A Day in the Snow

It was a real suprise to get up on Sunday morning and see everything covered in snow.

It was gorgeous though.

Waiting for the sun to come up

Sun's, up just hitting the driveway trees

Putting the sheep out.

You want us to go where? There's water in the way, we're sheep, we don't 'do' water...

Oh frick, here's Luna, 

Water, heck no problem, we're on our way....

Winter wonderland

Where little boys/grown men/Sasquatches frolic in the snow

Dogs too:)

Then Jeff called to see if we wanted to meet for a walk, he suggested Sumas Prairie again

There was one doG awful wind blowing, straight from the north pole it seemed.  Some of us tried walking backwards to see if it was any better.

Merdith took over with the picture taking, she was working on her photo of the day.

And eventually Larry looked like he was searching for a bank to rob.

The dogs didn't care about the wind though

And another dog joined in the chase

Jake went to that dog's owners and convinced them that they needed to throw a stick for him

Pippin and Luna found a long stick, that got shorter and shorter the longer they tussled over it

And Jake was just waiting until they dropped it so he could grab it and bring it to one of us

It was much warmer walking back, with the wind at our backs.  

More blueberry fields for Connie

Cottonwoods at the little park were we left our vehicles

And the moon high in the sky just before 5pm back at home

Despite the wicked wind, we had a great walk, and Calli handled this one just fine.

Can Hardly Call it Flooding

Yesterday we got that lovely break in the weather about noon, so I suggested we go down to the dyke.  It was mostly because I had wanted to see how high the water was there.  Well it was flooded, as usually you can barely even see the creek at this point, as it is just a narrow channel over to the left, well down below the banks.  But since no houses and very little property was affected, the flooding really was minor. 

Of course by the time we got there the next system was rolling in.  I don't mind this weather so much though.  The clouds are much higher, there is some variety, it's not so oppressive as the previous two days.

It did eventually rain again, but not for the whole walk.

Towards the end it was clearing again, and the sky was breaking up.

This is the dogs swimming hole.  The water is at least 3 or 4 feet higher than normal, and really moving fast  through there.  See that wave on the left of the pilings?  Normally this is a nice quiet pool with a gravel beach on the right.

Calli and Luna look like they are waiting to see if we are going to stop, but thankfully none of the dogs seemed interested in venturing into the water.

I got frustrated trying to take pictures of the blue patches of sky.  Well either I could get the sky and the landscape was dark, or the landscape was okay and the sky was bleached out.  I suppose it didn't help that I was looking south. 

Can it be done?

So I gave up and just made the trees a silhouette. 

A little towelling off before heading home.

And a bit of a self portrait in the reflection of the truck window. 

Kind of interesting how it turned out, as it is a tinted window, and I certainly didn't look this bright to me when I was taking this photo.

All this picture taking with glass involved just points out to me another window that needs cleaning.

I think that bird poop is on the window, not my jacket.

I end up using the view finder most of the time, and not the back display, because to see the display properly I would need to put on my reading glasses.

Putting it in Perspective

On Tuesday it clouded over, after five lovely days of blue sky.  We were supposed to get snow.  The snow didn't come, we got rain instead.  It started Tuesday night and I don't think it has stopped since.

I can handle the rain, but when the clouds are just about sitting on the ground, and it is just monotonously raining all day and all night long, (well really, I don't actually care if it rains during the night), it can get a bit depressing.

But then tonight, watching the news, seeing and hearing about the flooding in Australia, fatal mud slides in Brazil, the ongoing flooding in Pakistan, it reminds me once again that we really have nothing to complain about.

This afternoon we donned our rain gear yet again, took all three dogs around the mile block, me in my fisherman rain gear and rubber boots, keeping toasty warm.  Stopping like a little kid to get water accumulating along the edge of the road flowing where it should.

Then we left Calli at home and took Jake and Luna for another mile and a half, this time trying to push ourselves a little bit, trying to work off a few of those holiday chocolates. 

Which, really, was all for nought, as I discovered half a box of brandy chocolates that had been put away on top of the fridge.  I ate 10 miles, running, not walking, worth of chocolates.

And because this kind of weather is not conducive to picture taking, all I can offer you are these, taken after our bush run this morning.

Here's to the sunshine coming this weekend!

The Right Tool for the Job

When you live on a farm and have animals, well you have to have fences.  In our lifetimes Larry and I have pounded in more fence posts than we care to remember.  And then sometimes you decide at a later point that it would be really handy to have a gate in that fence.  So I decided that a gate from the alleyway into the orchard garden would make life so much simpler.   This morning I decided to make a start on it, because I wanted to wheel some mulch (partially rotted horse manure and shavings) and put it where the rhubarb is planted, and hill up the blueberry bushes some more.  There is a gate at the bottom end of the field, but having to push the wheel barrow down to that gate, and then up the bumpy field was far too much work.  I thought about using the tractor while the ground was still frozen. In the garden there was a frozen crust but it was still soft underneath, so the tractor would probably get stuck, since it's not four wheel drive.

As it happened, there was a perfect spot to make the gate.  See that angled pole.  Well the fence used to end there, and that wood fence that the canoe is leaning on used to be 50 or so feet closer to the camera.  Yes, sometimes you put a fence in, and then a few years down the road decide to move it.  Fun, fun, fun,.....not!   Anyway, that meant that the fence wire was joined there, so all I had to do was undo it and fold it back.

That required the perfect tool for the job.  Fence pliers are like one of those multi tools.  You can use them as a hammer, or to pull fence staples out, or to tighten fence wire, or cut wire, or anything else you can come up with.  We've had these for nearly thirty years.  They really are the perfect tool.

