Spring Is Coming

Yep, I'm sure it is . . . but when? We got 8-10" of new snow early this week. It left all our roads packed with a combination of ice and snow which isn't even thinking of melting with our cold temps. In town even slowly moving vehicles are sliding through intersections. Out on the back roads and highway, there's no chance of stopping should a deer chose to cross in front of you.

This is our driveway just before coming into our back yard area.

Random woods shot showing plenty of snow yet. (Can you see the crocus peeking through? Oh, whoops, I'm delirious.)

The front yard looking at door to greenhouse . . . nuthin' growing in there right now . . . br-r-r-r!

Maisy, our granddog, visiting. She says, "Wouldn't be so bad out here if it weren't for that stiff breeze.”

We're thankful for a day of sunshine today but we do have a biting breeze made all the more noticeable by our high temp of only nine above. And to think one year in Illinois I planted peas and potatoes on March 20th, just eight days from now. Our country certainly offers a variety of climates to choose from, that's for sure.

There Are Challenges . . .

If you read my daughter's blog (This Is Our Life on my right side bar under Blogs I Visit), you'll know that her most recent post prompted me to relate the following. She's been having trouble with a pine marten occasionally stopping by her chicken house/yard and helping himself to some chicken for dinner. Unfortunately, these small creatures will also get into a poultry house and slaughter every single bird they can get their hands on, and leave the carnage behind, seemingly doing it for sport rather than to satisfy hunger.

We keep a few chickens here on our homestead mainly for the eggs but we also butcher and process the older, no longer laying hens for stewing meat. About every other year, we start a new batch of chicks in the spring that grow over the summer months and start laying in the fall.

A few years ago in early spring, it was time to start this process once again. It was so cold out when the chicks hatched they spent their first several weeks in a chick nursery in the heated garage until it was warm enough and they were big enough to go outside into a special, small chicken house we use for raising new birds.

This little abode is separate from the main chicken house and set in a fenced in grassy area. At that time, it had a chicken wire flooring about six inches off the ground through which droppings could fall onto the grass below. The structure is moveable so that we can move it every day or two. This way the droppings don't pile up in any one spot.

At the time of our disaster, it was then autumn and the new pullets were about a month away from the time they would start laying. We had somewhere around 12-15 new hens and two proud roosters in the little house.

On the day of this story, we were down to one vehicle for some reason. Our truck must have been in for mechanical work because I took Roy to work that morning so I would have the availability of the car during the day.

Upon returning home around 7:30 that morning, I went directly out to the field area to let the pullets out onto pasture. They would hear your footsteps coming and get all excited about being let out. This morning I immediately knew something was wrong because there was not a sound coming from the chick house. Not a sound. There was a small chicken door on the front that we latched up in the morning and closed for safety at night, but the whole roof also lifted up for ease in cleaning. That was what I lifted when I got to the house.

Grand carnage. Blood splattered all over the walls, roof, everywhere. And every single bird dead.

The mistake we had made was the chicken wire flooring. A pine marten had dug through the dirt underneath the house and torn the chicken wire to shreds in order to get to the chickens.

Lesson learned. From now on, any structure we've had birds in, whether it be starter house, big chicken house, winter solarium, broody hen house, etc., we've made sure the entire bottom is lined with heavy, substantial, tightly spaced welded wire. Tough lesson to learn, but we haven't had any trouble since losing that whole batch of pullets.

Sick Computer Update

As you can see by the entry below, my posts are still coming up a little wonky. But at least I can get them to post and thanks to my husband and some support help, my computer isn't ailing quite as much as it was yesterday. We'll keep working at it.

Firewood To-Be

We had twelve cords of maple in 8 foot lengths delivered to our backyard yesterday afternoon. Both of our wood sheds are going to end up very close to empty after this year's heating season, and one of our first projects for this spring is to get them filled again so the wood has time to season and dry before next fall. Biting the bullet and purchasing this logger's truckload hurt the homestead pocket book but will expedite tremendously the time spent getting next year's wood ready. Actually, these twelve cords should last a good bit more than a year's time for us.

Can't you almost read Roy's mind as he contemplates the stack? "Dang, I wish this was all cut, split, and stacked in the wood sheds.”

We'll hit it as soon as the snow is gone (and before the bugs come out) and be all the healthier for the exercise it'll give us working it up. (Golly-gee, I can hardly wait for the fun to begin.)

P.S. You can see my postings are still coming out a little wonky, but at least I can post, and thanks to my husband and some support help, my computer isn't as sick as it was yesterday. We'll keep working on it.

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!

My husband loves coffee. I mean he LOVES coffee. Because he's health conscious he's not someone who drinks it all day, but it's those first two cups in the morning that make his life worth living and the other one as a pick-me-up around three in the afternoon that keeps him alive and alert and happy for the rest of the day.

He blames his love of the stuff on a good friend of his mother's, "Aunt" Rosemary. A memory of visiting at Aunt Rosemary's house when he was about five years old stands out in his mind. The ladies were having a chat over coffee, and he asked if he could please have a cup. (I've always suspected he was a precocious little bugger.) Aunt Rosemary dutifully poured him a cup of milk and added a dollop of her good, strong coffee. Roy says that was it for him. There is simply something in coffee that his body needs and cannot function without. But it must be good, strong, full-bodied, well-brewed coffee.

In Roy's lifelong quest for the "perfect" cuppa joe, he asked his daughter and son-in-law for an old-fashioned percolator coffeepot last Christmas. Of course, our daughter (who inherited a good dose of her father's "research" genes) found a nifty little stainless steel number that now gives him his requisite two cups of wonderful coffee each morning.

This perked coffee has turned out to be of such excellent quality that he decided we really should have a bigger percolator pot that would brew more cups at a time, in order to serve company. So he found this old Revere Ware pot on eBay that turned out to be in dandy shape.

I just love the looks of this coffeepot . . . so sturdy, so 1950s, so forever!

Even though I'm not a true, pure, coffee drinker (both my parents were big-time java lovers and often said they wondered if my brother and I had both been switched in the hospital at the time of our respective births because neither of us ever cared for the stuff), I do like my homemade latte most every morning. My little, cheapo espresso machine provides that one luscious cup of foamy milk laced with a little coffee flavoring which is just fine for me. But I sure do delight in the smell of Roy's perking coffee wafting through our house each morning now. I don't think you can get a better coffee aroma than from a percolating coffeepot.

Ah, yes, it truly is the little things in life. Or perhaps it's not such a little thing when you enjoy coffee the way my husband does. Take time to smell the roses? Absolutely. But don't forget the percolating coffee, too.

Big Trouble in River City

I'm having trouble posting an entry today and having other difficulties with my computer in general. I'm suspecting I have some sort of an ugly-buggly bug so if I disappear from the scene for a while you'll know my computer is in sick bay.