mini-horse coat. Mini horses tend to be the same size as goats so we will see. And yes, that is duck tape you see. With it being to big, it kept coming down in the front and she would trip. It's pretty funny that the first thing I grab was duck tape to help me, but hey, duck tape solves everything right? Every household she have duck tape if you ask me! LOL In any case, it works great and Mama doesn't mind! :-)


And here are a few more pictures from today (Thursday Dec 30th)at feeding time around the farm. You can tell it's frozen and cold as the animal pen is not muddy like it usually is. I made a few "chicken hills" around the yard as the chicks do not have anything to dig. My chicken hills are a mound of orchard grass hay that I feed all the animals with that has some chick feed with a touch of scratch in it. They love these mounds and gives them something to do during these cold days.