Snow!!

Early morning snow on the homestead. Here you can see the coop with one rooster out looking for scratch. Behind the coop, you can see a big apple tree and a slightly smaller pear tree. On the far right, one row of blackberry brambles are visable.

So, aparently, snow is an oddity here. Actually, I guess we do get the occasional snow dusting...it's the week long temps that won't break the freezing mark that has everyone baffled around here. Personally, I LOVE it! I was so afraid that our move to the PNW wouldn't afford me days like today - snow on the ground (that squeaks underfoot when you step on it), temps in the 20's and crystal clear sunlight. Ah...the beauty that is winter...

The view across the street as the sun was rising - and the iceslick that we call a road.

I could do without the 2 inch thick ice coating all the roadways though. It took me over an hour to drive the 19 miles to work today. And if you count the time it took to warm up the car and remove all the snow (our garage is not in use as a garage at the moment), then it probably would have been faster to bike here. Of course, that would probably mean certain death with the way people handle driving in this weather...so there really is no winning. Ah well, I made it here safe and sound eventually.

So this weekend, in anticipation of this cold snap, we took a few cold weather precautions. The first is that we installed the temporary floor in the chicken coop and sealed up all the cracks. I'd cut a floor out of heavy cardboard (gotta love those 'dish pack' boxes from the moving company!) a couple of weekends ago. I installed in on Saturday and covered it with pine shaving bedding. While I did that, my H used that expandable foam sealant to seal all the openings along the corners where the boards meet. These two tasks now ensure that our chicken coop is warm and comfy.

Snow just beginning to fall on Sunday morning. You can kind of see the foam sealant oozing out of the corners of the chicken coop.

In prep for the cold temps, we also fired up our oil furnace for the first time this year. We wanted to make sure that it was working properly before we actually needed it. The plan is to use it as a back-up only. We will still heat the house for comfort with the woodburning stove...the furnace is there to keep the pipes from freezing in the middle of the night. With normal PNW temps, this would not be a concern, but because the nighttime temps will be in the teens this week, the perimeter of our house (where one of our bathrooms is located) is subject to temps that are just too cold when the stove goes out. The thermostat is set to 55 F and is located in the center of the house. At 55F in the middle of the main room, the outlying walls will still remain above 32F - even in these cold evenings. We also made sure to stack the wood in the house high enough to last through the 'storm'. I also made a point of scouring the yard for all fallen branches and dumped them in a bucket in the garage - for kindling. I did it so that they would dry out - I didn't even think that I'd need to do that because they'd be covered with snow by Sunday night!

And so it begins...this was taken as I was milking the goats on Sunday morning.

Sunday Projects

We had a nice long list of projects to complete today, but to be reasonable, we prioritized them and expected that not everything would get done.

First order of business was to skim some more milk. We now do about 8 quarts at a time as I just don't have the storage containers for more than that. We moved the separator from the workbench in the basement up to the 'desk' in the kitchen. This made a HUGE difference in the 'dread factor' as the process is MUCH easier when it's in the kitchen and I won't be dreading the next batch when the time comes. Bascially, we have to warm the milk up to 100F. I do this while my H assembles the unit. Then while he's turning the crank, I pour 4 quarts of HOT water into the feed bowl. As H turns the crank, this water flows through the unit to heat up all the machinery.

Hot water running through the machine to warm it up for the skimming process.

Then, once all the water is out, I pour the warmed milk into the feed bowl. When the crank is turned at a consistant speed, we get cream out one spout and skimmed milk out the other. While this is going on, I have to keep track of how full each contatiner is getting so that we don't overflow anything. We end up with 2 half gallon ball jars of skimmed milk, one half gallon pitcher and a little more than a quart of milk to freeze. We also get about 2 cups of fresh cream. The last batch went towards making butter (which is delicious) and this batch will go towards making ice cream later this week.

Milk getting separated: skimmed milk on the right, cream on the left

We also had 'working on the chicken coop' on our list for today. While I cut a pattern for a light floor out of cardboard, my H began work on building nesting boxes. We have 12 chickens, so we need 3 boxes (4 per box). We suspended the boxes in the coop so that they were essentially using 'wasted' space. We are also going to put down a heavy duty cardboard floor next weekend. We are waiting because we are still 'collecting' the chicken poop for the garden. Once we move it off the garden, we'll install the floor and fill it with shavings. This will allow the coop to get a little warmer now that winter is moving in quickly. The floors will not be permanent, so come next spring, we can remove them and start the rotation around the yard once again.

Nesting boxes - filled with pine shavings and ready for eggs!

Lastly, I continued work on winterizing our row garden area. We've already covered the entire area with quite a bit of chicken poop by methodically moving the coop across it, one week at a time. Then we covered each poop-laden area with either soiled hay from the goat shed, or with leaves from the apple trees. Lastly, we are laying cardboard over everything. We figure that this will allow moisture to soak in, but it will retard the growth of grass and weeds. In the spring, we'll remove the cardboard and get to planting.

Row garden area: back left is covered with black plastic from last summer (to kill weeds), back right (near white posts) is garlic planted under pine straw mulch. The front left is where the coop was last - still needing straw or leaves before we cover with cardboard. Right front is the area that we covered today.