Monday, December 30, 2013

Winter wonderland

Some nice photos of the farm so far this winter. Click on one to see all as a slideshow. I've been enjoying the outdoors, mostly clearing snow and ice, but also walking the dogs and looking after the animals. Indoors, it's time for crafts. Aimee is knitting by hand, and I'm using the knitting machine.


A sparkly day just after the ice storm. Sheep are happy in their barn.


Down trees on the snowmobile trail.


Pine needles seem to attract more than their fair share of ice!


The neighbors very hungry cows wait for a hay bale. They're eating frozen tree tips from the down tree above, after the neighbor sawed it up and heaved the branches over the fence. The bale will come eventually, but only after the access road is plowed and the neighbor brings a truckload over. Must be hard to keep warm with an empty belly.


Flamey stops running for a second to contemplate the cows. She's not sure what to make of them, but as they seem big and scary and don't seem to want to play, she'll soon lose interest.


Ernie breaks the snowshoe trail. If only he'd stay on it and stop deviating into the woods, he'd be a help.


The cows follow me home, saying, "Can we come how with you and stay with the sheep? We like barns and oats and  hay and sweet feed too! We'll be nice to the sheep, promise!"

One of these days they'll realize they can just hop across that silly bit of hot wire and show up in our dooryard to ask for for a handout.


Snoeshows in various states of experiment and repair. I long ago switched out the bindings on the traditional ones for some heavy-duty plastic ski-mountaineering bindings from the seventies or eighties, and they work well, but the cheap aluminum and plastic snowshoes can't handle the cold. The plastic long ago began to crack, so I fixed it up with some duct tape. I like the metal ones for certain snow conditions --- they're lightweight and have good crampons -- but I think they're going to have to be replaced with some better ones.
 

A child's hat I knitted up on the machine. The machine itself in the background.


"Selfie" with smurf hat, also knitted up on the machine this year.


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Welcome to our Farm Blog.
The purpose of this blog is for Aimee and I to communicate with friends and family, with those of our students, and other folks in general who are interested in homesteading and farming activities.

The earliest posts, at the very end of the blog, tell the story of the Great Farm, our purchase of a fragment of that farm, the renovation of the homestead and its populating with people and animals. Go all the way to the last post in the archive and read backwards from there to get it in chronological order.

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