Spring Is Coming!

Yesterday, we started tapping maple trees because the weather forecast for the next ten days shows perfect maple weather.   

DAY	DESCRIPTION	HIGH / LOW	PRECIP	WIND	HUMIDITY
TODAY FEB 11	PM Light Rain	47°22°	80%	S 9 mph	88%
MON FEB 12	Mostly Sunny	32°10°	10%	NW 9 mph	61%
TUE FEB 13	Partly Cloudy	36°28°	10%	SE 7 mph	56%
WED FEB 14	Cloudy	46°40°	20%	SW 11 mph	79%
THU FEB 15	AM Showers	51°31°	30%	WSW 13 mph	88%
FRI FEB 16	AM Snow Showers	34°15°	50%	WNW 15 mph	74%
SAT FEB 17	Partly Cloudy	33°23°	10%	WSW 12 mph	41%
SUN FEB 18	Mostly Sunny	45°35°	10%	SSW 12 mph	47%
MON FEB 19	Showers	43°32°	60%	SW 9 mph	70%
TUE FEB 20	Rain/Snow Showers	39°28°	40%	W 7 mph	69%
WED FEB 21	Rain/Snow	38°29°	40%	W 8 mph	64%
THU FEB 22	Rain/Snow Showers	41°30°	30%	WSW 7 mph	77%
FRI FEB 23	Partly Cloudy	41°27°	20%	W 7 mph	74%
SAT FEB 24	AM Rain/Snow Showers	40°27°	40%	WSW 7 mph	64%
SUN FEB 25	AM Rain/Snow Showers	38°24°	40%	W 8 mph	64%

Temperatures will be mostly above freezing during the day and below freezing at night.  These are the perfect conditions for the sap to run!

Why does this make me so happy?  Because I know spring is coming!  Once the first few trees have been tapped it becomes an inexorable march towards weather that is too warm for collecting maple sap!

The very first tap of the 2018 maple season!

Some trees even produced a little bit of sap.

Lady Bird's first maple season - a great opportunity for her to wear off lots of energy!  (I told you she was  pampered!)

Behind the maple season comes crocuses and then there will be daffodils and green leaves and gardens and baby animals.

Spring is coming!

Snowshoes On A Winter Day

Yesterday, like most of the northeast, we got dumped on by snow.  

We're in the holding pattern now waiting for spring to come, so there's not a whole lot going on at the farm.  I'm planning my garden - a smaller one this year because I'll be growing for just my husband and me.  Both of our children will be off on their own life adventures!   

 Right after Thanksgiving of last year, my dear daughter left for the Air Force and my dear son plans to join as soon as he graduates high school in June.  They're both following family tradition as my husband and I were both in the Air Force.  You can bet we are some proud parents!

  

The snow piled up and I finally had a chance to try out my new snowshoes!  I bought them last year right as the snow started melting...   

...so I was excited to give them a try!  What a joy to get out in the peace and quiet of a new snow!  I've been entirely too housebound lately as I can handle some snow, but the bitter below zero temperatures leave me huddled in front of our wood stove.  

An interesting thing I found about snowshoes - balance is very important!  As I lifted my foot to take the first photo, I staggered a bit and in trying to catch my balance I realized that in snowshoes, you can't just quickly move your feet, and toppled over.  No injuries, just mild embarrassment as I looked around to make sure no one saw me thrashing around in the snow as I got up.

The dogs welcomed a run outside.  Our old lab, Daisy, particularly loved it as she finds the heated house a touch too warm for her and literally wallows in the snow.

This will probably be the last time I take the old miniature schnauzer, Petey, on a walk away from the house.  He's the oldest of our dogs and seems to have become very confused lately.  We'll take a walk and he'll wander off on his own.  He's deaf and can't hear me calling him (either that or he's ignoring me).  Fortunately, we have neighbors who know him and bring him back home.  For safeties sake though, he'll be a homebody from now on.  

Our new vizsla puppy, Lady Bird, welcomes the chance to get outside and burn off some her inexhaustible amounts of energy.  Ladybird is our new hunting dog... a very spoiled hunting dog who sleeps with us and is quite pampered.      

We're starting to keep a close watch on the temperatures because maple season is just around the corner.  It's hard to believe, but very soon there will be maple sap flowing from these trees and into these lines!

The snow laid heavy on the hemlock trees and I wonder what make these rubs on the trees.  Is it a buck rubbing his antlers?  Or something else?    

  

The farm clock ticks slowly now, but I can feel it pausing to take a deep breath before it begins to speed up! 

Eating Like A Pig

You've heard the term "eat like a pig?"  I always thought it was because pigs eat a lot and get fat and being kind of messy.  But eating like a pig has to be based on the way pigs eat!  

Not a pretty sight!

