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.