paper chain

Did you guys make one of these when you were kids? I'll bet you did! I know we did. Once at least, and I think my Mom still has that chain,even though it's at least 30 years old at this point (probably older). I KNOW that my Dad and brother regularly try to sneak "junk" like that from our childhood onto Mom and Dad's tree every year, just to drive Mom nuts. In fact, I'm going to try to take a photo series of some of the more memorable of those artifacts to share here this year.

Anyway, I decided that it would be a fun project for J to make a paper chain for our tree this year. And I wanted a bright and colorful project yesterday to prevent me from whining about this:

Yup, you guessed it, another storm! In this picture (of Annie, comfortably out in the elements sporting her new waterproof blanket -- Happy Holidays, Annie!) it was sleeting. But at various times it's been sleet, snow, and/or freezing rain, sometimes (when we were REALLY lucky) all three at once. It started somewhere around 3am on Sunday morning and finally was tapering off by bedtime that night. (Of course, today it is ridiculously cold and outrageously windy....) But rather than moan and groan yet again (you can read plenty of that sort of thing here and here), I decided that our tree decorating was a more blog-able topic.

J picked up on the technique and we quickly hammered out a nice long chain... (Truth be told, *I* did most of the chain-making, although J hung in there for awhile. Zoo Boy thought nibbling candy bits off the gingerbread house was a more worthwhile pursuit.)




...then we hung it on our cute little tree. Saturday night, before the disgusting weather began, The Map Man took the boys to the local fire department to buy a tree, and got a dandy -- short, narrow, flat on one side -- PERFECT for us! Especially at $10. When you're in a limited space, you go straight to the flag pole, which is where they put all the "defects". Nothin' better than a tree that'll make Charlie Brown proud!

Just look how nicely our chain dresses up our tree!



More decorations will be forthcoming as the week progresses!

week #14, winter #2 summary

This has been a really LONG week! We started out being iced in and having to miss J's Monday Homeschool Classes. After all the extra work we put in on Monday, Tuesday was more bearable and we were able to get out for his museum class, which was called "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (how appropriate is that??), where they learned about all the ways animals and people stay warm (and traced and colored in a life-size outline of their bodies, dressed in winter garb, which now adorns the back of his bedroom door).

The good mood didn't last long, however, as a major snowstorm dumped 14 inches of snow on us during the day on Thursday, canceling his other museum class for the week (it's been rescheduled for the coming week, so he'll still get to do it -- weather dependent, of course!), and putting the kibosh on our planned Friday excursion.

During the snowstorm, we kept busy building and decorating a Gingerbread house and reading stories by the fire. Our curriculum story this week was the Enki Education version of The Shoemaker and the Elves, which the kids quite enjoyed. We also added a few more seasonal pieces to our movement circle. I've had time to do a bit of soul-searching about our circle this week, and I'm planning on making some major changes to it after our holiday break to help support Zoo Boy's participation while still maintaining the structure J needs. (Stay tuned for further details!)

Candy Corn, the little stray cat we brought home from the farm where we bought Pig, finally joined our household as a full, participating family member. She started her first month in our grain room while we treated her for multiple parasite infestations and fattened her up enough to be able to withstand surgery. She had her operation last week and is now recovered to the point where she can start getting integrated into the household. She's such a sweetie, and is adjusting fairly well to the life of a pampered house pet. Although she can't believe we have birds in our house.

I had intended on doing quite a bit in the way of crafts this week, but the kids had other plans. We spent most of the afternoon during the end of the week out sledding on our pasture hill. I just can't find it in me to keep the kids indoors when they want to be out. I'm sure there's a balance to strike between indoor and outdoor activities (and certainly during the height of the storms, we had plenty of time for indoor pursuits), but I'm pretty sure I'll always lean heavily towards letting them go out over indoor activities.

Our books this week for Family Story Time were a really good batch: When Winter Comes, by Nancy Van Laan, illustrated by Susan Gaber; Christmas in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Renee Graef (one of our beloved My First Little House Books); and Room for a Little One, by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Jason Cockcroft (which is my new favorite manger story book). Our Special Story by the fire this week was Enki's The Holly and the Evergreen.

winter wonderland

(Our little snow angel, making his own.)

Fourteen inches of snow later, and our idyllic winter evening by the fireplace turned into one of those nights that it really just sucks to live on a farm. The snow ended around the kids' bedtime, so after they were tucked in, The Map Man headed out to rev up the snowblower, and I bundled up to attack the gates with a shovel. Only the snowblower didn't start. Didn't even come close. Which seems to happen more often than not. In the past 6 or so years since we've owned the accursed thing, we've only been able to use it about half a dozen times. Starts up just fine mid-summer, prefers to hibernate during the winter. To put it mildly, that launched me into a foul, foul mood, where at one point I threatened bodily harm to The Man with a broom. He wisely left me to my own demons and set forth to seek help across the street. Our neighbor (conveniently a mechanic of sorts) decided he can probably fix the blower, just not at 11pm on a Thursday evening. So it's in his shop til the weekend. He did let us borrow his snowblower after he was done with it, so we finished up digging out the gates by hand, and The Map Man cleared the driveway around midnight. Around 1 am I was seriously contemplating our lack of sanity for choosing to live is such a place. Oh yeah, almost forgot, Annie's shelter collapsed at the height of the storm. The Map Man was able to make a repair (thanks to our foresight in having spare parts available). As for Annie, she was completely unfazed and more than happy to get back into that shelter again once the roof was tall enough for her to get under. I, on the other hand, was rapidly calculating how quickly we could ditch all of the animals, sell the property, and move to a nice condo in Florida.

