Okay, so I’ve been taking pictures of food, snow, chickens, and such, to accompany the blogs I’ve been planning to post. Well, the best laid plans go awry, don’t they?
This morning IS the morning to dig through the miscelleous photos and notes and make sense, of it all.
The temp outside is
Can you read that? It’s -1.5! Brrrrrr! I put extra shavings in the doggie houses last night and hung a towel over their door openings to keep out cold air (they aren’t housebroken).
This morning I thought I’d be nice and let them in to warm up and visit for a little while. Well, they came in very willingly, ran to the woodstove, and Hattie laid down like a good girl. Blue kept pacing all around the house, rubbed on the rug in the living room, went through the bedroom, foyer, kitchen, into the dining room….I reached down to pet him and YUK! He had blood all over his face, neck, front legs……his ear was cut on the very tip and I got to tracing his steps back through the house and I sure am glad there isn’t any carpet in the house!
I took a towel, wet it, and cleaned him up as best as I could without putting him in the shower–they went back outside at this point. The next half hour was spent mopping up blood specs from ALL OVER the house. 3 throw rugs have been washed and the big rug in the living room has been spot-cleaned. So much for being a considerate dog mommy! I’m not looking forward to seeing how many spots are on the porches of the house 😦 His ear will be fine. Seems like those tip-of-the-ear cuts always bleed profusely.
The chickens HATE snow! I don’t blame them. Their little hairless feet and legs look really frigid on the frozen ground. Yesterday I made the morning trek to feed them and provide them some unfrozen water–they finished off the feed, grabbed a drink of water, and headed back inside the coop.
I snapped a couple of photos of the frozen farm along the way to the Empire of the Happy Hens……
This is a shot of the arbor (top not done yet) with the beginnings of the blue bottle “trees” at the upper entrance. This arbor has rosa rugosa, raspberries, hardy kiwi, muscadines, and one grape vine planted along the length. Just to the left is the beginning of an herb bed. So far, catnip and borage have been planted there, but rosemary, lavender, and other perennial herbs will be planted there when warmer weather comes around.
Here is a shot of the virgin fire pit–still waiting on a load of some type of pretty gravel to drop out of the sky to cover the weed barrier! I’ve wanted a place to have campfires AND am trying to get rid of the grass in the yard. Meanwhile, the fire pit covered about a 20 foot circle of grass and I like the way it looks too!
This past fall I planted 9 butternut trees, 70 raspberry bushes, 8 hazelnuts, 2 persimmons, 4 Chinese chestnuts, and 6 rhubarb plants in areas of the front yard that had been previously smothered and killed with leaves. Seems to be working great so far! I’ve got lots of leaves to play with, so the smothering shall continue when the weather warms a little.
Meanwhile, lots of projects going in the house…more to come later!
Wild Things Farm 