“I got lost
In the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind
all these words
I hear in my mind
All this music
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart
Breaks my
Heart
Breaks my heart”
This is about all you’ll see of the pigs when it’s cold, unless it’s feeding time. They burrow down in the straw, way in the back of the Port-a-hut. The Port-a-hut sits on the south side of the corncrib and is surrounded by large, stacked up cornstalk bales on the west side. Most animals seem to handle the cold pretty well as long as they have protection from the wind.
This morning it was 6 below, not sure what the wind chill was. When I heard the weatherman say, “The cold weather will arrive this weekend”, I thought…what? You mean this isn’t it? But Sunday’s high – if you can call it that – is going to be zero. So it should be a good day to stay inside and watch the Bears win the Superbowl 🙂
Rafe’s toys in the snowed-over garden, waiting for the spring thaw when the digging can begin again.
Bitter cold again today, with wind chills from 20 to 30 below. The kind of cold that can literally take your breath away.
Patti had warned me that Muscovy ducks might not be the brightest of the animal kingdom.
The temperatures plunged this weekend, with highs in the low single digits and windchills at 20 below. When I went out to feed and water the ducks and chickens this morning, I had my usual 10 ducks plus the one little brown hen with the speckly white chest that’s been hanging out on the creek with New Drake. But no New Drake, and I figured he was a goner after last night’s bitter cold.
I went back out at noon with more hot water and there in the shed with the rest of the ducks was New Drake, looking like a big ducksicle. Clumps of ice covered his entire body, making it hard for him to even move. There was an especially big clump covering the top of his tail feathers.
So I grabbed him and carried him back to the house, tucked under my arm, careful to keep his wings pinned against his body. The garage attached to the house has a heated floor and we keep it about 45 degrees in there. I figured it would be warm enough to defrost him.
As soon as I got him in there he started picking at the ice on his back and wings, preening and grooming himself. And pooping all over my garage floor. Oh well. Every once in a while he would stretch up and spread his wings, flinging bits of ice around.
It took about 6 hours, but he finally got defrosted and dried off. I took him back to the shed with the other ducks and shut them all in for the night. Hopefully New Drake will stay put until spring.
And I thought this was supposed to be the “quiet” time of the year!
A short but exhilarating ride
Matt is sure to make a pile of snow for the kids to sled down and tunnel through. The trickiest part of Olivia & Rafe’s adventure was keeping the sled from sliding down before they were both in it.
When there’s no snow, they sled down the piles of woodchips.
Ava stops eating snow long enough to pose for me.
Not feeling very verbose tonight, just tired. I have to be up extra early tomorrow, to go to the middle school and accompany band students as they practice for their solo contest in a few weeks. They each get 15 minutes with me, and I’ll play straight through from 7:30 to 1:00. (Some of them double up, if they’re playing the same solo.)
This started last year, Madeline’s first year of band (she plays the flute). I told her to ask her band teacher if it would be all right for me to accompany her for the solo contest. My mom always accompanied me, until I got into high school anyway.
The response was, “Yes it’s fine, but she wants to know if you’ll accompany the whole fifth grade.”
11 ducks have finally smartened up and spend their time in the vacant broiler shed, though they were all on the creek today (but 5 came when I called them!) 2 still camp on the creek. I found my favorite drake frozen at the side of the creek. That leaves 6 missing, presumed dead and eaten.
Yesterday I was in the mood for a good old-fashioned Sunday dinner. I cut up a couple of chickens, set the breasts aside for later in the week, and made oven-fried chicken with the dark pieces. We also had baked potimarron squash, scalloped corn and broccoli, and a huge pot of mashed potatoes. It was a really good meal, with all of the main ingredients from the farm. Naturally I proceeded to eat myself sick.
One of the reasons I made a huge pot of mashed potatoes was so that I could make Golden Potato Soup tonight with the leftovers. This is a really fast and easy soup, perfect with a green salad and bread, great for a quick weeknight supper.
Golden Potato Soup
(slightly adapted from More With Less Cookbook)
Chop 1 onion. Saute in 1/4 cup oil.
Blend in 2 T. flour and 2 t. salt (I find it easiest to do this if I shut the heat off first.)
Add 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and boil 2 minutes.
Add 4 cups milk, 2 cups mashed potatoes, and 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese. Stir and smash/blend the potatoes in. Heat just until cheese is melted – do not boil.
That’s it, simple!
The snow has ended for today. Haven’t heard what our total accumulation was, but it looks to be about 4 to 6 inches. Best of all, the wind hasn’t picked up so it’s really pleasant to be out and about. Tromping through snow to do chores is a good workout.
We knew it was coming, so yesterday I got the chickens and ducks bedded down and hauled feed out so I wouldn’t have to do that in the snow. Matt was sick, so Madeline and I fed the calves their corn. They get two five-gallon pails of corn a day. Olivia fed the boar & gilts and filled the cattle watertanks. I hooked the trailer water tank up for Madeline, and she pulled it up to the house with the tractor to fill up and then out to the pigs (where she had to knock the ice out of their trough with a hammer first). Chores are much less of a chore when there’s teamwork involved.
Olivia and I discovered a hen that had gotten herself stuck under a piece of fence panel that separates the cows from the calves. Looked like she had tried to squeeze underneath, but only got halfway through. I pushed on the bottom of the fence and Olivia pushed and pulled and wriggled the hen until she was out. Still, she wouldn’t move. So I tried to pick her up and found that her feathers were frozen to the ground! Kind of like pulling off a bandaid – just had to pull her free real quick. I carried her out to the coop and she was eating and drinking and walking around just fine.
Canon Rebel XT, 50mm lens
This is “Salmon”, our Salmon Faverolle roo.
(Original namers, aren’t we?)
He’s the lowest roo in the pecking order, and yet he’s most likely the highest maintenance bird we have.
Sunday I was headed back to the house after doing chicken chores. Ava ran over to the stack of round bales and was sniffing up Salmon. I hollered at her to get away from him, and then realized that Salmon wasn’t running away. So I went over to investigate and found that his foot was tangled in a shredded piece of bale tarp.
(Sorry, Ava. Good dog for alerting me.)
Back to the house for a pair of scissors. As I started snipping away the tarp fibers from his foot, I saw that he also had a piece of feed sack string wrapped around his foot. It had tied together two of his toes, and really constricted another toe. So I got that snipped and unwound, too.
Finally he was free. And promptly hid himself amongst the round bales, humiliated.
Even this time of year, when it seems there’s not much going on around here, something’s going on.
