It's Winter!

Last week marked our first measurable snowfall. Our two day total was around 14 inches. Wednesday was a snow day for pretty much the whole state. After getting stuck a couple of times and encountering broken bolts on the four-wheeler, we managed to make it out of the driveway. Now, the temperature has dropped considerably and it's very cold. We had a slow start, but winter is definitely here with an exclamation point now!

Blackberry Jam!

The blackberries were especially big and sweet this year for some reason. We never planted these, they are just "wild" around our property in a couple large pockets. It seemed a shame to let them go to waste, so we tried our hand at making jam for the first time. I did the picking (thorn scratches and all) and Mayme did the jam making. It turned out great! We got seven half pints of delicious jam out of the deal. We look forward to trying again next year if the crop is good again. We also just got a Presto 23 qt. pressure canner. This will allow us to can things we couldn't before like soups, green beans, etc. We're looking forward to trying some new things this canning season.

First Egg

It’s Saturday and it’s raining, so it’s a lazy day around our house. I went out to check on the chickens this morning around 10am and found Gertrude in one of the nesting boxes. About an hour later Jason and I heard Gertrude come out of the coop…Ba gok, Ba gok, Ba gok!!! So we went outside and along with all the other chickens started heading to the coop to see what all the commotion was about. I had a pretty good idea, and there it was…our first egg. It’s small, about half the size of an average egg, but we’re told the more they have the bigger they get. We’re glad we could be home for the first one.

Chickens on the Roof

On Friday evening I heard something on roof and went outside to find all the chickens up there. Ella looked pretty proud of herself, I'm sure she was the instigator. They all few down about a half hour later. Poor Faye, never did figure out how to get up there.

Chickens gone wild

Well, we FINALLY got the outdoor chicken enclosure completed the other weekend. Seemed like everything took a lot longer than expected and we would always get interupted with other things going on! The chickens are getting much larger now and they were eager to get outside. They had no hesitation at all jumping right out the door and getting to work on eating all of the stuff they couldn't get to before.

Check out these photos and you can click on the video clip at the end as well to see some "Chickens Gone Wild" footage. You can see it took every ounce of self-control, along with constant verbal warnings from Mayme and I, to prevent Jake from getting a taste of free-range chicken! He seems to be doing better now though, but still very excitable. Lily, our cat, doesn't seems pretty indifferent to the whole thing. She's one smart cat and seems to know these gals are part of the family.

A new friend in the neighborhood

This year and last I would walk up to the ridge and hear the strangest bird call. Every time, I could only barely catch a glimpse of the culprit. Finally, this year I was able to get a closer look, but still could not identify the bird. After doing some online research, I finally figured out that it is a Bobolink. I've never even heard of that bird! Apparently it does come through Wisconsin during the early summer for breeding and has one of the longest migrations known. It's yearly roundtrip of about 12,000 miles takes it to South America for the winter months.

Here are some links for more information if you're interested:

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/MigratoryBirds/Featured_Birds/default.cfm?bird=Bobolink

http://macaulaylibrary.org/search.do (#10 on the list of audio recordings sounds the most like ours)

Meet the Girls

We'd like to introduce you to "the girls"; in the back row left to right, we have Faye, Matilda and Thelma. In the front row left to right is Nellie, Gertrude and Ella. Or is it Ella then Gertrude?



After tenderly loving our baby chicks for the first 10 weeks of their lives, Dave and Ginny packed up all six chicks into a cat carrier and personally drove them all the way to us from Nebraska. After their long trip, Dave and Jason got them set up in the coop with fresh litter, food and water. Then they made a small roost for them since they can't fly yet. They look larger than they are in this picture. Each is only a little over a pound.

I installed a small door off the back of the coop and put a screen in it so they could look out. In the coming weeks we'll build a screened in porch and a fence back there. Not only to protect them from coyotes and hawks but from Jake and Lily as well. Jake can't take his eyes off of them and Lily is pretending like she doesn't know they're in there. I'm sure that's her strategy so she can pounce when we least expect it. I held one of the chicks and bent down so Jake could smell it. I told him "gentle" and at that, he opened his mouth very softly and started to slowly close it around the chicken's tail.

