Brrrrrr.....it goes without saying that it is COLD here right now but I'll say it anyway. While being at the top of a hill gives us a beautiful, panoramic view, the wind drops our temperature even more bitterly. But we LOVE it here! We have plenty of firewood to keep the wood stoves in the house and Dave's shop glowing to keep the house and shop warm. The electric furnace kicks on in the wee hours if the wood stove has burned through its fuel and the generator is a welcome buffer should there be a power outage.
The chickens have a cozy coup and appear to have tripled their "Summer size" as they puff up their extra down feathers to create a space to retain the heat against their bodies. I've picked up each of them and they have obviously added a nice layer of fat to keep them even more insulated against the frigid temperatures and they get extra cracked corn each day which ramps up their body heat production.
While it is cold outside it is also simply wonderful. After freezing rain coated everything in crystal a lovely blanket of snow covered up all traces of tracks. This gave me an opportunity to see what wild life is currently moving around our property. Oh, how I wish I could put cameras up to capture images of the creators of those foot prints! I can only guess at some of them. The deer and birds are fairly obvious. But, are those feline or canine tracks through our orchard, along the line of our back field and into the woods? The wind had already blurred the original lines so some appeared long and thin (coyote) while others were shorter and fat (bobcat). What is living in the hole at the base of the fence line behind the chicken coup? It has its own feed store under the "porch" of the coup where feed from the messy chickens falls through the small slits between the floor boards.
The birds have finally discovered the bird feeder hung strategically across the porch from our front window. This provides prime viewing of the birds antics for both human and cat amusement. Zosha and Max keep chirping and warbling trying to coax the birds closer.
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