Snowmaggedon

 Well so much for thinking that Winter was over and Spring was on it's way.  The snow started yesterday morning, and has finally stopped about 10pm tonight.  It was windy here much of the time, so there is a lot of drifting.  This was the gate into one of the chicken fields.  I had to climb over the fence to get in and then dig the snow away from the gate.  Quite a little pile there on the left.

Gates everywhere were inoperable.  This one we just forced open enough to get through, and then tramped a path to the coop.

Someone got hold of one of the apples for the sheep and chickens, and almost got buried by the snow as he lay on the patio to eat it. (There was a melted snow flake or two or three on the lens.)

At times there was some icy rain mixed in with the snow, and lacy pattern developed on the window.

It was rush hour at the bird feeders.  The red wing blackbirds have arrived again, and they seem to empty the feeder in no time.

A Hoary Woodpecker came for the suet

Always a pleasure to see the noisy, colourful Stellar's Jays.

And there are loads of the little Juncos.  David calls them the executioners (the black hood)

It's marmalade time, so the birds have kept me entertained through the kitchen window while I've cut up lemons and Seville oranges for marmalade.

Each batch of prepared fruit sits in a bucket with some of the water the recipe requires.  In the next day or two I add the rest of the water and cook it all for about an hour and a half until the peel is soft. Then I freeze it, and then do the last step of adding and cooking with the sugar, as I need it.  Making marmalade is a three stage process.

For a change of pace in the afternoon, we broke in a couple of pairs of snowshoes that David had bought for any of us to use.  I'm pretty sure that it is the first time Larry and I have been on snowshoes. 

 Not much of a learning curve.  Put them on so the extra strap length sticks to the outside.  I did that wrong, so had to switch them to the other feet.  Don't step on one snowshoe with the other snowshoe.    Crash.

 That's about it.

Come on Larry, hurry up!

We plodded out to the back field.  Poor dogs, the snow was so deep, they were struggling.  They really wanted to go out front, well except for Jake.  They quickly realized that it was much easier for them if they stayed in line behind me and walked on the snow I had packed down a bit.  There was probably a bit of drifted snow out there, although the drifts weren't obvious.  I measured in one spot and it was 18 inches deep.

Because the temperature was close to the freezing point, the snow made massive snowballs on Luna.  They were all over her chest and back legs and groin area.  Tucker had his share too.  Jake wasn't too bad, probably because he didn't ever venture into the deep virgin snow.  And Chy the Husky didn't have any snow balls stuck to her.  Makes sense I guess.

Cute snow puppy Tucker.