So far all the chicks are safe and happy in their new home. We'll keep you updated.

Some old friends return

This morning marked the return of our old friend the Eastern Phoebe. This is one of my favorite birds and it's great to see them return. They eat insects all day long. Patiently waiting in a tree and then flying out just to grab a single insect and returning to the same branch to wait for the next flyby. Earlier this week the Bluebirds also returned and are carefully evaluating our nest boxes to pick the perfect one for them. Another great insect eating, these birds always hang out around our garden.

Seed sprouting

We're trying something new this year by sprouting our own heirloom seeds for the garden. This fall we ordered some heirloom seeds online in hopes of saving seeds from the garden. Hopefully this will let us be a bit more self-sufficient instead of going to the garden center and buying plants every year. Also, there just seems to be something wrong with hybrid seeds or plants that grow a vegetable that can't every grow again without another hybrid seed provided by the seed company.

We set up some shelves in a heated room in our barn with some full-spectrum florescent lights. We also cranked up the heater in that room to make sure it was warm enough for the seeds to sprout. So far, so good. Our cat Lily doesn't seem to mind that it's even warmer in that room now than it was before either! Some are growing so well that we'll have to transplant sooner than we thought.

A start on next winter

Just as soon as we survive one winter, we have to start to prepare for the next! The last couple of weekends, we worked on splitting our firewood for next season. Our neighbor was nice enough to let us borrow his wood splitter again.

Last weekend we had a few friends out to help, and this weekend we did some more, giving us about 1/2 of the wood we'll need for next year. Our efforts will be cut short a bit this weekend with some early Spring snow scheduled. A couple more sessions and we should be all ready for next winter!

The return of some old friends

Things are changing quickly in our neck of the woods. The last couple of weeks have marked the return of some of our old friends. The sandhill cranes, robins and red-wing blackbirds have all returned for the season. It's great to see these sure signs of spring in the air!

A beautiful sound

I heard the first return of the geese yesterday afternoon! They were landing in a nearby pond. What a great sound to hear. I thought they'd get a rude awakening this morning as we were supposed to get 4-6 inches of snow overnight and throughout the day. But this morning, we woke up to only 1 inch with the storm retreating the rest of the day. I guess they know what they're doing!

That's my kind record!

Today we're supposed to hit a record high of 55 degrees! After months and weeks of record LOW temperatures, this is exciting news around here. We're all getting spring fever and looking forward to things to come. Last night was the first night in a long time that it didn't dip below freezing. That's really good news for our driveway. Hopefully with the warm weather today and tomorrow we'll get down to gravel.

Next step is getting set-up to start some garden seeds indoors!

Yep...that's cold! But wait...

Last Thursday and Friday we dropped into major subzero low temperatures. On Friday, my work vehicle was saying -30 degrees below zero. Yep...that's cold! Now in a drastic turn of events, by tomorrow (one week later) it's supposed to hit 34 degrees ABOVE zero. Fortunately there haven't been any major snows during this time and it looks like we'll get a break for several days now. But wait...by the weekend, they're predicting highs in the single digits with lows below zero again. This is one winter to remember for sure!

Can you believe it?

Last week our driveway was a sheet of ice! After some warmer days providing melting and some light freezing rain, our 1500 foot steep driveway was definitely a challenge. We used 600lbs of ice melt to try and make a dent in it on two different times with a little success. I have a seed spreader that I can hook to my ATV to help get the ice melt spread evenly. I have another 300lbs waiting for the next emergency.

Close to the top of the driveway, we spread out wood stove ash from a 55 gallon steel drum that we empty it into every day. With 5 gallon buckets, we spread just on the tire tracks which helps a lot in providing a little extra traction when you start to lose momentum coming up the driveway near the top.

On Friday we received another 6-7" of snow. Ironically, there was a 15 mile wide area that stretched from Dodgeville to Madison that had the heaviest snow. Everyone else only got 2-3". I guess we're just lucky like that!

Today we are to get another 3-4" of snow, with more on the way for Wednesday. I'd be lying if I said we weren't looking forward to spring already.