Christmas 2016

Christmas has come and gone once again.  And you know, it's only another 360 days until the next Christmas!!  Bet you can't wait!

We had a nice time with our immediate family.  We had to do a bit of sharing, so all of us weren't together until after mid afternoon.  Just in time to squeeze our Christmas photo shoot in before we lost all the light.  We definitely had a white Christmas, but snow levels were quite variable in Abbotsford, so for many people it would have been a bit of a stretch to use the adjective 'white'.  I think things evened out on Boxing Day though.  We sat in our neighbour's living room, in front of the fireplace, and watched the most beautiful snow come down all afternoon.  Unfortunately it turned to rain later in the evening, and once again became a soggy mess.  Meredith got her car stuck in our driveway, but didn't want to drive home on the snowy roads anyway, so ended up spending the night.

So here's the Brandsons, the 2016 version.

We are down one doggy member this Christmas, but have gained a couple more.  Left to right.

Meredith, David and his girlfriend Melissa, Larry, and your's truly.

 Four-footed members are Shy on the left (Melissa's dog),  puppy Tucker (David's Christmas present from Melissa), Jake and Luna.

David has been in England the last six months, doing an internship with Rolls Royce in Chichester.  He has decided not to return to England after Christmas.  He left Rolls Royce on good terms, being told he was the best intern ever in his department. He will be back at university for his last semester in January. 

    

Jake found Christmas exhausting.  Some new toys and they all had SQUEAKERS!! 

Little Tucker found Christmas exhausting too!

On Christmas Eve he arrived in Santa's sleigh an airplane from the North Pole the cold Cariboo. Melissa got David to the airport, totally unsuspecting.  At the last minute she handed him a little package that contained a collar and a leash!  The rest is history as they say. Tucker is mostly Australian Shepherd, with a little Border Collie thrown in for variety. He is three months old.

(Just in case you are wondering, David has been wanting a dog for quite a while)

And Tucker is a little cutie!  Nothing phases him, or at least no more than a second or two.

B*itchy Luna gets after him sometimes, but he bounces right back and tells her what he thinks, yap yap yap!

He offered to help her out and uncover her soccer ball

Shy is the only one to play with him so far, and she is very good with him.

Tucker and gang are visiting Oliver for a few days. 

It's so peaceful here again ;-)

Larry and I got all the chicken coops cleaned out this afternoon.  Between the snow, wet slush and short days and long nights, the chicken coops get messy really quickly.  It's an ongoing job.  I'm really looking forward to some snow melting so that they can get out and about more.  Looking at the forecast, that doesn't seem like it's going to happen in a hurry.

Christmas Eve

On Friday we got an unexpected snowfall.  The temperatures were above freezing, and rain was in the forecast, but instead it snowed. This morning (Saturday) it was all very pretty.

The sun just coming up

It started out mostly cloudy

The sky was starting to break up to the south. Looking over our hay field to the neighbours.

To the east there was blue sky. This is our old riding ring and the horse shelter back there.  Luna abandoned her ball and she and Jake took off on a hot scent.

Jake

More blue sky to the east, and Luna.

There's a trail through there somewhere.

We'll let the Yeti go first.

Loving that blue sky!

It froze overnight, so the snow was not heavy and wet.

Looking across the back hayfield.  See the fog bank hanging back there.  Glen Valley and the Fraser River are to the north of us.  We get the fog rising up from there sometimes.

Makes me think of a Bev Doolittle painting.

And by the time we were done, the fog bank had rolled back over us.  No more sunshine for us today.

I'd like to wish every one of my readers a very Merry Christmas.  Thanks for hanging in there through the blogging dry times.  

All the very best to everyone in 2017.

Baby It's Cold Outside!

Well winter is still sticking with us. It has been quite cold, at least compared to our usual temperatures.  Looks like next week we will get some more snow and then a warm spell and it will probably turn into an awful slushy mess.

Yesterday morning we were heading out for our bush walk.  Jake looked really uncomfortable, like he was hurting.  When he stopped his back legs were trembling.  I had an idea, so ran back to the house and scrounged up a few booties.  Calli used to use them on her back feet, which dragged a bit, when she was still able to get around on her own.

Hence the pink boots.  Not that Jake cared, but they did the job.  I had done a very good job of clipping all the extra hair from the bottom of his feet, because he is older now and 'worries' about the slippery laminate floor.  The lack of hair helped him in the house, but made for cold feet outside.

This picture is on our afternoon walk, that we take most days.

A mile walk around the block that starts at the bottom of our driveway.  It wasn't quite as dark as it looks here, but I wanted to get the pretty sky.  It was downhill here and a bit icy.  I think Larry is probably slipping a bit right in front of our eyes!  And Luna, she is way off, that dark spot in the ditch, above and to the left of Jake.

This after noon we went down to the dyke.  This is about 3:15, and the sun is just about to drop behind the hill.  The days are depressingly short.  That's Larry walking with the dogs on the lower trail.  We had dropped down there to get past other people with dogs.  A fellow stopped to warn us about a large dead smelly salmon further along, that a few dogs had already rolled in. Yuk!  That is not a smell you want in your car.

Jake and Luna ran ahead to the swimming hole.  They THINK they want to fetch something out of the water, but really they wouldn't.  In the photo above where the creek is wider, you can see the ice on it.

The sun disappeared fast and it started to get cold very quickly.  The scenery was lovely though.  Looking across the blueberry field.  Just after this photo, an eagle flew into one of those tall trees, to join another that was already there.

See those two black dots in the tree on the right?