It's the fence staples over the grey wire that I need to get out.

If the staple is sticking out enough, you can just grab it with the pliers like so.  If it's too embedded in the post to grab,  you put the pointed side of the pliers next to the staple, hit the flat opposite side of the pliers with a hammer to drive the point under the staple.  Then you put the top curved edge of the pliers against the post and pull the handles away from the pointed end, and then whole thing works like a lever to prise the staple out enough to grab like I said at the start of this paragraph.

Clear as mud eh!

So once you've grabbed the staple you pull the handles towards the pointed side this time, rolling the curved top against the post, and it pulls the staple right out.  Works like a hot damn every time!

There's always one staple at the very bottom of the post that is buried in the grass, and is inevitably the one the most pounded into the post, and the hardest to get at.

And always put your staples in a safe spot.  You don't want an animal stepping on one.  I thought this would be a good spot for the time being, but in the end I knocked one off and Larry was scrabbling in the grass to find it.  Pockets aren't a good idea, trust me.  I don't know how many times I've put them in my pocket, then put my hand in there and shoved one of the points up my fingernail.  Ouch!

And worse, when I was in my twenties and in the hospital having a patch of skin cancer removed from next to my eye, there was a girl in there having surgery because one of these fence staples had bounced out when she was hammering it in, and poked her in the eye.  They have deadly sharp points on the end.

Behind us the winter sun tried to break through.

And the manure shoveled from here, 

ends up here. 

Have you noticed that just about every time that Pride is in the background, Luna is right there with him?

Pride is not impressed.

Say Goodbye to the Sunshine

Well we've had a really great five days of sunshine, blue skies, ground with no mud, and a little bit of snow that has just about all disappeared.  Tomorrow afternoon  we are predicted to get some more snow, which will be fun when it first comes and then when it rains it will just turn into a slushy mess.

This afternoon Larry took Calli for a slow walk around the block.  She's been having a bit of trouble since last week when we met Jeff and Pippin for a walk on the dyke.  Her back end will give out on her every once in a while.  Larry said it only gave way a couple of times on the walk, so that is better than it was.  Since it was back to agility for the collies tonight, they didn't need to go.  Not that they wouldn't have wanted to of course.  I was playing around at pruning the pear tree, but said to heck with that and we went out in the hayfield and played frisbee and soccer.

 The chickens enjoyed the sun

And Jake thought it was great that there was a whole pile of sticks just for him to play fetch with.

Here's that young rooster, the one that hatched last summer.

He's very pretty, but keeps going into the field where the other rooster is.

The other rooster is much smaller, and came out the loser of their fight of a few days ago.  Time for the big rooster to go.

And down in the vegetable garden, which is in the shade of the trees at this time of the year, it is all cold and frozen and like a whole other world.

We planted those Douglas Firs when we moved here.  They were only about 3 ft high.  I guess we've been here a long time!

And that other New Year's resolution I was going to tell you about in a week or two...

Well I'm kind of excited about it, so I'll spill the beans.

I'm doing a 365 day photo project of something here at the farm.

Then I challenged Meredith to do one too, as she is thinking about upgrading to a better camera.

You can find our photos here:

http://365wyndsonfarm.blogspot.com/

http://ofrosesandrain.blogspot.com/

Clueless

Here we are at the start of a brand new year.

Unfortunately the time for this beauty is nearing the end.
It will probably be a slow process.  You know, grab an empty box, try to find all the ornaments that look the same and put them all together in that box.  I doubt we'll all get together and take the tree down with the same enthusiasm we put it up.  But, it will be nice to get back to 'normal' again, and Jake will probably be happy to have his chair put back in it's normal place.  The view is much better from there.


I did want to show you a couple of my Christmas presents though.

This cute little thing was on top of one of our gifts.  I saw it, but didn't pay attention to it, and didn't really clue in that it was a mouse.

Do you see what it was guarding in the nicely wrapped box it was attached to?

If you don't get it, well then you need to read this post.

It is the perfect toaster for us

Thanks Sue, Jeff and Pippin

Here's another one of my gifts.  

No, I didn't get a new padded bra or some implants.

I got a personalized apron from Meredith

Actually I got two! 

 I wear aprons all the time if am doing something messy in the kitchen.  Really though, I'm messy most of the time

And now that it's the beginning of a new year, it's time for a New Years resolution or two.

Besides the ubiquitous 'lose weight, eat better, be a nicer person, etc, etc ', I'm going to go with the two I made last year.  I have no intention of trying to keep them up all year long, but it gives me something to aim for at the beginning of the year.

The first one is to do one small cleaning job each day, that isn't really the everyday type stuff.  Something like cleaning out the cutlery drawer,  cleaning and sorting out things on a shelf.  Just a little job, something that might only take 10 or 15 minutes.  If I want to tackle a bigger job one day, well more power to me.  

Today I cleaned the computer keyboard.  It was pretty ugly gross.

The second thing is to sew $20 worth of something that I would sell at the farmers markets.  So that would be something like two aprons, or 3 shopping bags.  

My plan is to do these two things 5 days a week, on average.  So if I do two cleaning jobs one day, then I can miss a day along the way.  If I sew $100 worth one day, well then I'm good for the week.  I put a little 'S' or 'C' on the calendar for each job I do.  So a $100 of sewing would earn me five 'S's'.

I also have another resolution.  I'll let you know about that one in a week or two.

What about you, anything you are trying to stick with this year, or at least starting out the year trying to do?