This is our girl whom we hope will be farrowing (the piggy term for giving birth) in the near future!  

Always Look Before Reaching Into A Nest Box

We haven't had a lot of eggs with the shorter winter days, but I still check because every once in a while I'll have one or two and it's so frustrating when they've frozen!

However, I learned that is imperative to visually check the nest box before you reach your hand in there. 

It always, always makes my heart skip a beat when I see the flash of very white teeth just before I check for eggs.  That isn't feathers you're seeing.  It's the fur of an oppossum!  The bugger snuck in there and found a nice cozy spot for a winter nap!  Luckily I found him before he ate the head off of one of my chickens.    

Winter Gave Us A Wonderful Little Respite

Although the current temperature is 11-degrees and it feels like -4-degrees, yesterday's temperature was 59-degrees.  What a wonderful little break!

It gave me a chance to do all those "little" outside chores without it being absolutely painful!

✔  The outside Christmas lights put away.

✔  Horse stalls and chicken coop completely mucked out and laid with nice clean warm bedding.

But the very best part of the day was walking out to check on the bees and hearing lots and lots of humming!

  When I got to them they were flying all over the place!  This is a wonderful thing to see because you may not know it, but bees will "hold it"  all winter.  They will not pooh in the hive!  This quick little break of warm weather gives them a chance to go out and pooh (and when you look in the sky above the hives you might actually see them doing it) and it helps reduce the chance of them coming down with nosema, a kind of "dysentery" in the spring.  Funny thing, I remember an old beekeeper telling me that you never want to site your clothesline near your beehives because those mustard colored droppings are very staining!     

Source

We're back to winter with lots of snow, but wow the break was great!

Like Stepping On A Golf Ball

Road apples, horse buns, horse pucky, horse chips, horse hooey and horse apples.  

There are lots of names for horse manure. 

But I can tell you, stepping on a frozen road apple is just like stepping on a golf ball... and hurts just as much!

Some Days You Get The Worm And Some Days The Worm Gets You

As everyone knows, we are dealing with incredibly harsh weather today and tomorrow!  When I look at the weather for my area, I read that the temperature is 3-degrees and feels like -16-degrees!  Yesterday, our local schools canceled today's classes!

We've done all we can do to keep our animals warm and cozy.  Extra feed, extra bedding, blankets on the horses, giving them good shelter, etc.

This morning I looked out and I couldn't really see how much water was in the horse trough, but it looked like maybe it was a little low and I decided that my horses probably could use more water.  Surprisingly, they drink almost more water now than they do in the summertime!

We have an outside water hydrant spigot that is about 60 yards from the heated horse water trough.  In the wintertime, I put together a number of "Magic Hoses" to reach to water trough at the barn.  I can then put all the "Magic Hoses" in a five-gallon bucket and store them in the basement so that they don't freeze.  

When I was filling the horse water on the day before yesterday, one of the hoses developed a pretty significant hole and I forgot to pick up a new one while we were in town.  Ah!,  I thought, I have a spare "Magic Hose" hanging in the garage!  So I removed the broken hose and replaced it with the new hose.   

I then filled up my water buckets for the pigs and fowl (which I haul to them in a big log sled) and then attached my hoses, turned on the water and started dragging the running water end of the hose down to the barn.  It was then that remembered why I didn't use that hose from the garage.  It's about eight feet too short!  So I trudged back up to my broken hose and dragged it down to the other end to try to see if I could make it limp along enough to fill the horse trough. 

By the way, this was all being done in -16-degree whipping winds...AND when I got to the 100-gallon horse trough I found that it was about 3/4 full but I had started the horse watering process anyway!

Nope, the hose was far too damaged to work.  Water shot out everywhere at the connection.  

The horses had enough water to easily get them through until tomorrow so I trudged back up the hill to turn off the hydrant spigot so that I could let the hoses drain and put them back in their bucket when I go inside.   

I finished all of my animals chores - got everyone fed, watered - made sure they had adequate bedding, etc. - and trudged up the hill with my sled with its empty buckets. 

The hoses hadn't completely drained!  And the first hose was frozen to the spigot!  I thought that maybe if I ran some water through the spigot it would thaw the hose fitting.  It did not because the water that hadn't drained out of the hoses had frozen the spigot and now the water wouldn't turn on!  

I trudged into the garage, got a pair of pliers, and removed the hose.  Then I pulled the frozen hose together as well as I could and jammed it into the five-gallon bucket.  

I hauled the hose bucket and the pliers into the house and filled another bucket with warm water.   I hauled that out to the spigot and poured it over the spigot until it thawed and the water ran freely.  Thankfully the water started because I don't know what I would have done if it didn't! 

It's not always beautiful vegetables and cute and happy animals on the farm...

...Some Days You Get The Worm And Some Days The Worm Gets You!