But the sun arose this morning, and so did I, in much better spirits. This truly IS a gorgeous place to be, in all it's deep white winter splendor. I mean, once I'm sure emergency vehicles can reach us if need be, I'm pretty happy to be calling this place home. I took the dogs for an early morning romp out front. (Everyone except ol' Tristan, who chose to putter about the driveway instead of fend off them crazy young'uns.)

We dig out our gates by hand, but we leave the path-clearing up to animal power. Here's our champion Sheep Snow Compression Team, hard at work. With the help of judicious hay-strewing, our field went from 2 foot deep virgin drifts of snow...

...to nice wide compressed paths in just a few hours. I then spread hay around the working pens and locked them in there (if you look at the way back of this photo, you can see our Team hard at work tromping down a nice solid working surface) so that I can teach my lessons tomorrow morning as scheduled. Meanwhile, the horses were hard at work making trails between hay piles in the pasture so that my students have a good path to get to the pens.

The kids couldn't wait to get out and play in the white stuff. It's all I heard about last night and this morning, so when I finally had everything under control, I set them loose on our back hill, warmly dressed and sleds-in-hand. We have an unfortunate slant to our hill that lands the kids squarely into our pasture fencing a the bottom of their sled run, but I taught them how to hit it firmly boot-first, and we had no injuries during the course of the afternoon. I'm thinking a few well-placed straw bales may be in order down there.

Next storm due in tomorrow night, supposed to be a real potent Nor'easter, although it's questionable as to whether it'll be snow or ice. This IS New England, but even for here, this much snow before Christmas is a bit unusual. This sort of smacks of January, which is making me wonder what THAT month is going to be like this year....

let it snow

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...






...but the fire is so delightful.







And since we've no place to go...







...let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

zoo boy's wish

Zoo Boy and Oscar the Screech Owl contemplate each other at our local children's museum. After hanging out with his favorite little owl for a bit, he turned to me and said:

"I wish when I look at the animals that I could be in their cages and turn into them."

Think we picked a good nick-name for him?

sunlight on glass

With the dawning of a new day, the sun arose, and I could see the beauty in the aftermath of the ice storm. I also could feel the grateful that we didn't get hit as hard as the middle of the country did yesterday, where they had a lot of downed trees. Our storm was inconvenient, but not paralyzing. And with our little sand paths allowing us to get around, doing chores was, well, doable.
It did rain last night, making our already slick surfaces absolutely impossible to walk on, so the animals will all spend the day indoors. And, never fear, there's a winter storm warning posted for tomorrow. Oh, and a huge coastal storm is supposed to develop over the weekend. I'm just hoping it's all snow and no more ice!

But for now, at least, I'm enjoying living on a homestead again.

ice, ice baby

We absolutely love everything about living on a farm for about 355 days a year. Today was one of those rare 10 when it really sucks.

We were hit with a big ice storm last night. Which meant that everything had about 1/2 inch of ice on it when we woke up, which meant sliding down to the barn to feed critters this morning. The Map Man was 4 hours late for work, not because of traffic problems, but because he was busy making impromptu sand paths all over the property so that we could get around.

Here's one of his sand paths in the foreground of this picture. You can see how the rest of the paddock is just glare ice. Unfortunately it only takes one storm to pretty much wipe out our sand supply, and they are predicting another for Thursday (hopefully they're wrong and it will either be snow or plain old rain!). We're brainstorming about where to come up with enough sand before then. We usually get one of these sorts of storms each winter, but usually there's already a solid base of snow underneath, which makes it a little more bearable, as we can break through the crusty layer and have pretty decent footing.

A picture of some "haysicles". The other, probably even MORE unfortunate result from a storm like this is that I am out of luck in regards to income-producing ability. That's what happens when your entire income depends on the weather and animals being able to get around in it. Bad, bad time of year to be out of work. Hopefully we'll get a large warming period or a good heavy snowfall sooner rather than later and I'll be able to get back to work again. In the meantime, though, I'm nervously looking around to find things to sell on ebay.

The animals are more or less stuck indoors until the footing improves. Here Lacy grabs herself a mouthful of hay. We've hung her hay rack on the outside of the shelter so that Butterscotch can't reach it. (He's on a special diet for his Insulin Resistance, and our hay has too much sugar in it for him.) The sheep are fairly comfortable in their new digs, so we're glad we got that squared away before this storm hit. The early New England colonial farmers definitely had the right idea when they built their barns attached to their houses!

We spread straw for footing and bedding in the dog yards, so they can be out as much as possible despite the lousy footing. Tristan makes himself comfortable on a straw bed this afternoon.

I finished the morning chores around 1:30pm. (Although I sort of rolled the mid-day chores into it as well.) Which gives me a whole four hours before I have to start the evening chores. It may have gone faster if I didn't have to keep coming inside to check on the kids, feed them meals, pop another DVD in the player for them. (We'll pay for all that TV viewing tonight when they're bouncing off the walls at bedtime.) Even if I'd wanted to risk the local roads (I hear the state roads are in pretty good shape), we still would have missed J's homeschool classes. Daily rhythm? Completely out the window. Although I did manage to fit in our rest time when I finally finished up. And believe me, I NEEDED that rest!

Yup, it's not great to be me right this minute. I'm officially jealous of those of you in southerly climes and "normal" houses without a zillion critters to care for. Tomorrow I'll probably go back to being happy to be me.