We also saw a couple of herons, one flying and one standing in the water, brrr.  There was a seagull on the creek that kept sticking it's head under and pulling pieces of dead salmon off the bottom.  At least that is what I think it was doing.  There were two coyotes on the other side of the creek further along.  Last week I was walking down there with a friend, and saw one of those same coyotes.  It was quite distinctive, being a darker colour and a good size (maybe a coydog?) and last week it did a lot of the classic coyote barking.

Last week.....Staring and barking back at the coyote....Luna, Breeze, Jake and Lexi.

Sure looks different to this week!

We Have Winter

We haven't had much of a winter for a few years.  We usually get a few frozen spells, but it feels like it's been a while since we had much in the way of snow.  

Our snow started on Monday of last week.  Not much, but enough to make things interesting.  Or maybe frustrating, in Luna's mind.  How on earth is a girl supposed to play soccer with all that wet heavy white stuff sticking to the ball?

Click on the link to see her.

video

  We had some cold sunny days, and then last weekend we got more snow.  I think this was from Saturday morning.  By Saturday afternoon we had about 6 inches, and then it started to rain.

We got a bit of freezing rain, and there were quite a few smaller branches that came down.  Thankfully on Sunday morning when we were heading to farmer's market, the weather was just cold and cloudy, and the roads were good.

Sunday night we got some more snow.  So back up to 4 or 5 inches.  Today the sky started to clear, and we had some lovely blue skies and sunshine.  There are some pretty impressive icicles at the front of the house.  Drifting snow filled the eaves troughs, and then the just above freezing temperatures and the warm air from the attic created by the heat from the chimney caused some  melting.

Yesterday's walk through our bush was beautiful, but I hadn't taken a camera.  It wasn't quite as pretty this morning as some of the snow had fallen off  the branches, but still nice enough!  There was a frozen crust under the surface of the snow, and I don't think Jake liked it because he stuck pretty close.

Lots of rabbit and bird tracks.  Funny, I don't remember ever seeing any rabbits out there.

Jake has made his own route to get up the hill from the creek.  The cattle in the Fall made a mess of the trail here.

Looking across our back hay field at the old horse shed.  Look at that sky!!

Down through the old riding ring.  Did I ever mention that at one time we had four horses?

Looking  south across the other hayfield, and the our neighbour's pasture.

Some of the hens hanging out with Ramona in her leanto on the side of the chicken coop.

The hens aren't impressed with this weather, but they know how to warm up their feet.

Sheep's wool slippers!

Something Fishy

Today was the annual 'Fishermen Helping Kids With Cancer' herring sale.  Like last year I volunteered to help.  Last year I spent most of my time opening the plastic bags that the herring were put into.  This time when I got there I found out I was down for pushing wheelbarrows.  Okay, I do lots of that at home, and could probably do it for a little while.....Anyway, another fellow came along and got a group of us organized, and in the end I was the next stop after people had paid and were wanting to collect their bags of fish. I took their tickets (one per bag) and got them connected with someone else that helped them get their herring. There was a whole bunch of people with wheel barrows and big cart things that would push your load of herring to your car.  Some of those cars were parked a long way off.  

I heard there were 65 tons of herring.  That is a LOT of fish.  People were lining up from 4:30 am.  This is just some of the people lined up inside.  There are actually pathways that snake back and forth across the building.  It took at least a couple of hours (or more) to get from the start of the line to the end.

And the line went outside as well.

The bags were supposed to hold 20 lbs, and cost $15.  One fellow bought 35 bags!  Surely he wasn't using all those himself.    

There were more volunteers than were needed.  I was there at 8:30, and about 10:30 someone came along and asked if I needed a break.  I didn't really, but decided to take one and go buy my own herring.  The advantage of being a volunteer is that I could just skip the whole lineup.  So a young woman wheeled the four bags to my car (three for me for dog food, and one for a friend who said she wants to make pickled herring).  I weighed those bags when I got home, because I could tell some had more in that others.  The lightest one was 16.5 lbs and the heaviest was 25 lbs.  Oh well, all the money goes to a good cause!  My friend is not getting the heaviest one, but I didn't give her the lightest one either ;-)

So now I was out of a job, so I wandered around to see if I could help anywhere else, but no one wanted a break.  There were seagulls everywhere.

Look at the roof!

More seagulls!

I wandered over to the bagging shed, but the girl doing my job (haha!) didn't want a break either. 

I spoke to my fisherman neighbour Bob, there on the right, tying up a bag.  He said we should have carpooled (the drive was 50 minutes), but then he admitted that he had just got there, so that wouldn't have worked.

The herring are dumped on a conveyor, and then come down to the end and fill up a box. A door is opened and they fall in the bag underneath.  A pretty good method but it does allow for some variation in how much goes into each bag.  There is no way that they could weigh each bag, it would just take too long.

That background noise is the seagulls.  We used to call them shit hawks when I was a kid living in White Rock.

I am feeling very pleased with myself that all my 60 pounds or so of herring got rebagged at home and into the freezer. ( I am very good at acquiring large quantities of things, and then procrastinating on processing them). These big square bags from Dollarama worked perfectly.  A layer of herring, zip the bag mostly shut, put another bag on top, fill it with a layer of herring, and repeat.  The top bag forced most of the air out of the bag underneath, which was then zipped closed.  They were carried on the cookie sheet to the freezer, and it was easy to slide the whole lot off onto the top of the previous bags.  This way it is easy to break them apart when I want to feed one to each dog.  I just put them in a bit of warm water for a few minutes, and chomp chomp down they go.

So when that lady comes to the market tomorrow, oops, which is now today, and she's upset because I didn't get the Mango Chutney made, I 'll tell her what I did instead. 

Lousy excuse, oh well, I am so ready to be done with the jam making for a while.

I'd better get to bed, the alarm is going off in 5 and a half hours.